Angel Food Cake for Boo Radley (#ReadCookEat)

  "Mr Tate went to the swing and picked up his hat. It was lying beside Atticus. Mr Tate pushed back his hair and put his hat on.

  'I never heard tell that it's against the law for a citizen to do his utmost to prevent a crime from being committed, which is exactly what he did, but maybe you'll say it's my duty to tell the town all about it and not hush it up. Know what'd happen then? All the ladies in Maycomb includin' my wife'd be knocking on his door bringing angel food cakes. To my way of thinkin', Mr Finch, taking the one man who's done you and this town a great service an' draggin' him with his shy ways into the limelight -  to me, that's a sin. It's a sin and I'm not about to have it on my head. If it was any other man it'd be different. But not this man, Mr Finch.'

  Mr Tate was trying to dig a hole in the floor with the toe of his boot. He pulled his nose, then he massaged his left arm. 'I may not be much, Mr Finch, but I'm still sheriff of Maycomb County, and Bob Ewell fell on his knife. Good night sir.'

  Mr Tate stamped off the porch and strode across the front yard. His car door slammed and he drove away.

Atticus sat looking at the floor for a long time. Finally he raised his head. 'Scout,' he said, 'Mr Ewell fell on his knife. Can you possibly understand?'

  Atticus looked like he needed cheering up. I ran to him and hugged him an kissed him with all my might. 'Yes sir, I understand,' I reassured him. 'Mr Tate was right.'

  Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. 'What do you mean?'

  'Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a mockingbird, wouldn't it?'

  Atticus put his face in my hair and rubbed it. When he got up and walked across the porch into the shadows, his youthful step had returned. Before he went inside the house, he stopped in front of Boo Radley. 'Thank you for my children, Arthur,' he said." 

- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

As you have read, thing turned out that Boo Radley would not get into the limelight and as a consequence wouldn't receive any  angel food cakes from anyone around town.

Therefore, in order to join #ReadCookEat again this month, I decided to have a go at an angel food cake. I never had one before yet attempted to make one. So I had to do some research. One recipe I found was from Mary Berry on the BBC website. It mentioned also it was from The Great British Bake Off. I didn't notice anything ...

So, I didn't want to make a huge cake requiring a lot of ... eh ... cake eating afterwards, so I went one adjusting ideas from the net to my needs ...

Angel Food Cake for Boo Radley:

Ingredients:

75 g flour

180 g sugar

6 egg whites

Zest of one lemon

A small splash of lemon juice

1 tsp. baking powder

Pinch of salt

Method:

Sift the flour, baking powder and 60 g sugar into a bowl, which you set to the side for the time being.

Then start whisking the egg whites in a large bowl for one minute on high speed.

Add the lemon zest, juice and salt and continue whisking on high speed for another 3 minutes. The egg whites should form soft peaks when you remove the whisk.

Now you continue whisking at even higher speed and add the remaining 120 g of sugar on tablespoon at a time until all is in. Continue whisking for a while.

Now fold in the flour and sugar mixture, being careful as not to knock out all the air you whisked in before.

Transfer the batter to your tin you plan to use. Only after I had finished my angel food cake and was ready to eat, I remember I had seen the episode of The Great British Bake Off, where they had to bake angel food cakes according to Mary Berry's recipe. They even had special angel food cake tins. However, I hadn't. So I used a small rectangular tin for it.

Whatsoever the case, bake the angel food cake in the bottom third of your oven at 180 °C for 30-40 min.  I had mine in for a longer time (as I have read in other recipes) and that resulted in the cake to be looking slightly unpleasant around the edges.

Whatever you do, use common sense and test with a wooden skewer whether your cake is ready. When it comes out clean, it is.

After you removed the cake from the oven allow it to cool down for at least one hour. Then you can remove it from the tin and eat it ...

As you see on the picture, I wasn't quite satisfied to eat it like this. I added some strawberries and some freshly made rhubarb and strawberry jam.

Rhubarb and Strawberry Jam:

Ingredients:

400 g strawberries

2 large stalks of rhubarb

175 g sugar

100 ml water

1 vanilla bean

Juice of one lemon

Method:

Chop up the strawberries and the rhubarb. Put them into a sufficiently large pot together with the sugar and the water. Slice open the vanilla bean, add the seeds to the pot and the sliced open vanilla bean, too. Finally add the lemon juice and bring on the heat.

Let it cook and bubble away. Once you are satisfied with the consistency, fill the jam into a sterilised jar. Use it for the angle food cake or to enhance other desserts.

Well, it really has been a long time since I read To Kill a Mockingbird, it was back in school. Hm, this reminds me once more, I am not 20 anymore. Oh, oh, I feel the crisis coming up again. Therefore, I have continue to do some stupid things again or ... some even more stupid things ... things, I've never done before.

But, before I can go over to this I go and link this post up to the #ReadCookEat challenge. If you want to join, too, head over to Chez Maximka and add your link. That will nit only make Galina happy, but me as well.

I hope this post has made you hungry for reading, cooking and eating and you will join us this month ...

All the Sweet Things

Of what use is it to have a food blog? ... eh ... I mean, of what a use is it to have a food blog, cooking and writing lovely recipes and no-one is going to try them (at least not that you know of)?
Are the things just nice to look at or are they really delicious and easy to reproduce or at least made to satisfaction?
It's time to find out ...

Fresh from the garden to the oven: Rhubarb Cardamom Crumble Cake

When I started my tiny garden patch I set out to do some experimenting (always the same) with this and that. You don't have to think to hard that this would not deliver much food for a lot of dishes. I tried potatoes once and ... had just enough for one small potato salad. I had beans. Well ... eh ... I didn't even get as many as to count the years of my life so far with. I just got 37. Whatever I am going to do with them. I still don't know.
Of course there are some herbs growing in that garden patch. I can have thyme any time I want. Right now it is flowering and the chives as well. Then I got lavender, rosemary, oregano and at the moment a bit of coriander. The mint refuses to die. On a regular basis it disappears at the end of the year only to return the following year.
Strawberries! Yes, there are strawberries, too. Now you imagine it is quite cramped on my tiny garden patch with so many different things growing, but ... well ... eh ... there are only quite few strawberries and I can have one or two when I check the garden.
Last year, though, I acquired a rhubarb plant. By the end of the year I had the feeling I managed to kill it, but this spring it was growing well again. I guess, it's still rhubarb season or it will end soon. However, this rhubarb plant is really doing a good job. I wasn't just able to eat once from it. No, not even just twice. Careful thinking brings me to five times and I could still live with it to take something from it a sixth time. The rhubarb is really doing a good job. One job, it accomplished quite well, a cake ... a Rhubarb Cardamom Crumble Cake.
I got some stalks fresh from the garden and then ...

Ingredients:
4-5 stalks of rhubarb, cut into chunks
1 tbs fruit sugar
1 tsp cardamom
125 g butter, soft or softer or even melted
125 g sugar
1 tbs vanilla sugar
4 eggs
250 g flour
2 tsp baking powder
125 g butter
90 g sugar
100 g flour

Method:
Mix the rhubarb chunks with the fruit sugar and cardamom.
Then prepare the dough. Cream the eggs with the 125 g sugar and vanilla sugar. Add the soft butter and flour and combine to make the dough for the cake. Spread it on a baking tray prepared with baking parchment.
Start heating up the oven to 180 °C.
Distribute the rhubarb on top of the dough on the baking tray.
Now make the crumbles with the remaining butter sugar and flour. Put it all in a bowl and massage it together with your finger tips. If you enough of the massage for the crumble you might want to get someone to give you a massage. Maybe you manage. However, wait for that until you have crumbled the crumbles over the rhubarb on the cake.
Put the tray into the oven for 30-40 minutes. You know when the cake is ready.
While the cake is in the oven it might be an ideal opportunity to get that massage I just previously mentioned. Sometimes I like to administer a massage, but it's quite difficult to do that properly on my own shoulders. No worries. There are some things to endure and to live with. Massage also has only a relative value, though it was quite beneficial for the crumbles. 
Speaking of it, don't forget that your cake is ready. Remove it from the oven and plan to eat it ... enjoy it.

At the time I was doing this cake I asked around on the net what to do with rhubarb. By the way, what is your favourite way of having rhubarb?
I got one nice response of doing a crumble with rhubarb and apples. I had to try, too. Maybe I find time to let you know about the results. Of course only, if you appreciate that ... really?! 
Finally, before I devote myself to do other things I leave this post for Javelin Warrior's Made with Love Mondays. After all the rhubarb went just from the garden to the oven. Well, you read how I treated it nicely in between.

Originally, I wanted to add this post to the Simple and in Season blog event from Ren Behan. She mentioned the challenge opens at the 1st of every month, but I couldn't find the post to enter it. Now I found out the post was open a bit later. So I hope, it's still fine to enter.

Take care!

Really! Honestly!

I hope you are doing well and enjoy life to any extend possible and decently. 

Treat the people around you nicely, especially those you love. For you don't know how long you still have them around and can do this.

Sometimes you get just one chance to do things right ... so make sure not to mess it up.

Hope to see you again with some sun on the face and in the heart ...

Cornish Strawberry-Rhubarb Tiramisu

What a beautiful day! I don’t have to go to work today – an extra day off. I saw even the sun today and was tempted to lie down in the garden, in the sun.

 

It almost felt like holiday! At least a few features were fitting: no work, sun.

Of course having these two features and adding Cornwall to it would make things perfect.

Well it was a great time in Cornwall. There are tons of good memories.

Tintagel castle (with guard dog)

you have a great view from up there

nice fishing villages

the harbour of St. Ives

view from Lands End

the Minack Theatre ...

... with a nice view as well

 

The memories also have to do with food. I can’t remember how many Cornish pasties, but “I had them all!” and would I have had more time, even more.

Well, in between, of course there needs to be time for a good old cream tea with fine Cornish clotted cream.

From the past back to the present.

That brings us also to a blog challenge: Best of British, which features, what a surprise, the region of Cornwall this month.

More about this blog challenge you find here (Chocolate Log Blog) and here (The Face of New World Appliances) and here (London Unattached).

Let's talk food then.

Cornish Strawberry-Rhubarb Tiramisu

What do we need then for this waistline developing dish (if you are careful, nothing might happen, though)?

Let’s talk food then (of course I know that tiramisu is not Cornish, but clotted cream is not Italian).

Ingredients

200 g strawberries

200 g rhubarb

250 g mascarpone

250 g Cornish clotted cream (that is what it makes Cornish)

8 sponge fingers (at least)

one vanilla pod

5 teaspoons of vanilla sugar

one tablespoon of fructose

8 cl of strawberry liqueur (you might meed more when you like to drink during the preparation)

some wild strawberries

50 g of white chocolate

Then do it

Oh, you want me to tell you. Good!

Line a 24 x 24 cm form with the sponge fingers. You can add more in a second layer if you feel like it. 

Use the strawberries and rhubarb to make a nice compote in a pot on a medium heat. Add here also 4 cl of the liqueur (to the pot – and one to yourself if you have to (I’m not encouraging drinking though)) and the fructose. Cook it until the rhubarb starts to melt.

In the meantime whip up the mascarpone and the clotted cream together with the vanilla sugar and the seeds from the vanilla pod (if you can get only cheap dry vanilla pods, don’t bother using them). Well, and don’t forget to add 4 cl of the liqueur here as well (yes, I know). You get a slightly pinkish cream.

Spoon the compote over the sponge fingers. Do it carefully, you don’t want to make a mess, do you?

 

If you have managed, you can spoon over the slightly pinkish cream. Then you have to decide, what to do with the remaining cream you didn’t manage to get from the bowl.

Although I got unexpected company in the kitchen, I didn’t do what you might think I did.

(That is Willy. I try to keep an eye on him while his owner is away - EXTRA CHALLENGE! No worries, we get by!)

The whole thing we finish off with some nice wild strawberries I just got fresh from my garden today (while keeping an eye on Willy and Lucy – OK – Molly was also visiting – three dogs – no worries).

Finally or last but not least, grate the white chocolate on top.

Put it as it is in the fridge for a few hours and then indulge!

That should be all then. Now I can continue enjoying my holiday in "Cornwall".

Cooking in season - rhubarb-apple tarts

There is a strange thing happening, when you go shopping. Some food you find has travelled a lot more then you would maybe in one month, or rather, things have travelled half the globe before they reach you. What things? Also food you would get around here, but are not in season at the moment.

While sitting in front of my computer and browsing the net, I came across this:

 

Why not use the things for cooking that are available locally and that are in season (for some occasions it might not be possible). It's good to think about this!
This is also in line with a cookbook I bought now already some time ago: Jamie at home. It also has some good information on growing things on your own.
Said and done. Inspired by that I got a rhubarb plant from a friend this year. It was already quite big. So it is possible to use some stalks from it already this year.

As you look at this picture, the stalk at the front right edge of the image is no more.

Little rhubarb-apple tarts
All you need for this are some rhubarb, apples, brown sugar, orange juice, and ready made tart shells or you go through the process of making your own shortcrust pastry shells. Well, I happened to have some ready tarts shells still left somewhere in my storage (it was about time to use them).
Peel, remove the core part of the apples and cut them in small pieces. Remove the ends of the rhubarb stalks and cut them into, well also small pieces. Then just put all the ingredients, apart from the tart shells of course, in a pot and cook a lovely little compote with it. You know when the time is right. I didn't see the pieces of rhubarb anymore.
Let the ready compote cool off a bit and put it on the tart shells.

What's left to say: Go for it!
So, don't forget to grab some rhubarb and have a nice cake, may it be small like these or even a big one. It was the first time I used rhubarb, but for sure not the last time ...