Category / Yorkshire

Baking Recipe Yorkshire

Rhubarb and Custard Cheesecake

I developed this recipe for this year’s Rhubarb Festival in Wakefield. It combines all the classic elements we think of around rhubarb and its pairings. Rhubarb and custard is a great combination and works really well in this dessert. Thanks to Dave G. for encouraging me to post this recipe!

Ingredients

Base

  • 300g custard cream Biscuits (crushed)
  • 85g melted butter.

Cheese Filling

  • 600g full fat cream cheese
  • 60g icing sugar.
  • 300g double cream
  • 400g rhubarb

Creme Diplomat

  • 6 egg yolk
  • 35g custard powder
  • 75g caster sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 Tbs agar agar
  • 450 ml milk
  • 100 ml double cream

Rhubarb Puree

  • 400g rhubarb sliced.
  • 200g caster Sugar
  • Juices of an orange

Jelly

  • Sieved Liquid from puree.
  • 1 Tbs arrowroot
  • Half tsp agar agar
  • Red food colour
  • 1 Tbs aperol (optional)

Method

Mix melted butter and crushed biscuits together and press into a greased tin lined with acetate collar. Chill in fridge.

Gently poach the rhubarb in a pan with the sugar and orange juice. Drain off the fruit and conserve the liquid.

To make the crème diplomat, whisk egg yolks, sugar, custard powder and vanilla in a large bowl. Bring the milk to a boil and pour over the egg mixture stirring constantly. Return to pan and bring to a boil, mix the agar agar with a little water and stir into the pan. Tip the custard into the bowl. Chill in the fridge.

Whip the double cream and mix into the custard once the custard is cold.

Beat the cream cheese, cream, and icing sugar together. Stir through the cooked and cooled rhubarb. Chill in the fridge.

In a pan bring the rhubarb liquor to a boil, add a bit of food colour. Mix the arrowroot and agar with a little water to make a slurry. Add slurry to the liquor and stir it through, remove from the heat and add the aperol. Allow to cool and thicken.

Assembly.

Spread the rhubarb cheese mixture over the biscuit base and smooth the top.

Pour over the Diplomat cream and smooth the top.

Pour over the jelly and allow to set in the fridge.

Baking Recipe Yorkshire

Rhubarb and Custard Crumble Cake

This is a recipe given to me by Terry Harthill my Bake Off friend. I tweaked it here and there. It is delicious. I demonstrated this recipe at the Wakefield Rhubarb Festival Yesterday.

Roast Rhubarb

600 gram pink rhubarb

2 Tbs caster sugar

Custard

4 Egg Yolks

30g caster sugar

25g cornflour

350ml milk

1 Tsp vanilla paste

Sponge

250g butter

250 caster sugar

4 eggs

200g SR Flour

50g custard powder

1 Tsp Baking powder

Streusel Crumble

50g butter

85g soft brown sugar

85g plain flour

2 Tsp ginger powder

This recipe is made in four stages.

Heat the oven to 180 degrees

Chop the rhubarb into chunks and sprinkle with the sugar. Roast for ten minutes and remove from the oven.

Make the custard by heating the milk in a pan until almost boiling. In a bowl whisk the egg yolk, sugar, cornflour and vanilla. Pour the hot milk over it whisking all the time. Return the custard to the pan and heat on full until the custard is very thick.

Make the sponge by whisking the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add all of the other ingredients and mix together.

Stir the rhubarb gently through the sponge mixture and place the mixture into a greased and lined rectangular tin.

Using a spoon make small spaces in the sponge and drop in dollops of custard

Place in the oven for ten minutes while you make the crumble.

Make the crumble by combing all the ingredients and rubbing it all together with finger tips until it resembles breadcrumbs.

Open the oven door and very quickly scatter the crumbs over the cake. Continue to bake set, approx 45 minutes.

Leave to cool. Place a wire rack over the cake invert it. remove lining paper. Invert it again. This cake is better eaten after it has been cooled and then chilled in the fridge to keep to custard cold and fresh.

Baking Recipe Yorkshire

Rhubarb Relish

Yesterday I was making a very quick rhubarb relish in the Demo tent at Wakefield’s annual Rhubarb Festival. I made a quick Soda Bread and a mackerel pate to make a full lunch or supper dish.

Ingredients

1 Cup runny honey

Half cup red wine vinegar

3 tablespoons dark soy sauce

1 thumb sized piece of grated ginger

Half a red chilli chopped

2 Tsp Chinese five spice

1 cup dried cranberries

1 cup chopped red onion

4 cups chopped rhubarb

In a large frying pan heat the honey and vinegar until boiling, add all the ingredients except the rhubarb and bubble on a low heat until the mixture starts to thicken into a jam like consistency. add the rhubarb and continue to cook until it is starting to soften. Turn off the heat and stir to combine the rhubarb and relish, try to keep some chunks of rhubarb for texture.

Visits Yorkshire

Karen’s News Round

Closing words of my presentation.
Rounding up my Presentation

This week I made a New Year’s Resolution, I know I know, I am over two weeks late stepping up to the mark, but I have finally done it. I need to get the extra weight off that has been accumulating since my exciting summer in the Bake-Off tent. The first couple of weeks in the New Year most of us have odds and ends in the house that it would be a crime to throw away so hence I am two weeks late getting into my new regime. My husband John still has his instructions from me as to what his lunches must be, in fact he just poked his head around the door and asked if he was still on pate and cheese duties!

So, day one of my regime and I made brunch for myself. Not everyone can face spicy food early in the day, but I am not one of them, never too early in my book. I started by looking in my vegetable box and found a big cauliflower looking up at me, then a sweet potato that looked a wee bit sorry for itself, then half a yellow pepper was glinting at me and finally a red onion. Quick rummage around in my spice tin and before you could say “Bob’s your Uncle” I had a delicious veggie curry in my tummy. Just for the record I don’t have an Uncle Bob, but it sounded better than Uncle Graham or Uncle David, who are my actual Uncles.

That is a very healthy plate, and it is Veganuary too, so I am for once on trend!

A friend has asked me to make a small cake for her friends Birthday next week. It has a theme, everyone wants a theme these days. When I was small the theme that set a cake apart from any other cake at birthday time was having a candle stuck into it. Now you need a very good imagination, or a friend called Google to find inspiration for a cake. This cake’s theme is Game of Thrones. I have heard of the programme but not seen it. Google to the rescue. One of the many things that my experience on the Bake Off taught me was to think outside of the box, so using this lesson I have made a crown as I know crowns are significant on the programme, I have bought some cocktail stick swords to poke into the crown and I have filled the crown with Quality Street as crown jewels. When I make the cake next week, I will have red ganache (chocolate melted with cream) dripping down the cake as blood and my crown triumphantly on the top.

Tonight, I have been invited to speak at a local Women’s Institute meeting https://twitter.com/thehorburywi. I need to spruce myself up and get my stripes out of the wardrobe. Everyone is very keen to hear the Bake-Off story and I love to tell it, so it is a good match. They want me to judge their bakes, but I can’t as I am on my healthy regime now and with the best will in the world, I can’t get Victoria sponges and scones to fit in the regime. Think outside of the box, what to do? My trusty husband John, better known as a human dustbin will come along, he can taste I can look, between us we will work it out, teamwork!

Visits Yorkshire

Rhubarb Rhubarb Rhubarb

Glorious Pink Stalks

Its the first week in January and I hear on the rhubarb line that the first forced juicy pink stalks are out of the sheds and in the farm shop. I am keen to get my hands on some as I am doing a live food demo this year at Wakefield Rhubarb Festival (Sunday 24th February 2019) and need to practice some ideas.

When I arrived at the Rhubarb Triangle Farm Shop and explained my mission I was invited to have a quick peek in the forcing sheds, what a privilege! I have seen inside on the TV before but never expected to be in among the beautiful pink stalks in person. The sheds were dark and warm, it was a bit muddy underfoot. Despite this, the atmosphere strangely serene, with the pretty pink stalks standing proud with their crowns of soft green leaves like a bouffant beehive hairdo – I think of them as ladies, pink ladies. If you listen very carefully you can hear them squeak as they grow. Off I went back into the shop, picked my selection and off away to my kitchen to think up some delicious ways to cook it up.