If it is to be said, so it be, so it is

Oh, hi there! Thanks so much all for coming out on this misty saturday morning. Im both moved and touched. As is custom I begin with an acknowledgement that I am writing from recently ceded territory (also, coincidentally, seeded territory; which brings me to my first PSA – do not go scattering linseeds and other assorted seeds on a terrazzo benchtop. the resultant confusional anxiety will be extreme and abiding). Now where was i? Yes, correct, recently ceded land – i can assure you it was all very legal m’lud! Of course, in a broader sense, its neither ceded nor legal – a subject about which you can learn at sundry teach-ins and sit-downs up and down swanston st. Pull up a camp chair and do the “sitting and sharing” for which the Jewish community, in particular, is famed.

In any and all cases, i have opted today to dispense with the injunction to sit and share and be (in places of learning and connection); I have also dispensed with the over and under arching schleps objective (to make the lions roar and to make a heavy institution levitate); I’ve opted, instead, for a lighter levity – specifically a french apple cake. a frapple cake. an applench cake. Another #epicfail #facepalm, which was greeted with “yeah. its good” and “it just doesnt blow my hair back”. its just your basic tea cake so in fact not blowing your hair back is precisely the point. basically designed to be enjoyed with a cup of tea. Of course, having extensively reviewed the range of kettles currently on the market, and despite extreme coercive pressure, i have decided to wait until the next tranche of kettle tech is released and as a result, there is and will be no tea to speak of.

This recipe was taken from Adam Liaw – Strayas last great public intellectual.

Ingredients

• 25g butter, for greasing
• 2 eggs
• 150g caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 125ml vegetable oil
• 150g flour
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 4 apples, peeled and cored, cut into 2cm pieces
• 2 tbsp demerara sugar

Heat oven to 170C

Grease a 1.2-litre loaf tin with butter n flour. Reserve any leftover butter.

In a bowl, lightly whisk together the eggs and sugar, then whisk in the vanilla and the oil

Fold in flour, salt and baking powder to form a batter.

Stir the apples through the batter and pour into the tin.

Dot reserved butter on top and scatter with the demerara sugar.

Bake for 1 hour

A little too close. Look, if i had my time again, Id opt for a frapple cake of yore such as this guy

or even this ital number

and/but/which brings me to my titular point, if it is to be said, so it be and so it very much is/always was/will be/again.

In closing, had a lot of requests for recommendations – and, it being a space of sittting and sharing, here’s a book I recently ready that really helped me, as i hope it does you

Canelé? More like Cantelé

canelé i hardly knew you. the most easily overlooked, deceptively unpromising young women of the patisserie world. it takes a big, chonky man to admit when theyre wrong and i/xir, am they/them/that man. how wrong i was. these ridged burnished beauties are the apex. Recipe below but i warn you, its nqr and i will (wont) revisit in the fullness of time. for now, i offer only a humble apology and a reminder that false friends, not unlike leaves, are indeed found everywhere.

INGREDIENTS 

75g Unsalted Butter

750g Milk 

1 Vanilla Pod 

370g Caster Sugar 

225g Strong Bread Flour

5g Salt 

100g Egg Yolk

80g Bourbon/dark rum/whatveer you have

METHOD

Heat milk with split & scraped vanil pod in smol saucepan to just below a simmer. Allow to infuse for 30 mins.

Then add the butter. Allow the butter to melt completely remove from the heat and let it cool to body temp.

Combine the sugar, flour and salt in a large bowl and whisk together. Add the egg yolks and bourbon to the milk mixture and beat in.

Now gradually whisk the liquid into the dry mix until smooth. mine went lumpy af and was strained many times. Remove the vanilla pod and discard. Cover and fridge and let rest overnight.

Preheat the oven to 230°C.

Get batter out of the fridge and whisk to reincorporate any solids that might have sunk. i strained again. brush your moulds with melted butter.

Pour your batter into the prepared moulds, roughly 4/5ths full. Slide into the oven DMs and bake for 15 minutes. Turn oven down to 190°C and bake for a further 45 mins until deeply caramelised. Apparently you cant cook them too much (though ive also read contrary advice) so you can give em another 10-15 if you must.

Turn canelé out immediately and let kewl

See ya round. hope not sporadically.

Do ahead diva!

god. sorry, how embarrassing. please ignore m’heirlooms. dont know how they got in there!

not here to talk about tomates. nor whatever narcissistic injury you may be nursing this week. and neither nor the question of whether or not you and your feelings are even visible to the cold naked contemptuous eye of those who have the nerve to call themselves your loved ones. no siree bob.

just popped in, mrs peabody like, to remind you of the merits of preparation. herewith, the fruits of my own success in this regard and a reminder of what you too can do if you simply harness the D.A.D mindset

on monday i roasted a squash. no one can properly say why. on wednesday i aimlessly caramelised some onions. all week they weighed on me; every time i opened the fridge, there they’d be – a cruel, mocking reminder of the folly of man. but once uponst a stormy sunday, while in brace position under a the tallest tree i could find, inspiration struck like lightening and – a short visit from the CAT team later – a pie of sorts was made with the things i had prepared earlier – aka the things they carried. enjoy babes xox

Ingredients

Half a butternut squash, roasted however you see fit

3 onions carmelised

130g goats cheese

water – natures nectar (not to be confused with your basic fruit nectars)

1 sheet puffy-p

Basically i just PREHEATED OVEN TO 200

warmed up the onions in a soupcon of olive oil (oil slicked as they already were)

threw in the punkin, as Leza A would have it

topped with cheese

and 50 ml water to get things moving, loosen things up

things maybe got too loose but thats really not for anyone to say

then topped with puffy lid, egg-washed and into oven for 30 mins

was wayyy more golden than afore-imaged. more like this.

but look, really, just happy bday mango to all who celebrate!

thats not latin

its those pesky tomates again!

Captain correlli’s mandarin

Wfh lunch al desko amirite??

I simply adore to read. I also simply adore to collect autumn produce (and impingements. but a story for another time!). Your crimson grapes, radiculos, poires and what have you. So just a simple side salad from me today, inspired #by #my #seasonal #markethaul

Step 1: ghost your rapes

Step 2: pandolin (pangolin?) your mears, like that captain himself would have wanted

thence just layer him up. Raddichio

endive

gears and prapes

frumble some creta or a goats varietal

olive oil. and just let her catch light while she still can.

why do bad things happen to good people?

And another question: what do you do when you buy a gigante bowl?

A: (with the help of souvenaid) remember that you vowed to do so last time you made I.O.B’s and your cup overruneth and made a messeth and give ‘im another go. GIVE ‘IM A GO!

After much brownie experimentation (fu c_saff! separated and seized choc every effing time. more like fornever brownies), i happened upon Ina Garten (wife to Jeffrey, unshod contessa, policy/teaspoon wonk)’s “outrageous brownies”. with not particularly high hopes, i stepped nevertheless forth with courage and 450g of butter and choc respectively and the end result was outstanding. Posted below heretofore and forthwith and without (read: with much) comment.

450g semisweet choc (recently discovered this refers to anything in the 50th percentile, eg, your 54, 52, 50-whathaveyou %s)

450g butter

170g dark choc (thats your 70% big boy)

2 1/4 cups sugar

6 eggs

3 tbsp instant espresso pow

2 tbsp vanill

1 1/4 cup flour

1 tbsp bak pow (seems like a heckin lot to me)

1 tsp salt

300g chopped milk or semisweet choc (i only used 200 b/c seriously)

3 cups chopped walnuts or other sundry nut

Grease a 30 x 45 cm sheet pan (butter an flour. v annoying)

Oven at 175

Melt the choc and butter together. i do this in micro on 30 sec bursts. dont listen to the bain marie-ists. everyone is a napoleon. but theres no need to be

In the biggest bowl you got, mix eggs, sugar, instant coff and vanill with whisk just til combined.

Then pour in melted choc/butter mix

Sift in flour, bak pow and salt

Pour in chopped choc and nuts

Spread out sensuously but soberly on greased baking sheet.

Bake for 20 mins then, rap, raven-like, the tray a few times to get rid of any air bubbles. then back in oven for 15 more mins.

CHILL. put in fridge. then slice em, tag em and bag em.

SHANKS FOW CAWLLING

no but look at the crumpled top. shes a beauty.

HOUSEKEEPING

Lots of you asking what to do with leftover slaw ingredienties. really great questions, thanks so much for asking. Say for example, you shredded a cabbage and julienned some carrot and dinely ficed some onion, possibly even charred some corn; and just say, i mean, just for the sake of the hypothetical, you made a salad of it for lunch for 6 days in a row, and just say – still very much for the sake of argument – that no matter how much you et, it persisted to be and refused to do so towards death – WWYD??? Once again, the answer to the question begins with knowing and chopping your onions

soften your arrow mats in some penis oil (i used veg but would have used peanut if i could find). then toss in your shreddies, then noods, soy sauce, maybe some chilli crisp or what not

and voila, nother never ending bowl of bs.

Actually looks kinda gross. soz. this was pre spring onion/peanut scatterment which takes the edge off. here, have some oceanic:

PS. Finally mastered the muffin

but then flew close to the sun with this banana choc number.

Dont know why i bother/a tender crumb

Not a peep out of a single one of you. Not on the cookie, neither nor on the theme and variations on tart neither nor on the cake. And then you have the audacity of hope to ask for muffin posts? LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE YOU DEGENERATE PARASITES.

Few complications with this guy. I was given a list of ingredients for the perfect muffin but without quantities: veg oil, yoghurt, milk, vanilla, eggs, big pieces choc, self-raising flour, caster sugar.

In order to establish quantities i looked for a recipe that used similar ingredients and happened upon this one. I halved it because i am only in my experimental era and was not willing to commit to a full 12. Those eagle eyed among you will note she uses lime juice (wrong) and buttermilk and sour cream. Ie. not like my ingredient list at all. I thus substituted yogurt for sour cream. i only used bloobs because was worried the weight of choc may interfere with the crumb which, at this early stage of testing, is our dependent verable and i was trying to minimise m’confounds. i also forgot to halve the bak pow and im pretty sure that why i got the dome effect:

Recipe below is my melange. I will be continuing the experiments in the coming days.

Ingredients

150g SR flour

half tsp bak pow

82.5g caster sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1 egg

37.5g veg oil

vanill

82g butter milk

82g yoghurt

Method

Oven to 180 degs

Mix flour, bak pow, sugar n salt. Make well.

In separate bowl, mix egg, oil, vanil, buttermilk and yog. Stir til only just combined

Make well in dry, pour wet in. Barely stir. leave it relatively lumpy (vewy wumpy bweasts) and mix in your fixins.

Bake 20-25 mins (mine took a good 25).

And here she is again, just catching the last of the light

Great bitter lake/fewer better things

Who can say, in troth, that there is no place for a cakey cookie? Who would not recognise in the Amercan chewy varietal the two qualities constitutive of the great hegemon herself – lies and under-cooked cookie dough? Who would argue, in good faith, that there is no pleasure to be had in chowing down on a chonker? Who amongst us has never glimpsed the dazzle of the sunrise at birth? Et al.

Behold, a rebuttal to your mono-textured, sickening-ly caramel-y, toffee-like flatties – a beautiful, heckin’ chonk:

Ingredienties:

230g unsalted butter
165g brown sugar
110g caster sugar
2 free-range eggs
375g plain flour
1 tbsp cornflour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp fine sea salt
350g good quality dark chocolate chips (i also add chopped apricots for health but I appreciate its as unorthodox as it is unappealing)

(I used to be a militantly strayan apricots only lady but in my twilight years – and in light of my late Kemalist turn – Ive come to appreciate the plumptious Turkish genre. Here they were unchopped and here they lie, chopped. Thanks, as always, to the good people of the wood company for their ongoing sponsorship).

Preheat oven 180

Chop up your chonkies

Meanwhilst, cream butter and sugars together (I cream for anywhere between 5-10 mins). Add eggs and vanil.

Then add your dries (i just weigh them straight into the wets. not about to be dirtying another bowl). Then your chopped lads, whomstever they may be. Then scoop absolutely masssive balls of dough onto a lined tray ( i mean really, super-maxi-mega balls). I chill them in the fridge and bake some the next day (on 180 for about 15-18 mins). The rest i box n ship to the freezer and bake to order because as far as im aware, it does not say rsvp on the statue of liberty.

Oh look, shes presenting!

Ps. made an experimental granola-cum-cereal-cum-flake-pageant and look at what tf happened to some of my raisins (the swol boules in the centre of the image); actually thought they were going to blow. Why?

Chips Ahoy mateys!

First time i ever et a chips ahoy – or rather, more specifically the chewy CA varietal – was at a house party hosted by the daughter of Billy Connolly. Like a dream, I can only see fragments in my minds eye including a garage and a dizzying variety of amercan confection, amongst which was counted, the aforementioned C.A.C.

but if mrs svars taught me anything its that TWTTIN and there are not (necessarily) tunes for bears to dance to. And it is thus, against a backdrop of melancholic, lugubrious and confused bears, “dancing” to atonal melodies, that we proceed today.

The heretoforeabovementioned imago generated a lot of buzz online and so, by unpopular demand, please find below the recipe, such as it is.

Heres to another AMAZING YEAR of #munchinandbrunchin and #eatprayinglovingpurging. May your sensory floor remain bounded and for those of you rendered unrecognisable by the ravages of severe apoptosis (you/your carers know who you are) (Stswivens), may 2024 see the arrest of its devastating progression, one way or another.

An almost full tart, adapted from Z*onist Ott@lengh*

Ingredients:

New improved shortcrust pastry (ask me for the recipe)

Half to a whole butternut or other squash

couple of “portions” of frozen spinach or coupla handfuls of actual spinach

200ish g goats cheese

2 eggs

200ml dub cream

First, roast your pumpkin. The images below were for a different project (an experiment to determine the better squash – butternut or otherwise. results: inconclusive). but they show your basic pre-roast set up. Oven at 200 earthly degrees, olive oiled, salted, peppered, paprikashed, chilli flecked et al. Just roast til basically theyre basically burnt.

Meanwhile, know and carmel-ise your onions. i used an onion/shallot combo because i paid $17 dollars for the latter from an allium providor-cum-monorail salesman and my onions were on the turn. I used mayhaps 2 onions and 3 large shallots and just let them go til jammy. Here they are, just catching the last of the light.

Agin, this was from a different onion caramelising project. for the actual tart in question, i threw in some cube-ettes of fro_spin into the carmelisation stage so please dont @ me about why there’s spinach in the tart but not in the process notes. i do not want to hear it.

Now alls to do is build her up. Onions in thin layer on the base. then squash, strewn spinach, goats cheese. Then pour over your cream-y egg mixture and, personally, i topped with some halved cherry toms. Into oven at 160 degs for 35-45 mins

Of course, as Dr Parnassus would undoubtedly advise, this is an endlessly malleable formula. Please feel free to use your imagniarium to fill her otherwise. Below, some i made earlier and differently.

Possibly a broc number?

Looks like a mushroom based lad

The OG

Smell ya later!

“I wouldn’t request it, specifically”

Like so much in life/friendship, this promised so much and delivered, at best, a great deal less. That said, it was not dry as the above infographic would suggest, nor do i think did it merited the vile, bilious, vitriol it received from one man in particular (including: “it’s fine, i’d eat it; not sure id choose it myself” and “cant really identify anything specifically wrong with it”).

The one good thing that has come from this unmitigated disaster though was the exposure of snow – heretofore widely acknowledged genius/high achieving, enrichment specialist – as spatially/possibly mentally impaired. “How can you cut a cake in half?” is now lodged in the annals of questions that are at once the most profoundly stupid and the most unwittingly profound, together with “how can you sell a house”, “why do you hate me”, and “i was just wondering if mrs peabody is home?”

Anyway, here she blows. in all her mute interiority.

Recipe here for all those prepared to take a chance on a dark, reviled horse:

Ingredients

• 100g sultanas
• 275 ml water (swear to go this make the cake and the sultanas watery. would not use agin)
• 350g plain flour
• 1/2 ground cinnamon
• 1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 1/2 tsp bak pow
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 large apples (800g) (3 large apples are SO NOT 800g)
• 200g caster sugar
• 150 ml olive oil (evo)
• 2 large eggs, (a child is being) lightly beaten PLUS 2 egg whites
• scraped seeds of a vanill pod (just use the paste)
• grated zest of limone

For the maple cream cheese icing

• 100g butter (at room temperature)
• 100g light brown sugar
• 85g maple syrup
• 220g cream cheese (at room temperature)

Instructiones

1. preaheat oven to 160 degrees fan (180 if not fan but literally who has ever cooked anything unfanned?). Grease and line (lining is for squares. just butter n flour) a 23 cm cake tin
2. Put sultanas and 200ml water in medium saucepan. simmer over low heat til all water has been absorbed
3. Sift flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking pow and salt into bowl and set aside
4. Peel and core apples and cut into 2-3 cm dice and put in ANOTHER SEPARATE BOWL
5. Put sugar, olive oil, whole eggs, vanill and lemon in mixer and beat on medium for 6-7 mins til light and paso doble-d in size. “dont be tempted to increase speed of mixer”, is the instruction as written. but be tempted by whatever you want imo. just dont passage a l’acte is all
6. Fold in apples, sultanas, remaining 75 ml water (WHYYY). Add sifted dry ingredients
7. Put egg whites in ANOTHER SEPARATE BOWL and whisk to soft peaks. Then fold through the cake mix. Then pour cake mix into tin, level the top (i forgot to do this hence my duomo) and cook for 55 mins. Then remove from oven and let cool
8. Meanwhile make the icing before which reflect on the fact that this absolutely pointless cake required use of every single bowl in your kitchen. Its most damning feature

ICING

• Put butter, sugar and maple in bowl and beat til light and airy. add cream cheese in quarts and beat for 2 mins til thick and smooth
• Ice the cake.

ETERNAL VIGILANCE!

We have a lot of laffs here at schleps. a lot of laffs. now dont get me wrong, i enjoy the fun as much as the next man. but theres a time for fun and then there’s a time for seriousness. and now is the latter of those two times. in other words, you could say, this is a SERIOUS. BUSINESS. for all the glitz and glam of schleps, the world of food blogging and associated eating is rife with hazards. i of course try to shield you as much as i can from the perils but it behooves me to issue a stark and some might say graphic warning:

this is the grizzly aftermath of perhaps one of the most dangerous errors a food-ist can make: underestimating the size of a mouthful and or overestimating the size of ones mouth. i took this apfel cheek into me en bloc. not realising, of course, that it was the exact size of my mouth-roof cavity. it thus enjambed itself between my back-est most teeth and lodged itself there, forming a seal. whats more, i could not get any purchase to prize it out and for a few dark seconds i thought that my time had finally come.

honestly i cant even tell you how i managed to dislodge the offending item (thanks so much for asking though!). what i can tell you is that the experience changed me. i vowed that i would dedicate my life – or at least a short post – to raising awareness. so please, i urge you, be mindful of relative dimensions before, during and even after eating, get your breasts checked and, if you’re struggling, call lifeline/poison control.