Tag: Cryfield

Lemon Polenta Cake and the Last Time that I will…

cake for breakfast
Continuing the tradition of cake for breakfast

Each time, someone comes to visit me from the UK, I ask them to bring me over some lemons.  At 75 cents each here, they’re a much dearer ingredient than their equally delicious greener counterpart, the lime.  This time, I think that my sister brought me over a kilo of them; a much better suited present than the kilo of homegrown beetroot she once left in my fridge.  So now, I have a treasure trove of lots of lemony lemons living in the bottom of my fridge.

lemons, lemons
And so, I’ve begun to work through my favourite lemon recipes.  Last weekend, I came across this one, from 2013.  Don’t be put off by the name.  It’s actually a really simple cake to make and makes an elegant dessert.  When I mentioned it to Caroline, my housemate, she decided that lemon polenta cake was her preferred dessert over Kampot Pepper Brownies.  Actually, that Saturday evening, she declared that it to be her favourite of all my cakes that she’s ever eaten.

I wasn’t so sure.  I wanted rather a lot more tartness, than the original recipe was giving me.  So, I changed the syrup to a drizzle, reducing the amount of sugar and replacing the icing sugar with caster sugar.  The second time round, the lemony tartness complemented the sweetness of the cake beautifully.lemon polenta cake 1

So, let me set the scene, if you are reading this blog for the first time.  It’s June 2013. I’m preparing to leave one life behind and begin a new one in Cambodia.  I’ve just finished working my last week as a Skills Programme Coordinator at the University of Warwick and in the midst of packing up my Redfern flat.  I’m too busy to notice the misery and grief that will soon engulf me.  Thus, I have a much more pragmatic and much less miserable outlook to goodbyes than in this later post.

The last time that I will:

  • Have a tutor meeting
  • Wash my mug at work
  • Walk out the doors in University House as a Student Careers and Skills employee
  • Teach a Warwick Skills Workshop
  • Bake in my redfern kitchen

These last two weeks have been full of ‘last times’. I’ve been trying to acknowledge each one as they come round. It’s not a fully indulgent, let’s sit down and have a cry over them. I don’t really go for that kind of sentimentality. More of a passing nod to say – I saw you and I noticed.ingredients for lemon polenta cake

I realised that you know the last thing I’ve baked in each of my kitchens every time that I’ve moved. I think that I’ve chronicled each move with a recipe.  The countless hours of mundane wrapping and packing into boxes, only made bearable by thoughts of food.  Haha…  Reminisce with me. There was the lemon and ginger cheesecake when I left Cryfield. Then I was up til the wee hours making pots of bramble jelly when I moved out of Heronbank. I made a valiant attempt at using up my bananas and created whiskey, chocolate and banana cake when I moved out of the Subwarden flat in Cryfield 3, which I affectionately refer to as my rabbit warren years. Finally, I have to to move out of Redfern and I baked lemon polenta cake.

lemon zest for lemon polenta cakeprepare the dry ingredients

I’ve done better with each move. David worries less and less about whether I’ll get everything packed up in time for the removal men.

This time I packed away my baking equipment and books the Sunday I finished work; a week before the moving deadline and the day before my CELTA course is due to start.

Which leaves me sitting forlornly at my kitchen table, reminiscing about the huge amounts of baking I’ve done in this kitchen. I don’t know when I’ll be baking again in the next 4 weeks during my CELTA course and I feel bereft.

unbaked lemon polenta cake
baked lemon polenta cake
 

Lemon Polenta cake, adapted from Nigella

Ingredients

  • 200g unsalted butter
  • 200g golden caster sugar
  • 200g ground almonds
  • 100g polenta (try to find the finest)
  • 1½tsp baking powder – if you want it to be gluten free then use the gluten free variety.
  • 3 eggs
  • a pinch of salt
  • zest of 2 lemons

Lemon Drizzle:

  • Juice of 2 lemons
  • 75g golden caster sugar

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C, 350 °F, Gas Mark 4. Grease and line a 23cm springform round cake tin.

2. In one bowl, measure out the ground almonds, polenta and baking powder and give them a stir.

3. In another bowl, add the butter, sugar, salt and lemon zest.  Cream them together, preferably with an electric mixer or a stand mixer, for a couple of minutes until the mixture changes colour and becomes light.

4. Add in an egg and mix.  Then add a third of the dry ingredients from step no.2  All the time, keep on mixing.  Alternate between adding an egg and dry ingredients.  Nigella notes that you can make this cake entirely gluten-free if you don’t have gluten-free baking powder by beating all the ingredients really hard at that this point.

5. Splodge the mixture into the prepared cake tin and smooth it out with a spatula or a knife.

6. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes.

7. Meanwhile, make the lemon drizzle.  Measure out the sugar in a bowl and then add the juice of two lemons.  Stir together until the sugar dissolves in the lemon juice.

8. The cake is baked when it’s coming away from the edges, firm on top but still rather pale colour on top.  Prick holes to allow the drizzle to seep through.  As you can see, a toothpick can look rather unsightly.  But who cares, when it’s this delicious.  Pour the prepared lemon drizzle over the top of the cake.  Leave to cool as long as you can bear in the cake tin before eating it.

squeeze lemons for lemon drizzle

And I have to say – it’s even more delicious the morning after, when the lemons and almonds have had a bit more time to get to know each other and the flavours have melded together.

lemon polenta cake 2

Mulled Wine for 300


mulled wine syrup for 300

Mulled wine syrup for 300

For the past three years, we’ve put on a Winter Wonderland event for our Cryfield and Redfern students, with Christmas music, plenty mulled wine and mince pies to get them into the festive spirit. Of course, the first year we ran this, I realised how gauche I was about how one went around making mulled wine. My previous experiences of making mulled wine consisted of using a cheap bottle of red wine and dropping one of those mulled wine sachets into it. You know the kind I’m talking about right? The schwartz mulled wine spice bag.

So, that first year, I was marshalled into the mulled wine making army. We were inside this tiny kitchen, mixing vast quantities of homemade mulled wine syrup with bottles and bottles of red wine, adding sugar and dropping oranges into stock pots. Passing vats of the stuff outside to the thirsty punters, without making too much a mess, proved one step too far. Cleanliness was sacrificed for speed. I’m not sure that the redfern subwarden’s kitchen ever survived it.

It’s an understatement to say that it was somewhat of a revelation on how to make mulled wine. But you know what? That mulled wine tasted sweetly spiced wine with the tanginess of oranges, more akin to glühwein, and far superior than my previous homemade mulled wine. And that was even when we were doing it in bulk! The experience revolutionised my approach to making mulled wine.

The following year, I volunteered to make the mulled wine. A bit of research and arithmetic later, I began to compose my email to our deputy warden and organise my mulled wine making team.

Cha, Han-na
Actions
In response to the message from Border, Daniel, 21/11/2011
Sent Items
24 November 2011 00:45

Hi Dan,
I’ve put the costcutter order into one email.
I’ve gone for the Guardian’s mulled wine recipe – with a wee bit adaptation, think it’ll be tasty. –http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/dec/09/how-to-make-perfect-mulled-wine.
Chris and Dan – a few questions at the end which need your okaying to.

Here’s the mulled wine order for 300.

50 bottles of wine
25 oranges
25 lemons
4.5kg granulated sugar
8 jars of cinnamon sticks
2 jars of cloves
6 packets of whole star anise
3 jars of whole nutmeg
4 jars of whole cardamon pods

Hot chocolate order for 60:
12 litres of semi-skimmed milk
1200g hot chocolate powder

Pies and Biscuits:
300 mince pies (6×50 packets)
150 apple pies (6×25 packets)
2 packets of dark choc digestives
2 packets of milk choc digestives
3 packets of ginger nut biscuits
3 packets of bourbons

Could we have it ordered for Wednesday 30th November for 5pm pick up, rather than the Thursday and store it in Chris’s flat? Pinar said that she could store some of the milk in her fridge too.

If we have it on the Wednesday then Pinar and I can make the mulled wine syrup the night before, making it less stressful on the Thursday.

I’ll send an email to the wider group with an update and also request for manpower on the Wednesday, if Wednesday delivery is okay? Also have queries about urns/stock pans etc, which i’ll include in the email.

thanks,
Han-Na

For the next few days, I couldn’t quite get over the fact that I had ordered 50 bottles of wine!

Pinar and Rumana came round the evening before to make the mulled wine syrup with me, studding oranges with cloves, peeling lemons…

ingredients for mulled wine2ingredients for mulled wine3mulled wine factory line_2mulled wine factory line_1ingredients for mulled winemulled wine syrup for 300_2

2 hours and plenty of chatter later, we produced about 7.5 litres of mulled wine syrup. Later that night, I got the calculator out again to work out the mulled wine syrup to wine ratio.

This is what happened on the night.

cheeky Jueadding wine to the syrup

We had 47 bottles of red wine to mull and 2 hours to do it. I’d printed off the instructions in the morning and stuck it up on a cupboard.

For 500-550ml of mulled wine syrup, add 3 bottles of wine and 2 oranges. Heat it on a gentle heat so that all the alcohol doesn’t burn off. Empty the pan and start again 🙂

Rumana and Jue took charge of the mulling of the wine, whilst the rest of us began putting up decorations and heating up the pies. They were super-efficient and had it all done before 7pm before our first punters arrived. Shortly after the event began, I nipped off to a friend’s birthday party, confident that my job had been done.

laying out the mince piesmulled wine urns

I guess it’s becoming a tradition now to make the mulled wine from scratch for this annual event because this year I find that I’m initiating the new Cryfield team recruits into the art of making mulled wine syrup for the masses. We follow the success of last year and make the syrup a few nights before. Sarah needs a plaster when her finger exchanges sharp words with a vegetable peeler and Rumana shows off her skill for removing citrus peel. Glugs of orange juice and red wine are added into the pans by Dan. The good old calculator comes out as I work out the amount of spices that’s going into each stock pan and the ratio of syrup to wine when it comes to mulling.

But this time, it’s all happening out of my Redfern kitchen and I’m in charge of organising the whole event. What a difference a year makes!

So there you have it. Mulled wine for 300. Rather simple with a bit of organisation, preparation and a team of hardworking, happy helpers.

Cryfield 3 Pudding Competition: 4th November 2009

Follow-up to Cryfield 3: the start of the pudding competition from Courgettes and Limes: Recipes and Rhymes

6 November 2012

Haha! Here’s a blast from the past: I was editing the tags on this blog entry when I hit save for later button by accident, thereby changing the publish date on this entry!

Many people ask me what it is that I do, in my residential life role. I normally end up telling them a selection of the good, the bad and the ugly. Some stories of when you know that what you’ve said or done had really helped a student, some horrid grief that a student has given you and then the vomit… It doesn’t really do the residential tutor role any justice but it gives them a flavour of it. There is rather a lot more that goes on in the general humdrum of residential life. We go around the blocks to try and get to know the students and in doing so end up answering questions on topics such as heating, fridges and personal tutors. Then there are the nights when you don’t get any sleep, for one reason and another. And of course, we run events for students. In my first year as a resident tutor, I ran a pudding competition in my block with 84 students. Pretty much all of them took part. In those early days of blissful ignorance of a disease called ‘apathy’ so commonly caught by students, I did not realise what a monumental achievement it was to have the whole block take part.

I found these photos lurking in my photo archives. I can’t claim any credit for them. One of my students took them and then passed them onto me to publish online, which I never got round to. It’s a hazy memory now, but I remember being pretty sleep-deprived by then and losing the will to write any blog entries regularly. So here are some photos of what the students got up to. Finally! And all because I accidentally hit the ‘save for later’ button. (photos courtesey of my Cryfield 3 kitchen 5 2009 students)

spotted dickbakewell tart

1. spotted dick; 2. bakewell tart (the winner)

bread and butter puddingsticky toffee pudding

3. Bread and Butter Pudding and Chocolate Rice pudding in the foreground; 4. Sticky Toffee Pudding

triflehungry students

5. Trifle; 6. Students lining up

The Cryfield Pudding Competition is on Wednesday 4th November. We’ve decided to stick to english puddings this time round and if it’s a success, then we could have an international spin on things… tiramisu, cheesecake all spring to mind.

We’re hoping that, as competitors, you have fun with each other in the block, have enough puddings to taste and discover all the hidden talents that you have.

The rules are relatively simple:

  1. The competition will happen on the evening of Wednesday 4th November.
  2. Entry costs £1 per person (this covers cost of food and the rest will be donated to a charity).
  3. At a 8pm the puddings are to be brought down to the common room where the judging will take place.
  4. There are seven kitchens so there will be seven types of puddings. Each kitchen makes a pudding – or several of the same version.
  5. The puddings will be judged on the following: flavour, originality and presentation.
  6. Students must produce the recipe that they followed plus photographs or a video that show who took part in the making of the puddings and how it was made.
  7. Each kitchen must make enough of their pudding so that they can feed their kitchen.
  8. There are extra points available: Extra 3 points if all the students in your kitchen take part, 2 points if 2 students don’t take part, 1 point if 3 students don’t take part.

And here’s the bit that you’ve been waiting for allocations of kitchens and puddings:

Kitchen 1 – Trifle
Kitchen 2 – Bakewell Pudding
Kitchen 3 – Spotted Dick
Kitchen 4 – Crumble
Kitchen 5 – Sticky Toffee Pudding
Kitchen 6 – Bread and Butter Pudding
Kitchen 7 – Rice Pudding

The judges are Cryfield Resident Tutors and we’ll provide bowls, spoons, cream and custard. Looking forward to it!

ps. please use the comments facility, if you would like to suggest a charity that we can donate the proceeds to. If not, David and I will pick one and let you know.

Cryfield 3: the start of the pudding competition

Perhaps it was inevitable? … that food would be involved in my scheme for breaking down cultural cliques, sharing British culture and encouraging social integration and between UK and international students. I discussed it with Lucy, the resident tutor in Cryfield 1, last night who came up with this and the action plan. Tonight I mooted the idea of a pudding competition with several groups of residents in my block and they loved it. So folks, it is definitely ON!

The rules are relatively simple (but not yet set in stone so suggestions welcome).

  1. The competition will happen on the same evening in the next fortnight (an evening that the Cryfield resident tutors will choose).
  2. There are seven kitchens so there will be seven types of puddings. Each kitchen makes a pudding – or several of the same version.
  3. I’ll give them each the name of the pudding to make and a recipe for it, which they can either choose to follow or adapt. We need to be able to recognise what pudding it is once it’s finished.
  4. Each kitchen must involve all the people (who would like to take part) in the making and baking of the puddings.
  5. At a certain time the puddings are to be brought down to the common room where the judging will take place.
  6. There will be a criteria for how the puddings will be judged – to be revealed later.
  7. I’m mulling over the idea of giving extra points to kitchens if they involve 3 or more international students in the process.

Currently, I am thinking that judges will be the Cryfield Resident Tutors. I haven’t discussed it with anybody else yet.

I’ve also given them some more suggestions to think about:

Everyone who would like to take part contributes 50p and the proceeds go towards their favourite charity (as a block) and covering the costs of the food.

Or – they could choose to cover costs of food amongst their kitchens and make it a social event.

So, I need seven suggestions of british puddings. And if you’d like to be a judge then it can be considered…