on baking fails and cookie swaps

smitten kitchen's brownie roll-out cookies

do you have days when your efforts in the kitchen go awry? when recipes that should work fail? well, that is what i experienced in the fortnight of baking for the great food blogger cookie swap. i was keen on sub-continental khatai, a wonderful snow white biscuit that dissolves in the mouth like fine sand under the feet on a beach. i have memories of eating these with late afternoon tea at my phoopi’s house in lahore. the batch that i made was a variation on the traditional khatai as they had a fair bit of gram flour. they tasted lovely and were much appreciated by colleagues at work, friends and family but the recipe proved to be tricky. the second try involved ghraybeh, a shortbread like lebanese biscuit that echoed the feel of khatai, gently scented with orange blossom. once again the recipe i used failed me because the consistency of the dough did not match the description.

culture kitchen at the london review of books

culture kitchen

you will forgive me for beginning at the end of lunch at sunday’s ‘culture kitchen’. it is because the brownie with a thick stroke of pumpkin and white chocolate ganache and a crest of corn flakes toasted in butter was one of the cleverest flavour combinations i have eaten in a while. the pumpkin smoothes the aching sweetness of white chocolate and the cornflake crunch balances the soft textures. 

an afternoon tea from diana henry's salt sugar smoke

salt sugar smoke signed for me

i discovered the world of food writing in the late nineties but it wasn’t until nigel slater’s toast that i seriously started drawing up lists of food writing that i wanted to read. over the last few years my food book rolls have come to include cookery books as well. this is because cookery books today are as much a pleasure to read, as they are to cook from. their prologues and prefaces hold much promise and often reveal the personality of the chef.