With a sideways nod to the title of this blog, and in lieu of the 'bit'* of knitting I have once again failed to do, here instead is a picture of (some of**) today's easter efforts in the kitchen.
These little beauties are what I always knew as 'cheesecakes'. There's not even the tiniest scrap of cheese in 'em, so why 'cheesecakes' is anyone's guess. It might be a family quirk, or maybe a Norfolk thing, I just don't know.
They are actually little frangipani tartlets. My mum always made them with jam in the bottom, apricot mostly I think, but I'm sure I remember raspberry too. I've used some homemade lime curd Now I know that sounds sickeningly worthy/smug of me, except it didn't turn out nearly as nice as I'd hoped - probably because I used rather leathery limes to avoid actually wasting them. It's not awful, but it's not great either - a bit too sour, not quite bitter but near enough to notice. I've made lemon curd once or twice in the past and it's been great. The old ones are - at least in the case of my curd-making experience - definitely the best.
Unusually, these are not blind baked. That's a pretty old fashioned approach these days as everything seems to be blind baked, if not then given a second 'sealing' bake with a wash of egg before being filled and baked again. So I confess I was a bit sceptical - soggy bottoms ahoy I thought - although why I thought that is a mystery really: I mean I was pretty much raised on perfectly baked cheesecakes that were undoubtedly produced time and time again without a blind bake in sight. There wasn't time for that kind of fuss and faff back in the day.
The recipe I used came from from my mum's 1952 Good Housekeeping Cake Making book. Here it is.
It's a beauty, and has seen some very serious kitchen action over the years. It has an absolute ton of recipes, from everyday baking to wilder and wackier than you can imagine (blogging gold in there my friends), and some amazing 'colourised' photos/illustrations. Our dinky little cheesecakes only appear in black and white though...***
My mum never did the hot-cross-bun cross on top, so I didn't either, but the picture made me feel quite 'easter-y'.
So. Were they good? Well, with a wallop of creme fraiche to smooth out the slightly spiky edges of that lime curd, turns out they're not half bad. Not, of course, as good as my mum's.
* Periodically (ie when I get round to blogging at all) I wonder if I shouldn't either re-name this blog**** or start a new one (something I've already tried). It was supposed to be a knitting blog, and - for a while - it was mostly that. But given that the title does in fact imply only that I do a 'bit' of knitting, and as this is what does actually happen, I'm not going to.
** Like pretty much everyone else we had a roast dinner: for us today pork belly, done slow as you like, best crackling ever (at least until I remembered snipping off the nipples earlier in the day...it did spoil it, just a teeny tiny bit).
*** I know I know I know - they're not even called cheesecakes in the recipe book. I seriously have absolutely no idea. Suggestions on a postcard if you like.
**** I have no idea if I can re-name the blog, but luckily it doesn't matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment