Buy one Mason get one Free?A 'Streamer writes to the editor of the Berwickshire;SIR, - With reference to the article recently on the Masonic Lodge in Eyemouth, can anyone say why it was named ‘The Land of Cakes’?I have asked a senior Mason who did not know and said he was unable to find out.It is such an unusual title that I thought there must be a particular reason.One theory which I pass on untested is that the original lodge, before transfer to Eyemouth was in the little village ofEccles.I am endebted to Flickr for the image which is titled 'Scottish Rite Masonic Symbol'whatever that may be when it is at home. Connection with Eyemouth? Don't know but will ask a guy with a funny handshake if I ever come across...
This is a very simple and very tasty rhubarb pie – the creamy filling complements the tartness of rhubarb very nicely, and using melted butter in the crust makes it especially crumbly. If you use thin and youngish rhubarb, you don’t need to peel them first, but that would be wise with older and thicker rhubarbs. I actually prefer to use unpeeled rhubarb, as the pie gets a lovely pink hue then. And the scent of cinnamon and cardamom makes your kitchen smell divine..A creamy rhubarb pie(Kreemjas rabarbripirukas)A recipe adapted from June 2003 issue of PereköökThe crumbly crust:250 ml of plain flour0.5 tsp baking powder2 Tbsp brown sugar100 g butterSieve the flour and baking powder, mix with sugar and melted butter. Press the mixture into Ø 26 cm loose-bottomed cake tin and put into...
Same recipe - mocca cake with toasted almonds - just this time down-sized to feed 7 hungry adults and 2 ravenous kids. Oh, I did mix some milk curd cream into the filling, so it'd be healthier, sorry,...
I'm back from London. Arriving from truly summer-like London (sunny, 20 Celsius) to much colder and almost wintry Tallinn (rainy, ca 4 Celsius) last night was a bit of a shock, but as K. had baked a batch of canelés* to welcome me back home, I quickly warmed to the idea again :-)I'll be back with a new post tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'll leave you with a molten chocolate cake/chocolate fondant pudding that was much better than the earlier attempt:Same recipe, just shorter baking time and darker chocolate (Lindt 82%). Yum...* See here, or here or...
Last night I got a bad craving for chocolate. Although K. kindly offered to whip up and bake some chocolate souffle for me, I declined, as I remembered the number of dirty dishes in the kitchen after his last attempt. Instead I went to my del.icio.us bookmarks and printed out Food Migration's recipe for molten chocolate cake. I gave the recipe to K., together with Nigella's recipe for molten chocolate babycakes and asked him to choose between the two. He went for the first one, as the idea of using 350 grams of chocolate for 6 small cakes (as requested by Nigella's recipe) seemed a bit excessive on a weekday night.Only then did we realise that we don't have any bitter chocolate left in the house, so we used Manjari 64% Madagascar Plantation ("Rich, dark chocolate with a raspberry finish")...
Here’s how to get hold of that very special bottle of wine that you see at your friends’ place.A fortnight ago K. and I were invited to have dinner with some good old friends of his, Peter & Kristel. We had a lovely meal, drank some good wine (and pomegranate juice) and watched holiday pictures from South Africa, where the couple had spent the New Year’s Eve. It was my first visit to their place, so I was shown around the house (lots of lovely art, a captivating fish tank). Before we continued with biltong and fig compote, we stood for a while next to the couple’s wine collection.It was then that K. spotted a precious bottle of Burgundy: Clos de la Roche, Patriarche Père et Fils (Beaune, 1992). K. is into wine, big time, so he came up with a cunning idea.So it happened that last...
Valentine's Day hasn't really caught off in Estonia, unless you count the piles of red boxes of chocolate in supermarkets. I'm with Molly here - I prefer romance in small quantities, on a daily basis, if possible :) However, I'm also a chocoholic, so any excuse for eating chocolate is good for me. The imminent arrival of Valentine's day was a good excuse to bake a chocolate cake last weekend. I chose a recipe for chocolate brownies from an Australian booklet, Sweet & Simple: Chocolate (Australian Women's Weekly). I had to bake mine in a round cake tin, as I hadn't got a square one at the time (does that mean I cannot call these 'brownies' any more??). And as I wanted my coconut brownies to be really coconutty, I doubled the amount of coconut. A good idea, if I may say so myself - the...
The bright green Japanese matcha tea powder has been intriguing me for a while now. The slightly bitter taste had been haunting me since eating the Mont Fuji cake at Mariage Frères last May. The vivid green colour had captivated my visual tastebuds even earlier, when browsing Bea's and Keiko's blogs. I've now bookmarked numerous recipes using matcha. Last November I made dark chocolate & matcha truffles, but I've decided that more - many more - dishes incorporating matcha should be making an appearance in my kitchen. I'm thinking of making matcha panna cotta soon, as well as matcha ice cream. But to start things off, I made a simple green loaf during the weekend.My green matcha loaf(Rohelise tee keeks)Serves 84 medium eggs150 ml sugar200 ml plain flour1 Tbsp matcha tea powder*a pinch of...
