Whimsy is Radical!

Dear Readers, 

It has often been said that Whimsy is Radical. 

Well, maybe it hasn't *often* been said, or possibly even said by anyone other than me, but in this post I intend to demonstrate the radicalisation of Whimsy! 

A coupe of weeks ago, I received an email from Luke at THE RADICAL TEA TOWEL COMPANY explaining that he would like to give me a RADICAL TEA TOWEL. Those regular readers amongst you will be aware that I am a big fan of tea towels, and that indeed Sally and Dave from TO DRY FOR have long been Friends of Whimsy. Anyway, I checked out their website and thought some of the RADICAL tea towels were mighty fine. These are my favourites: 

I'm not 100% sure how Emmeline  would feel about having her face on the washing up, but whatever spreads the message and all... (I got my form to write her name in capital letters in their exercise books on International Women's Day and quizzed them on her name every day for a week. I felt a bit bad at the variations in spelling, but at least they know Ms Pankhurst's name and what she did.) 

ANYWAY, I think THE RADICAL TEA TOWEL COMPANY are a great company and they have an excellent range of tea towels. I was THRILLED when I received my tea towel in the post, and I have to say it really got me thinking. Not only does it have a quotation from 'He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven' by Yeats (which has the doubly fantastic versatility of rendering it a classroom teaching aid), but it also made me sit up and question the carbon footprint implications of baking. 

I've been ruminating on this ever since and it's made me think about lots of issues arising from baking. I know that a vegan cake would have a lower carbon footprint, but then what about all the extra ingredients that make up for the dairy and what about the packaging? If you use hyper-local ingredients, a low cooking temperature, minimum dairy and make a cake that will last for a long time does that make it vaguely equivalent to a dairy free cake, or is it just as bad? Clearly, the imaginary vegan cake with all produce bought locally would be the best option, but this isn't a vegan baking blog, so I've tried to come up with something that has a low carbon footprint but still contains some (minimum) dairy products. Also, I suppose you could quite easily make this recipe vegan by replacing the butter with vegan margarine and the milk with almond milk and you could try leaving out the egg and see what happened. BUT if I'd have done that I would have had to buy almond milk and vegan margarine (both in their packaging) and surely the purchase of those products rather than the use of what I already had would have added to the carbon footprint of this particular baking adventure? 

As blueberries are in season at the moment, I thought I would make them my starting point. If you use berries that are in season and buy them from the Farmer's Market, then there is hardly any packaging and the produce has come directly from A to B so there is less carbon involved in the delivery of the product. This is our local London Farmers' Market in Whamps:

Goes without saying you should be walking to the Farmers' Market. Also, whilst there purchase organic eggs directly off the farmer along with some milk. Again, there is less packaging, less transport and therefore less carbon if you buy directly from the farmer. I found this article: 'Where's the impact of a home-baked Cake?' really interesting about the carbon intensivity of eggs when looking into all these issues. For the rest of the ingredients (150g plain flour, 125g fairtrade caster sugar, 2 teaspoons corn flour, 100g butter, half a teaspoon baking powder, one egg, 100g light brown sugar, 50g almonds, 50ml milk, 100g flaked almonds - recipe grace a Dan Lepard in the Guardian) I tried to use what I had in the cupboard to avoid more purchasing and therefore more carbon footprint creating, and I had recently purchased organic almonds from our local healthfood store, Peppercorns: 

hence the almond content in this recipe. I can't find any online data about the carbon footprint of almonds and whilst I would imagine it's quite high if you buy them from an independent shop at least there will be less delivery, packing and transport implications. Also, I already had them so it made sense to use them rather than waste them... 

Anyway, for the recipe: start off by making a blueberry jam - put the blueberries, 100ml water, two teaspoons cornflour and 50g caster sugar into a pan and gently heat until the mixture thickens, looks like goo and has split oozing blueberries in it.

 This could be used by itself as either a jam or a hot blueberry sauce to go with pancakes or drop scones - YUM. If you just made this then it would be a v low carbon footprint, but not a cake. So...

...next, make the base for the bars. Stir the ground almonds, flour, baking powder and remaining fair trade sugar together in a bowl and then rub in the butter. (Note the low quantity of butter in this recipe to keep the footprint minimal.)

Rub in til it resembles breadcrumbs - as there are almonds in the mix, this is a very rich, crumbly base. Beat the egg and sort of stir it into the mix to create the dough/pastry for the base. It's quite a wet base.

Pat it into your tin (I used a brownie tin - Dan Lepard says to use a 20x20 cake tin but mine worked fine.)

The third layer - the topping - is made by simmering the milk, honey, brown sugar and almonds together in a pan.

 It takes merely seconds to heat it through until it is a sticky, slightly thick topping that looks like this:

Then the fun part comes with assembling the layers! Put the blueberry jam/compote on top of the base and the sticky almonds on top of the jam.

Et voila! Bake in the oven for 35 mins (relatively short baking time) at 160 degrees (relatively low oven temp), take out and leave to cool completely before cutting up. The almonds should be golden and the jam will be bubbling up slightly over the edges if it's ready.

Then for the fun part: STYLING YOUR BAKE THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF MINI-FLAGS! Long time Readers will know of my love for the mini-flag. Imagine the fun I had making these sloganistic ones:

FYI there isn't a spelling mistake in the above flag, it's supposed to be the anarchy sign on the A which, admittedly, is an extremely teenage thing to have done but there we go. (I had to explain this to my brother in law who thought I'd tried to cover up a spelling mistake, so I'm explaining it to you, Dear Reader, in case you too are labouring under this misapprehension. Incidentally, b to the l also informed me as I was doing this RADICAL BAKING photo shoot late last night that the truly lowest carbon footprint cake may well be PETITS FOURS as they were baked in the residual heat of 18th century cooling ovens. Although the carbon footprint implication of time travel is probably quite high.)

 Whimsy DOES love Radical Tea Towels, Dear Reader. Do you?

 My question to you: DOES this constitute as a 'low carbon cake'? Answers on a post card please...

And thus it ends. Many thank to Luke from THE RADICAL TEA TOWEL COMPANY  without whom this particular blog post would have never come about. It really has made me think. And I'm not sure what to do about the whole thing. But I do suggest you check out this blog: Charlie Bit My Tofu for interesting and lively ruminations on vegan food.

Love from Radical Whimsy! x

A Rich Winter Blueberry, Peach or Plum and Almond Cake

Dear Readers,

It amazes me, but according to 'blogger stats' still you read every day in spite of my inability to post more than very sporadically. I do hope this means that the quality of my recipes ensures longevity in the blogging world. Anyway, 'tis an extraordinarily miserable day here in north west London, so what could be better than to fill the flat with the aromas of baking and the joy of cake.

You will need: 

2 x free range organic eggs

175g self raising flour

100g ground almonds

175g unsalted organic butter

175g golden caster sugar

1 x teaspoon orange zest

A few drops vanilla extract

100g blueberries

A punnet of plums or peaches 

Oven pre-heated to 170. 

You can replace the blueberries with raspberries or any other berry and you could use nectarines or a mixture of the stone-fruit in the recipe as you wish. I know these fruits aren't in season but sometimes you end up with a punnet of plums / a handful of nectarines that were an impulse purchase that never seem to ripen and this cake suits them perfectly. You can also use up out of date / past their best berries in this delicious, moist and almost crumbly cake. 

Line the base of a circular cake tin and butter the edges. Then mix the almonds and self raising flour together and put to one side. 

Cream the butter in the bowl and then cream together with the golden caster sugar until it is light and fluffy. I do everything by hand so this is quite exhausting as golden caster sugar is less refined and so takes more beating. Lightly beat the eggs in a bowl and beat into the mixture about a quarter at a time adding a tablespoon of flour if there are signs of the mixture curdling. 

Fold in the flour and almond mixture in thirds - the base is quite heavy so this takes some time. Be sure to fold in evenly across the butter and sugar mix. Grate the orange zest into the bowl and stir in along with a few drops of vanilla extract. Mix the fruits in evenly. This can be quite tricky as the mixture will be rather stiff by now. 

Scrape into your tin, smooth the surface down with a palette knife and bake for about an hour - you will need to keep testing as cooking times vary depending on the water content of the fruit. 

When ready, the cake should be golden brown on top and speckled with rich jewels from the fruit. You can eat this cake warm as more of a winter pudding with lashings of thick cream or vanilla ice cream, or alternatively sprinkle the top with a little more caster sugar, leave to cool and then serve with a proper cup of Yorkshire tea in the afternoon.  If making in the summer, I go for raspberries and blueberries leaving the stone fruits out of the picture altogether and smother the top in whipped cream with icing sugar and vanilla running through it and then lob loads more berries on top for a truly delicious summer spectacle. 

 YUM.
Future tea time treats coming soon.
Love til then, Silver Whimsy x