His results - Buttermilk Pie

We seem to be on a bit of a roll at the moment. We've had a few weeks in a row with really tasty results.

That's not to say its all gone smoothly. The top got a tiny bit overdone here and it sank ever so slightly in the middle. It wasn't anything to worry about though, the darkening on the top was purely cosmetic and didn't affect the flavour.

As usual I took a piece of this in to three friends at work on Monday and we sat down together at lunch for a chat and a taste of something delicious. One of them said this was their favourite of all the dishes they've tried so far. High praise indeed!

It really is very good though. I didn't have a pie dish big enough so I baked it in a slightly smaller one and reduced the recipe by a quarter. I then sliced it into eight and each piece was still too big really. Nobody struggled even the tiniest bit to fit in a whole piece though. The most suprising thing to me was just how un-sugary the finished product tasted. After seeing the crazy quantity of sugar I poured into this thing I kind of expected it to turn out incredibly sweet but some magical cooking chemistry happened and it turned out just sweet enough with a nice texture and a great taste. I advise you try this one out. I had high hopes for this pie and it didn't disappoint. (The raw batter tasted great too by the way!)

Recipe 9 - Buttermilk Pie

If you take a look at your calendar and check out the entry for this coming Sunday you can probably guess what we're cooking this week. That's assuming you're an American and write down the date the wrong way round with the month first.

That's right. It's 3.14, a number which surely strikes a chord.
And what better way is there to spend pi day than to bake a buttermilk pie!

Over Christmas the lady and I ate a variety of fine, fine pies but perhaps the finest we came across was the one you can see below. It came as part of an outstanding, if life-shorteningly unhealthy, meal that also included the unbelievably tasty fried banana peppers you see before you now.



My compliments to the pie producer were so effusive that along with the bill I was slipped a copy of the recipe. This week we shall attempt to recreate it!



As you can see the recipe calls for a 10" frozen crust. We'll make our own instead using the ever reliable Delia as our guide. A 10" pie is really too big (and look at all of that sugar and butter!) and I planned on reducing the recipe. I've decided that we'll go with it as it is though but I'll insist on a solemn pledge to get a whole load of this stuff out of our respective homes ASAP after baking to remove the temptation. We should both be extremely popular with our colleagues next week! The recipe has a whopping 4000 calories in it.

We'll make pastry as per Delia using 150g of flour.

In metric the recipe for the filling goes like this:

400g sugar
60g flour
120ml buttermilk
110g melted butter
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
3 eggs

Mix all of this together and put it into the prepared crust. Bake at gas mark 6 or 400 Farenheit for 45 minutes or til it quits jigglin!

I've been waiting and waiting for the day I'd eat this again. This weekend should live long in the memory!

His results - Raspberry Buttermilk Cake

If you think back to the vanilla slice you'll maybe remember that I'm fond of these old Skyline pans. I've managed to track a couple down including the pan I used for this week's effort.

I decided to line the pan bottom since she told me she'd read a few reviews of this recipe which said it tends to stick.


The batter was easy to make and very tasty raw. When I was little and used to 'help' my Mum making buns I always used to love cleaning the bowl and the beaters from the mixer. If I'm honest with this one I didn't do a very thorough job of scraping the mix into the pan just so there'd be a little extra left in there to eat while it was in the oven.

I scattered over the raspberries and sugar. It seemed like quite a bit of sugar but I went with it.



The cake took longer than stated in the oven. I had the same experience as she did where the top looked well done while the middle was still very gooey. If you're making this (and I highly recommend you do) then I'd extend the cooking time and not judge it by how done the top looks or how well it springs back since this was deceptive for me.

I wish that the raspberries had floated a little better. I think tossing them in a little flour would have helped with that. Also, if you look at the photo you'll see the sugar topping is great in the center but totally missing from the outer inch and a half or so. Very curious.


When it was finally done we tucked in. And it was great. It was very, very moist and the slight crunch of the sugar topping was excellent. Eating it the day after the flavour was perhaps even better but the crunch was gone. For that reason I'd suggest you eat it on the day it's baked. You can always make another tomorrow!

Her results - Raspberry Buttermilk Cake

After my failed attempt at steaming a pudding last week, I thought there was no way I could go wrong baking a simple cake. I just have one question: how could the top look so done and the inside be so underdone? Luckily I discovered that I had a problem after only a short amount of cooling, so popped it back in the oven and basically rescued it. The outer edges are a little overdone and the center is not as fluffy as it could have been, but the bottom line is that this is a good recipe. The sugar on top gives each bite a nice crunch. And despite all the sugar that the recipe calls for, the sweetest bites are those with berries inside. I'm not going to admit how much of that cake I ate today.

Recipe 8 - Raspberry Buttermilk Cake

I've been wanting to cook a Raspberry Buttermilk Cake ever since I saw one on Smitten Kitchen. The recipe I've posted below is the original recipe from Gourmet.com with some metric measurement added in. The image below is from a blog entitled State of Gracie. Doesn't it look delicious?

RASPBERRY BUTTERMILK CAKE

SERVES 6 (probably more for us)

ACTIVE TIME:15 MIN

START TO FINISH:1 HR

JUNE 2009

Simple, tender buttermilk cake topped with a nice, sugary crunch: We like it as it is, full of raspberries, but you could easily substitute any sweet, juicy berries you pick up at the farmers market.

1 cup (130 grams) all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 stick (60 grams) unsalted butter, softened

2/3 cup (150 grams) plus 1 1/2 tablespoons (25 grams) sugar, divided

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 large egg

1/2 cup well-shaken buttermilk

1 cup fresh raspberries (about 5 oz / 140g)

Preheat oven to 400°F, gas mark 6 with rack in middle. Butter and flour a 9-inch round cake pan.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Beat butter and 2/3 cup sugar with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes, then beat in vanilla. Add egg and beat well.

At low speed, mix in flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour, and mixing until just combined.

Spoon batter into cake pan, smoothing top. Scatter raspberries evenly over top and sprinkle with remaining 1 1/2 Tbsp sugar.

Bake until cake is golden and a wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool to warm, 10 to 15 minutes more. Invert onto a plate.

RECIPE BY MELISSA ROBERTS

Using fat free buttermilk this comes to a total of 1700 calories

Her results - Date Pudding

Defeat! Well, kinda...

I was skeptical about this dessert at first. I'd never eaten a date, but he'd given me some nice ones so I nibbled one and found that they're delicious. Then there was the issue of suet. I'm a vegetarian and I forgot to look for veggie suet, so I decided to use Crisco. Okay, let's be honest: when the two of the six ingredients are dates and suet, I can see how the recipe might fall out of fashion!

Once I got past the ingredients, I moved on to the issue of equipment. He'd never imagined I wouldn't have a pudding basin. Meanwhile, I had no idea what a pudding basin was. To be fair, he figured I'd at least have an appropriately sized heat-proof bowl. I had a small pyrex bowl which I suspected was too small. Normally I'd have hunted for a cheap "pudding basin" in a charity shop, but time constraints forced me to visit a fancy kitchen store. I came home with a nice stainless steel bowl of the right size and shape.

The ingredients came together really easily, and I think I sealed my basin up carefully.



To my aggravation, my new bowl was too tall to fit into my deepest pot. I figured I could make a makeshift lid out of foil or another pot.

But something went totally wrong because after two hours the pudding hadn't set up in the middle. So I replaced my rickety tin-foil lid with an inverted pot and I gave it an extra 30 minutes, then another 30.


No luck! I finally gave up and flipped the darn thing out onto my plate. Prepare yourself.

I quickly set about remaking the recipe. I unwisely chose to make it in my small pyrex bowl because my first pudding looked pretty small, plus the pyrex bowl could fit in my pot with the lid on. Well it wasn't big enough and somehow water got in, too. This one was such a disaster I refused to photograph it. It went directly into the garbage.

The good news is that the pathetic looking pudding tastes good. It has the texture and taste of a sweet and lightly fruity cookie dough. I'd never serve it to a guest, but I'm polishing off the last crumbs as we speak! And even though I've failed mightily, I couldn't be any more determined to keep making puddings until I succeed.

His results - Date Pudding

As I write this I have one overwhelming feeling.

Pity. Pity for her.

This pudding was suprising to me in a couple of ways. I was suprised at how moist it turned out and how much it rose while it steamed. I was also suprised at just how good it was. I mean, it's a really, really good pudding. This week I really wished me and her were together so we could have tasted each others efforts. I suppose if we had been together I almost certainly wouldn't have made this pudding this weekend.

Silver linings I suppose although it's precious little given the size of the cloud. I enjoyed making this. I'd never made a steamed pudding from scratch by myself although I have plenty of happy memories of helping out making Christmas Puddings with my Grandma. I enjoyed pretty much every stage of this, especially fashioning the lid.

To me that was the second best bit (after the eating of course).


It's beautiful and light. Not overly rich or sweet but certainly slightly decadent in its taste. To me it's a real shame that these type of puddings have fallen out of favour a little. They're making a little bit of a comeback though I believe. I'll certainly be making something along these lines pretty soon I hope.

Make it. Be careful when you wrap it. Serve it warm. Close your eyes and drift away.
Repeat.