Lady Vengeance Pie

So, last night we held a really special meeting of Private Pie at the Star and Shadow Cinema. you can read all about it at the Private Pie blog here.

I decided to make two pies for the event: a sweet and a savoury. Some of you may already know that I am a bit of a fiend for Asian Extreme Horror Films, so I thought it would be cool to do something on that theme. I also went to go and see a load of Korean and Japanese horror films at the Star and Shadow, so it seemed like Lady Vengeance, my favourite of Park Chan-Wook's Vengeance trilogy. Here's an explanation of what I made, and how it links in with the film:

Tofu:
In Korea, a block of white tofu is presented to people on leaving prison. Its a symbol of purity and of starting a new life. This symbol appears twice in the film- at the beginning as she leaves prison, and at the end, when she represents the white tofu in a cake. A few weeks earlier, someone on Twitter recommended this recipe for chocolate tofu pie, so it seemed to me that it would fit nicely.

The chocolate tofu mixture in my pate sucree pastry case,

Strawberry Mousse:
On her release from prison, Geum-Ja finds a job in a bakery. Here's what the bakery owner has to say about her:

 "He tells her that he was astonished at a strawberry mousse made by a prison inmate who, using poor ingredients, made a dessert "fit for a king."

So I thought a lovely strawberry mousse topping would be perfect. I went for this BBC good food recipe

The strawberry mousse layer

Pink/Red:
See her eye-make up? That's quite a feature of the film, as Geum-Ja uses a change in her appearance to symbolise her departure from innocence to one intent on revenge. I had to go for a have a pink/red colour theme, and it had to be pretty- Geum-Ja likes pretty things, as do I, so I used pink sugar pearls which I let dissolved into the topping, and liberal applications of red glitter, with some little bits of red icing here and there. I also used some pink and red sugar roses, to add extra prettiness. I think Geum-Ja would have liked that.

With pink and red decorations

White
I made some meringue hearts with the leftover egg whites from the pate sucree, to pick up the theme of the purity from the tofu. And, of course, we have to bear in mind that everything Geum-Ja does is for the love of her daughter.

Blood
This is a revenge film, featuring plenty of blood. I used red gel food colouring to make blood spatter.

The fully assembled pie, ready for eating at Private Pie.

The resulting pie was rather tasty, although very sloppy as it was pretty hot in the room. If it was kept nice and clilled, I think it would make for a very pretty slice. And don't let the tofu put you off- its just really there for the texture, and you certainly can't taste it. the mousse was delicious, and i had plenty left over to give to friends and to make a pretty little dessert for myself as well.

 

 

Hxxx

Porter Cream Pie

Our last Private Pie Club meeting's theme was "Local Tipples"

I am a HUGE real ale fan and always have been, so this theme really excited me. Beer and pie are obvious partners but i was really excited about how our members were going to be creative with the theme.

I had set my heart on making a sweet pie with beer, but wasn't quite sure how to go about it. As usual, the first step in researching was google, and i stumbled across this beer cream pie blog post. I knew this was the one.

I was fairly short of time, so I ended up making the pies for the meeting the night before without doing a practice run. I was a bit nervous to start with that it was all going to go horribly wrong, which may explain the events that followed.

I merrily made a chocolate shortcrust pastry and blind baked the crust. Nothing untoward here.

Then I mixed the melted chocolate with the porter and brushed a good thick layer of this divine stuff onto the pastry case. Again, all went smoothly. The porter i was using was Hadrian and Borders Ouseburn porter.

Then it came to making the custard. Here, total panic and disaster struck, as the custard just wouldn't set at all (in reality, I think i was too impatient and didn't really let it cool down as much as i should before taking action). For some reason, it seemed like a good plan to put some gelatin in... So in went one sachet... Then i thought i needed some more (again i clearly hadn't left it for long enough to make this decision rationally)... and some more.... so in total i put in three sachets of gelatin.

Eventually, the custard started setting... And then it continued setting, then set a bit more. Undeterred, I
went ahead and decorated the tart with some of the leftover porter chocolate mixture and some gold leaf. It looked pretty good in the end:

The verdict at pie club was that it tasted nice, but had a very odd texture. Emergency gelatin really wasn't a good plan at all. One member put it very nicely: "I think you might have invented a new material for breast implants"

The Great February Muffin Feud

The next installment of the Matt and Hayley Bake-off took place today.

This time, the challenge was to make 12 muffins, involving chocolate in some way, shape or form.

I'm really interested in the idea of chilli and chocolate, so I thought i'd make some sort of chilli chocolate combination. A search through my cook books found a recipe for Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes from the Cox Cookies and Cake book. This book was bought for me by a friend ages ago and I hadn't had a chance to make anything from it, so i was really keen to go ahead and have a go at one of the recipes. It's a really stylish book with a sense of humour and a lot of glitter!

I used 1 and a half quantities to adjust for muffins... And the result was, well, pretty spectacular to be honest:

The taste of these muffins is truly amazing... They are definitely the best muffins I have ever made. The muffin mixture contains cinnamon and nutmeg, and the chocolate buttercream contains cayenne pepper.

The independent judge this time was Lisa, Newcastle's Clandestine Cake Club organiser. Who better to ask to judge a muffin contest? So, we took the pictures, and we sent them to her, and she (very slowly and dramatically) reached her decision. Would it be muffin 1 (which I knew to be Matt's effort) or my muffin 2 (I must admit to feeling confident, but what if Lisa wasn't a fan of chilli?!)

Before I tell you who won, here are some more pictures of my effort:

Lovely rich, squidgy moist inside

And here are some pictures of Matt's muffins, which were chocolate muffins with a chocolate topping:

Note the slightly dry texture... explanation to follow

Lovely precise decoration.

It turns out that somehow, Matt managed to forget to put any butter into his cake mixture, hence the rather dry-looking texture.

And so, the results came in and it turned out that my muffins won, so I am the muffin queen. I am slowly but surely starting to claw back my self respect following the cheesecake debacle and loser pie episode.

Black Forest Bake-Off

Those of you who have been following the blog for a while will know that, on weekends when we're not together, boyf and I will often have baking competitions, which are then judged by picture alone by independent judges.

We couldn't decide what to bake, but the lovely Lisa suggested black forest gateau. Neither of us have ever made black forest gateau so it seemed like a good challenge.

I chose a recipe out of one of my reliable old cookbooks and away we went to produce our masterpieces. Mine ended up looking like this:

I learnt 2 main things in the process: 1. applying chocolate sprinkles to the outside of a cake is hard and 2. Kirsch is very tasty. 

And here is boyf's effort, a very worthy affair with some expert piping. And particularly worthy considering he later admitted to never even having seen or tasted a black forest gateau.

The independent judges (my mum and dad and grandma, and boyf's mum and dad) agreed that mine was more "black forest gateau"-like and mine was therefore pronounced the winner :D

Hooray! 

Muffins!

Hello all,

Had a lovely holiday, thank you very much. I have returned with quite a serious addiction to olives and feta cheese, however. It was very quiet, as most things were closed in Malia with it being off-season, but we found ways to amuse ourselves, including visiting Knossos to hunt for the minotaur.

Last weekend i was down in London to see The Boyf, so we decided to do a spot of baking. I haven't made muffins for ages, so we thought we would whip up a couple of batches. Everything that Boyf bakes appears to need to contain chocolate, and lots of it, so we settled on double chocolate chunk muffins, and i demanded to make Nigella's divine snickers and peanut butter muffins as well.

We had to go shopping for ingredients and everything. For some reason i was slightly disappointed at the fact that London branches of Tesco are the same as North East ones, as if the south is a whole other country. My style of shopping usually consists of meandering about slowly looking at everything new and being seduced by shiny, brightly coloured packaging. I established  that alas, this is not how The Boyf shops at all (go directly to aisle required, select item, that is all)

We used this recipe for the double chocolate chunk muffins. The cinnamon was an odd addition, and initially we feared it was going to be a bit overpowered but the finished article was yummy.

Meanwhile (as The Boyf sloooowly and precisely measured out exact amounts of muffin mixture to go into each muffin cup, bless him), i made a start on the snickers and peanut butter muffins. I made these years ago from Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess, and they were amazing, and got rave reviews from those who tried them (including the staff in my local salon, who would regularly tell me how wonderful they were in a subtle hint kind of a way). Anyway, as you will probably know by now, I do have a serious peanut butter addiction, so these muffins are a joy for me.

There will be more baking this weekend, so expect more posts. It will involve more chocolate, yay!

In other news, the arrangements for Private Pie are coming along nicely. Will let you know as things develop further.

Hayley xxx