Lesson 11: Pâte Sucrée Chocolate / Tarte Mousse Chocolate

Being on a roll with one a week meant that today was baking day again. Thinking that the kids would appreciate more this chocolate pie, this was the easier choice.

The pastry was fairly straight forward, using the kitchen aid for all of it (apart from a bit of hand mixing to make sure it had scraped all the butter from the bottom of the bowl after adding the egg).  I didn't have a pastry ring, so was going to use my trusty 9" loose bottom pie dish.  Rolled out fine, although seemed to roll out larger than needed when going for the right thickness.  Still, the off cuts went to making some biscuits with Poppy choosing the biscuit cutters.

Hmm..  the typical slump down the sides did look like there wouldn't be enough space for the topping.  Plus my fork holes at the bottom weren't sufficient, so half way through cooking the bottom of the pie case was risen up with lots of hot air underneath, cue the three emergency tracheotomies visible here. 

So on reflection, there was just about enough time to make some more pasty and chill for a couple of hours, then to line the case with greaseproof paper and use pie weights to fill up the middle.  The pasty now rose up slightly above the sides of the dish during cooking, but flattening back down after coming out of the oven.  This did mean it was harder to judge the cooking time, but then again the first time I pretty much guessed anyway, so no real insight lost.

The extra case did mean that I didn't really have enough time to cool it, so made the mistake of taking it out of the pie dish and onto the cooling rack.  Not a really good plan, since it wasn't stable enough to do this safely.  Topping was fairly straight forward, leaving the kitchen aid on whisk for a while.  Still, filled with the topping it looked okay.  Not as 'brim full' as the recipe wants, but it wouldn't have fitted at all in the previous case.  So clearly we're expecting something inbetween, 

After cooling and serving it looked like this.  Very very rich, but really quite nice - apart from that we were too full from our Chinese New Year dinner to eat much...  Still, quite a bit left over for tomorrow.

Things to remember for next time

• Think about using pie weights - maybe half full with weights to get the right height?
• Investigate getting a proper pastry ring, would this help the sides sinking down during cooking?
• Leave it in the ring/dish to cool, and make sure it has an hour or two to cool before starting to make the topping.
• Perhaps have the chocolate/butter mixture hotter before adding to the eggs/sugar?  A little unsure whether it was cooling down too much and forming into pieces again, since it wasn't very hot yet melted.
• Use a bigger spatula when folding in the chocolate.  I did this in the kitchen aid bowl, which doesn't really help since it's tall and narrow, probably mixing it in a shorter wider bowl would have been easier.  I couldn't help thinking that I was reducing the volume of the egg/sugar mixture quite a bit by mixing too much to combine the chocolate properly.

Lesson 9: Pâte Sucrée Cannelle / Tarte Fromage Blanc Sucré

First new recipe for a while, and a new basic/simple one to try. However never underestimate my ability to mess up...

Made the pastry, using the flexible spatula as suggested.  Not sure that a wooden spoon wouldn't have worked just as well.  

I own lots of pie weights.  Useful for this one...  Chilled for about 3 hours, was fine to roll out, although I did roll out twice - too big the first time, the second time bits of the walls were too thin, so needed bolstering up with some of the offcuts.  This worked fine.  I used a loose bottom pie dish rather than springform, which was fine.

Baked and cooling.  Where the baking parchment had made folds these were taken by the sides of the pastry, but no harm done.  Remember pie weights get hot... I used the spaghetti spoon to remove them from on top of the baking parchment. 

This is where it really went wrong.  I didn't add the cornflower carefully enough, so had lumps.  I used the hand whisk for the egg whites and they weren't stiff enough - use the proper balloon whisk and the kitchen aid next time.  I also spent time trying to remove lumps from the cheese mixture, which wasn't ever really thick enough - probably since lots of the cornflower was in lumps rather than evenly spread.

Still, looked alright when cooked.

Middle wasn't really thick enough, tasted okay but not very cheesy.  I used Quark for the cheese, maybe something more cheesy next time. And fewer cornflower lumps.  Thankfully it was only for us rather than visitors...

Tips for next time:

1. Concentrate when splitting eggs, I wasted a couple trying to do this at the same time as the cornflower/cheese mixture.
2. Save enough of the milk from the cheese mixture and add into the cornflower first before starting the cheese on the hob.  Add enough milk to get all the cornflower lumps out, then add the remainder to the cheese.
3. Research more cheesy cheese.
4. Use kitchen aid + balloon whisk on the egg whites, make them really stiff.

Second Attempt - 21st January 2017

Determined to make a better attempt I cooked this again, and it was much better.  I rolled out the pastry to the right size first time, and I used enough milk from the 300ml to mix into the cornflower, the mixture was quite liquidy and smooth - much more like the picture in the book when they are mixed.  When it came time to mix in the combination became thick instantly rather than needing time to cook, it didn't get much thicker during the extra minute or so on the heat.

The balloon whisk got the whites stiffer, I stopped when they stopped getting any thicker...  The end taste was very similar (using ricotta for the cheese) so still fairly plain, but at least the texture was smooth. The topping is still quite soft, but noticeably easier to get a coherent portion cut than last time.

Simple Cupcake Birthday Cake

I did this take cake for Poppy's 6th birthday, which (as usual) we celebrated with her friends before they all disappeared for the summer holidays.

First make lots of pink coloured cake.

I can't remember the quantities I'm afraid, but it looks enough to make two healthy round cakes.  Well, I say healthy...

So after cutting all the edge off you're left with a nice tower.

Hacking away even more gets you the right kind of shape.

After putting roll out icing down on a cake board for the base (great for covering up all sorts of tears on the cake board), slather on lots of buttercream icing.

Looks quite neat, really.

Then fully decorated.  Most of the top was cake, covered in pink coloured buttercream and then decorated with smarties.  The height wasn't very well planned - it was higher than the chocolate fingers I'd got to simulate the folders in the case, so I ended up cutting a load down and putting them on the bottom.  It's the kind of thing the average 6 year old won't mind, but bothers me!

Dollywaggon Pike

The purist would say that climing Helvellyn from the west is boring and I'm sure some say it doesn't count.  Anyhow, needing to drive back that afternoon meant we didn't have time to walk from Glenridding, and actually our target was the peaks to the south.  So we parked at the south end of Thirlmere, striking lucky by both getting one of the last three spaces and finding the ticket machine out of order.  A total of just under 15km at 5h15 was slightly more than I had planned, but that's partly since we took advantage of the great weather to visit Helvellyn.

Difficulty: 6
Walkers: Tim, Caroline

10:22, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (198)

11:48, 4.1km 1h26 778m, Helvellyn (950)
12:09, 5.3km 1h46 821m, Nethermost Pike (891)
12:38, 6.9km 2h15 880m, Dollywaggon Pike (858)
13:50, 9.9km 3h27 1083m, Seat Sandal (737)
15:37, 14.8km 5h15 1153m, End (196)

So this was the walk up - not much to say, other than we generally were overtaking people!  We also met a couple of guys in the car park who didn't have a map but clearly were on a mission to climb Helvellyn - we met them a couple of times later on and they clearly met their objective and were having a great time.

The top of Helvellyn, with Swirral Edge to the left, Red Tarn center and Striding Edge to the right.  The great mystery has to be whether we'll ever do either of these routes...

Top of Nethermost Pike, really the most impressive thing here is the view of Striding Edge!  Apart from my wife in the foreground, naturally.

The path down at High Crag.

Dollywaggon Pike, looking back the way we had come.

Then the long descent down to Grisedale Tarn.  We could see much of the route we had taken the day before, it was great to get closer to some of the sites we could see then.  The path down was really quite long and tedious though...  Just matched by the short but quite exciting climb up Seat Sandal - seen opposite the Tarn to the right on this picture.  We took the direct route up the left hand edge, Caroline didn't much like it, but Evie would probably have loved it...

The view from the top - quite windy, with St Sunday Crag center opposite.

We retreated back down the valley, taking the direct route back to the road.  We then walked back up the path then forest road to the car park, and seeing two fly pasts by 2nd world war planes - a quad propeller bomber (?) then a fighter.    They were flying down the Thirlmere valley, a lot lower than the cliffs either side, very impressive, and too fast for me to get the camera out!

St Sunday to Red Screes

To be honest this was a walk that I didn't think we would be able to do in one go, and had planning this to cover 2 walks.  Driving back up the Kirkstone pass, the plan was to come back via the Kirkstone Pass Inn for a pre-dinner drink.  To be even more honest, I spent quite a bit of the second half of the walk thinking it would be sensible to cut it short, but Caroline was keen to do it all, the weather was warm but not too hot, and we could always skip our dinner reservation that evening...

Here's the list from this, our longest walk to date, at 29km in just over 9 and a half hours.

Difficulty: 11
Walkers: Tim, Caroline

9:53, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (161)

11:16, 4.3km 1h23 305m, Arnison Crag (433)
11:59, 6.3km 2h05 536m, Birks (622)
12:38, 8.2km 2h44 774m, St Sunday Crag (841)
13:36, 10.5km 3h42 987m, Fairfield (873)
14:07, 12.0km 4h13 1033m, Hart Crag (822)
15:03, 14.2km 5h09 1076m, Hartsop Above How (581)
16:11, 17.4km 6h17 1423m, Dove Crag (792)
16:45, 19.3km 6h51 1443m, Little Hart Crag (637)
17:05, 20.3km 7h11 1445m, High Hartsop Dodd (519)
17:58, 23.5km 8h04 1813m, Red Screes (776)
18:13, 24.5km 8h19 1827m, Middle Dodd (654)
19:32, 28.9km 9h38 1907m, End (162)

To start with we planned to find a route from the car park at Brothers Water around the valley and up to Arnison Crag, but ended up climbing up a fell opposite a farm without a clear track to avoid an extra mile or so.  Potentially not the best option to follow the path we took...  Still it meant that we approached Arnison Crag from the south, so only got the view of Ullswater when we were right at the top, which was great.

From here there was a fairly clear path which joined one wall to go to Birks and then followed a stream up a valley.  We were just about to strike up the hillside when Caroline spotted the actual path, following this wall up the hillside - much easier.

 This was our reward - great views, but mainly over the route to come to St Sunday Crag and the edge of the Fairfield horseshoe in the background.

It was a fair climb up, although it didn't get too steep to slow us down too much.  We were hopeful of a much better visit to Fairfield than earlier when it was all encased in cloud.

 This was the view walking to Fairfield, with Grisedale Tarn to the right, somewhere I was hopeful of visiting the following day.

After Fairfield (which is a pretty boring top) we walked down to Hart Crag, again being really impressed we could see anything this time.

This is the ridge out to Hartsop Above How, showing the ridge to the left with Arnison Crag at the end, and the farm at the bottom where we walked up to start the walk.

This the the top of High Hartsop Dodd, which was about the point I really started to worry about whether we could finish the walk.  The main concern was that I couldn't see any paths down from Middle Dodd, the next ridge along, which would have meant quite a backtrack to come down Scandale Pass.  This photo is looking back towards Hartsop Above How, with the ridge behind St Sunday Crag.

So we committed to climbing back up another 250m to Red Screes, and both really pushed up the pass next to the wall - taking about 10min for each 100m of ascent.  At the end of the day this felt quite hard, The photo capture the end of the hard section, looking down to Scandale Pass and Little Hart Crag - the rocky lump to the right.

We met a fell runner at the top of Red Screes, who agreed that we needed to get a move on to make dinner that evening!  This was the view - well worth it, looking down the way onwards to Middle Dodd and Brothers Water beyond.

The view from Middle Dodd - from which we could see pretty much every peak we had walked that day.

Caroline was motivated to be faster than normal on the descent, but as it turned out my fears were not grounded, there was quite a good path and not too many steep sections.  This was looking back up to Middle Dodd, showing the way we took.  We never got our pre-dinner pub stop, but we made dinner and thankfully (for the other guests) even had time to shower first!

Coniston Old Man & friends

This was a walk we'd planned and were keen to do in good weather - having climbed up the Old Man too many times with no view.  We ended up walking 21.4km in a total time of just under 8 hours.  Here are the peaks:

Difficulty: 8
Walkers: Tim, Caroline

9:45, 0.0km 0h00 0m, Start (55)

11:29, 5.1km 1h43 736m, Coniston Old Man (803)
12:07, 6.9km 2h21 858m, Dow Crag (778)
12:50, 8.7km 3h04 1007m, Brim Fell (796)
13:53, 12.0km 4h07 1158m, Grey Friar (773)
14:22, 13.4km 4h36 1239m, Great Carrs (785)
14:33, 14.0km 4h47 1285m, Swirl How (802)
15:35, 16.0km 5h49 1426m, Wetherlam (763)
17:37, 21.4km 7h51 1433m, End (55)

We parked in Coniston, and wanted to buy lunch - to our (mainly my) disappointment the Duck has stopped making packed lunches.  We ended up buying some food in the petrol station, then going up via the car park at the bottom of Walna Scar road.  Predictably there were quite a few people going up, including many families.  We looked on with a mixture of relief and pity (me) and envy (Caroline) as parents alternated between encouraging and holding back children from bounding off the edge of cliffs.

We continued up to the top, I was relishing being able to climb a lot faster than with Evie, although we were both really glad of the little wind there was to take the edge off the heat.  

The top was fairly busy, but it quickly thinned out as we continued beyond the summit, and the people we met tended to have more expensive walking gear!  The next target was Dow Crag, which turns out had a very small piece of climbing to reach the very top.  Caroline was persuaded to make it up - the view was clearly much better than just slightly lower down!

We retraced our steps, and took the option of going back to Brim Fell. On the way we met a rather confused lady, who wasn't sure where we was - she at least had a postcard sized map, so we helped her understand which route she had taken to the top and which way to go next to find her way back to Coniston.  This is at Brim Fell, looking back towards the Old Man.

Grey Friar with the sharp peak of Dow Crag visible in the middle of the far ridge.

 Great Carrs, looking over the Tilberthwaite Fells to the Little Langdale Tarn just visible.

Swirl How, the cliff edge is Great Carrs.  From here we took the path down to Prison Band, and then onwards and upwards.

Wetherlam was our eventual reward with this great view back over to Lake Windermere in the distance.

We then walked back along the ridge, avoiding going down the lower path down the valley where Grace lost her boot many years before - both times I've gone that way I've not really found a path.  Coming back down the ridge made for better views of the mining scars of the Old Man, and this great view of a very luck sheep.