Filed under: bread, dessert, recipe | Tags: dessert, harry potter, lyle's, treacle
treacle tart is good!
Hard to believe that after so much anticipation the Harry Potter Premier has come and gone. Yes, we survived the midnight showing. The girl was so keen on this day. Sheesh! I put out a walkway of lumieres for their drive in from school (gets so dark early now!), just to add to the excitement.
I made a cardamom carrot cake for that night, and she thought/ hoped it was tricycle tart. She explained that treacle tart is Harry’s favorite. She thought it was pronounced tricycle tart which we all thought was pretty funny!
Anyhow I had some Lyle’s Golden Syrup in the house and I thought I’d try to make it.
You really need that syrup. I’d never used it before (must have bought it to make something, though I don’t know what). When I opened it up I knew it was unlike any other. It’s sugar cane syrup and it is so thick. Nuts man! I tasted it and after a while figured out what it reminded me of. Do you remember those little ice cream cone treats from the candy store? They had syrup inside and a solid bit at the top to keep it in the cone? That was some good eating. I never see them anymore, but the syrup in them –that’s golden syrup! But I digress.
Treacle Tart
For the pastry
1 cup flour
1 stick butter diced
1/2 cup sour cream
For the filling
1 1/2 cup golden syrup
2 cups fresh bread crumbs (I used two slices of wheat bread in food processor)
juice and zest one lemon
2 eggs
pinch of salt
Whiz flour and butter in food processor, add in sour cream. It’ll be crumbly but just starting to come together. Put on waxed paper and ball it up. Flatten into a disk and put in freezer for about 15 minutes.
Roll out to fit a 9 inch tart pan. Put gently into tart pan. Line with beans or pie weights. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes at 375. Remove beans and then bake another 5 minutes or until it looks like it’s a tad bit dried out in the middle.
Note: the pastry recipe I was using was in grams. So I estimated. The tart was pretty gloopy, but it worked and it was pretty flakey. Note: use parchment in between beans and shell. Don’t ask me about that.
Anyhow after your shell is ready, mix up the filling ingredients and pour into base. Bake at 325 for about 50 minutes. Serve cold. Whipped cream is good.
I tasted the filling while it was warm. Not so good. But cold this tart was pretty great! The lemony flavor was great.
We had some carrot soup lounging around and I wanted to serve it again, but needed something to jazz it up a bit. A nice biscuit fit the bill. I haven’t made too many biscuits in my day, but these were easy, quick, and pretty good. I’d try them again. I love buttermilk. I think they’d be good with other herbs and things too.
Recipe here..
Yield: 16 servings (serving size: 1 biscuit)
Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons vegetable shortening
1/4 cup finely chopped green onions
1 cup low-fat buttermilk (what is low-fat buttermilk? I dunno. I used plain old buttermilk)
1/2 cup cheddar cheese shredded
Cooking spray
Preparation
Preheat oven to 400°.
Combine first 4 ingredients in a large bowl; cut in shortening with a pastry blender or 2 knives until mixture resembles coarse meal. Stir in green onions and cheese. Add buttermilk, stirring just until flour mixture is moist.
Drop batter by heaping tablespoons onto a baking sheet with a silpat on it. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes or until lightly browned.
Filed under: bread, recipe | Tags: barley, brewing beer, sandwich, spent grain
For some strange reason the doode claims to have never heard the term barley sandwich. Fer real! Anyhow here’s a link to a news item on the subject “More dough required for barley sandwich. This year’s May “two four” weekend just got more expensive: Beer prices will rise $1.25 per 12-pack as of Monday, March 8.” It’s a real word! Yes barley sandwich means beer. Hello??!
Anyways speaking of beer, and barley sandwiches, we had a busy night last night. The doode finally got the hops out of the freezer and he brewed up some beer!
nugget hops 2009 crop from freezer
stirring and stirring
spent grain in bowl
And while he was boiling and stirring, I had nothing to do. And there was this pile of spent grain. So I did some quick googling and found yes there was a recipe for spent grain bread. So I gave it a shot.
pretty good bread!
Spent Grain Bread
Recipe from the Realbeer.com forum.
3 cups of spent grain (wet)
1.5 cups warm (~100 F) water
1 tablespoon dry yeast
1/3 cup brown sugar
3-5 or 7 cups flour
Dash of salt
Proof yeast in mixture of water and sugar. Mix in the spent grain, and add one cup of flour at a time as you knead with the mixer. Keep adding flour until dough is smooth and no longer sticky. Recipe said 3-5 cups of flour. I used at least 7. That’s right! It took forever! Place dough in a large bowl, cover with a clean towel, and let rise until doubled. Punch down dough, and shape into loaves. I made four.
Allow loaf(ves) to double in size, bake in 375 F oven 30 to 40 minutes until browned and a long pin, such as a turkey pin, comes out clean after being inserted into the center of the loaf.
The bread is pretty good. Hearty. Good with honey, or cheese and mustard, or chili. We had chili for dinner with it, and kiddos liked it a lot.
turdacres 