Make your own candied peel

Candied peel is an ingredient that pops up a lot in winter and springtime British recipes - from Christmas cakes to hot cross buns. It can also be quite expensive to buy in the shops, and difficult to come by in most places in Japan, so it's definitely something I wanted on the handy "make your own..." list. Most of all I just really like the idea of a nose-to-tail style of no-waste baking. Let's have more of that please!

I made this batch on one of the recent snowy Tokyo days with a view to using them in hot cross buns coming up in April. Here is the method I used.

Candied orange peel - Ingredients

• 3 large oranges (you could do this with other citrus fruits too)
• 200 ml water (plus extra for initial boiling stages)
• 450g sugar, and extra caster sugar to dust 

Method

First peel your oranges. I used just 3 large oranges for quite a lot (300g+) of peel. If you cut off the ends and score lines down the sides of the oranges then you get nice shaped pieces to work with.

How thin you want to slice depends whether you will use them for decoration or for chopping up and going into bread or cake batters. Mine is the latter and so I went quite chunky.

Put the peels in a saucepan, cover with water and bring to the boil twice, discarding the hot water each time.

Next, measure the recipe's sugar and water into the pan and then bring to a simmer.

Add the peels and return to a simmer.

Heat like this for about 1 hour or until translucent and then drain off the syrup.

Dry the slices separately as much as possible, so they don't stick together.

I found that dredging with sugar worked best after the slices were cold and somewhat dry already. If you dredge too soon, the sugar melts in a thick layer on the peel, but what you want to see, is granules of unmelted sugar, coating the peel.

Eat a couple as they are, dip some in dark chocolate as very sugary snacks, or store in a ziplock bag for when you make your hot cross buns.

These peels should keep very well at room temperature for a few weeks, some people manage to store them for months if they have been well saturated with syrup in the boiling stage, dried very well before storage and then stored in an airtight container. Until I have better evidence to the contrary I would say that if you are planning to use them more than a month later, like me, then freeze them to be on the safe side, as they can go moldy.

Make your own Marzipan

This is a cooked marzipan recipe that contains eggs, as British home baking marzipan recipes tend to. It yields over 900g which should be enough for wrapping two 20cm long Battenberg cakes, and certainly enough to cover a 20cm round fruitcake. Marzipan keeps quite well wrapped in plastic in the fridge for two weeks, and if you are drying it out on top of a christmas cake it will keep longer, 1-2 months.

See here for tips on how to get ready-made marzipan in Japan, links to alternative cooked/raw, eggs/no eggs, alternative nuts marzipan recipes and comparative taste testing excitement!

Ingredients

• 450g ground almonds (and possibly a little more)
• 200g icing sugar
• 200g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 0.5 tsp almond extract
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp brandy

Method

1. Mix sugars together and add the eggs.
2. Set the bowl over a pan of gently simmering water ensuring the bottom of the bowl doesn't touch the water. Whisk the egg mixture continually until the temperature reaches at least 60°C and is maintained for over 3 and a half minutes. (This should take about 12 minutes in total.)
3. Remove the bowl from the heat and cool by standing the base in cold water or resting on a cool pack while whisking in the lemon juice, brandy and almond extract.
4. When the mixture is cool stir in the ground almonds and knead briefly to bring it together. Depending how big your eggs were you may need to add more ground almonds to make a firm mixture, however it will also firm up a little on chilling. Divide into required portion sizes, wrap in plastic and chill until needed.

Marzipan recipe adapted from:
http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/party-food/accompaniment/almond-icing-marzipan.html

Make your own self raising flour

Make your own self raising flour - (metric grams and U.S. cup versions):

• Sift together 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder and a quarter of a teaspoon of salt per cup of flour in your recipe
• which if you prefer is 5-7 grams of baking powder (about a teaspoon), and 1 gram (a small pinch) of salt for every 100g of flour.

Source for the baking powder ratio: Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen.

Self raising flour, or self-rising flour as it's sometimes less gracefully called is plain, all purpose white flour with the raising agents already included, along with salt. The raising agents used in self raising flour vary depending on the brand but all include a dry acid component along with an alkaline base, that react to produce carbon dioxide bubbles that leaven the batter - Odlums self raising flour uses sodium bicarbonate, monocalcium phosphate and sodium acid pyrophospate for example, and Tesco's self-raising flour uses calcium phosphate and sodium bicarbonate.

If you look at the label of the baking powder you'll use to create your self raising flour you'll see a similar mix of ingredients - an acid such as calcium acid phosphate, an alkaline base usually sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), and you'll also see a filler such as corn starch to keep the mixture from getting moist and to make it easier to measure out. Which, incidentally, is the difference between baking powder and baking soda - baking powder often contains baking soda as the alkaline base to react with the dry acidic component, where baking soda is just the dry alkali. Many American recipes for things like muffins use baking soda only because the other ingredients such as yoghurt or buttermilk provide the acid for the reaction.

All commercially available baking powders are double-acting, meaning that you get some of the carbon dioxide gas produced when the baking powder gets wet during mixing, and the remainder is released when a specific temperature is reached during baking. The amount of gas released at each stage varies depending on the leavening chemicals used, with aluminium-based leaveners seeming to reserve most of the gas production for the temperature-induced phase.

Some people prefer to avoid the use of aluminium-based baking powders such as Clabber Girl, Calumet and the Japanese brand 'Home Made Cake' due to the stronger taste or health concerns, and opt for an aluminium-free baking powder such as Rumford or Aikoku. Although Rumford is a double-acting powder, the only acid used is monocalcium phosphate (calcium acid phosphate) which releases 2/3 of the carbon dioxide within 2 minutes of coming into contact with water - so best not to let your batters hand around too long!

While we're at it, here is some fun chemistry Japanese to help you figure out what your baking powder is made of (I should note here that though this information is correct in my understanding, I'm not a chemist):

• 炭酸水素ナトリウム / たんさんすいそナトリウム: sodium hydrogen carbonate (baking soda)
• 重炭酸ナトリウム / じゅうたんさんナトリウム: sodium bicarbonate (also baking soda)
• 重曹 / じゅうそう: also baking soda (abbreviated for of above)
• 第一リン酸カルシウム / だいいちりんさんカルシウム: monocalcium phosphate
• 酒石酸水素カリウム / しゅせきさんすいそカリウム: potassium bitartrate, also called potassium hydrogen tartrate (cream of tartar)
• (焼き)ミョウバン / やきミョウバン: potassium aluminium sulfate (burnt alum, potash)
• 硫酸カリウムアルミニウム / りゅうさんカリウムアルミニウム: also potassium aluminium sulfate
• 硫酸ナトリウムアルミニウム / りゅうさんナトリウムアルミニウム: sodium aluminium sulfate
• ピロリン酸カルシウム / ピロリンさんカルシウム: calcium pyrophosphate
• 酸性ピロりん酸ナトリウム /さんせいピロリンさんナトリウム: sodium acid pyrophosphate or disodium pyrophosphate
• クエン酸 / クエンさん: citric acid
• フマル酸 / フマルさん: fumaric acid
• グルコノデルタラクトン: glucono delta-lactone

If you read Japanese, there is also an excellent investigation into a whole set of aluminium-free baking powders commonly available in Japan and their chemical components here.

Thanks to Nick-chan for sparking the idea for this post!

Make your own 'mixed spice' for British baking

Many British winter baking recipes (Yorkshire parkin, mince pies, Christmas cake, bread and butter pudding..), and a few spring ones (Welsh cakes, some hot cross bun recipes..) call for a mysteriously imprecise ingredient named 'mixed spice'. This is a particularly British mix, which is different to 'allspice' and different again to '5 spice'. How confusing. It has a warm, exotic fragrance, redolent of Christmas and mulled wine. It seems that no Japanese supermarkets sell the particular British blend. Why would they?

Cinnamon, coriander, allspice, ginger, nutmeg and cloves.

What is a Brit away from home, hankering for sticky toffee pudding recipe that calls for mixed spice to do? Well, you could do worse than buying a jar of American pumpkin pie spice, more readily available in Japan - the 4 ingredients found in most pumpkin pie spice blends are also the base of the British mixed spice - cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves.

Or you can make your own! This also has the benefit of you being able to alter the amounts of the spices in the mix to suit your personal preferences, and will make your dishes a bit more uniquely yours.

For about 4 teaspoons worth of mixed spice, enough for just a couple of bakes:

• 1 tsp cinnamon powder
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• About 3/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ginger powder
• 1/2 tsp allspice powder
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves

You could also add some ground caraway seeds, a little powdered mace, a ground cardamon pod, ground fenugreek, maybe a little white pepper. Cloves and mace are quite strong and can dominate the mix if you use too much, if you're increasing the amount of either of these go slowly and add a bit at a time.

Mixed spice mountains

Make as much or as little as you like using a baker's percentage-like calculation where instead of flour, the cinnamon is used as the 100% base to calculate the amounts of the other ingredients:

• 100% cinnamon powder
• 100% ground coriander
• 80% ground nutmeg
• 50% ginger powder
• 50% allspice powder
• 25% ground cloves

Which, for about 40g of mixed spice (8-16 bakes) would be:

• 10g cinnamon powder
• 10g ground coriander
• 8g ground nutmeg
• 5g ginger powder
• 5g allspice powder
• 2.5g ground cloves

The resulting mix might be a little milder than the version you can buy ready-mixed at supermarkets in the UK, so see how it goes in your baking and use a little more than your recipes suggest if you find it is too delicate.

Ground spices don't keep potent for very long either - make sure your newly mixed spice is kept in a cool dark place and stored in an air-tight container like a clean old jam jar. Store for about 6 months and make a new batch after that.

That's clove powder masquerading as a jar olives on the left

If you want to buy your spices in bulk for less than they'd cost you at an international supermarket, try Spice Home behind Roppongi Hills, near Cafe 8, there is also Jasmine mini market near the tennis courts in Moto Azabu, or make a trip to Hyakunincho, just outside Shin Okubo station, which is becoming a veritable Little India of spice shops.

The next level of dedication to British baking might have you grating whole nutmeg nuts and grinding your own coriander seeds etc. For now though, this should be a quick enough fix to solve your hot cross bun craving.