Birthday baking

So my birthday was last Saturday (I had a great time, received lots of nice presents and will need another lifetime to get through all the novels I received) and as always I made the cakes myself. To be on the safe side, I decided to make 3 cakes. I made a the carrot cake, which is my favourite cake, an apple pie, which turned out to be everybody else's favourite, and an American chocolate ripple cheesecake. This last cake is a bit like the double chocolate cheesecake I made a while back, but then with Mary Berry's twist. Here's how I made it:

Ingredients:
200 g crumbly biscuits (can be choclate digestive, if you want to be really festive)
100 g butter
200g cream cheese
400g mascarpone
100 g sugar
2 eggs
200g milk chocolate , melted


Line the bottom of the spring form tin with baking paper.
Mix the crumbled biscuits with the melted butter. Press the biscuit mixture into the base of the tin. Leave to cool in the oven.
Preheat your oven to 180C.
Mix the cream cheese with the mascarpone until it becomes soft. Add the sugar and keep mixing. Add the eggs, one at a time.
Spoon half of the mixture on top of your crumbly base. Then fold the melted chocolate into the other half of the cream cheese mixture and stir well.
Spoon the chocolaty half of the mixture on top of the other cream cheese, and "stir with a knif to create a marbled effect". If the bit in quotes does not work for you, you're in good company. It never works for me, nor did it this time: I just had a two-layered cheesecake, yellow on the bottom and chocolate on top.
Level the top and bake in the oven for about 1 hour. Towards the end, the cream cheese will be fluffy and puffy and rising over the top of your baking tin like a souffle.
When done, leave to cool in the oven with door closed. The cake will shrink back on itself to about the same level as before it went into the oven.

This can be a tricky one to get out of the tin, so I cooled it in the fridge over night to make the bottom and sides become more solid, and then I managed to get it out whole.

Now this proved to be the least popular cake last Saturday, but that may also be because I baked the apple pie on the day itself, and carrot cake is just always immensely popular. Anyway, that leaves more for me, so I'll just go downstairs and have another slice.

The Circle

So for the past couple of days I've been reading The Circle by Dave Eggars, and it's been freaking me out ever more.
Freaking me out in a good way, that is, because if a book grabs you so much that it leaves your heart pounding and your head spinning and yourself wondering whether you shouldn't be going around with a camera hanging from your neck recording your every move, then that book is really getting to you. And it's been a while since a new author (new to me at least, I'd never read anything by Eggars before) got to me like this.

I bought the novel because it had some great reviews in the newspaper. Later I checked the Amazon reviews, and although most of them are very positive, several complain about the book being badly researched and full of unnecessary dialogue. I don't understand those reviewers, because to me, the dialogue is the best bit.
In short, the novel is about a 24-year-old woman who starts work at the Circle, a Facebook/Google conglomerate proud of its community and transparency. At this job, you're not expected to go home at 5, you're expected to participate in community events, and then 'zing' (= tweet) about it to everyone else. Starting off with just one screen in front of her, the protagonist quickly upgrades to one of the most social and busy people in the company, constantly monitoring 5 screens, a headset, a microphone in her ear, and two wristbands.

If that alone isn't enough to set your heart racing, there is the ever increasing 1984-like surveillance. Children with chips implanted so that their parents will always know where they are, and they can't be abducted. Cars with logs so spouses will know where there other half has been. Cameras everywhere, in public and private spaces. People (especially politicians) with cameras around their necks recording their every move, meeting and conversation.
Scary as this may all sound, there are so many convincing rationales in the novel as to why this is a good thing, why having privacy is actually stealing someone else's experience, why not being transparent must mean that you have something to hide, and why having cameras record your every move will ultimately set you free to become a ' good person', that you almost start to believe it yourself. Those few characters in the novel talking sense, warning the protagonist of things to come, are quickly dismissed as lunatics. Interestingly, they proclaim those things that most of us take for granted.

In a society that is ever more discussing the value of privacy, the value of information, this novel came at exactly the right time. It has made me question why I do the things I do, why I want to share the things I share, and what privacy is actually really worth. It's one of those essential values that you only miss once you don't have it any more, and then it will be so hard to get back.

In short: read it. I'm about 2/3rds through and I have no way of predicting the ending, but if it will be anything like the rest of the novel, it will be something I will think about for quite a while to come.

NaNoWriMo 2013

NaNoWriMo time is almost upon us again. I've been receiving lots of emails from the Office of Letters and Light already, several from 'my novel' asking to be written, and one from 'the future' in which I have already written my novel.
There must be a parallel universe out there somewhere, because in this one, I will not be writing a novel in November. They mention the 'ideas at the back of your head' and the 'storylines and characters you work out before you fall asleep at night', and this is all very true, but they will also have to stay inside that head for a little while longer.
I am simply too busy. Not only physically too busy, in that I don't have the time to sit down behind a computer and write for an hour to get the 1667 words you need each day, but also mentally too busy. And it is true that I will be taking a week holiday in November, but that will be to relax and free my mind from stuff, not to add more stuff to it.
So apologies to 'my novel'  and 'my future self', but the answer is no.

However, if you, dear reader, do have the time and space, I can only recommend participating in NaNoWriMo. I've done so for several years, I've also won several years, but I can tell you that even without winning it is a great experience. Apart from finally letting go of all those stupid controlling mechanisms and just writing that novel, you get to meet lots of great and interesting people during the parties and writing events. Plus, they have nice goodies. Two weeks is more than enough time to prepare (I once decided that I was going to join on the 30th of October), and even if you can't make it, they have several 'Camp NaNoWriMo'  sessions throughout the year.
Give it a go!

Eat to live

In the Netherlands, people generally bike a lot. Looking at the 'bike basement' at my job, and the parking lot in front of the building, I'd say the ratio is pretty much 50-50, with those coming by car usually living more than 10 km from work and/or having to drop off several small children at day care before they come to work (lots of people also bike around with a small child in front and one in the back, but if you're working in a place that expects you to arrive relatively wrinkle and sweat-free, this isn't really an option).
I'd say most of us are a pretty healthy bunch: hardly any smokers, most people use the stairs when moving between floors, and a lot exercise or walk or move in any other way. The other company in our building is a health insurance company, which ironically has a larger percentage of smokers, and more elevator-users, although to be completely honest we do work on the 5th floor whereas they might be on the 11th.
Anyway, apparently, we're not healthy and sporty enough. Last week, there were leaflets in the canteen, stating that coming to work by bike was healthier than driving a car (which I'm sure most people know, and those able to bike generally already do so). The leaflet ended with a table of foodstuffs, and how many minutes one would have to bike to 'lose the calories' in that food. You come across these lists quite a lot, especially in women's magazines. There are several things that surprise, and maybe even worry, me about this development.
Firstly, it somehow emits the messages that when you bike, it's okay to eat these fatty things. You've biked to work? Great! Have a packet of crisps! As if it is somehow a reward you deserve for undertaking the great exhausting move of coming by bike.
Secondly, there are only unhealthy things on the list: crisps, candy bars, chips, other fried foods (egg rolls etc) but also hamburgers and other 'whole meal' options. Why not show how little time you need to 'lose' an apple or a wholemeal cracker? Wouldn't that be more motivating?
Finally, it makes it seem as if the only reason we eat, is to lose it as quickly as possible. As if you don't actually need the vitamins, protein, and fat (yes, fat) in your food. As if the only reason you're eating is to have something to do in your lunch break, and it's only purpose is to run through your body as quickly as possible and then be gone.
Now I know these leaflets won't really get much attention in our canteen, as most people already eat fruits, yogurt, salads, wholemeal buns and other healthy things. But I cannot help but remember the colleagues I had at the sandwich shop at the train station, who would literally tell each other 'I can have cookie today, because I came by bike!'. If that's the way we're treating food these days, not as something you need to survive, but as a treat you give yourself for doing a normal thing like move around, then I don't think we're going in the right direction. Having a piece of chocolate or a bag of crisps is nice every now and then, but just to enjoy it, not because you've already worked off the calories it contains.

Classic Dutch apple pie

Autumn is now fully upon us: the wind is howling through the trees, scattering wet leaves everywhere, and the rain is hammering against the windows. For me, this means it's apple pie time.
Now there are many, many different types of apple pie, but the one I prefer to make (apart from a quick apple crumble dessert for dinner guests) is what the Dutch call 'classic' or 'grandmother's' apple pie. In my case it's more like 'mother's' apple pie, as apart from the standard loaf-shaped cake, it is the only pie I could make at an early age.

Ingredients:
300 g self-raising flour
175 g sugar (can be any sugar: I prefer muscavado)
200 g butter
1 egg
mixed spice (optional)

Filling:
apples (I have no idea of the apple quantity I use: generally it's 2 large ones)
sultanas (soaked)
chopped nuts (whatever you like, I had some pecan nuts left over from my pecan pie)
lemon juice
sugar
cinnamon

Make the dough by combining the flour and sugar (and mixed spice if you have some) and then adding the butter in chunks. Some recipes specify cold or room-temperature butter: to me, it makes no difference. I generally mix these three ingredients together using a mixer and then add the egg and continue by hand. Knead the mixture until it becomes a proper dough, then set about 1/5th apart.
Take a buttered and lined springform baking tray and put the big part of the dough in the middle. With your hands, move and shape the dough so that it covers the bottom and most of the sides, creating an even, flat top by putting your finger on the top and running it all the way round. Don't worry if your dough looks woefully thin at this stage: my dough was about 3 mm think and still came out in a nice crust.
Pre-heat your oven to 180C.
Now remove the core of the apples and dice them. I like to keep the skin on for extra texture, but you can of course remove it. Dry your sultanas off and mix them together with the apples and chopped nuts. I generally add a splash of lemon juice to keep the apples from colouring and to add some freshness to the mixture. Generously sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, and mix again.
Put your apple mixture in your dough casing, making sure the top is level with the top of the sides and that no apple bits are sticking out (they will burn).
From the remaining dough, shape a casing to go over the apples. You can do this as fancy as you like (rolling the dough out flat and then cutting strips), or just by rolling out some doughy worms in your hand and putting those over the top. They will at least double in size in the oven, so don't worry if you only have very little of your apple mixture covered. You can brush some egg mixture over the top of the dough if you want a nice shine.
Bake in the oven for about an hour. If you've used muscavado sugar, the dough will become brown pretty quickly, but don't take the cake out of the oven too early or you will have a wet, under baked dough. Just leave it in the oven with the temperature turned down to about 140C.

Fresh from the oven

We ate it hot from the oven, with the apples still soft and melty and the crust firm and aromatic. The combination of the apples, mixed spice, cinnamon and nuts really gives it a great autumny feel.

But even after being stored cold in the fridge for a couple of days, it still has a nice taste and great texture. Just make sure your dough isn't underbaked, as that will give it a chewy, doughy taste that isn't very pleasant in any thing but American cookies.

Running

About a month ago, my boyfriend and I decided that we were going to run. We've both got jobs that make us sit still in chairs for the better part of 8 hours a day, and although we cycle to work, we had the feeling that our physical conditions were not what they used to be when we were students (and usually went for a long walk 3-4 days a week). To cover the same distances in less time, running seemed to be the solution.
Now I had done some running about 5 years ago, using the famous and fabulous program called 'Evi', in which a friendly Flemish lady tells you when to start and stop running. This kind of interval training was very effective, and in just a couple of weeks I could run 5 k in one go. Sadly, Evi requires you to run 3 days a week, if at all possible the same 3 days every week. This is easily done when you're a student with only 9 hours of classes every week, but not so when you've got a job that requires you to have meetings until 21:00 at night on various days of the week.
So we set our goal a bit lower: 2 days a week, usually Tuesday and Thursday, as those are generally meeting-free days. We found a nice  little loop to run, cutting through some fields and next to a canal, with a rail bridge thrown in for some altitude training. We both don't own any proper sporting clothes, apart from running shoes, so we put on some loose-fitting clothes from our DIY jobs on the house. And so we ran.

It is amazing how quickly you loose your stamina if you don't keep it up. After only the shortest possible space of running, I was huffing and puffing and bright red in the face, with my feet and legs begging me to stop and just go walk like any normal person would. This was to be expected. The annoying thing is that you know you're going to have to start out that way, and that it will take a couple of weeks before things will get better. It's so easy to stop and just think 'running is not my thing' and leave it at that.
But I kept at it, and we've done some nice sessions of interval training, lenghtening the period we run and shortening the walking period each time. We've also added another traffic bridge to our course, one which is steeper and therefore harder. Our pace is not very high, and we're not covering any great distances or training for any specific goal, but it still feels like we're doing something good, for both body and mind.

You often hear people talk about a 'runner's high'. I too have several colleagues who run marathons and are skinnier than should be humanly possible, who are always going on about 'the zone'  etc. Now I don't know about that, maybe I should be running more and longer, but I've never had that endorphin like experience. What I do feel, however, is that my thoughts tend to go more quiet and organized as I run. After getting home from a stressful 10 hour work day in which nothing went as expected and I am feeling like 'I should jump behind a computer and fix this right now, right this minute!', running is liberating. Your mind concentrates on just one thing (well, maybe two, as controlling my breathing seems to take up a large chunk of mental activity too), and when you're done you have this nice relaxed feeling of simplicity: take a shower, eat, don't work, just sit still and do nothing. Counting Crows tells us in their song Hard Candy: Time expands and then contracts, and that is exactly how it works for me: the running seems to go on forever, in a void somewhere, and when you get home you discover that hardly any time has passed, that you still have a whole evening ahead of you, and that your mind is now magically cleared.

So yes, I think we will try to keep up the running for quite some while to come. As long as our progression remains as slow as it is, it won't go eating up more time than it should, given the benifits we want to gain from it. We don't want to become the uber fit, overly competitive marathon type, we just want to be healthy, happy, and relatively stress-free.

PS: The Oatmeal wrote a series of comics about running great distances, and although I recognize very little of his story (he does ultra runs in mountains, I clomp away at city pavements) it is still an interesting read.

Pecan pie

So Sunday is my new standard bake day, and last Sunday I attempted to face my old nemesis: sweet pastry (or actually: pastry in general, be it sweet, short, crumbly, or any of the other 3 varieties I have not yet attempted). I decided to bake Mary Berry's pecan pie. This choice may have been inspired by the fact that it let me buy maple syrup, something I completely fell in love with while we were in the US last summer, but which is very very expensive.

Mary's recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:
175g plain flour
15g icing sugar
75g butter
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon cold water

25g butter
175g light muscovado sugar
3 large eggs
200ml maple syrup
150g pecan halves (or less, if they're as absurdly expensive as they are here)

You make the sweet pastry by mixing the flour and icing sugar and then rubbing in the butter with your fingers until the 'fine breadcrumbs' stage. You then add the egg and water and 'quickly' knead it to form a firm dough. Wrap in clingfilm and rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.
(It's these magical stages that determine whether your sweet pastry works or doesn't work: you should work the pastry too much, and it should be chilled properly.)

Take your pastry out again, role into a circle on a flat, lightly floured surface and then put into a lose-bottomed fluted flan tin. Of course, my pastry broke all over the place, so I had to assemble the bits in the flan tin. This does not really matter, your pastry will still come out good. Prick all over with a fork.
Scrunch up a bit of baking parchment, unscrunch and put into the pastry casting with baking beans to hold it down. Blind bake for 10 minutes at 200 C and then bake without the paper for another 5 minutes.

Now after the blind baking, my pastry looked great, but after the 'real' bake something was terribly wrong: there was a Grand Canyonesque ridge running through my casing, separating one bit of the pastry from the other. Now as the filling was going to be pourable, this would mean everything would run out of the bottom and into the oven. As the filling consisted mainly of sugary things, I did not think this was such a good idea. I therefore quickly mixed another small bit of pastry and used that to patch up the gaping gap.

On to the filling: mix the butter and sugar together, and then add the maple syrup and eggs, beating well. Pour the filling into the casing and arrange the pecan halves on top (Mary tells you to do it the other way around, but that makes no sense to me, as pouring in the mixture will result in all the pecan nuts flowing to one side). Bake at 180C for 30 minutes, and leave to cool.

Pie in the oven: notice the light colour of the maple syrup mixture.

I baked my flan tin inside another baking tray, which was a good idea, as my patch up job did not work. Upon returning to the pie after 20 minutes of baking, it was bathing nicely in a whole sea of bubbly, melty sugar. When the pie was done I very quickly detached it from the baking tray and set to scrubbing said tray for about 15 minutes until all the blackened sugar had come off. The same will have to be done for the flan tin (the top part of which I could only extract from the pastry casing with great difficulty), but as that is not something we use almost every other day, I could not really be bothered to get into that quickly. Anyway, it came out mostly in 1 piece, with some additional pastry bits to nibble on.

Darker pie, with a cracked pastry casing. Still tasted great!

Now the thing I had not mentioned about this pie is that it is American. Very American. Meaning that it has more calories than a normal person will eat in a couple of days, possibly even a week. So make sure to make the portions of the pie very very very small when serving (about 1 pecan width), or people will go 'I'm full!' with more than half of their piece left over, which would be a shame, because it really is a very very nice pie. It tasted very good, not too sweet, not too sticky.

It did nothing to resolve my fear of pastry, however, so I will have to try something else. I'm thinking about maybe doing some choux pastry, which is even more difficult but will be very rewarding when it goes well, but maybe that's a bit too ambitious. For now, we still have more than half a pie waiting in the fridge, so we'll get through the cold days nicely.

175g (6oz) plain flour
15g (½oz) icing sugar
75g (3oz) diced butter
1 large egg yolk

for the filling

25g (1oz) butter, softened
175g (6oz) light muscovado sugar
3 large eggs
200ml (7fl oz) maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
150g (5oz) pecan halves - See more at: