This week's Guest Chef - Ruperta Gallagher

Ruperta Gallagher returned, with her husband Brian, from America in 1993 and opened the Blueberry Tearooms in Donegal Town. She loves baking tasty pies & tarts and this recipe, from her kitchen, is one of her favourite homemade Autumn cakes.

The Blueberry Tea Room & Restaurant, Donegal Town

Cinnamon Pear Cake with Vanilla Fudge Sauce
750g ripe Pears
40g butter
3 tbls muscovado sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
200g butter
200g caster sugar
3 large eggs, beaten
200g SR Flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

1. Set the oven at 160*C. Melt 40g butter, dark sugar & cinnamon together slowly in a shallow pan, stirring often. Carefully add the peeled, cored and roughly chopped pears and cook until tender and coated in sauce. Don't let the sauce go dark. Set aside to cool.

2. Beat the 200g butter and sugar until light & creamy. Add the eggs and flour alternately and fold in any remaining flour with the baking powder.

3. Add the pears and their syrup and mix gently. Pour into a 24cm loose-bottomed and lightly-buttered cake tin and bake for 45 mins. Leave to cool before removing from the tin.

Cinnamon Pear Cake with Vanilla Fudge Sauce

For the Fudge Sauce bring 100g muscovado sugar, 100g golden syrup & 50g butter to the boil in a heavy-based pot. Stir in 150ml cream and a few drops of vanilla extract and leave it to cool & thicken. Serve over the cake with some ice cream.

Don't forget to Feed the Fish at the bottom of this Post!
zack

Whin Bush (aka Gorse) Pastry Cream for Eclairs

The Whin Bush, otherwise known as Gorse, Furze or Furse is a spiny evergreen shrub that is actually a part of the pea family! The bright yellow flowers have a wonderful & distinctive coconut scent.

This is an important plant for wildlife providing a dense thorny cover which is ideal for protecting nesting birds. Whins bushes almost always have a flower in bloom hence the old English country phrase: "When gorse is out of blossom, kissing's out of fashion".

Darren Bradley's Gorse Ice Cream looked yumm (seen here) (click for a link to Darren's blog)

and give me the idea for this.... it's a simple Pastry Cream using those same lovely coconut fragrant flowers that would be delicious inside homemade eclairs!


My Ingredients:

½ litre milk
200g Whin (gorse) flowers

4 egg yolks

130 g castor sugar
30 g plain flour
10g cornflour
a pinch of salt

My Method:

Bruise the flower petals with a mortar & pestal or a very quick whizz in the food processor to help release more of that delicious coconut flavouring.

Bring the milk, flower petals, sugar & a pinch of salt to a gentle boil in a pot. Strain into a jug.

Meanwhile, whisk the egg yolks and sugar in a big bowl until it's creamy and light. Whisk in the flour and cornflour until it is thoroughly mixed. Gradually pour the boiling milk into this while whisking continuously.

Transfer the whole mixture back into a clean pot and heat it on low to cook out. Stir it constantly with a wooden spoon until it has thickened. Don't let it stick to the pot!!

Once this custard cream has thickened, take it off the heat, pour it into a clean bowl and let it cool down. It will be thicker than a custard, more the consistency of a cold porridge. Once cooled you can cover it and refrigerate it until needed.

To fill your eclairs or flaky pastry slices etc, give the cream a good stir to smooth out before you spoon or pipe it into the cakes.

This is based on the classic French 'Creme Pattissier' so the recipe (without the flower petals) can be used and flavoured with whatever you like!

Making a Piping Bag with Greaseproof Paper

Making and baking and decorating and filling! In common these jobs all use, at some stage, 

a Piping Bag!

These useful catering bags come in all shapes and sizes and are made from a variety of materials. There is a massive selection of nozzels available to buy depending on the type of job you're doing. They are used for cake decorating, making choux eclairs or swans etc, piping potato dishes, making biscuits and hundreds of other uses.

There are times when a small pointed piping bag is required for a simple wee job like writing a name on a birthday cake or such and you are only going to use a little bit of cream or icing.

That is when you need to be able to fold together a quick little Greaseproof-Paper Piping Bag.

Well... here is how you do just that!

Fold a sheet of greaseproof paper corner to corner. It doesn't matter if it's a square or rectangle piece to start with as long as you fold it corner to corner, giving you a long fold in the centre

Keep the fold smooth and straight as you cut it with a sharp knife

The general stating position is to point the right-angled corner to your elbow, letting the smallest corner drop

Catch this bottom corner and fold it around your hand

Do not let go of the inside corner and complete the wrap around to look like this

Moving your two hands, slide the two corners gently up and down to tighten and sharpen the point of the cone  

Don't worry if it doesn't seem to be working, first time, as this part will take a little practice!

When you have a sharp point on the piping bag pinch the two top ends of the paper cone together and hold them tight - nearly there!

Fold the ends of the cone back on themselves, to tie the ends of the bag together and stop it from falling apart

It is now ready for use. It's a good idea to make a few of these in advance - they will sit inside each other for storage and you can keep them ready in a little plastic tub for easy access. Like many things in life....practice makes perfect on this one!

Fill the piping bag with your cream or icing and snip off the point to the desired piping size. Use a new bag if you need to. Don't try to re-fill the first one,  it doesn't work!

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all from the one place!

Don't forget to Feed the Fish at the end of this post!
zack