Eve Bidmead, Author at Bidmead Bites

Good things come in 3’s…not 1, not 2, but THREE chocolate cakes.

6th August 2014 by Eve Bidmead Leave a Comment

I wanted to do a post about chocolate cake. But then I had a think and decided I could do better than that. What, you may ask, could possibly be better than a chocolate cake? Three chocolate cakes! I present to you the Chocolate Almond Flourless Cake, the Chocolate Raspberry Buttercream cake and last but not least, Nigella Lawson’s Sour Cream Chocolate Cake.

But here’s a confession: chocolate cake just doesn’t really do it for me. By no means am I one of those weird people who just doesn’t like chocolate. So before you get all…

Steady on, because I love chocolate. However, chocolate cake…I just don’t really get it. It’s like chocolate in a poorer format. Mix it with all that flour and butter and I think it loses its sparkle somewhat. Now obviously many chocolate lovers out there would call this slightly blasphemous. So I’m working on my love of chocolate cake. A hard task I know, but someone has to do it.

My work began with the discovery of a Flourless Chocolate Cake, which is cake 1 of 3 today. It uses ground almonds instead of flour and is therefore gluten-free – find a coeliac, and make their day with this cake.

To make this gluten-free cake, you will need:

(Original recipe from BBC Good Food)

– 100g butter, diced, plus extra for greasing
– flour, for dusting
– 140g best-quality dark chocolate, with 70% cocoa solids, broken into pieces
– 6 large eggs, separated
– 140g ground almonds
– 1 tbsp kirsch or Cointreau (optional)
– pinch of salt
– 85g caster sugar

Method

1) Firstly, preheat the oven to 170C/Gas 3/fan oven 150C. Grease a 23cm/9in springform cake tin and line the base with greaseproof paper or baking parchment. Dust the sides with a little flour.

2) Melt chocolate and butter into a heatproof bowl set over a pan of gently simmering water. Heat until melted, then remove the bowl from the pan and stir until smooth. Now leave to cool while you get on whisking the egg whites.

3) Separate eggs. Yolks can be mixed in with ground almonds, while the whites need to be whisked with the sugar until soft peaks form (soft peaks are when the whipped whites are just beginning to become stiff, but will still melt back into shape when moved).

4) Now you want to slowly fold the whisked egg whites into the chocolate, almond and yolk mixture. This is a very important step in order to achieve a light airy cake – don’t just mix the two up, gently add in blobs of the whisked egg whites and fold into the chocolate mix until combined.

5) Pop the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 30-35 minutes until well risen and just firm to the touch. Cool in the tin, and don’t get disheartened if it cracks or shrinks. It’s perfectly normal and will still taste fantastic.

This cake goes down really well as although it’s very rich the ground almonds add a real lightness to it. You can leave it plain or, like I did slice it in half and ice it. A simple ganache of melted chocolate and double cream (equal measures of both) is fantastic, and with a sprinkle of pomegranate seeds it’s almost like one of your five a day.

Now time for the Chocolate cake with Raspberry Icing. Made with real raspberries, it’s a perfect chocolate/berry combo.

For the cake:
– 50g cocoa powder
– 6tbsp boiling water
– 3 large eggs
– 50ml milk
– 175g self-raising flour
– 1tsp baking powder
– 100g soft butter
– 300g caster sugar

For the raspberry icing:
– 100g butter, cubed and at room temperature
– 75g cream cheese
– 150g raspberries
– 250g icing sugar, sieved

The chocolate cake recipe comes from the ever-fabulous Mary Berry. It’s essentially just a chocolate victoria sponge mix and is a great base for a variety of icing and topping options.

Method
1) Heat your oven to 180°C/gas mark 4. Use 2 victoria sponge sandwich cases for this – grease and line bottoms. You then want to measure the cocoa into a bowl, add the boiling water and mix until you form a rich, chocolatey paste.

2) Add the remaining ingredients and mix until well combined – use a whisk and some elbow grease, or use a hand mixer or food processor – far easier. Now to just divide the cake mixture between the prepared tins and bake in the pre-heated oven for about twenty-five to thirty minutes until well risen and shrinking away from the sides of the tin.

3) For your icing, whip out my favorite…good old frozen berries! You can use fresh, but frozen works just as well. Defrost slightly in the microwave, then blend up.

4) Once blended, it’s a little bit annoying but we’ve got to get rid of those pesky pips. So push blended berries through a sieve into a bowl and you should be left with some delicious fresh raspberry puree in the bowl. Now you want to blend this with your butter and cream cheese, along with the sieved icing sugar. This results in a gorgeous pink, thick icing.

5) Ice the top of one cake, then place the other on top and repeat. Decorate with a few extra berries, and your raspberry chocolate cake is done!

By this point, you might start thinking I’m not as reluctant to bake/eat chocolate cake as I initially set out to be. And with the discovery of this third and final cake, I feel sure my feelings towards chocolate cake have changed dramatically for the good. It’s moist, rich, and really everything you’d want a chocolate cake to be. This is a Nigella Lawson recipe taken from her book How to be a Domestic Goddess. Make this cake and you will have more than earned your domestic goddess stripes.

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

For this cake, you will need:
– 200g plain flour
– 200g caster sugar
– 3/4 tsp baking powder
– 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
– 1/2 tsp salt
– 200g soft unsalted butter
– 40g best cocoa
– 150ml sour cream
-2 large eggs
– 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Ingredients for Icing

– 80g milk chocolate
– 80g dark chocolate
– 75g unsalted butter
– 125mL sour cream
– 1 tsp vanilla extract
– 1 tbsp golden syrup
– 300g icing sugar, sieved
– 1/2 tsp hot water

Method
1) Quite a lot of ingredients! But it’s actually a complete doddle to make. All you have to do is mix the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cocoa, butter, eggs, vanilla and sour cream in a food processor or electric mixer and mix until you’ve achieved what looks (and tastes like…mmm) like a good, chocolately cake batter. Divide cake mix between the two tins and bake for about 25-30 minutes. When cake is done it will start to shrink away from the edges of the tins.

2) While that’s baking make the icing. Melt the butter and chocolate in the microwave or over a gentle heat on the stove, combine fully and leave to cool a little. Now stir in the sour cream and vanilla. This is when it all starts to look fantastic.

3) Add in your golden syrup, and sift in the icing sugar and whisk together. My icing was a little runny for my liking, so I popped it into the freezer for 10 minutes which worked well. As for icing the cake, you’ll want to leave it to cool down beforehand, but pretty much…just slap it on! In an attractive manner, of course.

I found some sugar flowers in my cupboard and decorated it with those – perhaps you could use sprinkles too? Or go very retro and dig out those silver icing balls from your birthday parties as a kid.

Three chocolate cakes down, and I’ve not only found a love for chocolate cake but also a whole variety of chocolate cakes for different occasions. Bake your flourless chocolate cake for something a bit posh, as its dense chocolate flavor is ever so sophisticated. The raspberry chocolate sponge is visually stunning and makes a great cake to bring to any party. And make the sour cream cake for when you seek nothing but pure, smooth, chocolatey goodness. Whatever your chocolate craving is, one of this three is sure to soothe it!

Quinoa, Sweet Potato and Spinach Baked Eggs with Berry Frozen Yogurt

29th July 2014 by Eve Bidmead Leave a Comment

You can’t beat a good egg. Poached, fried, scrambled, in an omelette or a frittata, there’re so many things you can do with eggs. They are also filled with goodness. Eggs contain a whopping 18 different vitamins and minerals, are a source of omega-3 fats (the healthy fats) and provide us with the highest nutritional quality protein of all food sources….so it’s fair to say these little-shelled beauties pack quite the nutritional punch. But should you be looking for something slightly more exciting than just scrambled on toast, this egg-bake could be just the dish for you.

Cooked in a tomato-pepper sauce with quinoa, spinach and mashed sweet potato, these baked eggs are a great lunch or dinner dish to share. Served with a mixed leaf salad with tomato, avocado and pomegranate and some quick homemade frozen yogurt, this dish was the main of choice for an alfresco summer lunch at mine with some of my very lovely friends.

For this dish, you will need:

(Serves 4 hungry girls + 1 father… 5-6 people)

Egg Bake
– 200g quinoa (mine is red and white blend – I really like the colour and texture, but normal quinoa would work just fine)
– 3 sweet potatoes, peeled (add in 1 tbsp grainy mustard, a squidge of tomato ketchup and a generous grind of black pepper for mashing)
-Half a big bag of spinach
– 2 peppers (any color you chose, I went for red and yellow)
– 1 onion
-1 Can of chopped tomatoes
– 1 tbsp of tomato pesto
– 1 tsp of harissa paste
– 1 tsp oregano
– 9 eggs

Salad
– Big bag of mixed leaves
– A couple handful of cherry tomatoes
– 1 large avocado
– Any seeds/nuts you fancy to scatter over
– Seeds of half a pomegranate
– Maple syrup (or honey) and olive oil for drizzling
– Good grinding of salt and pepper

Homemade frozen yogurt

– 150g frozen raspberries
– 250g yogurt of your choice
– 2 tbsp of honey

Frozen Yogurt recipe

Start with the frozen yogurt so it can chill in the freezer while you do the eggs. This really is the very simplest of desserts, and always goes down well. The ingredients are variable, and you can use any frozen fruit or flavor yogurt you fancy. I went for raspberries and used a mix of vanilla and greek yogurt.

Place the frozen fruit and yogurt into a blender, and blend until minimal fruit chunks remain and the yogurt and fruit are completely combined. Pop it into a tupperware….

And into the freezer it goes. It’s good to serve when it’s still a bit soft, as if you leave it to really freeze up it gets a bit crystallised. It’s just an incentive to eat it all up in one go really!

Now lets get cracking on the eggs (pun intended).

Egg bake recipe

1) Cook your quinoa for 15 minutes in a pan with boiling water.
2) While your quinoa is cooking, you can peel and chop your sweet potato into cubes, ready for steaming or boiling. You want to steam or boil them for the same time the quinoa is cooking, and while they’re both cooking away we can get on with the tomato sauce.

Note on the tomato sauce – This is a simple tomato sauce with a few key add-ins. The harissa gives it a slightly spicy twang and the sun-dried tomato pesto adds an almost smokey flavor. Oregano is the key to tie it all together, making some form of Italian-style sauce. As with my energy bars, this recipe is a bit of an improvisation, so work with what you want to make a tasty tomato sauce! Our sauce is going to have onions, garlic, and peppers – I used one red pepper and one yellow.

3) Finely chop and cook the onion for 5 minutes and then add the sliced peppers. Here you want to add in your harissa, pesto and oregano, followed by the chopped tomatoes. If you have a hand blender feel free to whizz this up – I used my food processor, but it could equally be left chunky. With the sauce done, it’s time to attend to our quinoa and sweet potato.
5) Take the quinoa off the heat and drain. Separately mash the potato, mixing it with the tomato sauce and add in 1 tbsp grainy mustard, a squidge of tomato ketchup and a generous grind of black pepper. Combine the drained quinoa and mashed potato/tomato mix together, adding in the spinach in bits until it is all wilted.
6) Spread the quinoa/sweet potato/tomato/spinach mash in a baking tray, and make little circular indentations for eggs to nestle in. Crack in eggs, and don’t worry if the whites spill over their allocated mini-holes.

7) That goes into the oven at 200 degrees celsius for about 10-15 minutes, and now we can make the salad.

There’s no real art form involved in this, it really is just a combination of all the ingredients in a bowl, and for the dressing I chose a very simple olive oil drizzle with a touch of maple syrup – I use this slight sugary touch to really bring out the sweetness of the tomatoes.

Serve all together, bringing out the frozen yogurt just before serving.

The muffins served alongside the yogurt were baked by my wonderful friend Lily, and are from an Ottolenghi recipe. They were truly sumptuous – nutty and rich but not overly sweet, they went down a treat. I found the recipe reposted on the website What Rachel Ate, which is also a fantastic blog.

All this delicious food, and the company of some gorgeous girls and sunshine. A perfect afternoon!

A berry, berry good loaf

19th July 2014 by Eve Bidmead Leave a Comment

I always think you can’t go wrong with a loaf cake. Some of the best and most classic of cakes lend themselves brilliantly to this bread-like shaped bar of deliciousness. Lemon drizzle loaf anyone? Slice of banana bread? Perhaps a carrot cake loaf? I’ll take all three.

The great Nigel Slater was not wrong when he said ‘There is something elegant and timeless about a slice of plain cake’, but sometimes you want to mix things up. Starting with a classic lemon drizzle loaf, I wanted something equally as moist and lemony, but perhaps with more fruit, and why not throw in some chocolate while we’re at it…

Low and behold the Lemon Yogurt Poppyseed Loaf, with summer berries and a white chocolate drizzle.

It is a real beauty, and pretty darn simple to make too. I’ve adapted the recipe from Red Magazine’s website and you can see the original here. My version uses more ground almonds and less flour, and more yogurt instead of oil – this is the trick for a really sumptuous moist bake in my opinion. You don’t have to buy expensive fresh berries, and I was very pleased to find some of these hiding in my freezer…

For £2 you get about twice as many berries frozen as you do fresh and after 20 seconds at full whack in the microwave they defrost pretty perfectly (careful though, too long and you end up with berry sauce – a mistake I’ve previously made).

For this loaf of loveliness, you will need:

Lemon Yogurt Poppyseed loaf

Ingredients:

– 150g plain flour
– 2 tsp baking powder
– 90 ground almonds
– 175g caster sugar
– 200ml natural yogurt
– 50ml sunflower oil
– 3 medium eggs
– Zest and juice of 2 lemons
– 25g poppy seeds
– 75g white chocolate
– 150g berries

Method:

1) Mix the flour, almonds, baking powder, caster sugar, poppy seeds and lemon zest in a bowl.

2) Separately, in a large jug (or blender if your lazy like me) combine the yogurt, eggs, oil and lemon juice.

3) Now combine the dry ingredients mixed in your bowl well into the wet mixture in your jug and pour into your loaf tin (which you will have greased already, naturally).

4) Pop this into the oven for 40 minutes at 180 degrees celsius.

5) Once out of the oven, leave out to cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes, then take out of the tin and leave for a further 10 minutes. Now comes the fun bit – berry placing and white chocolate drizzling!

6) Melt your white chocolate in the microwave and then…drizzle away. I like using a small dessert fork as you instantly get three little drizzles going on at once, but a knife does pretty much the same job.

7) After one layer of drizzle, pop on your berries- the melted white chocolate should help them stick. Then, just because it’s so much fun, drizzle again!

And there you have it. A very simple recipe for a stunning cake which is sure to be a hit with everyone…

So much so it hardly lasted a second in my home!

All that glimmers is golders

19th July 2014 by Eve Bidmead Leave a Comment

Golders Green…

Perhaps you know of it, perhaps you don’t. Situated in Northwest London, it could be described as a relatively unremarkable area of London. But for some of us locals who proudly call it home, it holds a dear place in our heart and is actually filled with culinary treats. It’s known mainly for its Jewish population, but these days is home to large Polish, Korean and Turkish communities too. Such a rich cultural mix means Golders is a great place to try different cuisines.

The Jewish population gives the area many great bakeries, but by far my favourite is Carmelli.

Their bagels cannot be beaten, and they also make some truly delicious sweet cheese pastries. Alongside these you will find some entertaining marzipan animals and faces, which while may perhaps look more fun than they actually taste, they feature as just some of the many baked delights to be found in this neighbourhood bakery.

Filled with goods not just from Korea, but Japan and China too, Seoul Plaza is a great place to source out different ingredients for your own kitchen. They also have the option of freshly made sushi and bento boxes. Don’t miss out on the absolute crème de la crème of Asian sweets, the white rabbit.

Another excellent international supermarket is Buy 2 Save. My go-to store for any middle eastern flavours, it stocks a whole host of goodies from date syrup to rose water, with delicious baklava to top it off.

But if it’s not bagels you’re after and you’ve no interest in Asian milk chews, don’t rule this glorious area out, as Golders also provides some absolute gems in the restaurant department. Home to two fine Turkish ocakbasi grill restaurants, you are never far from the enticing smell of grilled meats. Likya was the first and provides a great atmosphere, friendly service and some fantastic dishes, including sweetbreads and kidneys – and they are offally good.

The newer addition to the Turkish contingent in Golders is Durum, and dare I say it, my preference. Now this is when we really start talking about value! Opt for one of their set menus, and you are able to taste a wide range of their starters, such as these dips.

A great way to sample what the place has to offer, this spread includes hummus, babaganoush and taramasalata, as well as tzatziki, aubergine stew and a tabbouleh salad. But whatever you do, save room for the main. Because the mixed meat platter that follows is the stuff of carnivore heaven.

Featuring donner, shish and kofte kebabs of both lamb and chicken, along with lamb ribs and chicken wings, all on a bed of rice with a delicious side salad, it really is a no-brainer when it comes to ordering here. This platter, with the dips included, is recommended for 2-3 people. Having tackled it twice now, initially as a duo and then a 3-man team, I must confess it has championed me on both occasions, with rather large doggy bags coming home. No complaints really though…it’s like the dinner that just keeps on giving. And the price for such an enormous amount of food? £30. So between 4 people (and even then I think you’d have spare), that works out at about 8 quid each. Amazing!

Clearly very happy with my mound of meat

But if eating the equivalent of a whole animal in one sitting isn’t your thing, you have other dining options. Another favourite of mine is Eat Toyko. A tiny, really authentic Japanese restaurant, you will often have to queue for a table, and even booking doesn’t guarantee you your table straight away. Slightly odd but almost just as well, as this allows you the necessary time to read the extensive menu. Reading as an A-Z of truly delicious Japanese food, you can find offally goodness (can you tell I like my offal?) in the way of teriyaki chicken livers, but also vegan-friendly fare in the shape of tofu dishes and delicious veg.

It’s the bento box selection which really steals the show though, allowing you to try a variety of dishes all in one compact box. The sushi-tem is fantastic, and for £16 it may seem like a slightly more expensive main option, but with all this food…

The brilliant bento from Eat Tokyo

There’s plenty to share! This includes sushi, sashmi, tempura and a side salad. If your not such a fan of our fishy friends, don’t fret – there are also some great beef and chicken options too. Another Japanese and highly recommended option is Cafe Japan, also a really small restaurant so if you fancy checking it out, probably best to ring ahead and book.

I could not say I hail from Golders Green and not write about L’artista in a restaurant related blog post. This friendly Italian restaurant is situated under the bridge the tube runs over, and the rumbling noise heard every time a train passes only adds to the restaurant’s charm.The pizza’s are big, crispy based circles of joy, and the pasta dishes are also great, coming in huge portions too. Another wallet-friendly option, a margarita will see you back £6 and most dishes are around the £8 mark. Go on your birthday and you’ll get a parade of Italian waiters with cymbals wishing you happy birthday whilst throwing pizza dough on your head. It’s like the present you’ve always dreamed of, but just forgot to ask for.

The last one on the list today, but by no means the end of the options Golders has to offer, is Pita. More of a takeaway (although there is some space inside to dine in), I quote the wise words of my own sister when I say Pita serves ‘the best falafel in the world‘. And she’s a veggie. Better take her word for it then! You can get all mains such as falafel, shwarma, schnitzel or hummus in a pitta, in a wrap or as a meal. The pitta’s are huge, and the meals include an Israeli style tabbouleh salad, chips or rice, plus a pitta – more than enough to feed hungry bellies on the move. And with a falafel pitta costing just £4.20, I’d say it’s not bad for the best in the world -and luckily for me it’s just on my doorstep!

So, why not head down to NW11 and give all these places a go? If you do, let me know what you think! And if you have any other foodie gems around the area please feel free to share as well.