All Things Baking

[765489]

Pics or it didn't happen OB

[isha]

Pics or it didn't happen OB

On the subject of pics how do ye post photos here? The allowed size is small and if I resize photos small enough they look grainy.
Yummy looking things by the way, everyone. Recently in the baking department I made sponge with strawberry and cream, apple and blacberry crumble and a lemon drizzle cake.
Fortunately my very tall husband eats like a horse or else I would be the size of a horse.

[765489]

On the subject of pics how do ye post photos here? The allowed size is small and if I resize photos small enough they look grainy.
Yummy looking things by the way, everyone. Recently in the baking department I made sponge with strawberry and cream, apple and blacberry crumble and a lemon drizzle cake.
Fortunately my very tall husband eats like a horse or else I would be the size of a horse.

What I do Isha is as follows.

1. I take a screenshot of the original photo on my phone. This brings down the size by about 50 percent.
2. When I go into my gallery to edit the screenshot, I crop it to take out anything in the screenshot I don't want shown, eg might contain the icons and time on the top of the phone screen etc.
3. When I resize it I start around 60 percent, then check if the size is now 300 kb or lower, if not I resize it to 40 percent. If you go below 40 percent this is where the grainy thing happens.

If I've reduced it to 40 percent and the screenshot is still over 300 kbs, say 327kbs, I crop a small bit more out of it. This usually does the trick and brings it below 300kbs.

[isha]

Thanks N. Trying that with a pic of challah I made recently.

[Osciiboscii]

Thanks N. Trying that with a pic of challah I made recently.

Looks amazing..

[marhay70]

Anybody got any links to sites with recipes for plain Irish/British food, both main meals and desserts? We don't have the palate for spicy, Continental or Asian. Thanks

[Uncle Frank]

Pics or it didn't happen OB

I'm with you. I love to drool over the photos in here

[Uncle Frank]

Anybody got any links to sites with recipes for plain Irish/British food, both main meals and desserts? We don't have the palate for spicy, Continental or Asian. Thanks

You can try the bbc site
https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes
They have lots of recipes to browse through.

[Osciiboscii]

Anybody got any links to sites with recipes for plain Irish/British food, both main meals and desserts? We don't have the palate for spicy, Continental or Asian. Thanks

With you on that one....can't go wrong with Delia https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes
In fact, right now I'm making her Queen of Puddings, with leftover breadcrumbs from Xmas pudding mix. Lovely soft, warm, sweet & comforting...perfect for today

[Osciiboscii]

And.. https://www.ballymaloe.ie/content/ballymaloe-recipes
My two goto sites. Basic and old fashioned.

[Osciiboscii]

20210919_130034.jpg

With you on that one....can't go wrong with Delia https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes
In fact, right now I'm making her Queen of Puddings, with leftover breadcrumbs from Xmas pudding mix. Lovely soft, warm, sweet & comforting...perfect for today

[Del.Monte]

What cookbooks do you all use? I have a varied collection of ancient ones handed down to me by my grandmother along with her own recipe books with handwritten and stuck in recipes. One of my favourites is this 1910 copy of Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book which was first published in 1861 and for a long time regarded as the bible for all cooks. I'll be tacking an oddity from it next week - pics to follow.

[Osciiboscii]

Mostly Darina and Delia by me. I also have my Rayburn cookbook, pretty much along the same lines - Irish/English gut sticking grub. I have a folder with recipes torn out of magazines/copied from the interwebs etc.

[dawg]

On the subject of pics how do ye post photos here? The allowed size is small and if I resize photos small enough they look grainy....

I use a program 'Irfanview' on my windows lappy to clean up and sort out images.

For example, I posted https://gubu.ie/download/file.php?id=467 on the Christmas thread. Its around 20k in size.

The original jpeg that I borrowed was IIRC 500+k. Irfanview did the changes

[dawg]

What cookbooks do you all use? I have a varied collection of ancient ones handed down to me by my grandmother along with her own recipe books with handwritten and stuck in recipes. One of my favourites is this 1910 copy of Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book which was first published in 1861...

I have a Mrs B as well.

I went off it after I looked up a recipe for bread. The first ingredient listed was 'half a pint of brewers yeast'. Even for me, thats a bit archaic.

Cant spot a print date. The preface includes 'The World, especially since the war, has travelled with vast strides...' At a guess thats after the first war, so maybe published around 1920 ?

At any rate, Its Delia all the way for me. Does anyone remember her original TV series and the way she had of looking at the camera ?

Minx


Edit - to drag the thread even further OT.

Have heavily thumbed copies of Elizabeth David's 'French Provincial Cooking' and 'Italian Food' .
E.D. has delightful preamble stories for many of her recipes. I have become too lazy to make many of the dishes... the stories are still a great read

[isha]

I have well over 40 cookbooks
I like them!
One I use a lot is this Virtue cookbook from 1964, my mother in law got it when she married, used the heck out of it for nearly 25 years and when I kidnapped her son she gave it to me as a parting shot, and I have used the heck out of it for nearly another 30 years. It is great for ordinary things, like jam, pastry, how many scruples are in a drachm, what to feed invalids to cheer them up
But I am firmly in the modern section too and Yotam Ottolenghi's books are my food porn stash. His book called Sweet is great for out of the ordinary baking and desserts with a hint of exotic. Some day I will post a pic when I make his Guinness Chocolate cake with Baileys mascarpone filling - it is gorgeous, but I try not to make it too often because of that...

[Osciiboscii]

what to feed invalids to cheer them up

reminds me of my Home Economics book, All in the cooking Book 2.... . There was also a section of "things to have in your kitchen"....a refrigerator was one . I think Ireland must have been beginning to move beyond food safes when that book was written

[CelticRambler]

reminds me of my Home Economics book, All in the cooking Book 2.... .

Okay, now that puts me in an awkward position ...


Well feckit: my two go-to books (in fact the only two cook books that have earned a place on the ground floor)



I think I'm in with a good chance of acquiring All in the Cooking Vol. 2 from my mother when she hangs up her oven gloves; but in the meantime, I'm following her example of stuffing the newer book with the recipes I actually use most often!

[CelticRambler]

As for baking: today's weather demands comfort-food, so dessert this evening will be rhubarb crumble with custard. The fruit part of the crumble has a non-standard ingredient - a spoonful of powdered/dried rose and hibiscus, brought back from exotic parts.

[Osciiboscii]

20210919_203348.jpg

Batch 1......you'd nearly get drunk with the smell

[Osciiboscii]

20210919_203807.jpg

This is the book that set me on my bread-making journey as a teenager. Many happy Saturdays making yeast breads. That reprint is 1978

[765489]

I have my mother's recipe book somewhere. Must have a look for it, she had it at school I think.

[765489]

Was researching apple varieties and for some reason this came up in my search results.

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/101 ... apple-tart

ya-apple-rosette-tart-blog480.jpg

[Osciiboscii]

Looks too pretty to cut . Seems Bramleys are not available in USA , and it's usually Granny Smiths used.

[CelticRambler]

Not available in France either, where the classic cooking apple is ... Golden Delicious. Bleurgh.

It's mad, because the French go absolutely crazy over any apple tart (or crumble) brought to communal meals by Irish or British immigrants. The only difference between ours and theirs: at the very least, we use Granny Smiths, and some fortunate cooks can get hold of genuine Bramleys. I've twice tried to grow one, and twice failed, but will try once more next year (first one was lost to rabbits or deer, second was lost to drought).