Birthdays and beyond - A cake for all occaisions

Carrot cake is one of those classic homemade cakes that never seems to go out of style. Here is my adaptation of my father's favourite recipe for carrot cake which I made for his birthday.

Happy Birthday Dad.

Carrot Cake

2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
2 tsp Angostura orange bitters or orange zest
2 cups carrots, grated finely
8 oz crushed pineapple, drained
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
  
Cream Cheese Frosting
8 oz cream cheese
1/2 cup butter
1lb or 31/2 cups icing sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence

Method

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F
Grease tins, line with parchment paper and flour two 9" round cake tins
Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon. Add sugar and oil and beat until fluffy and creamy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well between additions then add the bitters. Add pineapple, carrots and walnuts or pecans.

Divide the batter evenly among the two cake tins use a spatula to even out the batter. Bake  for 35 to 40 minutes or until the tops just spring back when gently pressed with a fingertip and the cakes begin to pull away from the sides of the pan. Remove from the oven and let stand 2-3 minutes in the pans on a cooling rack. Run a small knife around the perimeter of the cake and invert the cakes onto a cooling rack and allow to cool completely.

Brush any stray crumbs from the sides of the cakes wrap in plastic wrap and transfer the cakes to the freezer. until you are ready to frost the cake. Do not thaw the layers before icing. Freezing the cake ensures that loose crumbs will not ruin the look of the iced cake

When you are ready to frost the cake, combine butter , cream cheese, icing sugar and vanilla essence and mix well. Once the cake is completely cool you may frost and layer one on top the other.

The Wednesday Meal

Late breakfasts, lazy Sunday lunches and posh desserts are the stuff of dreamy, relaxed weekends. Weekdays are a whole other story.

Sure, it’s nice to have a fabulous repertoire of sensational epicurean delights to wow your family. But of what use is haute cuisine when you find yourself completely exhausted with only microwave time to get dinner on the table?

Enter the Wednesday meal. You know that dish that you can make blind and in your sleep.  I call it my Wednesday meal because that's the day of the week when I usually want a bit of reprieve from the kitchen. You won’t find this in many cookbooks nor will it grace your plate in a restaurant. However the combination of smoked herring, rice, dhal and bhaji is a traditional meal that every Trinidadian knows well.

With the exception of the dhal, each component of this meal only takes 10 maybe 15 minutes to prepare. You will forgive me the omission of the dhal as the cooking time is longer.

Dasheen Bush Bhaji

Serves- 5-6

2 bundles dasheen (rolled younger leaves)

1 onion

6 cloves garlic

1 tsp oil

1 tablespoon curry

4 ochros (okra) optional

1 pk (50g) coconut milk powder

½ lime

Salt to taste

Here is what you do. Boil some water and put smoked herring fillets to soak. Now, feeling all virtuous that you are about to nourish your family instead of cave and reach for the takeout menu, prep dasheen leaves and heat oil on medium high. Mix the curry with water and add to the pot. Cook for about 2 mins.

Finely dice a garlic clove or six.

Yeah six is definitely better.

Then in a wide, deep pot, sauté the curry and the garlic. You want this mixture to get wonderfully fragrant, but without burning. Monitor the heat and keep moving everything around the pan. Add the dasheen leaves, ochros (okra) if using, coconut cream powder and 1 cup of water. Cook it all on medium heat until the callaloo melts in the pot and the water is cooked off.

While that is bubbling away, cook your smoked herring.

Smoked Herring

1 lb smoked herring fillets

2 tomatos

2 medium onion

1 hot pepper (optional)

6-8 tablespoons vegetable oil

3 Trinidad pimento peppers (optional)

1 sweet pepper(optional)

Method
Start by putting the fillets into a fairly deep bowl and cover with boiling water. This will help remove some of the salt and make the fish tender enough to shred. Let it soak for about 10 – 15 mins. Salt content varies so taste a tiny piece of fish before going on to the next step. If it is too salty repeat the first step and steep the fish in boiling water again.

Drain the water from the bowl and rinse the fillets with a fresh batch of cool water. Squeeze dry and start shredding the fillets into small pieces. You will encounter a few small bones. Remove as many as you are inclined too but don’t worry if you don’t get them all because they are very soft and can be safely consumed.

Chop the rest of ingredients and set aside
Sauté the onion, garlic and seasonings in 1 tablespoons of oil. Then add the tomatoes and cook about 2 minututes. Add the flaked smoked herring and hot pepper (optional) and allow it to cook for about 10 minutes.

Boil some rice, a squeeze of lime over the bhaji and dinner is ready. See that wasn’t too hard was it? So tell me what is your favourite easy to prepare Wednesday meal?




This post is part of Simple Lives Thursday.

Southwestern Shredded Beef

One of my favourite cooking mantras is cook once, eat twice. So you can be sure the minute I saw Southwestern beef wraps over on Our Best Bites, I was all over this recipe. The plan was to cook a lot (once) so that there would be leftovers to make tacos ( thus eating twice).

My plan was a colossal failure. There were no leftovers because certain individuals seemed to think that eating twice meant that they should go back for second helpings. I have no real evidence but I do I have my suspicions that some may have even stretched it to eating thrice. Consider yourselves warned.


Originally this was a slow-cooker meal from Mc Cormick. I have adapted it for the pressure cooker.

Southwestern Shredded Beef

INGREDIENTS

2 medium onions, cut into 1-inch wedges

3 cloves garlic

2 1/2 pounds boneless chuck roast,

1 teaspoon chili powder

1 teaspoon  cumin, ground

1 to 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro (or 2 teaspoons culantro)

3/4 teaspoon salt

5 Trinidad pimento peppers or substitute with 1 green bell pepper, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

6 diced tomatoes

*For extra heat, use spicy salsa and/or add 1 chopped jalapeno pepper to slow cooker when adding green pepper


DIRECTIONS

1. Put onions and whole garlic cloves at the bottom of the pressure cooker.


2. Mix chili powder, cumin, cilanto and salt in small bowl. Rub seasoning mixture all over meat. Place meat on onions and garlic in the pressure cooker. Top with green pepper and diced tomatoes. Cover.


Consult your pressure cooker manual on how long to cook the beef as the following instructions may not work for your brand of cooker.

3. Cook on high until desired pressure is acheived (about 5 mins). Turn  heat down to med - low and cook for 20 minutes.

4.When the 20 minutes are up, release the pressure from the pot according to the manufacturer's instructions. This takes about 5 mins.

5. Shred beef with 2 forks. At this point you will find that there is still a lot of liquid in the pot. You can drain the liquid of or f cook further in the uncovered pressure cooker to thicken gravy.


Serving Tip: Serve with rice,  fried plantains and bean salad

St Dominic Apricot Charlotte

I am glad that summer is over.

Did you know that during summer food bloggers drive me crazy?

Yeh you do.

Oh I'm sure it's not intentional.

Still, the cumulative effect of all of you waving your punnets of berries and baskets of stone fruits in my face is a bit more than I can bear.

You bake pies, cobblers and clafoutis and sing praises to the rosy blush of summer fruit.

Meanwhile, I curse our humidity. Tropic heat is ill-suited to growing stuff like blueberries or peaches.

Crap. I am so envious of you all, BUT NOT THIS YEAR!

This year I had this to comfort me.

Mammee apple.

No I didn't just cuss yo momma. That's the name of the fruit I asked you to identify in an earlier post. Some of you correctly identified it on my FB page as mammy apple (Mammea americana L).


Trinidadians also call it mammee sepote, not to be confused with mamey sepote (pouteria sapota) which is a different fruit altogether.


Admittedly it will never win any fruity beauty pageants. The skin is rough and kind of bumpy and well... it's brown. You're thinking, no way this ugly thing has your luscious berries beat. Never fear, under that rough exterior lurks a delectable and fragrant surprise.

According to the "Manual Of Tropical And Subtropical Fruits", by Wilson Popenoe. Christopher Columbus, after his first visit to Veragua in 1502, is said to have described the mammee apple as a fruit the size of a large lemon, with the flavor of the peach.

Is it any wonder that the man got hopelessly lost trying to find the East Indies? Evidently Chris' powers of observation like his navigation are way off course. A large lemon? Really there were 8lb lemons back in the day? As to the peach-like flavour ....uhm... not so much.

This fruit is indigenous to the West Indies but some 500 years after Coloumbus and it still isn’t something that is widely cultivated and as such is not very well known.  I must confess that my remembrance of the actual taste was vague and overshadowed by memories of holidays in the countryside which was where I first tasted mammee apple..

With something akin to religious reverence I assembled my own children and we gathered around the one mammy apple. I explained what it was and divided it up amongst us. The flesh is slightly tart but sweet, and crisp.

Everyone offered up their own superlatives of it’s deliciousness in an effort  to help me describe the flavour for my blog readers.  Turns out we each had a different opinion. Flavours like peaches, nectarines, mangoes, pineapples  cantaloupes, and apricots were suggested.  The final decision was that the flavour is familiar yet quite unique; it tastes like itself - a  mammee apple. Pity there was only the one.

But wait! The following week my dad came back from the market with the farmer's remaining three 3 mammee apples and a bottle of homemade mammee apple jam. JOYFULNESS!

So what do you do with your mammee apple once you've bought out the farmer's meager supply thus selfishly denying others the joy of experiencing this amazing  fruit?

 St Dominic Apricot Charlotte

Woah! That looks really good but what the heck is a St Dominic apricot? I thought we were talking about mammee apples.

Nice to know you're paying attention.

Mammee apple is also called St Dominic or West Indian apricot. "To Spanish-speaking people, it is known as mamey de Santo Domingo, mamey amarillo, mamey de Cartagena, mata serrano, zapote mamey, or zapote de Santo Domingo. In Portuguese it is called abricote, abrico do Pará, abrico selvagem, or pecego de Sao Domingos. In French, it is abricot d' Amerique, abricot des Antilles, abricot pays, abricot de Saint-Dominque or abricotier sauvage."

Besides a St Dominic apricot charlotte sounds a whole lot more impressive than Mammee apple ice-box cake don't you think?

So to my good friend in Texas tweeting peotic about her damn juicy farm purchased peaches. Forget you and your bags of cherries from your  in-law's farm in Iowa. This charlotte is me sticking my tongue out you.:-P

I've got tree-ripened West Indian apricots enveloped in a pillow of sweetened cream. They are then wrapped in a layer of sponge cake soaked in Cointreau and served with a drizzle of wild hibiscus syrup.  So yeah I too have summer fruit to crave, you betcha! And it may even be better than peaches!

St Dominic Apricot Charlotte 
(adapted from taste.com.au)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup water
500g cream cheese cheese
600ml thickened cream
1/3 cup (50g) icing sugar
2 egg yolks
1 vanilla bean, split, seeds scraped
1/2 cup (125ml) Grand Marnier or Cointreau
Juice of 2 oranges
one 8" sponge cake cut in strips

One large mammee apple strips

1. Place the granulated sugar and 1/4 cup water in a small pan over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add the mammee apple slices and stir. Cook for 2 mins. Remove from heat and let cool. 
2. Line the 4 rounded teacups with plastic wrap. Place the cream cheese, thickened cream, icing sugar, egg yolks and vanilla seeds in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat on high speed until thick and well combined.
3. Combine the Cointreau or Grand Marnier and orange juice in a separate bowl. Drizzle half the sponge cake slices with the juice mixture and layer in the base and sides of teacups with the soaked cake strips. Spread with one-third of the cream cheese, and a layer of mamme apple slices. Repeat the process, then top with the remaining cream cheese mixture, reserving the remaining mango slices to serve. Cover the cakes and chill for 2 hours or until firm.
4. To serve, carefully invert the cup onto a small serving plate and remove plastic wrap. Decorate with slices of the reserved mammee apple and serve with hibiscus or sauce of your choice.

We have a winner!

The winner of my blog anniversary giveaway is Dee. Congratulations!   I am really very thrilled since Dee is a regular visitor to my blog and comments on almost every post. She  is also a friend of mine. We may live miles apart  in different countries but thanks to the Internet we remain close. At first it felt a bit weird when her number came up and I worried about the fairness of the draw. However when I think about it, my  friends and family make up the majority of my loyal readers and they have the same chance of winning as anyone else. Dee followed the rules and her number was generated by random.org so congratulations to her. Let me take this opportunity to thank EVERYONE who follows my blog. I am deeply appreciative of your support, truely I am:-)