Cakes and biscuits with gluten free alternative flours

I was flabbergasted by the various kinds of flours in the supermarket shelves and decided to try some of them. I experimented both with biscuits and cakes recipes, just to have something special from time to time.

Donut cake with rice flour

You need: 200 g of rice flour, 150 g of icing sugar, 4 eggs, 30 g of melted butter, one tsp of baking powder and 100 g of dark bitter chocolate to decorate.

Whip the eggs with the sugar using an electric mixer for 15-20 minutes. Add the melted butter, the flour little by little and the baking powder. Keep whipping for another five minutes. Pour the mixture in a greased tin with the shape of a donut and bake for half an hour at 180° C. When cool, melt the chocolate in a pan and pour it on the cake.

Biscuits with rice flour

You need: 200 g of rice flour, 100 g of caster sugar, 2 eggs, 30 g of melted butter, half a tsp of baking powder and 50 g of glacé ginger in cubes or dried chopped apricots.

Mix flour and sugar in a bowl, add the eggs, the baking powder and the butter. Finally add the chopped apricots, or the glacé ginger. Mingle them in the mixture using a fork and then knead the dough. Shape little balls, then press them with the palms of the hands and set them on a greased oven tray. Bake for 20 minutes, or till golden, at 180° C.

Cake with buckwheat flour

You need: 250 g of buckwheat flour, 150 g of golden granulated sugar, 2 eggs, 2 tbsp of olive oil, one tsp of baking powder, half a tsp of bicarbonate of soda, 150 g of cranberries and three tbsp of Demerara sugar.

Cook the cranberry in a pan with the Demerara sugar and 2-3 tbsp of water. Prepare the cake beating the eggs with the sugar, add the olive oil and the flour together with the bicarbonate of soda and the baking powder. Finally add two thirds of the cranberry and mix well. Pour the mixture in a greased cake tin and finish scattering the remnant cranberries on top. Bake for 30-45 minutes at 180° C.

Biscuits with buckwheat flour

You need: 200 g of buckwheat flour, 2 eggs, 100 g of golden granulated sugar, 2 tbsp of olive oil, half a tsp of baking powder and 50 g of dried cranberries.

Mix flour and sugar in a bowl, add the eggs, the baking powder, the dried cranberries and the olive oil. Mingle bits evenly using a fork and then knead the dough. Roll out the dough and cut the biscuits using a cookie cutter, finally set them on a greased oven tray. Bake for 20 minutes, or till darker, at 180° C.

Cake with rye flour

You need: 350 g of rye flour, 3 eggs, 3 tbsp of sunflower oil, 170 g of muscovado sugar, grated zest and juice of an orange, one tsp of baking powder and half a tsp of bicarbonate of soda. Orange peels sticks and melted dark chocolate to decorate.

Beat the yolk of the eggs with the sugar and add the orange zest and the juice. Then add half of the flour, the baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and the sunflower oil. Whip the whites of the eggs till stiff and blend them in the mixture as well. Add the rest of the flour and pour the mixture in a greased tin cake. Bake for 30-45 minutes at 180° C. When cool, decorate with the orange peel sticks and pour some melted dark chocolate on top.

Biscuits with rye flour

You need: 200 g of rye flour, 2 eggs, 50 g of melted butter, 100 g of muscovado sugar, grated zest of a lemon, half a tsp on baking powder, half a tsp of cinnamon.

Mix flour and sugar in a bowl. Add the eggs, the lemon zest, the cinnamon, the baking powder and the melted butter. Mingle it using a fork and then knead the dough. Roll out the dough and cut the biscuits using a cookie cutter. Finally set them on a greased oven tray. Bake for 20 minutes, or till darker, at 180° C.

I hope you enjoy them all!

Eurovision contest: Occidentali’s Karma and The Naked Ape

The Eurovision contest is an entertaining, diverse and controversial showcase, where catchy tunes mix with tacky performances. But I always enjoy it, especially the voting bit when the countries conveniently cast their votes according to specific geographical areas (all the eastern countries vote for each other, the same for the southern ones and so on). The UK ends up being a bit isolated, but these are the disadvantages (and advantages) of being an island.

I am particularly fond of the Italian song this year, Occidentali’s Karma (Westerners’ Karma), sang by Francesco Gabbani, an extremely funny, clever and fresh tune. The song is catchy and the lyrics cracked me up. It can be defined a postmodern intertextual high quality text, or to say it in a simpler way, it ridicules all of us mixing quotations from different sources. There is a good list of the ideas and texts it refers to here: http://wiwibloggs.com/2017/02/15/occidentalis-karma-lyrics/174193/  (with the English translation of the lyrics at the bottom), which I am going to summarize briefly as well as adding some personal considerations.

There is also a video clip with English subtitles on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zNfw-GDm20

Here is the lyrics:

OCCIDENTALI’S KARMA

Essere o dover essere

Il dubbio amletico

Contemporaneo come l’uomo del neolitico

Nella tua gabbia 2×3 mettiti comodo

Intellettuali nei caffè

Internettologi

Soci onorari al gruppo dei selfisti anonimi

L’intelligenza è démodé

Risposte facili

Dilemmi inutili

AAA cercasi storie dal gran finale,

Sperasi

Comunque vada, panta rei

And “Singing in the rain”

Lezioni di Nirvana

C’è il Buddha in fila indiana

Per tutti un’ora d’aria, di gloria (ale!)

La folla grida un mantra

L’evoluzione inciampa

La scimmia nuda balla

Occidentali’s karma

Occidentali’s karma

La scimmia nuda balla

Occidentali’s karma

Piovono gocce di Chanel

Su corpi asettici

Mettiti in salvo dall’odore dei tuoi simili

Tutti tuttologi col web

Coca dei popoli

Oppio dei poveri

AAA cercasi umanità virtuale

Sex appeal

Comunque vada, panta rei

And “Singing in the rain”

Lezioni di Nirvana

C’è il Buddha in fila indiana

Per tutti un’ora d’aria, di gloria (ale!)

La folla grida un mantra

L’evoluzione inciampa

La scimmia nuda balla

Occidentali’s karma

Occidentali’s karma

La scimmia nuda balla

Occidentali’s karma

Quando la vita si distrae

Cadono gli uomini

Occidentali’s karma

Occidentali’s karma

La scimmia si rialza

Namaste, ale!

Lezioni di Nirvana

C’è il Buddha in fila indiana

Per tutti un’ora d’aria, di gloria (ale!)

La folla grida un mantra

L’evoluzione inciampa

La scimmia nuda balla

Occidentali’s karma

Occidentali’s karma

La scimmia nuda balla

Occidentali’s karma

Om

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

To be or to have to be

Hamlet’s doubt

As current as the Neolithic man

Get comfy in your 2 x 3 cage

Intellectuals in cafés

Internet experts

Honorary members of the selfie-addicted anonymous

Cleverness is out of fashion

Easy answers

Pointless dilemmas

AAA grand endings wanted

Hoped for,

Whatever happens, panta rhei

And “Singing in the Rain”.

Nirvana lessons

There’s Buddha in single line

Recreation time for everyone, a moment of glory (ale!)

The crowd is shouting a mantra

Evolution stumbles

The naked ape is dancing

Westerners’ karma

Westerners’ karma

The naked ape is dancing

Westerners’ karma

Drops of Chanel are pouring

On aseptic bodies

Save yourself from the smell of your own kind

All know-all with the web

Cocaine of the masses

Opiate of the poor

AAA virtual humanity wanted

Sex appeal

Whatever happens, panta rhei

And “Singing in The Rain”

Nirvana lessons

There’s Buddha in single line

Recreation time for everyone, a moment of glory (ale!)

The crowd is shouting a mantra

Evolution stumbles

The naked ape is dancing

Westerners’ karma

Westerners’ karma

The naked ape is dancing

Westerners’ karma

When life is distracted

Men drop

Westerners’ karma

Westerners’ karma

The ape gets back on its feet

Namaste, go!

Nirvana lessons

There’s Buddha in single line,

recreation time for everyone, a moment of glory (ale!)

The crowd is shouting a mantra

Evolution stumbles

The naked ape is dancing

Westerners’ karma

Westerners’ karma

The naked ape is dancing

Westerners’ karma

Om

The beginning refers to the famous Hamlet’s soliloquy (to be or not to be) and Eric Fromm (to have or to be). The song carries on quoting the alcoholics anonymous (which now are selfie-anonymous, alluding to our attention-seeking addiction), advertising sites (AAA, everything can be effectively advertised) and the famous ‘Singing in the rain’ by Gene Kelly, which seems just to rhyme with panta rhei (everything flows, by the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus), but it is not so simple. In the film Singing in the Rain the main actress (Kathy) is dubbed by Lina, the nice girl with an angel voice, as it often happened when silent films were converted into a talkie. At the end the curtain lifts and the audience finally sees that Lina is the real star. It’s clearly a sham.

The song mocks serious and pretentious attitudes not only towards Oriental philosophies and religions (which the Westerners use as a way to relax, have fun or self-advertising) but in a more general way it teases the way Westerners use and misuse everything. The world has become a big supermarket, we go around and grasp whatever we need with little respect for others (other people, animals and the environment). The funny thing is that we are pretty unaware of it and believe (or pretend) we are doing nothing wrong, we are the best. But eventually who cares, panta rhei.

The cherry on top is the dancing naked ape (referring to the famous Desmond Morris’s book The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal published in 1967), who always rises like the phoenix from the ashes. Its instinctual, playful and aggressive behaviour represents us all at our best. This is who we are at the end, let’s acknowledge it. I don’t think this is referring only to sex, it’s about all our attitudes towards the others: ‘life is distracted’, the ape comes back and ‘men drop’ (cadono gli uomini). We take advantage of others, cheat them, play with them in a more or less abusive way. We are all dancing apes pretending to be civilized respectful humans, and we need to acknowledge it.

According to Desmond Morris, this happened because our cultural and technological progress developed too fast and our biological characteristics couldn’t keep up with it, we would need some million years to bridge the gap. Consequently our civilized goals are too high a stake sometimes and we can’t cope with it, we fall back on our instinctual side. Or our instinctual side is something we can’t get rid of to survive biologically, so ‘we should tailor our intelligent opportunist advances to our basic behavioural requirements’.

Other references are to Karl Marx (Religion is the opiate of the masses, which becomes ‘All know-all with the web cocaine of the masses opiate of the poor’) and Oriental spiritual terminology (Nirvana, Mantra, Namaste), which are not mentioned with disrespectful intentions but are just a way to mock the people who practice them without really understanding the meaning of it.

The quotations are well chosen, a clever pastiche that communicates a clear thought-provoking message. It is a warning or just a way to say that the king is naked and we can all see it, open your eyes and don’t make much fuss about tolerance and consideration towards the others. We just grab what we can and how we can.

The video clip is brilliant as well, Francesco Gabbani is a good singer and dancer, and above all it is his body language and facial expression that spices it up, he winks at us in a typical knowing Italian way. You know what I mean, he seems to say. And we do.

The song won Sanremo Music Festival 2017 beating Fiorella Mannoia’s Che sia benedetta (Let her be blessed), a moving song about the beauty of life but no match with Occidentali’s Karma.

Will it win Eurovision contest as well? Let’s wait and see. I believe it deserves our votes.

Lightkeepers by Elizabeth Burns

Elizabeth Burns’ last collection (Lightkeepers, Wayleave Press, 2016) was edited by her friends and fellow-poets Gerrie Fellows and Jane Routh; it puts together the poems she wrote during the last years of her life. She didn’t have the time to publish it but asked her friends to do it for her. A few of the poems appeared in poetry reviews and in anthologies but most of them were unpublished when she died of cancer in August 2015.

A new fresh voice emerges from the collection, the reader has the sense of meeting her personally while reading her lines, they have the authenticity that only unpublished poems sometimes have. Her capacity of observing and perceiving reality, of making the invisible visible (as she said speaking about women’s voice), and the ordinary relevant, is so acute, insightful and unique that it made me experience things in new ways.

When she writes about some duck eggs (ten dozen duck eggs she found on her doorstep one day):

..... I love their magnitude,

their plenty, the rows and rows of them,

the different ways of ordering and counting them.

Their ranks of sameness, and their slight differences.

She communicates the preciousness of the gift and also the innate beauty of the eggs so common and special, a work of nature and of art at the same time to admire and cherish:

.......I want to keep them

on this windowsill and gaze at them each day –

their lovely shapes, the oval clear and pure,

as if they were holy, made for ritual;

.....

and the way they are contained and unassuming,

holding inside themselves a freight of possibility.

A fruitful force emanates from these lines, they don’t seem to be written by a person at the end of her life, on the contrary they are vital, full of hope, compassion and care.

Her masterly use of enjambment in The Spool expresses the inner joy and mutual close communion in the act of sewing up some buttons with her daughter on the new dress the girl is going to wear in a school trip to an art gallery:

And here she is, early in the hot June morning, light on her feet

in her pretty shoes setting off with her camera, her sketchbook,

on the school trip to the gallery, the art college show; threading her way

down the street, heading out into the promise of this summer’s day.

In Clay, Plum and Lightkeepers, her last pamphlets and collection all published by Wayleave press, her poetry definitely develops in a deeply imaginative and free way, her poems are spare, tight and careless of what is inessential; instead she goes to the core of things. While her body was inevitably shrinking and her hair was falling, her poetry bloomed.

The intensity of everyday, strongly felt experiences is, for example, in the simple act of buying a second hand dresser in an antique shop:

a blue-painted dresser that was old and worn

and had six little drawers with knobs for handles,

a dresser that would fit exactly into my kitchen

........................................

The dresser is scratched and some of its paint

is wearing away, but its wood glows in the evening sun

and it holds a bowl of oranges, perhaps, or a jug of roses,

green candles, blown eggs, tulips, herbs, postcards;

The poem  Lightkeepers is about following the traces of R.L. Stevenson in the east coast of Scotland near Edinburgh. His presence is everywhere together with the memories of her daughters’ childhood at the seaside. The Isle of May and Fidra lighthouses remind her of the writer’s family and are ‘beacons in darkness’, but all the happiness she gathered is ‘fragile as glass’ and momentary, ‘a lantern-slide lit for a moment’. The complexity of this poem seems to be resolved in the lines: ‘We’re lightkeepers, making ready/for sundown, revealing that tiny glimmer and refracting it’, showing the value of ‘the gleam/that makes us human’ and its inevitable fickleness. A sense of transience is in the last line: ‘we take that light we can to keep us through the night.’

Going through the collection is like having a journey in an apparently ordinary world perceptively observed and deftly written. From the comfort of the first poem, The recovery room (‘the tests are clear − ...the winter in your skin’), to the last one, Spiral (which was chosen to be attached to the scaffolding covering the Poetry Library in Edinburgh in October 2015), one spiralling sentence in two verses celebrating our earthen roots but also our never ending aspiration to something more, a spiritual dimension, whirling up into the sky and beyond.

Spring time: hot cross buns and PhD proposal

I had a very exciting early spring time working hard as an IB examiner, preparing my literature lessons and assessments for my students and above all digging deep for my PhD proposal. I had also time to try new recipes: I experimented new cakes and, being Easter near, hot cross buns.

The brighter, warmer days and the energy boost that comes naturally with spring time gave me the right trigger to work on my PhD proposal and submit it. The idea came to me after reading The Blind Assassin, a true masterpiece. So many connections came to my mind together with a total sincere admiration for what I consider a real work of art, that I started to study about a year ago, research and collect critical works on Margaret Atwood and link it to other books I read in the past. At first my ideas were generic and confused but then they took shape and focused on the role of female characters, how their identities developed and were influenced by previous female characters in western literature (but not only in literature, in visual art and music as well). An intertextual kind of research sprang from it! I repeatedly visited the British Library in search of texts to support my work. It is such a beautiful place to spend time in, there are exhibitions, bookshops and comfortable reading rooms that looked like pleasant lounges. I felt so deeply motivated and younger, going back to my university years when I used to spend hours and hours in the Biblioteca Nazionale (National Library) in Rome or in the Vatican Library.

Studying in a library adds concentration and cosiness to the research as well as a sort of solemn aura: it is the temple of knowledge and you are in it to accomplish a task of some importance. And there is the pleasure of reading and researching that goes with it, of course. An exciting process of studying, understanding more, solving problems hoping to reach your goal at the end. All my passion and commitment to Margaret Atwood finally has a goal and I can dedicate my next years to the study of her work. What a great electrifying adventure!

In a typical woman multi-task mood (and in accordance with an postmodern Atwoodian mixture of genres and registers), I also had time to experiment a hot cross buns recipe from a magazine, but I adapted it as usual. Here it is:

You need: 300 ml of milk, 60 g of butter, 250 g of strong white flour, 250 g of strong brown flour, 100 g of golden caster sugar, 7 g sachet of fast action bread yeast, 1 egg (lightly beaten), 100 g of sultanas, grated zest of one lemon, 1 apple (peeled and grated), 1 tsp of cinnamon; for the crosses you need: 150 g of plain flour and 100 ml of water; to glaze you need: 3 tbsp of warm apricot jam or marmalade.

Warm the milk and butter and let the butter melt. Mix the flours in a large bowl, add half a tsp of salt, sugar, yeast, then pour the warm milk and butter in. Mix it with a fork, then knead the dough by hand till smooth. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and let it rest in a warm place for at least two hours till it doubles in size. Remove the damp cloth and knead the dough adding sultanas, lemon zest, apple and cinnamon. Add some flour if it is too sticky. Divide the dough into round pieces and set them on an oiled oven tray. Prepare the dough for the crosses mixing the plain flour with water, roll it out and cut strips to arrange on top of the buns, securing them with water. Cover the tray with cling film and let the buns rest in a warm place for an hour. Bake the buns for 15-20 minutes at 200° C till golden. Finally brush the jam (or marmalade) on top when the buns are still hot. And enjoy!

Some recipes my mother taught me

My mum’s dishes are very simple but extremely tasty. She sticks to two basic rules in her cooking mode/approach: give it time and don’t make it too elaborate. Here are a few recipes she taught me in my recent visit to Italy.

Pasta e ceci (pasta with chickpeas)

Soak 400 g of chickpeas for 36 hours or use a canned product.  Boil them in salty water for about one hour. Warm some extra virgin olive oil in a saucepan with a clove of garlic. When the garlic become lightly brown remove it and add the chickpeas and the water. Let it boil and add some rosemary, three tbsp of passata and 200 g of pasta (macaroni). Let the pasta cook and serve it warm.

Coda alla vaccinara (oxtail stew)

This is an old recipe typical of Rome. You need about a kilo of chopped oxtail (or better veal tail) and plenty of celery. First boil 3-4 celery stalks in 2 litres stock for half an hour. In a pan fry some pancetta cubes in extra virgin olive oil and add some chopped celery, a carrot, an onion, one clove of garlic and parsley, add the oxtail, salt and let it cook. After half an hour add a glass of white wine, when it evaporates add 4 tbsp of passata. Finally add the water where you had cooked the celery stalks till it covers the oxtail. After half an hour add the celery stalks chopped. Let it simmer and the water evaporate. Serve warm with mashed potatoes.

Carciofi alla romana (artichokes in the Roman way)

The most difficult thing here is to find the artichokes, good tender ones. There’s plenty in Italy in December and my mother can pick the right ones just pressing her fingers on the outer leaves. Once you have them (let’s say from 5 to 10 pieces) you need to get rid of some of the outer leaves and cut the upper part to get rid of the thorns. Ideally only the stem and the most tender leaves around the choke should be left. Once it’s clean, pass half a lemon around it or soak it in water and lemon. Place a piece of garlic (a quarter of a clove) and some leaves of parsley inside, add salt and pepper. Cook in a pan head down with plenty of oil and some water. Cover the pan with a lid and put a paper (kind of bread bag paper) under the lid so the water doesn’t evaporate otherwise the artichokes will burn. It needs about half an hour to cook.

Minestrone soup

You can make this dish with the vegetable you like, my mum uses carrots, courgettes, broccoli, celery, cauliflower, potatoes, spinach and onions. She chops them and boils them in water for about two hours. She adds stock to the water, salt and some passata as well. She usually has it without pasta but you can add some macaroni if you like or you can also puree it if you prefer. She only adds some extra virgin olive oil and parmigiano once she serves it.

Spaghetti ai frutti di mare (spaghetti with seafood)

We had this dish on Christmas Eve when we usually have fish. Cook the sea food (mussels, king prawns and squid) on a frying pan with some extra virgin olive oil and a clove of garlic. Add salt, pepper, chilli, parsley and 3-4 tbsp of passata. Add some black olives as well if you like. Let it simmer for half an hour. Cook 250g of spaghetti in salty water, drain it and mix it with the seafood in the frying pan. Toss it and let it warm for five minutes. Serve it warm.

Torta di mele (cake with apples)

This is a special cake with apples cooked in white wine my mum and I made during Christmas holidays. You need to peel, core and slice the apples (about 800 g), then cook them in 150 g of white wine and 100 g of water with 80 g of sugar. When they are soft set them on a plate and pour the juice of one lemon on them. Let the wine and water boil till it thickens to make a sort of syrup. Prepare the cake by mixing 280 g of flour, 1 tsp of baking powder and half a tsp of bicarbonate of soda, 70 g of melted butter, 4 yolk of eggs, the juice and grated zest of a lemon, 120 g of sugar and the whites of the eggs whipped till stiff. Pour half of the mixture in a greased tin cake, spread half of the sliced apples on it, then pour the rest of the mixture on top and finish with the remaining apples. Bake the cake for about half an hour at 180 °C. When it is still warm pour the syrup on it and let it cool before serving.

What I did on February half term 2017

Finally we reached half term. It was a great relief as the beginning of the term was very stressful due to different reasons, the most testing one was the fact that the international school where both my husband and I are teaching is unfortunately closing at the end of the school year. The consequence is that we are looking for a new job.

Just before the holidays we had the International Languages Day at school to celebrate the different languages and cultures present at our school, that is more than twenty. Students and teachers were encouraged to wear their traditional costumes and parents prepared delicious typical food from all the countries. There was an assembly at the end of the day where all the groups could perform a song, a poem or a dance linked to their culture. It was amazing to see how the students were proud to represent their country in different interesting ways. My Italian colleague and I dressed up in traditional costumes as well (she was wearing a costume from the area of Naples, I was wearing one from Sardinia, which I had made together with my mum last summer looking at some pictures of Sardinian costumes a friend of mine had sent me. It took a long time to complete it but it was worth it). We danced a tarantella with a twist (part traditional, part hip hop) with our Italian students. Pardon my boasting but it was a great success!

During half term week we planned to see all of our children. My daughter came from Edinburgh to see some friends in London so we could spend part of the weekend together. We visited a stunning orchids exhibition at the Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew Gardens, I had never seen such an astounding display before. The variety of the orchids species and the way they were arranged was absolutely superb. Some were on huge baskets hanging on water, others arranged in columns, or forming a peacock or on display on a cart. Special ones were hanging from the ceiling like floating multi-coloured angels, their brightness standing out from the glass ceiling of the hot-house, the stringy roots coming down like frozen green worms. The soft music in the air helped imagine the dancing orchids similar to unattainable damsels or precious jewels out of hand. There were all colours, from purple to striking pink, all shades of yellow, maculated ones, pure white, blue, burgundy. There were slipper orchids, spiky ones, tiny and big, solitary and in clusters. All of them incredibly attractive. It is such a unique flower, fleshy, sensual, with an unmistakably harmonious shape, a natural beauty. In the same conservatory just before entering the orchids exhibition, there was a display of cactuses and other prickly plants, an extraordinary contrast with the orchids.

During the week we went to Oxford for the Poetry Society annual lecture featuring the German poet Jan Wagner, and saw our son as well. He is definitely absorbed in his Physics studies but could find the time for a pizza with us and have a tête-à-tête on truths in Physics and in Literature.

Jan Wagner’s lecture (The shedding of skins and schemes. A voice of one’s own and the voices of others) was very interesting. It was about the different ways in which poets are influenced by other poets; they imitate the work of their models at first and then develop their own voice. Jan Wagner’s models were the great masters (Shakespeare, Heine, Goethe, Brecht) that influenced him in the first place inspiring love for poetry, his prosody and vividness of imagery. Nevertheless, the continuous readings allowed him to reconsider their legacy and let his originality emerge. This confluence of many voices from different poets and different poems results in the inevitable intertextuality that is present in all texts, an important topic for me at the moment as I am studying intertextuality in Margaret Atwood’s work. I bought two books: Jan Wagner’s Self-portrait with a swarm of bees, translated by Iain Galbraith, and Love Poems by Bertolt Brecht, translated by David Constantine and Tom Kuhn.

We also headed north to spend a few days with my autistic daughter Valentina near Doncaster. She was not well, a flu probably and a lot of coughing, but had enough spirit to take us around the school, showing us a new engaging sensory wall and see the new house where she is going to move into in two-three weeks. It’s a bungalow they enlarged for her, brand new and especially thought for her. I must say she looks eager to move there.

Finally we spent a day with my other son and his fiancée in Leeds. We visited their new apartment and had an update on the wedding preparations.

Coming back home we didn’t feel so well, probably Valentina gave us influenza.

Winter cakes, 2017

I tried these cakes with my mum and my daughter last Christmas. They are tremendously energising, perfect for winter time when I always feel the physical need to eat chocolate and other rich things.

Black and white donut cake

This is composed of two cakes with rich textures blended together, to make a typical winter treat. I didn’t have a ring-shaped tin so I used a 23 cm cake tin with a glass in the middle to make the hole.

For the white cake you need:

200 g of flour, 150 g of caster sugar, 100 g of ground almonds, 50 g of butter, 2 eggs, half a glass of milk, 1 tsp of baking powder, half a tsp of bicarbonate of soda.

For the black cake you need:

200 g of flour, 150 g of dark muscovado sugar, 100 g of ground walnuts, 50 g of butter, 2 eggs, half a glass of milk, 1 tsp of baking powder, half a tsp of bicarbonate of soda, 2 tbsp of liquor.

Prepare the two cake separately. Soften the butter using a wooden spoon, add the sugar and the yolk of the eggs. Then almonds (or walnuts, and the liquor) and half of the flour. Mix the baking powder and bicarbonate of soda with the milk and add it to the mixture with the rest of the flour. Finally whip the egg whites until stiff and combine them to the mixture. Grease the cake tin and the glass, pour the mixtures in, alternating white and dark to give a marble effect. Bake for 50 minutes, at 180 °C. When cool, dust with icing sugar.

Dark chocolate and hazelnut cake

This is an ideal treat for icy weather.

You need: 200 g of flour, 150 g of light brown sugar, 70 g of butter, four eggs, 150 g of melted dark chocolate, 100 g of ground hazelnuts, half a glass of milk, one tsp of baking powder and half a tsp of bicarbonate of soda; to decorate: 50 g of white chocolate, 50 g of dark chocolate and 100 g of chopped hazelnuts.

Beat the butter soft and add the yolks of the eggs and sugar. Melt the dark chocolate and stir it in, then add the ground hazelnuts and half of the flour. Combine the baking powder and the bicarbonate of soda with the milk and pour in the mixture. Finally whip the egg whites until stiff and combine them to the mixture together with the rest of the flour, mix well till smooth. Pour into a round greased tin and bake for half an hour to forty five minutes at 180°C (check bake by poking it with a skewer until it comes out clean). Melt the white and dark chocolate in separate pans and mix the chopped hazelnut half in one and half in the other. When the cake is cool spread the white and dark chocolate in patches or patterns on the top. Chill before serving to let the top set.

Apple Strudel

This is a classical recipe of a traditional Austrian pudding very popular in Italy as well, especially in northern Italy near the Austrian border. The dough is simple while the exquisite flavour is concentrated in the filling made of apples and dried fruit.

For the dough you need:

350 g of flour, 2 tbsp of olive oil, 2 eggs, 150 ml of lukewarm water, a pinch of salt.

For the filling you need:

800 g of Golden Delicious apples, 2 tsp of ground cinnamon, the grated zest and the juice of a lemon, 100 g of breadcrumbs, 50 g of pine nuts, 2 tbsp of liquor, 50 g of raisins, 100 g of sugar.

For the finish: 100 g of melted butter and icing sugar to dust.

Mix all the ingredients for the dough in a bowl, knead it for five minutes and let it rest for half an hour in a bowl covered with a tea towel.

Prepare the filling by first peeling and coring the apples, cutting them in pieces and then adding the zest and juice of the lemon. Add the rest of the ingredients, mix well and let it rest for a while.

Roll out the dough in the shape of a rectangle, spread half of the butter on the dough and pour the apple mixture in the middle of it. Roll up the sides of the pastry to wrap the filling and seal it. Brush the rest of the melted butter on top and bake  for 45 minutes at 180 °C.

When cool, dust with icing sugar.

White chocolate and almonds donut cake

This is a lighter cake compared to the others as I used sunflower oil instead of butter.

You need: 250 g of flour, 4 eggs, 170 g of sugar, 4 tbsp of sunflower oil, 100 g of ground almonds, 100 g of ground white chocolate, half a glass of milk, 1 tsp of baking powder, half a tsp of bicarbonate of soda, some vanilla drops; to decorate: 100 g of white chocolate plus one tbsp of milk and some flaked almonds.

Beat the yolk of the eggs with the sugar in a large bowl till mixture becomes pale. Add the ground almonds, the sunflower oil, the ground white chocolate and some vanilla drops. Combine the baking powder and the bicarbonate of soda with the milk and pour this in the mixture. Finally add the flour and the whipped egg whites (whipped till stiff). Bake for half an hour to forty five minutes at 180°C until a skewer comes out clean. When cool, melt a 100 g of white chocolate in a pan with a tbsp of milk and pour it on top of the cake, then sprinkle some flaked almonds.