Yorkies

I'm continuing my acclimation to British food. This time it was actually my sister who helped me step deeper into the British food culture landscape. I visited my sister in Yorkshire and she cooked a mean Sunday roast. She served a huge pork joint from a happy, organic piggy along with roasted veg, home made apple sauce and the most amazing Yorkies I have ever eaten. I have only had Yorkies a few times when I've had a roast down the pub, but they never quite struck my fancy. These Yorkies were really different from the ones I have had before. They were so incredibly light, fluffy and tasty. They were so fluffy that sis had to open the oven door at one point to deflate them as they were getting so big that they almost hit the roof of the oven. 

In addition to the huge pork roast, Easter was all about the Easter eggs. The Easter Bunny went a bit over the top and got some huge chocolate eggs. 

That is a whole kilogram of chocolate!!

My sister used the BBC good food recipe for the Yorkies, and proceeded exactly according to instructions. They are actually much easier to make than you would believe from seeing the beautiful end product. Just make sure you heat the oiled pan up really good before pouring in the batter, as the hot oil helps the Yorkies rise to gigantic proportions.

Yorkies (makes 12):
450 ml milk
4 large eggs
250g plain flour
2 tsp salt
2 tbsp vegetable oil

The howto:
Mix the eggs, flour, salt and milk using a balloon whisk until the batter is smooth. Let stand for at least 15 minutes in room temperature. You can make the batter up to a few hours ahead of time. When you want to cook the Yorkies, preheat oven to 220 degrees C (or 200 degrees fan). Brush the holes of a 12 hole muffin tin with oil, and pre-heat the oiled tin in the oven for 5 minutes. Carefully take the tin out of the oven, and evenly divide the batter into the holes. Bake for five minutes, and then reduce oven temperature to 200 degrees C (180 degrees fan) and bake for another 25-30 minutes, or until the Yorkies are golden brown and fluffy. 

The verdict:
As I said before, these were hands down the best Yorkies I have ever had. They were perfect with the roast pork, and particularly with the home made apple sauce (two apples, a few tbsp caster sugar and a few tbsp cooking juices from the pork cooked until the apples go all soft and mushy). I couldn't stop eating the Yorkies with just some apple sauce on top, that would make a perfect breakfast. Actually when you think about it, Yorkies are pretty much the same as Finnish (or Dutch) pancakes. They go great with roast, but they would make a perfect breakfast or snack as well. Although, to avoid unnecessary confusion, maybe pancake should be called pancake when it is eaten as pudding or brekkie, and Yorkies when served with dinner. 

Organic happy pork, roast veg, heavenly
Yorkies and home made apple sauce.

Card of the day:

It's really hard to make manly cards. This was my first try. The background stamp is Papermania Urban Stamps Cogs and the front is from a Chronology set which was free with Issue 37 of the Docrafts Creativity magazine (there are multiple copies floating around Ebay, I got mine for £0.99+p&p). I absolutely love the solar system model stamp. Both images were stamped onto ivory card using Tim Holtz Distress Walnut Stain and embossed with Ranger Clear extra fine embossing powder. The background was sponged with Antique Linen, Vintage Photo, Walnut Stain and Black Soot Distress ink. I cut out the solar system model using scissors and went over the edges lightly with Walnut Stain and Black Soot, and attached it to the background using dimensionals. The background was then matted onto a brown card and then attached to a recycled brown cardstock. The sentiment was from the same stamp set as the solar system model and stamped and embossed as described above. The sentiment is stamped onto a background made using a really cool technique called the distress ink bubble technique made using Chipped Sapphire. I had best success with the bubbles when I put some water and washing up liquid in my sink as that gave me enough room to whisk the water and create really fluffy detergent bubbles instead of doing it in a bowl as the lady does on the video. I finished the sentiment by hand drawing the white lines using Tim Holtz distress marker Picket Fence. I absolutely love the two stamp sets, I think they go really well together and make quite an elegant card.