A surfeit of dates

 It's that time of year, isn't it? When we buy dates, nuts, satsumas and Quality Street, regardless of whether anyone in the house likes them or not.

At least one person in the Netherton household will eat and enjoy at least one of the above, so none of it goes to waste.

That being said, we find ourselves with a surfeit of dates (don't ask!).

Inevitably there has been a sticky toffee pudding, with a generous studding of dates, there have been dates stuffed with marzipan to enjoy with coffee, dates stuffed with ricotta, orange zest and thyme, aubergine with saffron, black cardamom and date butter from Diana Henry's From The Oven To The Table

But then I was reading about treacle tarts - if you slip down that rabbit hole on Google you could be lost for days - and an idea took shape.

Treacle tart with dates and nuts.

Start with a basic shortcrust pastry using 110g plain flour to 55g fat (I used butter) with the zest of an orange and water to bind.

Roll out the pastry and line a greased 8½" cake tin (pictured) for a deep pie or a 10" pie dish

Chill the pie case while you make the filling.

100g dates, chopped and soaked for an hour in the juice of the orange you zested for the pastry (waste not, want not)

50g chopped nuts

45g black treacle

120g golden syrup

40g butter

50g double (heavy) cream

2 eggs, lightly beaten

Set the oven to 170ºC 

Place the treacle, syrup and butter in a saucepan - I am lucky, I get to use one of our copper milkpans and warm over a gentle heat until the butter melts.

Stir in all the other ingredients.

Blind bake the pastry case for 15 minutes, then pour in the treacle mixture nad return the tart to the oven.

bake for a further 30 minutes.

Allow to cool before serving with clotted cream or custard.

Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2021 ©

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Rhubarb, golden syrup and ginger cake

A lot of fuss is made of the beautiful, pink, forced rhubarb from the Yorkshire rhubarb triangle.  More especially perhaps in these days of Instagram, its blush so photogenic, the colour "popping" on the screen.

But I think I prefer the thicker, greener stems of field grown rhubarb, with its astringency and bite.  Of course, it does need to be tempered with sugar, I defy anyone to tell me they like unsweetened rhubarb, even in savoury dishes.  It also combines joyfully with other flavours; rhubarb and strawberry crumble is a firm favourite here.

This cake is a variation of a much loved steamed sponge and is a light and luscious foil for the tart rhubarb topping.

2 long sticks of rhubarb
Sugar to taste
120g butter
120g golden syrup
2 eggs
120g self raising flour
1 tblsp ground ginger

Heat the oven to 180ºC
Cut the rhubarb into thumb sized pieces and place in an oven proof dish.  Sprinkle liberally with sugar, you will have to decide for yourself how much you need, I used a couple of tablespoons.
Place in the oven for about 20 minutes until it is soft, but still holds its shape.

Set aside while you make the cake mix.
Lightly grease a 22cm cake tin 
Beat the butter and golden syrup together until light in colour and thoroughly combined.
Beat in the eggs.  Really beat in the eggs, then beat a bit more.
Fold in the flour and ground ginger.
Spoon the cake mix into the prepared tin and level it.
Carefully place the cooked rhubarb on top of the cake mix and put the tin into the oven.
Cook for 20 - 25 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
Serve at room temperature with cream or ice cream.

Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2018 ©

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Apricot cake

A scrumptious, scented apricot cake, which makes a great dessert.
It's reassuringly simple to make, but the inclusion of the rosemary and lemon lifts it out of the ordinary and the Mascarpone gives it a luscious moistness, lending itself to dessert status. 
Of course, you could just eat it with a cup of tea, I think Earl Grey would be particularly complimentary.
However you choose to indulge, I am sure you will enjoy this.

150g soft dried apricots
50ml dry sherry
2 strips of thinly pared lemon zest
1 sprig of rosemary

Put everything into a small pan and simmer gently until all the liquid has been absorbed by the apricots.
Discard the rosemary and lemon zest and set the apricots aside to cool.

120g butter
120g sugar
70g Mascarpone
70g ground almonds
40g self raising flour
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
Handful of flaked almonds.

Pre-heat the oven to 170ºC
Grease and flour an 8½" cake tin.
Chop the cooled apricots.  Beat the butter, Mascarpone and sugar until light and fluffy, then add the eggs and vanilla and continue beating thoroughly.
Stir in the flour, ground almonds and chopped apricots.
Spoon into the prepared cake tin and spread evenly.  Scatter the flaked almonds evenly over the top of the cake.
Place in the oven and cook for 20 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Leave to cool for 10 minutes, then turn out of the tin and serve with more Mascarpone or better still, some clotted cream.

Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2018 ©
www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Fruit cake

The last few crumbs of the Christmas cake have been scooped out of the tin and the festive board packed away until next year.
But we love a good fruit cake, so we are not hanging around until December for the next slice of fruit laden, moist cake.
This one was inspired by one of Sue's Christmas presents - a selection of teas from Whittard Of Chelsea. It's light, gluten free and so full of fruit I reckon you could count it as one of your #fiveaday. As you can see from the photos, the cake tin was not lined, simply greased and dusted with ground almonds and despite the cake's inherent gooeyness it came out a treat.

120g butter
60g granulated sugar
60g light soft brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tea bag - I used a Spice Imperial one, but any black tea will work
200ml boiling water
120g mixed dried fruit; sultanas and cherries is a great combination
80g ground almonds
40g chestnut flour (you can use self raising flour instead)

Put the teabag in a jug and add the boiling water. Leave to steep for 10 minutes.
Remove the teabag and add the dried fruit. Leave to steep until the tea is cold. Strain off the liquid, which, incidentally makes a terrific drink, and reserve the fruit.
Pre-heat the oven to 170ºC
Grease a 8½" cake tin and dust with flour or ground almonds. You can tip any excess into the cake mix.
Beat the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and mix thoroughly.
Fold in the almonds and flour and then stir in the steeped fruit.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake for 20 minutes.  Leave to cool for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack.  Perfect with a cup of tea.

And while you drink your tea and eat your cake, have a read of this article about fruit cake by Mayukh Sen

You can see our full range of bakeware here: http://www.netherton-foundry.co.uk/shop/baking-tins

Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2018 ©

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

An update on school dinners

Not all of you will be as old as us and may not recall the sort of school dinners dished up in our youth. Lots of mince, lumpy mashed potato and for "afters" luke warm custard, made with custard powder and hot water.
Among our memories of these horrors are 2 pineapple dishes - the first is pineapple rice pudding, the juice from the tinned pineapple doing unnerving things to the milk of the rice pudding. An altogether more appetising version of this can be found on our blog: http://netherton-foundry.blogspot.co.uk/…/pondering-pineapp…

The other is pineapple upside down cake; stodgy sponge, topped with tinned pineapple rings and glacé cherries smothered in the aforementioned luminous yellow custard.
I hope you find the following recipe altogether more appetising.

Caramel sauce
50g butter
100g sugar
100ml double cream
Grated zest of an orange

Put the butter into a saucepan and place over a low heat. As soon as the butter has melted, add the sugar and continue cooking until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture has turned a deep golden brown. Add the orange zest and cream - be careful, the mixture will bubble up alarmingly - stir vigorously until it all comes together into a smooth sauce.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Sponge
120g butter
120g sugar
2 eggs
120g self raising flour
Juice of an orange

Pre-heat the oven to 170ºC
Beat the butter and sugar until light in colour and fluffy - by hand (great for the arm muscles), with a hand mixer or in a food mixer/processor. Add the eggs and orange juice and mix well. Sift in the flour and gently bring the mixture together.

You will need half a pineapple, peeled, hard core removed and chopped into chunks.
If you are feeling creative, use the other half and the skin to make pineapple tepache - just Google it.

Lightly grease a savarin ring or a cake tin.
Spread a layer of caramel sauce over the base - you may not need it all, just put the rest in the fridge where it will keep for at least a week.....apparently!
Pile the pineapple chunks evenly over the sauce.

 and then spread the cake mix on top.

Bake for approximately 30 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the mix comes out clean.

Leave to stand until the tin is cool enough to handle and then invert on to a serving plate.

EAT!!

Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2017 ©

Our new cake tin is put through its paces

Someone called the workshops last week and asked whether we had a rep visiting their area in the near future.

The short answer was, "No", but to expand on this brevity.... we are a small, family business and when you call you deal directly with us. You can talk to Neil, the creative genius and founder of Netherton Foundry, father of my children and all round superhuman and you can talk to me.  
We do not have reps and agents schlepping around drumming up business for us - that's not how we do things.
When Neil created the first Netherton Foundry, made in Britain product -  our slow cooker - there was nothing else for it than for me to fill my "little blue van" and tour the length and breadth of the country, hammering on shop doors.
Not being a natural front of house/sales person, with a lifetime of back room jobs behind me I found this new role, shall we say, challenging. However, with no-one else to do it, I simply had to get on with it - what doesn't kill you makes you stronger!!
To start with, I was quite frankly terrified and rubbish.  But as the trips and the miles accumulated, so did my confidence, market knowledge, sales and "technique".  
I covered a lot of ground, quite literally, and met many people.
Of the rude, arrogant, ignorant and hostile, the less said the better.
Of the inspirational, imaginative, supportive, kind, tea offering and friendly majority, no praise is high enough and my thanks to all of you are implicit here.... you know who you are.
I learned a lot of valuable lessons and have a store of anecdotes, with which I occasionally bore anyone who will listen.

My personal armour, donned to protect me, in part, from the aforementioned hostile crowd, and polished to bolster my confidence, was double skinned; my passion for what we had started and personal knowledge of the product.
I simply refused to sell anything we hadn't tried and tested ourselves.
Cliché it may be, but I spoke from the heart.
For example, before the milkpan was made available to you lot, one came home with me.  Its first run was a batch of porridge, and when it had been successfully and easily cleaned out, it had to face a helping of scrambled egg followed by a pint of custard.  Product testing can be hard at times, imagine having to eat a pint of creamy, home made custard and call it work!
Incidentally, that's how the milkpan ended up with 2 pouring spouts - our son is left handed and accused us of right hand prejudice when he tried out the pan.

The latest Netherton Foundry equivalent of a "shiny new thing", which naturally isn't shiny at all, is our cake tin and this was tested with the same ruthlessness as everything else.
No paper lining and the stickiest substance in the cupboard were the starting point.
And this is what happened................. this was not a special tin, nothing extra had been done to it, it came out of the seasoning oven, had its brass rivet added and was unceremoniously bundled onto the front seat of my slightly newer little blue van.

Honey, date, walnut and lavender cake.
120g butter
50g broken walnuts
120g honey
70g chopped, pitted dates
2 eggs
170g self raising flour 
2 lavender heads, chopped (optional and you can substitute fresh thyme if you prefer)
3 teaspoons runny honey.

Pre-heat the oven to 170ºC.
Grease your cake tin - as my mother before me, I use the wrapper from a pack of butter - and dust with flour.  Tip out any excess flour.
Put the honey, butter, dates and walnuts into a pan, our milk pan is ideal.
Warm over a gentle heat until the butter has melted.
Leave to cool while you whisk the eggs in a large mixing bowl until light and fluffy.
Pour the butter mix into the eggs and whisk again.
Fold in the flour and lavender/thyme (if using) 
Pour the batter into the  greased and floured cake tin.
It looks like porridge at this stage - don't worry!

Place in the oven for 20  - 25 minutes, you can tell it's cooked if a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean

Drizzle top with 3 tsp runny honey while still warm.
Allow to cool in tin and then turn out carefully.  You will get sticky hands, but hey, what's the problem with that?  Lick your fingers.

This can be served plain with a cup of coffee or dressed up with, say, caramelised or puréed apple and a dollop of Mascarpone.

© Netherton Foundry 2017

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

White chocolate and raspberry cake

No rambling, no proselytising, just a fab new recipe, of which I am extremely proud.

120g sugar

2 eggs, separated

1/2 tsp vanilla paste

120g rice flour

100g white chocolate, melted and cooled

120g stracciatella yogurt, you can get big tubs of this in Lidl 

120g raspberries

Pre heat the oven to 180ºC

Whisk the egg yolks, sugar and vanilla extract until very pale.

Add the yogurt (use plain, vanilla, lemon or coconut if you can't get/don't like stracciatella)

Whisk thoroughly.

Add the cooled, melted chocolate and whisk again - it will feel a little stiffer now as the chocolate cools.
Whisk the egg whites until they form peaks.

Fold the rice flour and the whisked egg whites into the chocolate batter.

Pour into a greased 10" prospector pan or one of our new cake tins

Arrange the raspberries in concentric circles on top of the batter..... or if you are feeling anarchic, just scatter them where they fall!

Bake for 30 minutes until golden and a skewer comes out clean.

Leave to cool, then turn out of the pan.

Serve just warm either on its own or with creme fraiche, Greek yogurt, clotted cream or raspberry sorbet/ raspberry ripple ice cream.

© Netherton Foundry 2017

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk