Sunday, June 19, 2011

Yogurt oat cake and scotch duck egg

Yogurt oat cake with crunchy coconut glaze
Food Diary (June 19, 2011)
Breakfast: Rolled oats with toasted coconut, raisins, sunflower seeds and flax seeds
Lunch: Meatless chili con carne with rice
Dinner: Savoury polenta, rolled oats, granola, toast with cheese 
Baking/sweets: Yogurt oat cake with crunchy coconut glaze, custard sorbet

After many years I had a cake with a crunchy coconut glaze. I last had it when I was at boarding school in New Zealand. I distinctly remember the dessert, it was a light spongy cake with a fantastic crunchy glaze, served with a generous dollop of custard. The cake I had today was nowhere near as delicious. Boarding school meals leave a lasting impression, and rarely are the impressions positive. The cake was one of the rare bright moments, a simple sandwich was another. 

The sandwich was made with egg spread. I tried to recreate the recipe with some level of success. Perhaps recreating the exact dish is impossible without recreating the atmosphere and the mood. I remember the day when I first had the sandwich. We were on a mission to climb Mount Taranaki and the lovely ladies at the kitchen packed our lunch. The weather was dismal. We reached the first resting hut, cold, wet, miserable and hungry, enjoyed our lunch and went back. We didn’t reach the top, we barely made it past the foothills. I suppose under such conditions any meal would taste wonderful, except for beef olives. Stop giggling, beef olives is not what you think it is!

Beef olives ranks as one of the least favourite meals served by the boarding school kitchen. Many dinner plates never even reached the dining table, they took the short route from serving station straight to the station where you return empty plates, except in this case the plates were full. I don’t know how the cooks consistently managed to screw it up. They surely did a great job in maintaining consistency. Consistency is one of the factors that Michelin star restaurants are judged on. Our boarding kitchen would get full points for this, and probably the only points they would receive.

Meatless chili con carne with rice


Today's Favourite Photo
Source: Camemberu
Scotch Duck Egg



Today’s Favourite Blog
Source: Care2
Interesting article titled “9 Surprising Items Made With Animal Ingredients”.  Most items are non-food, unless of course you eat things you should not be eating. The nine items are:
1. Plastic bags
2. Car and bike tyres
3. Glue in Wood Work and Musical Instruments
4. Biofuels
5. Fireworks
6. Fabric Softener
7. Shampoo & Conditioner
8. Toothpaste
9. White and Brown Sugar

Purified ash from animal bones is used in filters to refine sugar by some brands, though there are other companies that use filters with granular carbon or ion exchange systems. Good to keep in mind in case you are a strict vegetarian. 

22 comments:

  1. Ah, memories of boarding school food.

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  2. Ooh, love the coconut on the yogurt oat cake!

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  3. Thank you for dropping by my blog, glad to have found yours too! Your background sounds very similar to mine and my partner's! Looking forward to browsing your recipes :-)

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  4. These recipes are very special and delicious. thanks for sharing


    I'm from Brazil, if you can, visit my blog, he has the option to English. Come a little bit of Brazilian recipes

    See you soon in



    Daniel Deywes
    http://feitonahora.blogspot.com

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  5. I'm now gonna google each of those item to find out just what animal parts they use for what!

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  6. In sugar?! You're kidding me? Fortunately I'm an all-roundatarian. So whatever they put in there, as long as it's not poisonous, is fine by me. And those beef olives aren't as interesting as I thought it would be ;-)

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  7. Crunchy coconut glaze...that definitely sounds like a bright spot!

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  8. I attended boarding school too, and you can bet I still recall how the food tasted! There were one or two favorite dishes but overall, they were just dire... That yoghurt oat cake and scotch duck egg both look enticing! Definitely non-boarding fare.

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  9. That cake looks good! Interesting dishes here!

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  10. I enjoyed a lot reading your school food memorie. I think we all have nostalgic dishes, which we would probably hate if we tasted them for the first time now. The other problem is they never taste the same... Both the cake and the egg spread look good! I used to eat the same egg spread when I was a child, but always with chives (the colours were lovely). My mum used to make another version too, with butter instead of mayonnaise. I hated this one.
    I think if consistency was the only criteria, Mc Donald's would be the best restaurant in the world!
    I have just heard on tv some French specialists saying that the safest places to eat (in terms of dangerous bacteria, such as in Germany, and in terms of hygiene) are fast food chains, and the bigger the better, since they are controlled all the time...
    It's awful, but true: I don't know anyone who got sick after a McDonald's meal, but I know many people who were really sick after a visit to a fancy and expensive restaurant (myself for example).
    Your 'made with animal ingredients" list is very surprising, the only ones I would guess would be glue and softener, shampoo (lanolin I suppose).
    I was very surprised too when I once saw a list of US products made with corn. I think if the corn disappeared one day, most industry fields would collapse!

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  11. um that fish spread on the last post did not look appetizing! sorry- i saw it when i hit the comment button. however, that yogurt oat cake looks amazing!!!!

    I didn't know that some companies use the ash for sugar but I'm not surprised. I think its interesting that you really never know about anything you consume - to be perfectly honest!

    t

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  12. It's so creative and inventive! Just beautiful and delicious!

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  13. That list of things made from animal products was so interesting. Who knew???

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  14. Gosh - I'd completely forgotten about our canteen food at school. We just had the sponge cake squares and the runny custard and certainly don't have the best of memories. We didn't get that crunchy glaze that you did in NZ - so here's to crunchy glazes for more happy school food memories!

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  15. Hi Mr. Three-Cookies! Today's post has interesting topics. The yogurt cake with coconut glaze looks delicious. I have some memories from childhood that I still think it's the best (it may not but in my memory it still is). The article about items made with meat...I wonder if it is animal oil for shampoo and conditioner...well sometimes it's better not know the details but how much ignorance we should be kept...great post today!

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  16. That cake looks delicious, and what a great picture of the duck egg. Considering I'm not that adventurous with food, I'm not sure if I'd try it, but the presentation sure makes it look tempting!

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  17. what a unique cake - I wonder what it tastes like!

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  18. ping: its definitely not poisonous!
    Sissi: thats really interesting - fast food chains being more safe. I guess it makes sense since if something goes wrong it will affect a lot more people. The Fat Duck has some issues relating to food poisoning but I've never heard of McD's or KFC customers getting poisoned etc
    Jill: not all cakes came with the crunchy glazy, others were like you describe it, with runny custard!
    Nami: "According to PETA, there are more than 20 components from animals that could be in your shampoo and conditioner."

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  19. The Scotch Dutch Egg picture looks interesting. Not sure I'd eat it, but it looks cool.

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  20. The yogurt cake looks so moist and tasty with crunchy golden coconut on top, even though you don't find it as delicious as it should be :D Still I want to have a huge piece of it :D The Scotch Dutch Egg looks real good! I have no idea about the taste, but it looks good and the colours are nice, too :)

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