Launching our new baking sheet

At the Ludlow Food Festival in September (2017), we met up again with Val Stones, a star of the 2016 Great British Bake off series and well on her way to becoming a national treasure.

Val has more energy than most hyperactive 5 year olds and as well as all her fantastic baking, she devotes a great deal of time to charity fund raising.  As I write this, she has just come back from walking an arduous section of the Great Wall of China in aid of NSPCC and the Cystic Fibrosis Trust

She posted some wonderful clips on her Instagram feed, please take the time to go and have a look.

But back to Ludlow.... we had a chat about a product that Val wanted and couldn't find; a decent, heavy duty baking sheet with a sensible lip at the front to help lift it our of the oven.
Never one to shy away from a challenge, our creative genius knocked up a sketch, confirmed that it was what she had in mind and hey presto, a new product is added to the range.
The prototype went to Val, after a brief sojourn in the Netherton kitchen to put it to the test.

                                    

I made a batch of shortbread biscuits, which lasted as long as snowfall in summer and Val did a more rigorous like for like test, baking scones on her old baking sheet and her new Netherton one.  you can see her results on Instagram.

Delighted to report that the Netherton baking sheet passed with flying colours - send the creative genius to the top of the class and give him a gold star.

The heavy duty baking sheet is now in production.
What's more, for every one sold £2.00 will be donated to the MS Society, £1.00 by us and £1.00 by Val.

So what better excuse to spend a wet and windy Saturday in a warm kitchen, creating lovely new baking recipes for our lovely new product.

Here's the first one.

Beetroot scones
8 oz self raising flour
2 oz butter
1 tsp salt
1 tsp caraway seeds
½ tsp celery salt
1 medium size cooked beetroot, peeled and grated
1 tblsp natural yogurt
Milk - approx 2 tblsp.

Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC 
Place the baking tray in the oven to warm - this is a trick I learned from Val.  If the tray is warm when you put the scones on to it, they start to rise straight away and you get a great bake.

Put the flour, butter, salt, celery salt, caraway seeds and beetroot in a food processor and mix until it all resemble pink breadcrumbs.  Alternatively, put all those ingredients, except the beetroot into a large bowl and rub the fat into the flour until you reach the same stage, then stir in the beetroot.

Add the yogurt and just enough milk to bring it together into a stiff dough.

Roll out on a floured surface to around ½" thick and cut into 9 or 12 scones, dependent on the size of your cutter.
Remove the baking sheet from the oven and place the scones directly on to it - no need to grease or line it.
Pop them back in the oven for approximately 20 minutes.

Take them out of the oven and transfer to a cooling rack.
Serve warm.

Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2017  ©

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

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