❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
RMH
No title available
sheepfilms
roma★
No title available
occasionally subtle
Keni
𓃗
Andulka
h
Mike Driver
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
No title available
macklin celebrini has autism
One Nice Bug Per Day
Claire Keane
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Game of Thrones Daily
tannertan36
seen from Belarus
seen from Romania
seen from Malaysia
seen from Venezuela
seen from United States
seen from Ukraine
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Vietnam
seen from Chile
seen from Brazil
seen from Australia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Colombia
seen from Brazil
seen from Mexico
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
@changingcountriesforcakes-blog
This will be my penultimate post on this blog that I've neglected for far too long. Two years is a long time to be 'making a life change', and only in the last few weeks, have I had the courage to finally make that leap of faith and give up architecture for pastry.
My quest to explore the intersection of food and design will continue in another yet-to-be-born blog. At least I won't be commenting from the sidelines anymore!
Wish me luck!
While heading back home from a site visit in Exeter, I walked past the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in the city centre and then retraced my steps, only to take a photograph of that lovely pink wall. It's not a colour I usually make room for in my life, but it's that shade of pink - a Victorian pink I was told, here enhanced further with gentle lighting from the skylight above.
My beautician was quite amused - apparently I was the first person to ask her for nail varnish to match a wall colour! Occupational hazard, I say in my defence.
My first attempt at jam-making left me confused: has it turned out right? Was it supposed to taste this good? One taste and it made every store-bought version I've tasted pale into oblivion. Try making it, do! You might have to wait a few months before attempting this one - a thick-cut Seville and blood orange marmalade that I made in January when they were both in season.
Jam-making doesn't seem that precise a science as baking. Apart from the general process, every cook seems to have his or her method, proportions, preference of sugars, etc. A marmalade, however, does appear to entail more elaborate techniques than other preserves.
I chose to follow this slow cooker marmalade recipe by Wales-based John and Liz Burton, where they warmly share their wisdom. While halving the quantities, I couldn't resist substituting one of the Seville oranges for a Sicilian blood orange and letting colour add to my excitement! For sugar, I'm a bit embarrassed to say I added every kind I had in store - demerara, unrefined caster sugar, muscovado sugar, soft brown sugar, granulated sugar (in order of quantities). This somehow seemed to work, because I think the darker sugars brought out the flavour of the blood orange better.
To conclude, I'll reiterate that you should give it a try. Toast for breakfast is a once-a-month occurrence for me, but it's always a pleasure to reach out for my marmalade that tasted more blood orange in February but has now mellowed to better express its Hispanic entity.
Season to taste
One of my resolutions this year was to learn about seasonal food. I grew up in a desert, where the season after season brought little indigenous food besides dates and a few vegetables from some intensive agriculture. Every other ingredient was imported and available throughout the year. So apart from a few varieties of fruit, I never developed a vocabulary for seasonal food.
Like for everything else in life, I turned to the printed word for enlightenment. Paul Waddington's Seasonal Food: A guide to what's in season when and why warmly shares his insight by telling you what you can anticipate month-by-month in the English markets, and how you can expect it to taste.
So, in search of January's bounty, I headed to Borough Market in search of venison. As I handed over my money in exchange for the goods, I learnt that the vendor had also hunted the animal.
My hand paused for a few seconds, mid-air over the display counter. I won't comment on the moral dilemma between happily supporting someone's livelihood, and supporting just that kind of livelihood. I only want to highlight that the opportunity to know your food is out there.
Volver
You might have gathered that I'm back. Not with a vastly-improved blog as I had hoped to. In that void between posts I've literally changed countries, yo-yo'd back into North London, found clarity on important life issues, and most importantly, made vital choices about food.
I've joined the movement of people who espouse organic, natural, whole foods as a lifestyle choice. I'll talk more about my first steps in future posts, but I have to tell you that nourishing myself with the right ingredients has been a revelation. I no longer crave food: what I eat is wholesome. Flavours seem more distinct to me and I feel I can almost smell or taste artificial additives.
When you come from a country where people die from hunger every day, rejecting any kind of food feels like ingratitude, initially. That's what I was brought up to believe. But I learnt that I could invite the right things, the right people, the right circumstances into my life, while fully accepting that alternatives existed and fully deserved to exist as they were. Maybe I'm just learning to be true to myself - I wear next to no makeup, use natural cosmetics and skincare products, spend hours of my life ironing because I prefer natural fabrics to synthetic and value integrity and honesty above all other personal qualities.
It's truly a blessing to have so many resources to inspire my choice and have access to so much great food here in London. You can be assured that I will share what I learn with you!
Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
Rumi
Streamlined
One day last week on my commute to Luton, I noticed something I hadn't before: these streamlined trailers that I shared the motorways with occasionally. My first reaction was surprise that something that functional as a trailer was made to look so aesthetically pleasing. Here I learnt that these 'teardrop trailers' all about aerodynamics, added capacity and a fuel saving of around 10%, which is phenomenal.
That made me think - what about baked goods? The classic pastries come in a myriad of shapes, from the roof-tile inspired tuile to the shell-shaped madeleine, each with their romantic stories. But how many of the creations were formed just to give the baker a better yield - with shapes that you could fit more of on a baking tray? Or could any pastries have been designed to maximise exposed surface area to give a larger crust to crumb ratio?
Food for thought?
(Image source: www.donbur.co.uk)
On the hot spot
If you'd moved as often as I had in my first year in London, you'd by now have a ritual that makes you feel fully settled in. It isn't the unpacking and finding homes for your possessions. For me, it's baking for the first time in the new oven. But each oven behaves differently and sometimes getting acquainted with one takes a while.
The foolproof hot spot test makes this a little easier. Lay slices of bread (white, preferrably) on a baking sheet and into the centre of a 180*C oven for about 20-25 minutes. Or at least till it's developed some degree of colouring.
Now I can tell that my cakes and tarts will be fine. But bake two batches of madeleines simultaneously, without rotating the pans, and some of them are sure to end up with a swarthy complexion.
You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.
Christopher Columbus
10 principles
Dieter Rams, design guru. Celebrated for his illustrious career at Braun. Here are his ten principles for good design:
Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design makes a product understandable.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is durable.
Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Good design is concerned with the environment.
Good design is as little design as possible.
You can tell which ones I've resolved to apply to pastry!
(Here's an interesting story on how his products may have influenced Apple's offerings.)
In 2013:
Free your mind. Cherish your body. Nourish your soul.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Take into account that great love and great achievement involve great risk.
- the Dalai Lama
The 'outside' story - I
In my previous post on the red velvet cake, I explored using the cake crust as a means of decoration. Ever wonder how the crust is formed? I must admit I never did. Till I went to culinary school, where our chef demos were accompanied by insightful commentary on baking science. I was enthralled.
"Please, sir, I want some more."
Then I found a book. The kind of book you put under your pillow, hoping to find enlightenment through osmosis*. I pored over its pages on Tube rides everyday: jostling not mere dragons, but impatient, grumpy Londoners. All for the sake of an education.
How Baking Works by Paula Figoni preempts your questions: even ones you didn't think you'd ask. I started baking as a child and most of what I know has been gained through intuition. I can't name it, but I can feel it. I know that will only take me so far. Now, when the book I'm reading refers to 'your baked goods', I feel all grown up but filled with wonder.
This learning might take forever. But what's the hurry? I'm in this for the long haul, and one day it might just make a difference.
*No, not really!
C is for celebration
I am not a fan of celebration cakes. To me they represent the edifice complex that gave us some of the world's best and also some of its worst architecture. Admittedly, there's more potential for design here than the more delicate croqembouche or cupcake tower, but the designs seldom exploit form.
Maggie Austin's cakes, on the other hand, completely redefine that dynamic. Her creations are fluid, fragile even. They're not static monoliths: you can sense movement. Are you as unsurprised by her past as a ballet dancer as I was?
Hers is a commonly used technique in modern architecture. The next time you come across a huge, expansive construction, notice how a band of windows or cladding leads your eye horizontally across the mass.
To me, what makes her celebration cakes stand out is that they celebrate her. Her style and her story.
(Image source: Maggie's portfolio, via Green Wedding Shoes)
100
100th post. This one is for you. Thanking you sincerely for turning up, some of you repeatedly, to listen to a voice that's finding itself on this blog. I have much to learn, but everyday I grow more comfortable in my own skin and the fact that all the detours I've taken give me something else to bring to the table. I hope to learn and grow more and help you view food in a different light.
Even after a 40-hour working week, which involves a 10 hour per week commute to Luton, joy is walking into the kitchen on a Friday night to bake. Most weekdays I return home, whip up a quick meal and wind down by blogging. None of this feels like a sacrifice. It's like when you've met the love of your life - there's just no other way forward.
And the way forward?
Redefining this blog so that you can navigate it better and so that we can have a dialogue.
Recipes - I can't resist trying to develop my own now.
Better food photography. (I promise!)
No ads - I want this to grow organically and not be dictated by commerce (those ad boxes are really ugly anyway!)
Thanking you sincerely for giving me a reason to turn up here. See you at 200!
'Tis autumn..
..when my body asks for a whole shade card of colourful foods. And I submit completely. Which means that for the first time, I bake a red velvet cake. Although stained with copious amounts of red food colouring, I fear that the high cocoa powder content here led to a more muted shade than I expected. I might use a more inferior cocoa powder brand next time.
The decoration more than made up for the disappointment. For the first time, I came across a suggestion of using the actual cake crumb to decorate a cake. Ingenious! After all, the tradition is that the decoration on your cake should betray what it's made of.
But I found it easier to work with the rich-hued cake crust, being drier in comparison to the oh so velvet, oh so moist crumb. It's highly therapeutic trying to manually disintegrate the crust into small, non-uniform particles. You can then liberally cast them over your frosted cake (with a white chocolate + cream cheese coat here), to form your very own constellation of crumbs.
Design detail - 13
Compelling. Back home in Cardiff you can design your own sandwich.