What Colour Were The 1970's?

Brown. Everything was freakishly brown. Furniture was brown. Think of all those drab wooden sideboards and burnt-looking velour sofas that houses were so very full of. Our houses themselves were brown. With brown front doors. Wallpaper was brown. Sometimes it was more off-the-wall than on it with swirly patterns granted, but generally it was different shades of brown. Our clothes were brown. Our shoes were brown. We were all tanned. We liked it. Brown was where it was at. We fawned over it. We were happy with brown. Until someone paired it with another ludicrous colour of course.

Orange. We had outlandish orange curtains hanging in rooms to match the peculiar orange lampshades. Rugs were a range of far-out orange tones. Our kitchens were so orange we needed sunglasses to enter them. We had offbeat ornaments that were orange and maybe a bit space-aged. But orange still. And kooky. We matched them with brown. We embraced the eccentric, extraordinary orange and brown combinations in our homes, in our wardrobes and in our lives. Even our tans went orange. If it wasn't for orange the whole curious decade would just have been, well, brown.

Almost. Okay, Fanny did her best to banish the buff and beige, bringing every colour of the rainbow to the buffet table. But the table was probably brown, the table cloth would undoubtedly be brown and orange. The guests crowded round it would certainly be dressed head to foot in cocoa inspired patterns of chocolatey brown and zesty orange, with orange accessories that perhaps looked like they'd been fashioned from the space-age adornments scattered around the house. And dipped in extra brown. You get the idea.

Fanny decided to embrace the unavoidable brown-ness of the time. In celebration, she unveiled her Brown Meringue. She could've worked more on the name, but do remember how hip and happening it was to love brown. Today we want our meringues to be so glowingly white they match our overly-whitened teeth and pristine, shiny, clinical white homes. Not brown. In the 1970's Fanny replaced the white sugar in her meringue mix for the tawny brown stuff and whipped up a brown frenzy. If she could've got brown egg whites I'm sure she would've. That's how she rocked.

Bang on trend, she pairs it of course with... Orange. She replaces the milk in a custard with equal quantities of orange juice and water, using the otherwise abandoned egg yolks perfectly. A splash of orange blossom water adds a shade more orange. The brown meringue is baked on a sheet of rice paper for reasons unknown, but also why not. It emerges so fashionably brown, all it needs is a seventies swirl of the orange custard. And a whole mandarin orange plonked in the centre. With a bay leave decoration. And freshly released citrus segments to trim. It tastes wonderfully caramelly and orangey. It tastes like the 70's. There are no other descriptions. It's brown. It's orange. It is the 1970's.

Taking The Pistachio

Fanny reckons that she has the home cook completely sussed. She knows how to make them vulnerable. According to Fanny they are already susceptible enough when it comes to chocolate recipes, so her plan is to make them (or hang on a cotton-picking minute, does she mean me?) doubly defenceless. Fanny can always spot a chocolate obsessed home cook you see, they will tend to read, ponder over and generally sort out any other kind of recipe, but give them an absolute dud with chocolate and they will rush to try it. The solution is of course to give them a good one, one of Fanny's! Fanny says there is not one 'woman in a thousand' who will fail to betray her slimming diet with 'just a slice', 'only one' or 'just a very small portion'. No duds here.

I'm not on a slimming diet, but the flavour combination that makes me go weak is chocolate and pistachio. I just love it. Fanny uses pistachios from time to time, but warns that in the 1970's they were hard to find, and way beyond the already stretched purse for many. I'm not tightening any belts just yet though and was thrilled to find the Lindt Pistachio Delight on sale in my local supermarket - I'd previously discovered it in Paris and fell in love... Chocolate with a pistachio filling, what's not to adore? Perfect for a twist on Fanny's Moist Chocolate Cake, non?

Fanny starts this cake by preparing the tin, naturally. She uses a perfectly ordinary 8" Victoria Sponge tin, buttered, lined with a disc of greaseproof paper, buttered again and then floured. It may seem like a faff, but I find it quite therapeutic really and the cakes always pop out well at the other end. This sponge is genoise in style. Fanny says to whisk up whole eggs and an extra yolk, with caster sugar in a bowl over another bowl of boiling water. Not that I want to cheat or anything, but I've seen recently that using a stand mixer on high speed produces the same results, and is less finicky. After all that tin preparation I need a short cut! Poor Sarah, my mixing assistant, makes light work of it, whipping it up until it is thick, risen and pale in colour. Fanny warns that if you cut down on the whipping you will spoil the cake! Thankfully Poor Sarah just keeps going and going.

This sponge only has a small amount of flour, but it needs to be added carefully so as to not take all the air out of the risen mix. Fanny folds hers in with a plastic spatula before adding softened chocolate chips, which I'm swapping for my pistachio chocolate. The mix is really thick and sticky, so takes a fair bit of folding to incorporate the flour and chocolate before pouring into the prepared tin. Fanny bakes hers for the very exact timing of 24 minutes, but I found mine needed much longer - probably another 20 minutes. Maybe it's because I didn't whisk it over the boiling water which presumably would've started the cooking process? Or maybe Fanny made a mistake? Surely not.

Fanny hides the inevitable crusty cracked top of the cake by flipping it over, then covering it with homemade almond paste. To keep with the pistachio theme, I experiment, switching the almonds for pistachios. I whizz up some gorgeously green and purple nuts and blend them with an egg white, orange blossom water, rose water and icing sugar. Just a quick knead and it's ready to roll. Fanny glues hers on with warmed apricot jelly, but I am using some homemade marmalade, which seems to work well. The pistachio paste is a great colour, natural for once, and covers the bouncy chocolate cake well. Fanny makes chocolate shavings to top hers, I chop up some more pistachio chocolate. You can never have too much. I'm ready to be exposed to a slice or two, it tastes nutty, not too sweet and very light. Surely not too calorific, it must be mostly air. I'll leave the small portions for those vulnerable slenderising home cooks, Fanny is training me in her professional ways, which I am taking to mean eat well, eat often, eat lots. That's my kind of diet.