Stuart's Soliloquy to the void

Apple blackberry tart

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 | Cooking | No Comments

Starting as an experiment on creating whipped cream from an oat-based cream, the apple blackberry tart is a nice dessert, but since it is fairly dry it really needs whipped cream. The tart dough and fruits applied does look rather appetising.

The blackberries are fresh from our garden, so I think they deserve a closeup.

This is a closed tart receiving a lid of more shortcrust dough.

It is supposedly possible to whip the oat-based cream by adding some gelatine, but even after we threw it in the freezer for a while to strengthen the gelatine’s properties (they were not working without this step at all) the result was lumpy and disappointing, nowhere near the impressive tops and lightness of regular whipped cream. So we had to settle with a slightly thickened cream on the tart.

Darkness fell between the assembly of the tart and it finishing its bake, hence the bad lighting in the last photo.

Tags: baking, cake, dessert

Maize bread

Saturday, August 16th, 2008 | Cooking | No Comments

During the last month and some of writing my thesis I spent almost all my waking hours doing just that. No baking whatsoever. One of the last things I had time to bake before going into crunch mode was a maize bread, or corn bread as it is known in many places.

As evident in the photo, the yellow colour of the maize imparts on the dough rather starkly as opposed to the normal white wheat flour. Once baked the pale yellow colour turns to a more golden glow.

The crumb, however, is fairly tough, and a tad more dry than its wheat only counterparts. The maize flavour adds a nice taste, though.

Tags: baking, bread, maize bread

Rehabilitating from thesis writing

Thursday, August 14th, 2008 | Cooking | No Comments

There has been a lot of silence on this blog during the past two months. Too much silence, really. However, all has not been lost as I have now finished my master’s thesis and handed it in. Only the defense remains. However, after scarcely having had time to bake, let alone writing about it, there is only one solution for rehabilitation: bake a lot of bread and make some awesome food. So I did just that, or, rather, I provided the bread, my wife provided the awesome food.

What we did was take a bunch of very lovely and delicate chantarelle mushrooms…

and we throw them on a frying pan together with a few regular champignons, some thyme, a bit of parsley and some thinly sliced garlic. They make for a very lovely photo if I have to say so myself.

To this we add a bit of oat-based cream (since I am lactose intolerant) that the mushrooms absorb fairly quickly.

Now all we need is a bit of my freshly baked french bread…

and the fried mushrooms are placed on the bread…

et voilà. Delicious as an appetiser or a night snack.

Tags: appetisers, baking, bread, food, mushroom, white bread