"Chest-nuts burst-ing, all over the ovennnn..."

'Twas the night before Bake Off, when all through the house,

one baker was stirring, cocoa all over her blouse.

The parchment was lined in the cake pan with care,

in hopes that the batter would soon be in there.

When out of the oven sounded such a loud bang,

that the bowl nearly fell to the floor with a clang!

Away to the oven I flew like a flash,

threw open the door and had all my hopes dashed.

A great wave of heat rushed up into my eyes,

yet not from that sprung the tears, but from the surprise.

The walls of the oven showed I was a clutz:

splattered bits everywhere, in place of chestnuts.

I apologize, I don't know what happened there.  I need to get out more.  As is probably now clear, despite hearing Nat King Cole croon about chestnuts annually, I had next to zero familiarity with the shiny brown nuts prior to my blowing them up.  What possessed me, then, to want to bake a chestnut coffee cake, I do not know.  It was, in fact, the night of the Bake Off finale in early October, but I was already feeling a touch of holiday spirit.  So when I saw Bon Appétite's recipe for Chestnut Coffee Cake earlier on in the day, it grabbed my attention.  Never mind that I didn't know how to handle chestnuts, it couldn't be that hard, right?

I bought some lovely-looking nuts from the local market and took them home to get started.  The recipe calls for nuts in a vacuum-pack or a jar, but while I'd seen some in a can in the grocery store I hadn't seen any others.  Since fresh ones were available I thought they'd be best, plus I wanted to try roasting them first (not called for in the recipe) and wasn't sure about trying to roast chestnuts which had already been peeled, such as those in the can.  What I didn't think about was the possibility of rotten nuts.  Or blowing them up.

Of course, I knew the scoring of the nuts, as directed by BBC Food, was to allow for expansion; I expected the skins to open up, but for some reason it never occurred to me that they might start popping like popcorn.  So I scored them and put them in the oven to roast, uncovered.  The bang like the shot of a gun in the corner of the kitchen caught me totally off guard, and the mess inside... it wasn't pretty.  Only one nut had burst, but it had done so with gusto, coating the entire inside of the oven - top, bottom and sides - with a soft powder of chestnut guts.

I pulled the hot roasting pan from the oven and let the nuts cool while I aired out and cleaned out the oven.  By the time that was finished and I was no longer worried about any of the remaining chestnuts exploding in my face, I investigated them.  Some seemed ready to be peeled, but a number of them were discoloured inside.  I'd happened upon advice in another recipe to over-buy chestnuts because they often have rotten centres.  Without knowing what exactly a rotten centre looked like, or how to tell if my chestnuts were bad, I ran out and bought the canned variety.  It's never worth risking making people sick, and this cake wasn't just for me.

The canned variety come suspended in some sort of thick liquid, so I rinsed them off and then stuck them in to roast very very briefly before chopping them up.  The chopped nuts are then (or first, if you skip the roasting) cooked in a skillet with water and brown sugar to make a syrup.  The recipe calls for a half-cup of chestnuts, but I believe I might actually have gone a little crazy with the chestnut chopping (revenge therapy for the chestnut exploding?) and ended up using a full cup; if so I would also have doubled the water and sugar, as well as the cocoa and remaining sugar for coating.

There were a lot of nuts.  I let those cool while making the streusel topping.  This, unlike the nut fiasco, was very straightforward: simply mix almond meal, sugar, flour and salt and work the chunks of butter into it with your hands.  The cake recipe itself is very easy and fairly standard, with the inclusion of sour cream.  After the batter was made, I worked pretty quickly to get half of it in the pan and then to crumble a layer of the cocoa-coated chestnuts over it before topping it off with the second half of the batter and finally the streusel.

The recipe says to sprinkle the chestnuts over the first layer of batter, but mine were pretty sticky and thick, and not really sprinkle material...  I also had twice the amount, so rather than a chestnut here and a chestnut there, I wound up with an entire layer's worth.  In the end I quite liked it that way.

Unfortunately, even after my fallen cake and my flooded cake, I was still adjusting to my new oven (I still am, in fact), and one side got a little to near to the flame in the back.  Open fires, huh?  So it was singed and certainly wouldn't have won me any star baker accolades, but it was far from inedible.  Having had, as I mentioned, no previous experience with chestnuts I was surprised to find that they were meaty, but they really do work with the chocolate and the somewhat crumbly spongy texture of the coffee cake.  It was good for enjoying with friends (and their goodies!) during the finale of Bake Off, and a leftover slice was equally tasty with coffee the next morning.

It's Christmas 'til the tree comes down

I love a bargain as much as the next person - possibly more.  Thrift stores are my preferred hunting grounds, but post-Christmas there's a veritable open season in all sorts of shops.  Holiday items receive some of the deepest discounts, which this [new] year led to my baking of some somewhat belated gingerbread people.  At a fourth of its original price, my new Nordic Ware pan was not to be refused.

Naturally, I had to test it; our Christmas tree is still standing, so the smiling little cakes should similarly still be considered seasonally acceptable.  Plus, gingerbread will always be a welcome warmer in the cold winter months.  The packaging on the pan contained a recipe for gingerbread with a serving size of the six small cakes, so that was the recipe I used, with some adaptation.  It can be found here in the Recipe Box.

I added a pinch of black pepper to the other spices to give the cake some extra heat.  I also substituted milk for the cup of water called for on the packaging, some dark brown sugar for a portion of the granuated sugar, and I added a second egg.

The batter is thick until the addition of the liquid, but once the milk (or water) has been stirred in it is easily poured into the wells of the pan.

As the recipe was - it seemed - written for the pan, I thought that the cakes would probably not rise too high and spread out of the wells...  I should have listened to my instincts that the wells looked too full.

My gingerbread people needed to go on a diet after their sojourn in the oven.  The pan claims that 'Baked goods rise evenly, cook uniformly and are finely detailed thanks to the excellent thermal conduction of the heavy walls'.  The pan certainly is weighty, and from previous pan experimentation I thought that the light coating might reflect heat for an even bake, even before reading their statement that 'A special heat-reflective exterior and premium nonstick surface assures perfect results'.  Well... given that the recipe could have filled two pans, I'm not sure that it would be fair to judge the rise against this first test run.  The cake did bake uniformly, however, and the recipe was tasty.  If the downside was a surprise double-batch, that can't be considered a bad thing - two for the price of one!

The pan did make good on its claims of detail and easy removal, although it did also call for preparing the pan in the normal way, with grease and flour, despite its 'premium nonstick surface'.  This was just as well, because I felt like experimenting by adding a bit of cinnamon to the flour for a little extra flavour - I think it worked!  Once out, the cakes just had to be separated from each other, and from their overly-large backsides.  The first step was easy, with a small sharp knife.

Step two was fairly simple, if a little bit messier.  Using a tiny turntable, I removed the backs of the cakes in the same way you would split a layer of a round cake.  If your cakes overflow like mine, definitely wait for the cakes to be cool before moving on to this.  Better still, split the batter into two batches, making twelve gingerbread people.

I decorated the people halves with royal icing to make them colourful and to accentuate the details from the pan.  If you don't feel like wasting the time, they would also look nice with a sprinkling of powdered sugar.

For the blobby halves I plopped a couple in a pair of bowls and served with fresh cream whipped with a hint (but not too subtle) of brandy.

Taste trumps beauty.

A Candy Cane Christmas

A stock compliment for food, at least in tv commercials, is 'It's just like grandma used to make!'.  It's not that grandma's cooking should necessarily be held up as the gold standard against which all other food should be judged (let's be honest, the course of history has surely produced grandmas who couldn't bake), it's the idea that grandma represents warmth, love and comfort [food] that the compliment seeks to evoke.  Unfortunately for me I grew up on the opposite coast from my grandma, and while we visited every couple of years as kids, there aren't really many things that I can remember her making, except - importantly - cookies.

My favourite cookies of grammy's were candy cane cookies.  She probably didn't make up the recipe herself; it appears in Christmas Cookies (1986).  But I didn't know that as a kid, and she was making them long before the publication of that book: my mom remembers her making them when she was little.  Nowadays if mom makes them she uses a handwritten recipe copied from grandma's - the best kind of recipe I think.

Not only do handwritten recipes show that the ingredients and methods are tested, but it puts you in touch with the writer and brings the recipe to life.  They might have additions and emendations, and, if you're lucky, they even have food stains to show their time in action (also a sign of a good cookbook).  They preserve history, but aren't stuck in it.  My mom's candy cane cookies are not just like grandma's, and mine are not just like hers.  It doesn't matter though, because they are yummy in every iteration, and a candy cane cookie will always mean Christmas.

The recipe for candy cane cookies can be found in the Recipe Box.  These cookies begin with one batch of basic cookie dough, similar to sugar cookie dough but with the addition of shortening.  To this grandma would add both vanilla and almond extract.  Mom adds vanilla, almond, and peppermint extract.  I add just the vanilla, then split the dough into two batches (which will be the two stripes of the candy canes) before adding almond to one and peppermint to the other.  The peppermint batch also gets red dye.

Take a small ball of each colour (less than a tablespoon), and roll them into strips.  Before doing this, you can optionally crush up about three candy canes to roll the red strips through, or you can crush them later to mix with sugar and sprinkle over the cookies just after they come out of the oven.  In my experience the sugar-candy cane sprinkles don't stick very well, so just to be safe I do both.

Roll the strips of each colour out to about the width of your pinky finger, then twist them together.  It is possible to make larger candy canes than this, but they may be more liable to breakage, especially if they will be travelling.

Then shape into a candy cane.  I do this before transferring to a lightly greased baking sheet, but if it is easier for you you could transfer the twist to the sheet and shape there.

These cookies do expand a bit when baking, so make sure there is a little bit of space between each cane.

If baking with candy cane pieces, remove from the baking sheet while still slightly warm, as the melted candy will stick to the sheet.

Finally, all you need to do is decide if you're leaving any for Santa...