How To Cook The Perfect Chocolate Crispy Cakes

Chocolate crispy squares are some of the first cakes most of us learn to make – maybe the fond memories of standing on a stool to laboriously stir the bowl, cereal flying everywhere, mean these simple treats never quite lose their appeal. Or perhaps they just tick all the boxes our most basic selves demand: at once sweet, buttery and delightfully crunchy.

Either way, they’re useful to have up your sleeve (and squashed under your feet) in what are the dog days of the school holidays for much of the country. At this stage in the summer, any activity that makes everyone happy is a rare gift indeed – and remember: you’re never too old to lick the bowl.

The rice

You wouldn’t think there was much debate about this, but Christal Sczebel of the Nutrition in the Kitch blog rejects the usual “puffed refined rice” in favour of the brown version. Although nobody in the UK seems to sell the Canadian organic sprouted rice cereal she uses, I do locate some wholegrain rice puffs. Unfortunately, they have a different texture to the usual kind – chewy, rather than crunchy. Clearly, this is not a treat that is ever going to be high in fibre.

Chocolate

Although I remember making these with cocoa powder back in the frugal 80s, chocolate seems to be a more common choice these days, Martha Stewart and Sczebel do use powder (the latter in the form of raw cacao, naturally). Chocolate gives the cakes a more rounded character, with testers preferring the higher cocoa versions to the very sweet milk variety used by Nigella Lawson (under-10s may disagree). Everyone loves the combination of milk and dark chocolate in the recipe from Annie Bell’s Baking Bible, however – and, to make them really chocolatey, I’m going to stir in some cocoa powder, too.

Nicky Evans wins a prize for the best start to a recipe I have ever come across: “Five Mars bars, chopped,” beats the mythical, “First, catch your hare,” hands down. Her recipe divides the table; we all love its salty, caramel tang, but it is much richer than the traditional variety – “You couldn’t eat more than a tiny square,” says one tester, shovelling in her third. Well worth a go, especially if you’re making these with ingredients foraged from the all-night garage (no judgment here), but not canonical crispy cake territory.

The fat

Butter is the usual choice of lubricant, although Sczebel substitutes vegan margarine and almond butter. This works well texture-wise and gives the cakes a subtle nutty flavour that’s a real hit with testers, but, again, we conclude that it doesn’t fit with our fond memories. It’s also worth bearing in mind that neither of these things sets quite as firm as dairy butter, so the resulting cakes will be more fragile than the usual sticky missiles – the recipe recommends a spell in the freezer, then overnight refrigeration to help them set.

The sweetener

Bell and Evans feel that chocolate is sweet enough on its own (and no wonder, with five Mars bars), but sugar acts as a binder as well as a flavouring here: Lawson’s golden syrup gives her cakes a pleasing, slightly sticky, quality which makes them feel less dry than Bell’s version. Stewart goes for melted marshmallows, that gives her cakes an unnervingly chewy, almost stringy, consistency, and Sczebel opts for raw honey, which we can’t detect in the finished product. Sometimes, you just can’t beat an inverted sugar syrup.

The extras

Stewart and Evans top their cakes with melted dark chocolate (don’t blame Stewart for the bloom on the top of hers; it’s entirely my fault), but this feels far too decadent for such a simple treat – even Bell’s white chocolate chips add too much complexity, while Sczebel’s desiccated coconut confuses the issue no end, nice though it is. This is a gloriously one-dimensional pleasure: no gussying up required.

Perfect chocolate crispy cakes

(Makes about 25)
100g dark chocolate
75g milk chocolate
50g butter
2 tbsp cocoa powder
4 tbsp golden syrup
135g puffed rice

Set a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water, making sure it doesn’t touch the water. Break the chocolate into roughly equally sized pieces and add to the bowl along with the butter. Melt, stirring occasionally to help it along.

Meanwhile, put the puffed rice in a large bowl and line a tin about 20cm square with foil.

Once the chocolate has melted, stir in the syrup and cocoa until you have a smooth mixture. Pour into the bowl of puffed rice and mix well, then spoon into the tin. Press down very firmly with the back of a spoon, then refrigerate for 1-2 hours until set. Cut into squares and store in an airtight container well out of easy reach.

How to Have Your Health Food and Love It

At some point in the ’70s my mom bought her first pair of bluejeans. She didn’t suddenly throw away all her tailored wool skirts and silk scarves, or dump all the cashmere sweaters from the dresser drawers into bags destined for the Salvation Army, but there they were, in rotation: A pair of soft bluejeans, modestly flared at the ankle, with two flat front pockets, that she wore, if I may say, with exceptional and enviable style.

And then, around this same time, you opened the fridge one day and found she had glass jars lying on their sides, cheesecloth held with rubber bands over their mouths, alfalfa sprouts growing inside. And there on the kitchen ­counter, nestled like a flock of broken fledglings fallen too early from the nest, were eight little glass jars wrapped in kitchen towels and set on an electric medical heating pad meant for sore back muscles, incubating her homemade cultured yogurt. Which turned out tangy and creamy and expert.

My mother was dispositionally unwilling to sacrifice pleasure for politics, or style for trends, enough so that I did not mind the dialed-down frequency of her customary brown-butter sauces, ripe, oozing full-fat cheeses and visits to the butchers. And I welcomed the open-faced avocado sandwiches on pumpernickel with cream cheese, red onion and alfalfa sprouts (hers were clean and fresh and lively) and fruit preserves stirred into yogurt for dessert and shopping trips to the memorably dirty health-food store. There the bulk jugs of tamari and tahini and separated almond butter under an inch of rancid oil had crud on their spouts, and the bulk bins of oats and millet and whole-grain flours were lively with meal moths. This was as fascinating to me as the whole sides of bloody animals hanging from hooks in the refrigerated walk-in at the Italian butcher we used.

I thought it was just as miraculous and cool to see her making her own yogurt and granola, and sprouting her own sprouts, as I did watching her make Irish soda bread or duck-leg confit or the annual birthday baked alaska that she set under mesmerizing blue rivulets of fire with kirsch flowing from half an empty eggshell set at the top of the meringue Vesuvius. In a way, her French background, her impeccable kitchen skills and her intractable devotion to pleasure in eating made her a kind of perfect precursor and model for healthful whole-foods cooking, 45 years ago.

Tofu, however, I came to for the first time during my second attempt at college in the early ’80s, at a lefty, rigorously political liberal-arts college in New England, under decidedly less stylish and markedly less pleasure-principled circumstances. It seemed as if there were a dog-eared ‘‘Moosewood Cookbook’’ in every kitchen on campus. They sold it in the campus bookstore next to Wollstonecraft and Hume and John Stuart Mill. The chore wheel — that egalitarian method for distributing household chores to make these experiments in communal living harmonious and less fetid — in our on-campus apartment had a slot wedged right there between Clean Bathrooms and Vacuum Common Area: Water the Tofu! Everybody cut the tofu into cubes and steamed it in a wok with celery and onions and mushrooms and garlic and ginger. We meant to stir-fry it, but you could never get a wok hot enough on those electric coil burners, so tofu dinner was always wet and limp, then drenched in tamari. It was not stylish, expert or enviable.

When I started making soft, silken tofu about five years ago, it was like getting my own first pair of bluejeans. I did not toss out all my marrow bones and suckling pig and the crème Chantilly to remake myself in soy. I started my first batch in a stainless-steel pot on the kitchen counter and finished in glass Ball jars. I took exceptional care of the beans, the soak, the milk. The tofu was rich, almost nutty. It had, and will always have, a faint, chalky mouth-feel, which the unctuousness of salted French butter will completely smooth out in the finished dish. If you went at this in the spirit of the chefs who have labs/test kitchens/ateliers with interesting appliances and chemicals, I think you could add lecithin or other mail-ordered emulsifiers to ‘‘correct’’ that effect in the milk before you coagulate the tofu. But I really want you to go at this the way my mom eventually went for the macramé bikini and the addition of brewer’s yeast on our popcorn: Enjoy yourself, but remain yourself.

Yes, You Can Cook Cucumbers, And They Are Delicious

We eat a lot of cucumbers stateside, most often served raw and crunchy to impart a refreshing quality to a meal. Does “cool as a cucumber” ring a bell?

Hardly do we ever cook them ― but we can, and we should.

Cooked cucumbers are more common in Asian cuisines, where they work wonders in stir fries and side dishes. But they shouldn’t be reserved just for that part of the world.

Julia Child has a recipe for cooked cucumbers in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in which she actually bakes them in the oven. Martha Stewart also has a recipe where she quickly sautés cukes in butter with dill. But it’s time to give them more play in your kitchen.

Cooking cucumbers first came to our attention while listening to the podcast The Splendid Table, when a caller asked host Francis Lam what to do with excess cucumbers. (It does become a problem in the summer.) When he suggested sautéing them, our interest was piqued and we got to cooking.

We came up with a simple recipe that’s quick to make, and actually easy to love. So when you have too many cucumbers on hand, or just want to switch things up, give this easy recipe a try. It just might convert you.

Spicy Sautéed Cucumbers

2 medium-sized cucumbers, sliced, seeded and partially peeled
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 large garlic clove, sliced
1/4 teaspoon chili flakes
1. Place sliced cucumbers in colander, toss with salt and let sit for 30 minutes to drain out the excess water. Rinse well and pat dry.

2. In a sauté pan, add canola oil and garlic. Cook on medium-low heat for a couple of minutes, until the garlic is fragrant. Add cucumbers, soy sauce and chili flakes and cook for 3-5 more minutes, before the cucumbers become overly cooked (and mushy) and when they still have a little crunch to them. Enjoy!

Nigel Slater’s linguine with nduja and tomatoes recipe

The recipe

Bring a deep pan of water to the boil, salt it, then add 250g linguine and cook it for 8 or 9 minutes, until the pasta is tender.

While the linguine cooks, make the sauce: in a shallow pan – one to which nothing will stick – warm 140g of nduja over a moderate heat, stirring it regularly.

Slice 300g of cherry tomatoes in half then fold them into the warm nduja and continue cooking. Stir in 30g of cornichons, sliced in half lengthways, and 2 tsp of capers.

Leave to cook for 3 or 4 minutes until the tomatoes have started to give up some their juice. Then stir in 2 tbsp of olive oil.

Drain the linguine, then toss it with the sauce, folding the spiced tomatoes through the pasta.

The trick

The nduja sauce is very spicy. If you feel the need to tone down its heat, simply stir in more tomatoes, halved or crushed or as you serve the dish, and fold in a spoonful of yogurt or cream.

Nduja burns easily, so keep the heat moderate while it warms, and stir regularly to prevent it from scorching.

The twist

Instead of using pasta, the spiced tomato sauce can be spooned on to thick toast or bruschetta. Top the toast with a soft goat’s cheese, or a spoonful of goat’s curd or mascarpone. It is also good as a dressing for vegetables, such as baked courgettes, pumpkin or potatoes.

How You Can Help Save Local Kids From Going Hungry This Summer

For many children, summer vacation evokes images of their favorite foods: backyard barbecues, fresh farmer’s market produce, s’mores by the campfire and frozen delights from the ice cream truck. However, for the 13 million children in America living in food-insecure households — homes lacking the adequate resources to purchase the food needed for an active, healthy lifestyle — summer vacation offers less relief than it does hunger and uncertainty. During the school year, free or reduced-price school meal programs often serve as the front line of defense against food insecurity for millions of children. But when school is out, the overwhelming majority of these children lose access to this assistance, and their rates of food insecurity increase.

Childhood food insecurity is a tangible problem for millions of families throughout the country — in suburbs, exurbs, small towns, and urban centers from coast to coast. As of 2015, over one in six American children lived in households with food insecurity, and in five states the rate surpasses one in four. Despite steady declines since the depths of the Great Recession, these rates remain unconscionably high.

Fortunately, some students continue to have access to school lunches in the summer, through summer school programs or year-round schooling. Others may benefit from additional U.S. Department of Agriculture–funded programs run by local organizations (such as the YMCA, Boys & Girls Clubs, churches, schools and parks) aimed at feeding children when school is out of session. Last summer, over three million children received lunch through these critical summer food service programs. And in some areas, the USDA has offered a summer-only program, awarding electronic voucher benefits of $30–60 per month per child that can be used to purchase food in grocery stores. Research has shown that increasing food benefits is a particularly effective method to combat food insecurity among families.

Nevertheless, while these USDA initiatives and community-based programs provide a much-needed lifeline for some children and their families, they serve only 15 out of every 100 children who receive free or reduced price lunches during the school year. These programs have also often been unable to reach their full potential due to factors including burdensome regulations imposed by USDA (such as certifying that all meals meet USDA nutrition standards) and limited access in rural and suburban areas due to lack of transportation for children, which deters many organizations from creating or expanding summer meals programs.

The good news is that there are actionable steps you can take to reduce the indignity of childhood hunger in your local community — which do not require much time, energy or resources (unless you would like them to).

First, know what’s already in your area. The USDA has a summer meal program locator, which tells you where your region’s summer meals programs are located. Then, spread the word. Share it on Facebook and other social media. Speak about it with other families at camps or daycare or, really, anywhere. Too often, a lack of awareness about existing summer meal programs currently available can prevent kids from accessing the nutrition they need.

Next, build more. Encourage both public and private organizations in your area — libraries, parks and recreation departments, tutoring programs, religious congregations, athletic leagues — to open their doors and offer meals programs to children this summer. Talk for a few minutes after the next meeting with the leaders you know. There are plenty of obvious benefits: Comprehensive and enriching summer programs will help meet the needs of kids and families, reduce summer learning loss, improve health and keep children safe and out of trouble. The cost of providing summer programs to kids is reduced when USDA funding for food is there to help defray costs.

Then, expand your reach. Write a letter (not a tweet) to your Congressional representatives to advocate for funding for comprehensive and enriching summer programs. If this fails: Try writing an opinion-editorial for a regional newspaper in your Congressperson’s area. While there is currently funding available for summer meals, there is not adequate funding to support summer enrichment programs at which children can also be fed — and President Trump’s proposed budget calls for even greater reductions to summer enrichment programs. This is problematic because although some cities (such as Seattle) are able to serve children free meals in enriching, summer day camp settings — made possible by USDA support for meals, coupled with local government and philanthropic funding — many others (including Washington, D.C.) lack the funding to offer enriching activities to accompany their summer meal programs. Fortunately, Congress has the power to make it easier for rural and suburban organizations to adopt and grow these programs, by funding transportation to summer feeding sites and expanding the summer food voucher program so more families can purchase additional groceries for their children during the summer.

All the while, keep it simple. Donate food, money or a few hours of your time to your local food bank and the other community organizations already working hard to feed kids this summer. Even better, organize a group of friends and go.Our nation’s children deserve to experience summer breaks filled with fun, not hunger pangs. In order to make this a reality, all of us — from private citizens to community organizations to our nation’s leaders in Washington, D.C. — must step up to the plate to strike out childhood hunger.

Nigel Slater’s lamb steak and caper dressing recipe

The recipe

Slice 300g of new potatoes into coins. Warm 4 tbsp of oil in a frying pan then add the potatoes and cook for 12-15 minutes, over a moderate heat, till they are golden.

While the potatoes cook put 150ml of soured cream into a small bowl. Stir in 1 tbsp each of Dijon mustard and capers. Chop 1 tbsp of tarragon leaves, then add to the soured cream. Halve lengthways 6 small gherkins then stir into the dressing, together with a little salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate.

Remove the potatoes with a draining spoon and keep warm. Season a couple of lamb steaks, each about 180g in weight, then sauté them for 4-5 minutes on each side, until they are cooked as you like them. Remove the lamb and let it rest for a few minutes. Briefly return the potatoes back into the pan, tossing them in the meat juices.

Serve the lamb steaks with the sour cream dressing and the potatoes. Enough for 2.

The trick

The principle of resting meat between cooking and serving benefits small cuts like a lamb steak as much as large joints. In this case, a matter of just 7-10 minutes in a warm place will ensure juicier lamb.

The twist

Young, sweet carrots are good here. Slice them in half lengthways and use in place of the potatoes. I’d add chopped mint leaves, too, when the carrots are returned to the meat juices in the pan. This method also works with pork steaks and chicken breasts.

WHY GELATO IS GOING TO BE THE FOOD OF 2018

Something weird happened to me the other day. It was a balmy July evening, so I headed out with my flatmate to grab a cool glass of white wine or a crisp Aperol spritz at the new food market near our flat. But instead of heading to the bar, I went straight to the gelato stand without a second thought, as if pulled to it by an invisible force.

Intense pistachio. Moreish black sesame. Bitter coffee. Creamy stracciatella. My head was swimming with the possibilities. Two hours later, we left. But I hadn’t even had a snifter of wine, and my friend, disappointed by the knok-off Aperol she was served, abandoned the full glass on the table. The gelatos, on the other hand, were demolished in minutes, in a flurry of groans, moans and eye rolls.

I got to thinking, I can’t be the only person who has uncharacteristically ditched booze for a dinky cup of pistachio gelato, or at least forged a new love affair with the dessert. Gelatos beautifully presented like roses or pressed into gourmet waffle cones seemed to be popping up across social media more and more, and gelatarias opening up across the country. Plus, the third annual Gelato Festival in London in June almost sold out. I, coming to terms with the fact that I had an addiction, decided to investigate.

My suspicions were confirmed by Alex Beckett, global food and drink analyst at the Mintel forecasting agency who specialises in ice creams and its sub-categories like gelato and sorbets. After some probing, he excitedly predicted that 2018 will indeed by the year of the gelato.

He says he has also noticed stores opening up across the UK, from Swoon in Bristol, to Badiani at the Mercato Metropolitano in London, and the newly-refurbished Unico in the capital which offers delicious vegan takes on favourites like moody dark chocolate. Google searches for the term have reached their highest ever point in the UK. Remeo, meanwhile, has this year become the first Italian gelato maker to start selling in the UK, with deals with Waitrose and Ocado rolling out earlier this year. All of this is great news for someone like me who has a habit to prop up.

At this point it's important to arm you with some facts if you want to enter the year of the gelato like a true pompous foodie. First, ice cream and gelato are most certainly not the same thing. Yes, they’re very similar, but not the same.

Gelato contains more milk than cream, making it freeze at a lower temperature and taste cooler, lighter and, arguably, more refreshing. Churned slower than ice cream, it is more dense and has a more intense flavour. According to Maggie Rush, the president of the Ice Cream Alliance, the ingredients and the fact that it contains less air than ice cream means it also has a short shelf life and generally must be sold the same day that it is made. As gelato must be produced in smaller batches, this makes it ripe for experimentation with the highest quality ingredients, from sweet lychee or fig to black olives and wasabi.

“The quality of the gelato on offer in the UK is increasing and people are enamoured by the discernible flavour of gelato, which is less ‘diluted’ than ice cream,” adds Charlotte Vile, a spokeswoman for the Nationwide Caterers Association.

This, says Beckett, taps into the overall demand for healthier, artisanal, “craft” foods containing ingredients with an engaging story of provenance... and all the other buzzwords that make something a surefire hit these days.

“We are on the cusp of gelato becoming mainstream," says Beckett. "There is a latent understanding that it is high quality. It’s just that supermarkets are so competitive it's hard for brands to break through into retail." He says once a global manufacturer like Unilever takes the plunge, gelato will be everywhere.

"We know that alcohol consumption is declining and people still want their treats. Ice cream is one of the biggest treat foods out there. Millennials want to pay out for quality and authentic foods that have a clean label with fewer ingredients,” he adds. “Ice cream struggles in UK, but in the US gelato has been its saviour. We expect to see the same thing happening here."

For Jacopo Cordero di Vonzo, the founder of Remeo, it's not just data that plays into why he decided to bring gelato to the UK, but a bit of raw, carnal desire.

“We are convinced that Gelato is a better product than ice-cream  - tastier, healthier, sexier,” he tells The Independent. "In the last five to ten years gelato has grown enormously in US and Brazil so we expect this to happen in the UK as well, and we are seeing this already."

Established gelaterias are already noticing a difference. “Our sales continue to grow year on year and if you needed any evidence to support that you just have to look at the queues that form outside our shop," says Owen Hazel, the co-owner of Jannettas in St Andrews, which has been open for over 100 years. "Where once our customers waited perhaps five to ten minutes they sometimes, during peak periods, have to wait 40 minutes."

“I think the Brits are now embracing gelato,” adds Jon Adams, who founded Brighton’s Gelato Gusto in 2012. "I think in general people today are more discerning about the food they eat. Brighton in particular is a very foodie city and people appreciate the fact that we are an artisan producer making small batches of fresh gelato and sorbetto each day above the shop and they are willing." Meanwhile, Swoon in Bristol says it has seen as 43 per cent rise in sales up on last year.

Gelato, it seems, is set to explode in popularity across the UK. But there’s just one small problem to solve before it becomes embedded in British culture like it is in Italian, says Adams: "it would also be helpful if we had a little more sunshine."