A Fine Strawberry Mess

Another recipe for those of you with a sweet tooth. This one uses my Victoria sponge cake recipe for the cake base and then a load of strawberries, some lemons, limes and clementines or tangerines for the toppings.

It’s a great recipe for using up leftover cake when you’ve made a shaped birthday or occasion cake where you’ve had to cut out the shape and have lots of off cuts.

But the best thing about this recipe is that it is really easy to make, can be made in advance and a great dessert to serve up at a dinner party when your main meal takes a long time and/or you want to spend a bit more time with your guests and out of the kitchen.

Enjoy!

Wealie x

Recipe for A Fine Strawberry Mess

Ingredients

500 g of Vanilla Sponge Cake
1 kg of Strawberries
2 Lemons
2 Limes
4 Clementines/Tangerines
4 Tablespoons of Amber Sugar

Method

1. Before you start take your strawberries out of the fridge at least 30 mins before you begin the preparation.
2. Wash and chop your strawberries into quarters.  Put the strawberries in a bowl and sprinkle the sugar on top and then toss to ensure the sugar covers the strawberries evenly.
3. Juice the two lemons, limes and the four clementines (or tangerines if clementines are not available) into a jug.
4. Pour the juice over the strawberries and mix through evenly.  Leave for one hour at room temperature.
5. Crumble 500 g of Vanilla Sponge Cake (see my Victoria sponge cake recipe) into a bowl and level out.
6. Spoon the strawberries over the Vanilla Sponge Cake Crumble mix evenly and then pour the remaining juice evenly over the entire mix.
7. 

   A Fine Strawberry Mess - Copyright R.Weal 2012

   Leave for one hour to let the juice soak through the sponge mix.

8. Serve with ice-cream, cream or custard and watch your guests salivate at the sight of this Fine Strawberry Mess!

Chruścik – Polish Pastry Twists – copyright R.Weal 2010

Chruścik are the subject of today’s blog post.  ”What are they?” I hear you ask, well quite simply they are a Polish pudding dish, a basic sour dough pastry twist that has been deep fried and dredged with icing sugar.  They’re sometimes known as Chrust and Faworki in Poland and in the USA some people call them Angel Wings.

They are exceptionally delicious and as a young girl I always looked forward with extra relish to seeing Babcia (my polish grandmother) when I knew she was going to be cooking up a batch. Having just recently lost Babcia it felt really nice to bake up a batch in her honour.  I felt really close to her in a very down to earth way, which is not surprising really as Babcia was always cooking up a feast in the kitchen and my most treasured memories of her are sitting and eating in the kitchen or more often than not getting in her way as she cooked!

The batch in the picture are to take to my Auntie Chris’ tomorrow who is cooking Sunday lunch and as a good Polish niece I’m bringing a long something to ensure that we have enough food for 5,000 rather than the 7 or so who will be at the table!  This will be the first time the family has gotten together since Babcia’s wake and it felt important to bring along something that reminded me of her.

The recipe is actually very simple, but I’ll warn you it’s a time consuming and tiring process to cook them, especially if you don’t have a food processor!  Put it this way, I had only two reasons for buying a food processor and both of them were Polish recipes!  Firstly, so that I could make the Chruścik dough and secondly, so that I could make my own pasta for Pierogis and I don’t think I use it for anything else!  It took me about 2.5 hrs to cook up this batch.

So in the spirit of sharing I thought I’d give you the recipe for these melt in the mouth delights.  Why not have a go at making some Chruścik and help me honour my Babcia!

Happy baking one and all.

Wealie x

Chruścik – Pastry Twists Recipe

Just a quick note to say that in my picture above the amount created is double the amounts of the ingredients used in the recipe below.

Main Ingredients

250 g plain flour
1 tablespoon icing sugar
25 g unsalted butter
1 teaspoon Rum Flavouring
1 whole egg
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon sour cream
1 tablespoon of distilled malt vinegar

Ingredients for Cooking

Sunflower/Vegetable oil for deep frying
Icing sugar for dredging

Preparation

Mix together all the main ingredients in a large bowl or food processer until they form a rough dough, you may need to add additional flour to get right consistency.

Knead the dough for 15 – 20 mins until smooth.

Divide dough into 2 or 3 pieces and roll out each piece thinly (approx 5 mm depth).

Cut the dough into narrow strips and then cut across the diagonal to create individual diamond shapes.  Cut a slit through the middle of each diamond and push one point through the slit and pull gently to make the twist.

Heat oil in a deep frying pan, fry the twists until golden on both sides and drain on kitchen towels and then dredge with icing sugar.

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