You Must Be Yolking

More often than not dear old Fanny is deadly serious when it comes to her discussion of food, her directions for preparation and her dissections for garnish. It is a serious business after all, and she wants us to take it equally seriously. However from time to time she just feels likes throwing it all up in air to have a chuckle. Clowning around isn't a normal way of things in the Cradock Kitchen, as you can imagine, but when she feels a little prank coming on, she frolics in and can barely contain herself. If the pun is a visual one, it would seem, more the better, and best of all if she can (wise)crack with an eggs-capade or two, the yolk is wonderfully complete. I'll try and contain myself...

Observable one-liners are very much en vogue at the moment, with the likes of the ever-inventive Frances Quinn and her amazing showstoppers on Great British Bake Off. Fannys stunts don't strive for the same standard of shenanigans, they are not quite as elaborate, but she does try to trick our eyes as we tuck in. Here, she wants us to believe we are making Poached Eggs. Sweet ones. Worry not, it's NOT like her beloved omelettes. There's nothing more to it than some droll sponge, quirky cream and apricot cups full of jest... The joke's on you if you think all cooking is complicated.

Fanny takes her ordinary 'fresh' sponge (you'll see that I freshly purchased a Madeira Cake but you may interpret her directions as you will) and slices it into squares, *spoiler*, as if to resemble slices of toast. You can probably guess the punchline to this one. My Madeira was a little thick and much as I like a doorstep sandwich, I neatly sliced it down the centre before beginning. The slices were still fairly hefty, so you could do the same again. Or you could just eat a huge wad of cake, like I did.

Fanny carefully whips some cream, by hand of course, until it is thick but not too firm, and spreads a little on each slice of 'toast' in as neat a not-quite-circular egg-shape as you can manage. Fanny suggests some grown-up supervision may be required, these are really for the little people to make you see. The final witty step is to glibly open a tin of apricot halves (or cups as Fanny correctly refers to them). An adult is definitely required for this, especially if like me your tin is the old-fashioned type without a ring-pull. I'm all for authenticity you see...

Dry off a 'cup' and plonk it onto the cream, a little off centre if you are pernickety about detail like moi, and voilà, there you have Fanny's Sweet Poached Eggs on Toast. Don't mention to Fanny they more closely resemble Fried Eggs, she won't laugh along. Everyone will be mightily fooled, everyone will laugh heartily, everyone will revel enviously in your whimsical repartee. They are, quite incidentally, fairly tasty too - a sweet, cakey, creamy, fruity treat. Farcical Fanny has also worked on a suitable joke *clears throat*, ahem, to share as you serve them, just to build on the theme. I'm just copying it out as she has written it okay? Alternatively, supply your own egg-based humour... "Do you know what the hen said to the dish of scrambled egg? Gee, you poor, crazy, mixed up kids!"

Poor old Dom at Belleau Kitchen may end up with egg on his face this month, as I'm sneakily entering these 'Sweet Poached Eggs' into his Simply Eggcellent blogger link-up thingy... The theme this month is Anything Goes, I do hope Dom is a good egg and accepts Fannys Funny Frolic in the good spirit it is intended... Pop over and share a 'yolk' or two with him...

Oh Madeira! Stickly Pricklies

This is one of those Fanny Cradock recipes that I had to read and re-read many times, surely it couldn't be right? I know Madeira Cake as a buttery, lemony, dense cake, fairly simple but sometimes simple is best. But hang on a minute, Fannys version, which she calls Real Madeira Sponge - or Gâteau au Madère - is made from only three ingredients - eggs, sugar and flour. Where's the butter and the flavour? Fanny says it's from an old Mrs Graham Blandy family 'receipt' which she has never found an equal for anywhere else. I don't think she looked very hard. Presumably Fanny calls it 'real' to mark it against all those imposter Madeira cakes that are being baked and scoffed in huge numbers all over the world. Pah, what do they know? 

The recipe that Fanny favours seems to make a ginormous cake, as well as a 'surplus' of mixture which Fanny suggests you can make an additional smaller cake from or lots of little buns. It also uses seven eggs. Yes, seven! These two things together lead me to cut the recipe down to a more manageable three egg version. I'm sure Mrs Blandy would understand.

The only problem in cutting things down is the uncertainty of what size cake tin to butter and flour in preparation, but I plump for a smallish oblong one. Be brave I think to myself, listen to all that Fanny has taught you so far. The cake itself is made from whisking up the egg yolks, adding in the sugar, caster of course, whisking again and adding the flour. It becomes quite a thick paste at this stage, I really can't see how it will transform into a sponge at all. The final addition is the whisked up egg whites, which do loosen the mixture but also require a fair bit of beating to incorporate. Have I just whipped all the air from my sponge? Fear not, after some careful baking it appears from the oven looking golden and pillowy, and literally jumps out of the carefully prepared tin to cool.

Now, it doesn't look or sound like the most exciting cake in Fannys collection, but of course she has a perfect idea to tiddle it up and inject some fun into this fat free sponge. That is to transform them into replicas of little wooden hedgehog toys that she saw on a shopping trip to Heals with Johnnie recently, naturally. I mean it would be almost everyone's first thought, right? I don't have the hedgehog toy to work from, just a picture, but Fanny made a template and cut copies from the Madeira cake, so, so do I. Except I have to draw the hedgehog first. Once brushed with warmed apricot jam and buried in a mountain of desiccated coconut they are brought to life with eyes and a snout. Fanny uses squished currants for hers, but I have some chocolate chips to hand. Fanny adds on 'wheels' made from little Macarons. The original toy had wheels. My drawing didn't. And there we have it, Stickly Pricklies as Fanny calls them. I'm not sure who would make them or why, but they do seem to have little 'eat me' personalities that the fatless Madeira alone could only dream of. No butter, no flavouring and albino. Didn't anyone tell Fanny hedgehogs aren't white?