Meg Rivers Traditional Home Baking E-Book

Julian Day

• Herausgeber: Ryland Peters & Small
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

When Meg Rivers' young children clamoured for a sweet treat, she was reluctant to give them commercial bakes made with artificial flavours, preservatives and colours. She started to bake her own wholesome cakes, traybakes and cookies using good-quality ingredients. Word spread about how delicious these treats were and her friends began to place orders. When she got her first order for a cake to be sent to Africa she decided to turn her hobby into a mail-order business and Meg Rivers Artisan Bakery was born. After Meg's death in 2001, family friend Julian Day took over the running of the bakery. In this artisan cookbook, Julian has collected the bakery's most popular recipes - inspired by English afternoon-tea classics, but with a sprinkling of influences from elsewhere in the world. There are chapters on Family Cakes, Small Cakes, Traybakes, Cookies, Loaves and Tarts, and recipes for Ginger Cake, Wheat-free Chocolate & Hazelnut Torte, Flapjacks, Amaretti Cookies, Apricot & Nut Loaf, and Lemon Tart. Julian Day has lived and worked in Warwickshire almost all his life. He ran his own food wholesaling business for many years, then in 2001 he was approached to acquire the mail-order bakery business of Meg Rivers Cakes. Establishing a new bakery in a converted cow shed near Shipston on Stour, Warwickshire, he began production using the original Meg Rivers recipes. He continues to run the business with the help of two of his four daughters.

Leseprobe

About the author

Julian Day ran his own food wholesaling business based in rural Warwickshire for many years. In 2001 he was approached by Meg’s family to take over the mail-order bakery business of Meg Rivers Cakes. Establishing a new bakery in a converted barn near Shipston on Stour, he began production again, using the original Meg Rivers recipes. He lives in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire and continues to run the business with the help of two of his four daughters.

About the photographer

Steve Painter worked for Ryland Peters & Small for ten years, designing, art directing photography and prop styling many of their cookery books, including the number 1 bestselling The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. Now freelance, he lives in the seaside town of Hastings where he designed and photographed this book. For Ryland Peters and Small he has also photographed Whoopie Pies, How to Make Bread and Gelato.

DESIGN, PHOTOGRAPHY AND PROP STYLING

Steve Painter

COMMISSIONING EDITOR Céline Hughes

HEAD OF PRODUCTION Patricia Harrington

ART DIRECTOR Leslie Harrington

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Julia Charles

FOOD STYLIST Lucy Mckelvie

INDEXER Hilary Bird

Published in 2012 by Ryland Peters & Small

20–21 Jockey’s Fields

London WC1R 4BW

and

519 Broadway, 5th Floor

New York, NY 10012

www.rylandpeters.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text © Julian Day 2012

Design and photographs © Ryland Peters & Small 2012

Printed in China

The author’s moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

eISBN: 978 1 84975 327 2

UK ISBN: 978 1 84975 196 4

US ISBN: 978 1 84975 225 1

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

A CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

NOTES

• All spoon measurements are level, unless otherwise specified.

• Uncooked or partially cooked eggs should not be served to the very young, the very old, those with compromised immune systems, or to pregnant women.

• When a recipe calls for the grated zest of citrus fruit, buy unwaxed fruit and wash well before using. If you can only find treated fruit, scrub well in warm soapy water and rinse before using.

• Ovens should be preheated to the specified temperature. Recipes in this book were tested using a regular oven. If using a fan/convection oven, follow the manufacturer’s instructions for adjusting temperatures.

• Small panettone cases (approximately 70 x 50 mm/3 x 2 inches), as used for the Mini-Meg recipes, can be bought from these online suppliers:

www.bakerybits.co.uk

www.beryls.com

www.amazon.co.uk

www.amazon.com

contents

introduction

cakes

small cakes

brownies & bars

biscuits & cookies

loaves & breads

tarts

index

credits

Introduction

Most of us at one time or another have held a fantasy about turning our hobby into our living. While most of us only dream, Meg Rivers was someone who actually achieved this. I first met Meg when we were both living and working in the Warwickshire village of Upper Tysoe. Our children were of an age and they went to the local school together. We were each running our own small businesses, and we’d often chat about the problems and benefits of working for ourselves. Meg was already something of a celebrity, often appearing in the food pages of magazines, but more impressive to me was that she had the only fax machine in the village, which she let me use! Chatting in her tiny office with the fantastic scents of fruit cakes from the bakery beyond was always a pleasure.

I had no idea then that one day, I would be running the Meg Rivers Artisan Bakery.

Always a keen cook, Meg had learned to bake helping in her mother’s tearooms in Bowral, in the Southern Tablelands of Australia. In the 1980s, she moved to the UK, married and set up home in rural Warwickshire. When she started a family, like many mums she became aware of her children’s desire for sweet things but didn’t want them to eat the kind of commercial cakes and baked goods available at the time. Having always been interested in healthy eating, Meg was particularly reluctant for her family to eat products made with artificial flavourings, colourings or preservatives. Knowing that it was possible for treats to be both tasty and wholesome, she began baking at home, making the kind of things she’d enjoyed herself as a child. Family and friends raved about her baking and asked her to bake for them too. Gradually, her reputation grew, and when someone asked her to post a fruit cake to Africa, the idea of a mail-order bakery business was born.

In 1986, Meg found herself needing to provide an income for her family, something that she could fit around the demands of three young children. Starting small and working from her home kitchen, she began baking cakes and selling them mail-order. Her background in PR helped her gain publicity; in those pre-internet days, selling food mail-order was something of a rarity and a young woman juggling the difficulties of being a lone parent with running her own business was also rather unusual. The enterprise prospered and in 1991 she won the Businesswoman of the Year Award. This provided additional welcome publicity and a small cash prize, which Meg used to open a small bakery in Tysoe, Warwickshire.

Meg always insisted on using the best available ingredients and tried whenever possible to source things locally. More than 25 years later, though sadly Meg is no longer with us, we’re still sticking to the same principles. At our bakery in the Cotswolds we often feel we have the best job in the world – we live and work in a beautiful part of the country, making lovely things for lovely people. I’m pretty sure this rural environment impacts on our working philosophy too. Maybe it’s something to do with the slower pace of life in the countryside but we like to take the time required to o things properly. Yes, we live in the internet age when we all expect everything to be available 24/7 and it’s true that our cakes are often made and despatched one day, to be with our customers at the other end of the country the next day. But we strongly believe in retaining an artisan approach. For us, the integrity of the recipe is vital and we won’t ever compromise quality for the convenience.

We’re a small team and we bake our cakes on a small scale, using the same low-tech, traditional methods that will be familiar to any home baker. In this book we’ve deliberately tried to keep the amount of equipment needed to a minimum – pretty much everything needed will be the type that most home kitchens will have. We love what we do and we want others to share the pleasure we get from baking. Our first ever recipe book will show that you don’t need to be an expert to get great results. All the recipes are simple to follow and have been tried and tested by the Meg Rivers team. Many are exactly the same as the cakes we’ve been sending out to happy customers around the world since Meg first started her business. Some have been chosen from ones that are particularly popular with visitors to our café and shop in Chipping Campden, and others are simply personal favourites gathered from family and friends.

There’s something to suit every occasion here; quick and easy teatime treats, tasty and nourishing family favourites and sophisticated dinner party desserts. There are so many reasons to get baking. Cakes are by their very nature a treat and treats are best shared. Meg began baking for her family and that’s a great place to start – who better to spoil than those you love the most?

Baking is fun and the best results come from keeping things simple – don’t take short cuts for the sake of convenience and take your time when baking; it’s a wonderful way to chill out. Always use the best ingredients you can find – because that way even the humblest cake can be elevated to something rather special. There’s always something magical about following a recipe; the alchemy of selecting, measuring and mixing the ingredients followed by the mysterious transformation of the baking process itself – and best of all, you get to eat the results!

Julian Day

Proprietor, Meg Rivers Artisan Bakery

family cakes

dundee cake

This almond fruit cake is Meg’s version of an old Scottish recipe. Dundee cake was first sold commercially in the nineteenth century by Keiller’s, a famous marmalade producer, as a way of keeping their staff busy when oranges were out of season. Lightly fruited and with a high ground-almond content, this is a lovely cut-and-come-again cake, ideal to eat at any time of year.

175 g/1½ sticks salted butter, soft

155 g/¾ cup (caster) sugar

4 eggs, lightly beaten

210 g/1⅓ cups ground almonds

140 g/1 generous cup plain/all-purpose flour

365 g/2½ cups sultanas/golden raisins

115 g/¾ cup mixed candied peel

25 g/1 oz. crystallized ginger, chopped

24 blanched almonds, to decorate

18-cm/7-inch round cake pan, lined with baking parchment

Serves 10–12

Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F) Gas 2.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the beaten eggs in 2 stages, stirring to a smooth batter each time. With a wooden spoon, fold in the ground almonds and flour, stirring until smooth. Add the sultanas/golden raisins, mixed candied peel and ginger and stir until evenly distributed.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake pan and smooth level with a palette knife. Decorate the top of the cake with the almonds. Bake in the preheated oven for about 2 hours – the cake will turn a good colour well before this, but be patient and test the middle with a skewer. Only when the skewer comes out clean is the cake ready. If it doesn’t come out clean, give it another 5–10 minutes. The high ground-almond content in this recipe means there is often an oily, under-cooked appearance to the cake when first removed from the oven, but don’t worry – the skewer does not lie and the oil will re-absorb into the cake on cooling!

This will keep for up to 14 days in an airtight container.

VARIATION: To make 8 Mini-Meg-style cakes, make the cake mixture as above, then divide between 8 small panettone cases (see page 4) and bake for 50–60 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

caraway seed cake

Perhaps this cake fell out of favour with a generation of schoolchildren who came to associate it with boring tea parties hosted by grim-faced maiden aunts. Maybe this delicately flavoured cake is more suited to adult tastes, but it is certainly overdue a revival.

195 g/13 tablespoons salted butter, soft

195 g/1 cup (caster) sugar

3 eggs

¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

145 g/1 cup plus 2 tablespoons plain/all-purpose flour

45 g/⅓ cup self-raising flour

50 g/⅓ cup ground almonds

2 teaspoons caraway seeds

15-cm/6-inch round cake pan, lined with baking parchment

Serves 8–10

Preheat the oven to 170°C (325°F) Gas 3.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until pale and fluffy.

Crack the eggs into a small bowl and add the vanilla and ½ teaspoon water, lightly beating together. Add this in stages to the creamed butter, mixing thoroughly with a fork each time to obtain as smooth a blend as possible.

Add both flours and the ground almonds and fold into the mixture with a wooden spoon. Mix to a smooth consistency, then add the caraway seeds and stir till evenly distributed.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake pan and smooth level with a palette knife. Bake in the preheated oven for about 60–70 minutes. A skewer inserted in the middle should come out clean. Let cool for a few minutes, then turn the cake out onto a wire rack.

It tastes best when it is left to rest overnight in an airtight container, and it will keep for 2–3 days.

amaretto, date & pecan cake

Here’s a cake that gets your taste buds going simply by the wonderful aroma it produces as it bakes. It’s really worth finding fresh Medjool dates if you can. Sometimes described as ‘the king of dates’, they are exceptionally succulent and flavoursome and somehow help the subtle flavour of the Amaretto liqueur come to the fore.

150 g/1 cup plus 2 tablespoons plain/all-purpose flour

150 g/1 cup plus 2 tablespoons self-raising flour

170 g/¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons dark muscovado sugar

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon baking powder

80 g/5 tablespoons salted butter