Monday 28 September 2015

So Waffley Versatile

Fanny Cradock closes this part by blabbering on about a very particular tool of the trade. Luckily for me I bought a vintage, Italian one very recently, in perfectly unused condition, and I've been looking for an excuse to try it out! The stove-top Waffle Iron is not something I'd have expected Fanny to be blethering about, but as ever she is full of surprises. It's a lovely shiny piece of kitchen kit, I wonder how readily available they were back in Fannys time? Not that that would concern her of course, she'd continue to twaddle on about them before striking a deal with the importers and adding them to her catalogue...

Fanny Cradock Waffles

I'm also not sure how well known or how popular waffles themselves were outside of the States. Not that that would stop Fanny babbling about them.These are obviously not the potato ones which became staples of the 80's tea times, but the ones more like biscuits and rolled into cones if you were fancy. Fanny was. Fanny gives them their French translation to boost their appeal - she chats about Les Gaufres Amèricaines.

Fanny Cradock Waffles

Fanny starts her batter banter by combining perfectly ordinary (don't tell Wrights) self-raising flour with both bicarbonate of soda and baking powder in a roomy bowl. As the butter melts quietly on the stove, a beaten egg is dropped in and blended with a little milk until it makes a thick, springy dough. The remaining milk is very gradually but steadily beaten in too, once the dough is fairly smooth, and finally the butter, preferably with a trusty wooden spoon. The batter goes very glossy after this addition, and is worth the extra palaver.

Fanny Cradock Waffles

Fanny prattles on with very particular instructions for the waffle iron. It needs to heated perfectly dry on both sides, over a low flame, which can be done while making the batter. When the batter is ready to go, brush the insides of the iron with a little melted butter or oil (or even better still with saindoux seemingly) or if like me you are feeling modern, spray some oil over the surfaces. Fanny says it must be very hot, and must smoke viciously and sizzle. Indeed it does. She plops a dollop of batter on while still over a moderate heat and spreads it out before closing the iron. I tried that, but it slid around a lot, so I just plonked it on and closed them, squidging the batter evenly.

Fanny Cradock Waffles

Fanny's chatter is that if you overdo things and plop on too much batter it will escape out the sides, oozing and bubbling, so always have a clean, small knife to hand to cut it free. This turns out to be top advice until I get used the particular amounts for my iron. Fanny's final ramble of advice is to turn the iron over before checking if the first side is golden and cooked, and finishing off the underside. The waffles should never look a rather disconsolate beige. The finished waffles look great, crisp up once cooled and while warm wrap around the spindly thing that came with it to make (sort of) cones. My ice-cream would perhaps dribble from the bottom, but Fanny recommends serving simply with Maple Syrup and butter anyway. So I can dribble away quite happily while I gabble on about how great the waffle iron is...

Fanny Cradock Waffles

Monday 21 September 2015

Diamonds Are Forever - Sixty Years of Kitchen Magic

Somewhat unbelievably, 2015 marks the simply sensational sixtieth anniversary of Fanny Cradocks first ever proper TV show. Well, proper in Fanny's own special way. Prior to 1955 she had been a regular on radio of course, dispensing Hints for Housewives on Womans Hour, cooking up 'dishes which can be done in a flash'. However, it wasn't long before Fanny (then know plainly as Phyllis) and Johnnie transferred to TV. Their first 15-minute BBC show, The Cradocks with Kitchen Magic, was interestingly even then billed as 'an unusual style of TV cookery to a TV audience', but the ratings delivered with them scoring 73% of the potential audience despite its after dark time slot. I don't think any footage exists, although they later recreated it for Gas Board promotional film, but what a treat if it ever turned up!


Fanny and Johnnie filmed a follow up, the crackingly titled The Cradocks are Frying Tonight ('an evening dress version of their afternoon show') for the BBC before switching to independent TV for Associated Rediffusion who lured them with the glory of full half hour shows. Fanny felt they were much more suited to them than the measly 15 minutes the BBC offered. Chez Bon Viveur and Fanny's Kitchen were independent hits, but they soon returned to the BBC with Challenge in the Kitchen - where Fanny was pitted against a French male chef to explore 'if men cooked better than women' - and their very first Christmas show, the Bon Viveur Gala Christmas Dinner broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall.


The 1950's ended with yet more TV appearances with Fanny and Johnnie introducing their soon-to-be-well-established cookery club idea to the Mainly for Women afternoon show by making assiette de crudités and boxes of chocolates. Presumably these were particularly called for back then. They continued to make appearances on a variety of programmes, among them making exciting party feasts For Deaf Children and making a case for elegant presentation on Home at One Thirty. It was here that Fanny introduced her idea to make three course meals in 15 minutes. Beat that Jamie! Fifty years before his quick-fire series, just saying.


Fanny was still developing her unique persona and style, personally, as a TV cook and as a TV personality, confusingly popping up as a gardening expert in Living Today before returning to radio for Beginning to Cook, following another familiar future theme of six elementary lessons. The 1960's were a boon time for Fanny and TV however, with Kitchen Party, Home Cooking, Adventurous Cooking, Problem Cooking, Ten Classic Dishes, the ground-breaking Colourful Cookery which Fanny was surely born for and Giving a Dinner Party all airing. All with the essential accompanying booklet of course, and all in between popular appearances on Juke Box Jury or Call My Bluff. We just couldn't get enough Fanny.


The 60's also saw Fanny's first full Christmas series, Christmas Cooking, which covered the Pudding, The Cake and the Birds - all the festive fundamentals. The 1970's are often seen as the glory years for Fanny on TV, but perhaps this is simply because most of the footage still exists? With Fanny Cradock Invites, she invited us to a range of parties each episode from Cheese and Wine, Sunday Brunch and even one for Teenagers. very much the Nigella of her day. Again, it was all in the booklet. Fanny jumped from Generation Game appearances to frolicking around Europe exploring their cuisines and giving expert advice to other cooks for Nationwide. This new role as 'advice giver' would come back to haunt but, but as 1975 continued we saw perhaps her most famous shows, the wonderful Fanny Cradock Cooks for Christmas, which are still shown regularly each festive season, often to collective gasps from TV audiences and Twitter alike.


The 1970's also saw the demise of Fanny's TV career with the ill-judged Gwen Troaks Banquet on the Big Time. It is often cited as her final TV appearance, following a rude demolition of poor Gwen's ideas and skills. In scenes which would be popular for 'judges' today, the viewers in the 70's found it hard to swallow. However, during the 1980's she popped up on Pebble Mill, Wogan and the unusually titled Sin on Saturday to name but a few. I'd love to see that one particularly! Her final TV cooking slots were for independent breakfast TV, introducing the early morning TV-am viewers to the wonders of filo pastry.


Rather sadly, most of Fanny's TV appearances remain either in the vaults or have disappeared forever, sometimes popping up in a welcome manner on compilation shows and tribute programmes like TV Heroes, Look Who's Cooking and the Way We Cooked. I'd love to have a rummage around in the archives though, and I'm sure we'd all enjoy the televisual treats that could be uncovered. Perhaps the BBC are already planning a suitably splendid Fanny Cradock Diamond Anniversary Celebration? We are still hungry to see Fanny's unusual style of cookery... Aren't we?

Monday 14 September 2015

Thanks for the Tools of the Trade

Fanny Cradock encourages us to 'take time off from cooking' with the arrival of Part 24 of the Cookery Programme. She's not suggesting we just sit back, kick off our carpet slippers, pour a glass of sherry, watch some TV and order in some take-away you understand, it's time to grab our clipboards and do a stock-take in the kitchen. How do our tools of the trade match up to Fanny's high standards?

Fanny Cradock Tools of the Trade

Fanny recognises that we won't all have the array of implements that she has in her dream kitchen, but we need things to aspire to naturally. Fanny says she is 90% certain that all her readers started to cook with the most basic of items, as she herself did, including a jam jar for a rolling pin. she doesn't know but I used an empty lemonade bottle, glass of course, for many years. Although Fanny displays page after page of equipment, she knows she can only show a fraction of those that are used by professionals, a grouping to which she includes herself. Otherwise Part 24 would be an extended 20 part catalogue she tells us. Diane lends a hand by showing how to make her own felt roll for her butchery knives, keeping them safe from temptation harm. Wouldn't want any nasty 'accidents' in Fanny's kitchen.

Fanny Cradock Tools of the Trade

Fanny discusses all kinds of 'gear' - casseroles, stockpots, rings, tins and assorted home baking equipment, jelly moulds, icing equipment and lastly, not as expected, salad bowls. Her own wooden bowl came courtesy of some Australian friends and a 300 year old tree, how does yours measure up? Fanny is well aware that most readers will have come from families who have to make-do in culinary terms through lack of funds. Fanny is keen to make readers aware that both her and Johnnie came from backgrounds of great privilege and had exceptionally spoilt childhoods as a result.

Fanny Cradock Tools of the Trade

However, in an attempt to connect with the readers, Fanny states that mercifully for both their characters they lost it all and hit rock bottom. It was this devastating loss and brush with poverty that spurned Fanny and Johnnie to success you see. When she began to earn money, without any training whatsoever, except in how to be a debutant, Fanny had her trustee jam jar for a rolling pin, frying pans without handles which other people had thrown away, tea towels made from cotton garments too shabby to wear and a junk shop piece of marble for her pastry work.

Fanny Cradock Tools of the Trade

She got by though, and hopes that even the poorest of readers will be inspired to do the same, by scrimping, saving and working hard, like she and Johnnie have done, to have such a gorgeous kitchen. Fanny leaves us with a thank-you, as she spends another happy hour looking at all her things she is reminded that if it wasn't for her readers she would have none of it. So, in many ways she believes it really is OUR kitchen too, as we have enabled it. So, no need to buy all the things at all, just pop round and share in Fanny's super-ness. I'm sure she wouldn't mind. Now, back to the cooking, Fanny has more earning to do!

Fanny Cradock Tools of the Trade

Monday 7 September 2015

They Eat Horses, Don't They?

These days it is dead popular to hide things in food for children to get them to eat the stuff they wouldn't normally choose. Usually healthy items, like vegetables. Fanny Cradock had a very different perspective I think, she liked to encourage the little ones to make their own bits and pieces, knowing that they'd be more likely to eat their own creations. Each part of the weekly series ends with a 'recipe' for small fry, quite unlike anything you'd see today. Either that or Fanny thought the wee ones needed some extra encouragement to eat more biscuits and chocolate...?

Fanny Cradock Chocolate Horse Biscuits

I know what you are thinking - biscuits and chocolate, it must be chocolate biscuits? Clearly just having chocolate biscuits alone is just not enough for Fanny. Where would the fun be in taking ordinary shop bought biscuits and adding your own chocolate? Well, it sounds ok to me, and would surely keep the nippers quiet for a while at least? But no, Fanny has to take it to a different level, naturally, transforming the ordinary shortbread biscuits into horses.

Fanny Cradock Chocolate Horse Biscuits

Yes, horses. It wouldn't be my first thought either. Perhaps some of Fannys friends with children (did she have any?) were equine obsessed, and needed little horse-shaped snacks to take to the gymkhana? Fanny makes it all sound so easy, simply cut the shortbread biscuits in half and scoop out a little circle from the middle to give the impression of legs. I ended up with half a packet of broken biscuits as they crumbled either when cutting or scooping. My knife cut them into many bits, and the piping nozzle I used to create the 'scoop' shattered those that survived. It was like a nightmare Grand National where only one or two made it past the finish line.

Fanny Cradock Chocolate Horse Biscuits

Perhaps Fanny smashed all her biscuits too, she doesn't let on, but she uses little off-cuts to make the horses heads and tails by sticking them on with some melted chocolate. She uses ordinary milk chocolate, but I have white. My horses I feel need to be grander. Fanny has given me aspiration, if nothing else. In sticking on the heads and tails there are a few more breaks and mishaps, so the chocolate becomes more like glue, which is quite ironic.

Fanny Cradock Chocolate Horse Biscuits

Finally the 'horses' are dipped in the remaining melted chocolate, which is easier said than done, to cover them before being decorated with eyes (little silver balls which ended up all over the house when I dropped the box), saddles and reigns. Fanny makes hers from almond paste, but I have some cake modelling sugar paste for mine. Just not sure what to do with all those broken biscuits, apart from scooping them up and eating them myself... Fanny displays her horses in an inedible field of fake grass, and gives them a bowl of nuts to 'eat'. I've spent the best part of an hour collecting up little silver balls, so mine are left to frolic carousel-like on an orange-half with the aid of some well-placed cocktail sticks. I'm not so sure any children of today would be impressed, they wouldn't win the dressage would they?

Fanny Cradock Chocolate Horse Biscuits

Too selfish to keep these treasures to myself, I am entering them in this months Treat Petite, hosted by Cakeyboi this month, (Baking Explorer Kat will be sorry to miss these) which has an 'Anything Goes' theme. These fit so well, don't you think?

Wednesday 2 September 2015

May All Your Oily Balls Turn Out Like Howards + Book Giveaway

Innuendo. The Fanny Cradock Cookery Programme is full of it. Filthy Fanny, she always has her tongue firmly in her cheek and her ever-higher eyebrows raised as she is writing. You've probably noticed already. It's everywhere in the baking world these days. The whispering mucky undertones have become overt in the Great British Bake Off with Mary Berry trying to steal Fanny's crown. Insinuation King Howard Middleton's new book, Delicious Gluten Free Baking, is full of double entendre too. "Ah yes," Howard tells me "it's a vital part of the secret Bake Off audition process - the innuendo challenge - I did rather well in that!" Future applicants take note...

Fanny Cradock Howard Middleton

Fanny had over 40 cookbooks published during her lifetime, dear old Howard doesn't seem daunted by this as his first hits the shelves. "It's very exciting! Writing the book was enjoyable, at times frustrating, and absolutely exhausting. I had to be very disciplined to do it alongside working full-time and I'm not a naturally disciplined person. Another 39 could be a bit too ambitious I think." Well, Fanny's final cookbook was called The Ambitious Cook so aim high Howard!

Fanny Cradock Howard Middleton

Howard's book is hilarious to read, just as Howard himself was on Bake Off, but is jammed with fantastic sounding recipes that everyone will crave, whether they are following a gluten-free diet or not. Howards aim was to create recipes that people miss, and I think he's cracked it. Fanny had a cookbook for almost everything, even one about Foil Cookery, so I'm sure she'd have approved. "For some people it's a necessity so can't be a fad, but for those who don't have dietary restrictions I see it as discovering new and usual ingredients that are naturally gluten free. Learning from other cuisines and cultures has always influenced what we eat. Oh, I've just done a search online for Fanny's book of foil cookery, my life may not be complete without it!" Research for book two Howard? But please, stop Googling while we are chatting...

Fanny Cradock Howard Middleton

There are so many recipes I want to make in the book, but there is one that I had to make straight away in Fanny's honour. Doughnuts. Dutch ones, Oliebollen, or Oily Balls as Howard refers to them, allegedly this is the Dutch translation. Mucky. I told you he was innuendo obsessed. Or is it me? The recipe is easy to follow, and in between giggles I get my deep-fat fryer on the go ready for these gluten-less bready balls of joy speckled with dried apple and raisins. They turn out light and golden, with fluffy centres... Just as Fanny said hers should be, just as you'd expect doughnuts to be!

Fanny Cradock Howard Middleton

What would Fanny reckon to these doughnuts? "I remember her as a wonderfully trenchant character, barking at Johnnie and her audience with dogged aplomb. She was also one of the icons in that transition from black and white TV to colour (I'm now feeling very old), with her vibrant clothes and make-up... and vivid food! And your blog reminds us of that, with hors d'oeuvres of blue eggs and the multi-coloured cartwheel trifle! I do have a weakness for that sense of style - the book has a recipe for Snowball Cocktail Cakes, which is my boozy, kitsch homage to my late great aunt, Auntie Olive's unique approach to baking, and the lure of her drinks cabinet. I hope Fanny would approve." Booze, kitsch, vividness? Of course she would! I do love a Snowball too, must bake these tout de suite! And everything else...

Fanny Cradock Howard Middleton

Fanny had Johnnie, Mary has Paul, Mel's got Sue, but who would be Howard's dream sidekick, apart from Fanny obviously? "I think Fanny would've made mincemeat of me!" Omelette of course. "I have to say my partner, Peter, is my dream sidekick don't I? I recently did a demo at the Bakewell Baking Festival and he kept popping up just off stage when I needed a bowl or a spoon or something. My sister and young nieces were in the audience - she was explaining to them that we were like Fanny and Johnnie!" So maybe the 40-book deal isn't so far way? "I'm fairly easy going. I never expected half the opportunities that have come along, so I'll continue to go with the flow. I've got lots of demos coming up, and I'd love to do some more writing. Fingers crossed the future is as bright as a Fanny frock!" Wink. Raise eyebrow. Look knowingly. Innuendos at the ready? Bake!

Fanny Cradock Howard Middleton

Thanks to Howard for being lovey and answering my questions! Howard's publisher, Little, Brown sent me a preview copy of Howards book, Delicious Gluten Free Baking, to enjoy and one for me to giveaway... Simply leave me a blog post comment telling me what bake you'd like to make Gluten Free and fill in the rafflecopter thingy-me-jig which will select the winner! Good luck!

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