Luna

Avoiding is good Dragon. I avoid avoiding ice cream

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Dragon, you are hilarious ... 'love your humour.

Baldur

I wholeheartedly agree

Baldur

I think I overdosed on hot fudge sauce last week, so I'm eating my ice cream in it's natural state for a while

Baldur

Baldur's Bourbon Fudge Sauce
In the bottom section of a double boiler (bain marie) bring water to a low simmer. Place the top section of the double boiler over the simmering water and add to it:

A 14oz can of sweetened condensed milk
4oz of unsweetened baking chocolate chopped
4oz of bittersweet baking chocolate chopped

heat slowly stirring occasionally until the chocolate has melted and blended smoothly into the sweetened condensed milk.
If the sauce is thicker than you'd like at this point stir in a tablespoon or two of milk. (I like it thick)

Remove the double boiler from the stove and stir 1oz of bourbon into the chocolate sauce.
Serve warm over ice cream.

In place of the bourbon you can substitute Rum, or any flavored liqueur.
Try Grande Marnier, Frangelico, Framboise, Kahlua etc etc

Baldur

Make sure you are using sweetened condensed milk, and not evaporated milk which comes in a very similar can. The cheaper store brand works just as well as the Brand name here.

Luna

...running drooling to the store.....

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This is yummy. Baldur, do you have a recipe for Welsh Rarebit?

Baldur

I do actually, which reminds me that i haven't made it in ages.
I'll post it in the next day or so

Baldur

Does anyone have a recipe for Eccles Cakes? I haven't found a recipe yet that is as good as the one the local bakery used in the neighborhood where I grew up. The bakery went out of business years ago

Qsilv

Yes! Strangely enough... but give me a bit of time to look for it.

Baldur

Wow! that's an obscure recipe nowadays too.
What the bakery used was no doubt pie dough rather than the puff pastry most recipes called for. I remember a small round 'eye' cut out of the top.
the filling had currants and cake crumbs, I do not believe it had cinnamon, but it's been a long time

Qsilv

Story-- I lived in England for a few years, and somewhere in the first few months a German friend came to visit and expressed a yearning for them. He remembered them from back in the mists of his own earlier life, and his description seemed simple enough. It was "tipping down" so I tried concocting them from what he told me. Pffff... it was good, but NOT right. The rain stopped, a search ensued, and it turned out the local markets all carried them, all essentially alike.

Eventually, too, I got up to Eccles, in the Manchester area, but they were pretty standardized there too.

America, however, is sadly lacking in ANY variant of these (along with quite a few other things I miss achingly), and the problem I've had in making my own is getting them thick enough. If I'm not careful, they wind up a flat delicate little packet, when they should have a substantial thickness and an oddly powdery quality lurking in the flake. Sound about right to you?

Baldur

Yes, that does sound right, and they are certainly not delicate.
I know that there used to be a substatial English population in Providence, RI (where I grew up), but that was long ago. By the time I had my first Eccles Cake, the area was Polish/Russian/Lithuanian/Jewish/Italian/Armenian/etc. The bakery was run by an Italian family, how they got into making Eccles Cakes would be an interesting story. They were never the showiest pastry in the display case, but they had a following as they were always offered for sale.
Unless LOL I was the only person to ever buy them, in which case they could have been very historic Eccles Cakes that they would dust off periodically hoping to eventually sell them

Baldur

+n

Qsilv

ok, in poking around on the net for photos, this is the one best showing the shape and proportions I'm after--
http://britishfood.about.com/od/recipeindex/r/ecclescakes.htm

this one is NOT right, but the commentaries are priceless--
http://mattikaarts.com/blog/baking-recipes/eccles-cakes-the-classic-british-tea-cake/

R ecipe-- (my recipes are always pretty casual... weather affects all baking)

PASTRY
1 C flour
1 pinch salt
~1 C unsalted butter (yes, you're going to make a VERY short pie crust dough!)
~1/4 C water (I tend to add vanilla and/or lemon)

FILLING
1 C currants
1/4 C candied citrus peel (minced fine, dried works too)
~1 tsp nutmeg (cinnamon optional... play with it)
~1/2 C sugar (note: caster is finer than granulated; demarara is a light golden brown with a lovely distinctive flavor)
...more butter
.......and-- BRANDY!

Heat the oven to as 400F+
Chill the butter
Make up the dough by cutting in the chilled butter in gradual batches
Rest the dough in the fridge for half an hour or so
Mix the filling together in a saucepan and heat it gently
Roll out the chilled dough rather thickly (I'd roll it thinner for pie, thicker for cookies.... and I roll onto a floured board, you may be fancier/cleverer)
Cut rounds ~4" (cookie cutters work, I use a soup mug... so sue me)
Pile a bit of filling on each round (it should be moist but not gooey)
Bring up the edges of the rounds, moisten and pinch closed
Turn the cakes over to get the pinched part down
Flatten the cakes a bit (rolling pin is a tidy way) til they look like the photo I recommended... don't get fatched if a few currents break through, you need a steam vent anyway
Pinch out a centered little hole (or use scissors)
Brush the tops with egg white and sprinkle with sugar if you want to
Shovel them onto your baking sheet (with this short a dough it doesn't really need greasing; parchment's nice if it's handy)
Bake 10 - 15 minutes, depending on... life. Risen gold is what you're after.
Cool on a rack... Enjoy!

;>

Qsilv

- as (no idea how that word got in there... elves!)

Baldur

maybe brandy is what the other recipes are missing
they're filling was rather dry

Baldur

-y're +ir

Qsilv

brandy makes the taste sooo much richer...
the filling is a bit, well, not dry, it's moist, but a long ways from mince-meat pie type
whenever you get around to playing with this, I'd love to hear your results.