Getting soulful for Halloween

To celebrate the (almost) holiday of Halloween, I am starting the cooking experience with a nod to all hallows eve. For this week’s challenge I am going to be making ‘Soul Cakes’. 

With Halloween just around the corner, the greengrocers and superstores are packed to the roof with an array of Pumpkins, ready to be carved and stuffed into pies. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this was the traditional Halloween nibble but I’ve discovered that Halloween edibles have originated a little closer to home. 

The earliest form of Halloween food is actually ‘soul’ cakes, which are a Celtic concoction of dried fruit, cinnamon and mixed spice.
 

During the nineteenth and early 20th centuries these flat, round cakes were given to children and the poor who would go door-to-door singing and saying prayers for the dead, this later evolved into ‘trick or treating’. Read on to find out how to make these delicious hallows treats and also to see how well mine turned out.  

This recipe was sourced from all recipes. 

All the ingredients you need to make the Soul Cakes:

375g flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp nutmeg 

2 tsp mixed spice 

185g butter (at room temperature = soft) 

155g caster sugar

90g currants 

90g sultanas 

1 egg and 125ml milk

 

 

Ingredients needed to cook up a ‘treat’                                                               

 

Preparation method:

1.   Preheat oven to 220 C / Gas 7. Grease baking tray or line with parchment.
2.   Sieve dry ingredients into a medium-sized bowl. Rub in the butter. Mix in the sugar, currants and sultanas.
3.   Make a well in the centre and add the egg and milk. Mix in well until you have a firm batter.
4.   Using a dessertspoon and fork, spoon the mixture onto greased trays. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes in preheated oven.

What I thought: “These cakes were very easy to make, cheap and tasty. The majority of the cakes came out perfectly apart from the last one to go into the oven, sadly this one was forgotten about and came out of the oven like charcoal. Apart from that, the cakes were lovely, especially warm and are a perfect way for heating up those Autumn nights”. 

  The final result  

 

 

 

The one that didnt make it

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Here are some of the responses to my version of the Soul Cakes: 

Juliette, 24, Cardiff 

“They were delicious and a great alternative treat for Halloween. Were lovely warm with butter and jam”. 

Delyth, 24, Llantrisant 

“Bit too sweet for me, but smelt lovely and looked really easy to cook”. 

Good luck with your cakes and happy cooking! 

xx 

 

Read Full Post »

Around the world in 80 trays

I have spent a long time procrastinating over the subject of my blog, so much so that the subject has changed rapidly from the realms of beauty and pampering to venturing into the unknown world of travel cooking.

I love to travel but my poor empty purse forbids any such activity. Therefore, for now I will have to make do with exploring the world through its very many culinary delights. Every week I will be discovering another country/region through attempting to re-create one its speciality dishes. Now, I am not the best of cooks to say the least and so this task will be test of my culinary abilities; Will the dish look and taste like it should? Will anyone be daring enough to try? Will the dish be beyond edible? Not even I can answer these questions at this stage.

The most adventurous of dishes I have attempted to re-create was an Indonesian bread-type dessert concoction for a themed party. In my opinion it was completely un-edible due to its yellowing and slightly congealing appearance and was met with rather mixed reviews.

This will also be somewhat of a challenge to see if I can open the pallet of my aptly named ‘foodarian’ housemate (she doesn’t seem to like anything), who of an evening is partial to the very frequent Quorn pie and mash combo. This will probably be the hardest task of all.

So over the next few weeks/months/years, I will be slogging away in the kitchen to create these gastronomic masterpieces, albeit on a student budget.  The challenge has been set, and so with the help of a few friends, Jamie, Delia, Levi, Nigella and plenty more I will be creating ’80 worldly trays’.

Read Full Post »

Entering the world of the blogger – Internet Manifesto

Our fingers move increasingly faster over keys of a computer and buttons on a mobile phone, than they do with pen and paper. Does this mean the end of writing personal messages and that soon everyone will be communicating through the internet? Is that not a scary enough thought in itself?

While many still shy away from the world of online, journalism is taking the online world by storm and journalists are logging onto the internet in their thousands to share news at the click of a button and easily connect with their audience. I have been reading the www.internet-manifesto.org which is a series of 17 declarations set out by German Journalists. The article supports the argument that journalism is advancing on the internet and claims that in order to better connect with the audience every advance in technology should be used, journalists should embrace the technology that is available rather than ignore it.

As more and more people are logging onto the internet and exploring the online world, the expectations for online journalism are greater. With a regular paper the reader would of paid a substantial sum of money to read it, whereas online there is so much content available that you will hold the reader’s attention for much less time. In order to compete with other journalists your technology needs to be of the highest standard, and you’re not only competing with journalists but also “citizen journalists” – anyone with a video/camera/blog who through the now hundreds of different avenues to publish their thoughts and photos (twitter, bloggers, youtube) are competing with the professionals for the transient audience. 

While a web page with more technology such as pictures, videos and sound links would attract a bigger and more diverse audience than the bog-standard web page would ordinarily attract, not everyone has the technology available to support the larger content of the webpages. The more advanced a webpage gets, the less compatible it will be with every computer. On numerous occasions I have been asked to download Flash player or have been entirely disconnected from some web page because the computer I am using is to old or the connection too poor. Not everyone will have an internet connection either, many families in the UK still don’t have access to the internet, especially the older generation and in other countries such as Vietnam webpages are restricted.

Is it a good thing that journalism is moving into the online world? I think a magazine is something you cherish, a nice quiet hour curled up on the settee where you can flick through at your leisure or your morning newspaper, read over coffee. If you move too much towards the online world we lose the edited content in exchange for the vast amounts of user generated content out there. And where is the social aspect of sharing news, features over your breakfast/evening meal while you are sitting alone at your computer?

Read Full Post »

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

Read Full Post »