Posts by dyan campbell
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Float like a fairy cake, sting like a….?
Fairycakes? I am on a baking, ranting tangent!
Ohmygod, my Mother In Law used to make the most exquisite fairy cakes, with delicate little icing sugar dusted golden wings and a half strawberry poking out of the cream, which was hiding her homemade strawberry preserve in the base of the little cake. Gosh, they were beautiful. The woman was a genius.
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I’ve probably eaten thousands of different kinds, but baking takes so much longer. Do you do anything else? (if it’s not a rude question)
Not at all - I run a physiotherapy practice (Paul's) but have been known to make many forays into public health - was on the executive & planning committee of sci/med conferences (for The Obesity Society (to the great amusement of those who consume my food, and have watched me eat). I have written many articles on health - NZ Doctor, Fitness Life etc - and I'd just like to say here high GI foods are the enemy of health,
Having said that, I think people are going to eat some crap anyway, and something that's homemade is sooo much lower in sugar, has no trans fats or preservatives. I can make an entire batch of something that would contain less sugar than two Tim-Tams or a can of Coke but you wouldn't know it. Kipforal, for instance, needs 1/4 C of sugar to make about 60 cookies, though they do use a huge amount of butter & ground walnuts. They are a kind of vanilla walnut shortbread, invented by the Austrians, who knew a thing or two about pastry. Or cherry strudel - made with ground almonds, a bit of cream cheese and you can use a filo, butter & sugar layers if you don't have 6 hours to make puff pastry (plus it's way lower in butter) and the whole thing would have less that 3 Tbsp of sugar for the whole strudel. The cherries baked with the almonds, cream cheese almond essence and kirsch taste sooo sweet you wouldn't believe it. There winds up being exactly 2Tbsp in the filling and 1Tbsp in the filo, but the impression is that it is very sweet.
But I like old colonial cooking - I have a NZ book from about 1903 I use a lot - though there is a recipe for raspberry jam in it that starts with... "Take 16lbs of fresh raspberries..." and I think, wait, I just need to mortgage the house...
I love old American baking, with blackstrap molasses, ginger, cloves, cinnamon. Pies, deep dish fruit pies with unsweetened pie crust Hundreds of different gingerbreads - loafs, chewy cookies - breads - gingerbread is a huge category, and the American versions are the best, as they used so much molasses, and hardly any sugar. North American baking used lots of nuts, fruit, buttermilk, so many fresh berries and vegetables, ground up in cake. Pumpkin pie, flavoured with spices, treacle is an old Thanksgiving tradition. Ginger & pumpkin cheesecake... It's delicious. Zucchini cake, beet root cake, tomato cake - all three can be teamed with chocolate to great success, though zucchini is even better in the spice and molasses loaf category. But vegetables in cake - it has always been around in North American traditions.
I always have one eye on nutritional value of a recipe - I like Delia Smith's recipes but not Jo Segar's or Nigella Lawson's as are invariably too sweet, too greasy and don't appeal to my palate, let alone my sense of nutritional decency.
Often taking out 1/3 of the sugar and 1/3 of the butter can improve both the flavour and texture of something. Classic American brownies for instance - instead of melting quite so much butter with the unsweetened chocolate, then adding a huge amount of sugar (as the original goes) puree till smooth 20 prunes soaked in brandy and fold it in and you can leave out 1/3 of both the sugar and the butter - prunes in brandy go beautifully with the chocolate (as dried fruit - prunes, currants, raisins - is the foundation of most chocolate tortes). Anyhow, this makes a brownie much more chewy, and more chocolaty than the original.
Does that answer your question? I've been known to digress.
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You may say so, but it would be disputed. I make a mean carrot. My lemon’s not bad either. We’ll have to have a cake-off.
Oh, carrot cake, child's play. GAME ON.
I have the world's best Devil's food - with a chocolate cream cheese icing. Though it can be done with ganache, raspberries and yoghurt cream. Or an Angel's food - (12 egg whites - no yolks) with (my own invention) lemon cream.
Cakes are a mere category. Cookies? I make thousands of different kinds. I have a chocolate cookie that can be converted into a cookies and cream dessert, with the stroke of a whisk. And some cream, vanilla, bit of icing sugar & yoghurt. I make ice cream. Ice cream sandwiches. Cinnamon buns. Coconut buns. Bars, brownies and slices. Choux pastry? Been making it since I was born. Napoleons? I have a version that has caused riots. Pies? God yes. probably my specialty. Lemon meringue, deep dish peach, blueberry, rhubarb claufoutis pie (invented) granny apple-crumble topped...
I know all the tricks. Floury, flavourless apples? Dice a green tomato & add it to the mixture... never use raisins or currants without first soaking them in boiling water, draining, then soaking them in rum, brandy, or marsala, depending on the flavour you're matching. I like antique recipes, forgotten recipes. Vienna flavour? A mixture of brandy and vanilla. I MAKE MY OWN VANILLA.
The two best tips I've ever been given: when making cake, make sure the eggs and butter are room temperature (fluffier cake). And when washing up the bowl after making bread, pizza or any yeasty dough, use icy cold water to wash up. If I'd known that last tip earlier, I'd have a year of my life back.
Bring it on, amateurs!
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Seems like we might have some things in common. If you ever need a cake tester, it’s one of my specialities :)
Where are you based? If we cross paths at a PAS soiree and you give me a couple days' notice, I can guinea pig you. Though I have to say, my husband Paul has been heroic in that role - he has been the testing kitchen for many newly invented recipes of mine. If I may say so (in all modesty) I am the best damn baker in the whole universe. Which is funny, because I worked on quite a few obesity sci/med conferences and wrote more than a few articles on diabetes and metabolic syndrome.
Say, weren't we going to have a PAS bake-off? I am guessing it wouldn't be hard to find guinea pigs/judges.
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Thank you for that Sally - nicely done, plus Giselle is my favourite ballet. And I make awesome, awesome cake.
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I can see U2 doing Red Hill Mining Town tomorrow night. That would be moving.
They do a cover of Peggy Seeger's Springhill Mining Disaster, but I am pretty sure they will have a little more sensitivity that that, and not sing that here, at this time.
The term Springhill mining disaster can refer to any of three separate Canadian mining disasters which occurred in 1891, 1956, and 1958.
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Did you see Atom Egoyan’s film The Sweet Hereafter, Dyan? It was a real downer in a way that was just totally .. Canadian.
Oh, god, yes that film is so Canadian. Earlier Canadian films have equally depressing themes - Goin' Down the Road is the Canadian equivalent (in other words the obverse) of the American Dream...
Two goofy Newfies head for the big city to take it by storm - and the audience is invited to laugh at their bumbling, comical inept adventures... until slowly... ther sense of despair, and the characters' own awareness of their gaucheness slowly grips the guilty audience by the throat. It starts as slapstick and ends as tragedy. And because you, the viewer are so lacking in compassion, humanity and insight, you laugh at first, and you feel rank for ever mistaking someone's delusion or gaucheness as humourous in the first place. Ever again.
It's a great film, and Sacha, if you liked the Sweet Hereafter, you'd probably like Goin' Down the Road.
Then there is The Rowdyman which starts with a really handsome, funny, popular, irresponsible man whose practical joker, life of the party way and his inability to commit to a woman and his immaturity take him from enviable to pitiable all in one movie. His childhood sweetheart not only doesn't save him, but tells him exactly why she would never choose him, even if she didn't have a decent husband and kids waiting inside.
They're both really good films, but they really show the massive gulf between the American and the Canadian sensibility. Margaret Atwood wrote an entire book devoted to the theme, and in it she said that "If Moby Dick had been written by a Canadian, it would have been from the whale's point of view."
You should see what we can do with a love story. I remember one where the heroine stabs herself to death at the end...
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One of my favourite Canadians would be
Rand Holmes (R.I.P.) best known for his classic Harold Hedd underground comics and his Georgia Straight (Vancouver) covers and contributions.Thank you for posting this - hadn't heard - but this is very sad news.
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Mounties spanking lumberjacks, saying ‘Don’t do it again, Pierre,’
Pictures of rotten teeth as health warnings on maple syrup packaging.
I love a good stereotype, please don’t anyone spoil it for me.Jeez, the maple syrup warning thing I can believe Joe, and I can add to it... one year I got a Christmas card from Canada, and on the postage stamp, the words Joyeux Noel were over a tiny picture of a car being hauled out of an icy river, And I thought, wow, is that ever Canadian. Not festive, perhaps, but certainly Canadian. The NZ stamp on the other hand, was a Kiwi bird with a little Santa hat. How may lives did that save, eh? Or teeth?
As for the Mounties... well, they are trying hard to clear their name as dog murdering racists.
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Yeah, I… don’t think we can blame his behaviour, as we usually do, on Not Being Canadian. ;)
No, we don't blame it on him Not Being Canadian, we blame it on his not being accustomed to Canadian culture. Canada has just as many assholes, perverts and racists as New Zealand. The difference is that in Canada they are afraid and shifty instead of proud and boorish.
He would have been slapped by women, punched by men trying to be gallant so many times by his 30s that he would have long since grown out of that kind of behaviour.