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All this madness from our Festival of 50s has given us from great inspiration for yummy treats! Any excuse to sample newly tried out recipes…

As you can imagine there was a lot of choice when we were thinking of what to bake for the festival but something that we kept coming back to was Battenberg cake. Plus as one of our favourites to eat, the choice was pretty simple to make!

After many failed attempts on a certain televised baking competition, a lot of people seem to be scared or intimidated to make this delicious treat at home. So we thought that while we were making our next cake for the Festival of the 50s, we would make a note of our method that we use and share it with you. Even if the construction of the cake goes slightly wrong, at least you are left with yummy cake, best to eat it quick to hide the evidence! I would also like to point out that the photos we have taken are of the cake tins we use in Herron’s Bakery, so a tad larger than what you will be using at home!

The history of the Battenberg cake is pretty interesting as well, allegedly comes from the cake made in celebration of the 1884 marriage of Princess Victoria (a granddaughter of Queen Victoria) to Prince Louis of Battenberg, with the four squares representing the four Battenberg princes. But this is where the story gets interesting – many early versions of the cake had nine squares not four, and in many recipe books and catalogues that were published in the following years all included the nine square versions. Unless the pastry chefs were using a bit of artistic license to show off, then a trend followed, it doesn’t seem clear.

Names such as window or domino also seems to hang around recipes for the Battenberg, but with the same flavourings, very confusing! The reverting back to the usual four panels after World War Two is another mystery, although it could be suggested that the mass production that became commonplace in the following years would have been a lot easier with less sections.

If you have anything further to add to the origin story of the Battenberg, please let me know! (KatherineHindmarch@beamish.org.uk)

Ingredients

For Pink sponge

6oz Self raising flour

6oz Caster sugar

6oz Softened butter

3 Eggs, beaten and mixed with ½ tsp each of vanilla and almond extract (optional)

A few drops of red food colouring, use sparingly!

For Yellow sponge

Same as above but with yellow food colouring

1lb marzipan, the standard packet is just under this weight I believe, bakers treat while you’re baking!

Apricot jar, enough to spread over the sections of cake

Method (Photos from a lot of the stages are included above)

Grease and line two 8inch square cake tins and preheat your oven to gas mark 4.

Cream together the butter and sugar until light, fluffy and very pale in colour.

Add in alternate amounts of flour and the beaten egg, vanilla and almond extract mix, a little at a time.

Add your food colouring carefully, without knocking any air out of your mix unnecessarily, pour into your prepared cake tin.

Repeat the above method with the other colour.

Bake your sponges for 25-30 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean and cool in the tins for at least 15 minutes, or ideally until cooled completely.

Divide both sponges into two, if they have risen at different levels or look uneven, just give them a small trim to that they match, and sandwich with a little apricot jam.

Roll out your marzipan to the desired thickness and dimensions (a certain person I know likes theirs as thick as the sponge!) and paint a layer of jam onto the surface – doing it this way will avoid getting pesky crumbs in your jam!

This is can be the tricky part – place the sponge in the middle of your measured marzipan and bring over one side over the sponge at a time, as if you are wrapping it in a blanket. A good trick is thinking of the jam as glue, so brush a small amount onto the marzipan where the seam overlaps as this will help it stick.

Make sure the marzipan is wrapped quite tightly to the sponge, as if it’s too loose it could slide off the sides, a common Battenberg disaster!

Smooth the sides with your hands gently, the more square your edges the more authentic it will look, although a slightly lumpy cake also has its merits of looking very homemade!

 I would leave the cake to settle for a few minutes before flipping over to the marzipan seam is on the bottom, remember that the sponge inside is quite delicate.

Ta da – You have a finished Battenberg cake! Now sit down with a wodge of cake and a cuppa, you have deserved it!

The Festival of 50s, taking place from 6^th to 9^th July, is only a few days away and we are super excited!

Other than being a really good opportunity for us to dress up in our red lipstick and eyeliner, (a real rarity for us), the 50s are a really interesting period of our history, especially when we look at food.

During this time food really did go through a revolution, with the eventual end of rationing in July 1954, you can imagine the excitement when foods that hadn’t been available for years were suddenly on the shelves again. For many who grew up throughout this period, the majority of these items had never been experienced before – memory that often gets shared by visitors is the thrill of was their first banana or pineapple!

Developments in technology such as the Kenwood mixer below meant making cakes and other recipes was a lot quicker and didn’t require constant supervision. That freed up a lot of time for the typical housewife, and considering the freedoms that started to gather momentum during the war, the 1950s must have been an exciting time! 

These technological advancements also meant that convenience foods were more commonplace, again broadening the horizons for a lot of people. Can you imagine the excitement of your first packet of crisps with the salt packet inside, or your first ready meal?

What we really love about the festival of 50s is that it gives us a glimpse into the work going into our plans for building an entire 1950s Town, just think of how much edible research is going to go into that! I can hardly contain myself…

If all this talk of 50s food has inspired you to share your memories or stories, please do get in touch, (KatherineHindmarch@Beamish.org.uk), we really want to represent the people of the North East in our plans for the 1950s Town!

Lots of other lovely things will be happening over the weekend so keep your eyes peeled, hope you are as excited as we are! Everything during usual museum opening hours is included in the Unlimited Pass so come down for both days if you can, don’t miss a minute of the 50s madness!

As you can imagine, we love an excuse to dress up here at Beamish. This gets especially exciting if this can be outside of our usual costumes that we wear day to day, and more exciting still if the costume flashes a small sliver of ankle or a larger pop of colour than usual.

As you may have guessed the highlight of our costumed year is our Festival of 50s – which takes place 6^th-9^th July! The bright green skirt and red lipstick I wore at last year’s event is still a happy memory for me, and ask anyone who has helped out with the festival of previous years and they can still reel off what their costume consisted of with ease.

From a food point of view, we are in full 50s swing, lots of research goes into the event every year and we are always keen to try new things. Luckily we have a wealth of brilliant recipe books, adverts and catalogues from the period that have been donated to us, perfect for browsing for ideas!

Amongst this year’s delights we will be making macaroni cheese and oxtail stew, which I am already eagerly awaiting with bowl in hand! We will also be mixing up delicious 50s milkshakes, perfect after all that rock ‘n’ roll dancing! For adults, we will be serving Babycham and Advocaat, the ultimate tastes of nostalgia!

A part of the festival that gets more popular each year are our cinema events on Friday 7^th and Saturday 8^th July we are showing two films from the era; Penny Points to Paradise, which was Peter Sellers’ first film and The Titfield Thunderbolt – the first Ealing film shot in colour. There are only 80 seats available for each night so book up quick! The details for tickets can be found here.

Obviously the food details are very important! The ticket includes a bag of delicious handmade Beamish sweets from the Jubilee Sweet Shop and a bottle of aerated water from our chemist shop, the sound of rustling sweet bags will be unavoidable! Usherettes dressed in period costume will be on hand, so feel free to say hello and pose with us for photos!

So get your petticoats ready and pop in to see our Festival of 50s, (which is included in your usual Unlimited Pass), don’t miss out!

Even if the weather is less than tropical outside (I mean it is the North East of England, we can’t set our sights too high…) the summer season is definitely starting to leave its mark here at Beamish! If we are not able to magic up some sunshine for your visit, we certainly can provide a taste of summer no matter what!

Wherever you are on site you can always find something to conjure up the summer, from our lemon biscuits in the bakery that are made from our trademark shortbread, to locally made vanilla ice cream in Sinker’s Bait Cabin and Town ice cream kiosk.

From the summery flavours of our handmade sweets (strawberries and cream, lemon and lime yummy) to the Picnic Gin made by a local distillery, which is flavoured with strawberries and other seasonable flavours (great with lemonade), there is something for children and grown-ups alike.

As I’ve mentioned before, Beamish is also great for picnics when the sun is out. But there are also places to shelter if the rain decides to start in earnest!

Next time you are driving through our famous red gates, look out your car window and if the sky is decidedly grey and its spitting rain; don’t let it put you off! Come in and taste some summery treats to capture a taste of the season, nothing else can be done for it!

One of the main things that we like to do within the Beamish Food Team is represent our lovely North East England surroundings through food. The item that, for me, really epitomises the food of the North East is the stottie. If you have never heard of stotties before, they are simply a type of bread that is pretty much only found in Tyne and Wear and County Durham. Although they are not made as regularly at home as they used to be, stotties usually can be found in any local bakery or supermarket!

Even the name can show variations within the region, in most places it’s just a stottie, but travel around and you’ll hear stottie bread or even stottie cake being mentioned. We like to make things individual up here! It is one of the items that people who move away from the area seem to miss and hunt down when they are visiting, there is nothing else quite like a stottie, with its flattened shape and slightly chewy, close texture.

The word stottie comes from the Geordie word “stot” or “stotting” which basically means to bounce off something. For example you can say “stotting down” for heavy rain or “stotted off” for bounced off, and for some reason “stotting” also means in a bad mood, not that we ever have need to say that here at Beamish!

How does this relates to a type of bread you might ask? The stottie would have been baked on the bottom of the oven, hence its flat- bottomed shape and particular colouring and as “stott” means to throw, the idea was that the dough was “stotted off” the bottom of the oven. The texture of the stottie is partially due to the fact that it would be a mixture of the leftover dough, so it would have already been partly proved so would not have proven to its full potential when in the stottie shape. This means it would be doughier than a normal loaf proven in the usual way.

If you visit The Pit Village, you can see a communal bread oven behind the cottages on Francis Street. This is exactly the type of oven that you would have cooked a stottie in, used by everyone in the community and definitely working class. This is why, if you visit Joseph Herron’s Bakery in our 1900s Town, you won’t find us making stotties instead of our usual cob loaves, we are far too posh and middle class for that!

You can often find stotties in our many food outlets, so you can get your fill of North East specialities while you are here, especially good with ham and pease pudding! There are loads of other delicacies specific to our region, and I want you to know about them all, so I will be including them in posts to come.

Why not share your local specialities with me, at KatherineHindmarch@beamish.org.uk or on our Facebook page!

As you can imagine from a food blog based in a museum that has beautiful gardens, grassy fields and lots of nice open spaces in general, we love a good picnic in the great outdoors. Luckily so did the Edwardians so it is something I find very easy to talk enthusiastically about for National Picnic Week, starting on Friday, 16^th June.

And, as chance would have it, we have been putting a new summery window display in Joseph Herron’s Bakery in our 1900s Town, which has taken a lot of inspiration from this foodie past time; the display is so good it looks as if a local Edwardian has just left their picnic spot in the bakery window!

The staff have been popping into the window their favourite treats that would be perfect for a picnic, complete with original crockery and even some sporty items for a game of tennis after their cheese and onion pies, lemon biscuits and endless cups of tea! If a visiting Edwardian happened to stroll past our display, they would feel right at home; the idea of picnicking was very popular in this era and the sight of a family or group gathered round a picnic basket was increasingly common in local parks and at society events. Shops like Fortnum and Mason started to tailor their wares to suit this new trend, and claim to be the inventors of the scotch egg in 1738 – a firm picnic favourite.

If you fancy a picnic at the museum, there are plenty of places to set up your rug and hamper, whether it’s the grass around the bandstand, the events field, or any of the picnic tables that are dotted around the whole site. If you forget your supplies there are plenty of options to pick up some bits and bobs; from the pork pies and pasties in Sinkers’ Bait Cabin, to sponge cakes and bread in the bakery, there is something for everyone to make your picnic a true success!

If you are a keen baker, crafter or gardener, this is certainly a date for your diary! As part of The Great North Festival of Agriculture, the Agricultural Show has been a growing feature of the Beamish calendar over the years and is getting more popular each year. Although the 14-17th September seems like a long time away, strawberry season is coming up for you jam makers, and damson gin takes a while to mature, so get your skates on!

Last year the bakery staff enjoyed success with our elderberry cordial. Using elderberries that we foraged from behind the Tea Rooms, we certainly got some funny looks in our traditional Edwardian costumes! There are a number of categories so there is something for everyone, including classes for children, so it can be a fun day out for the whole family, with a bit of friendly competition thrown in, just for good measure…

On the food front, there are tonnes of different categories to enter; including preserves, bread and cherry scones, I will be entering something again this year with bated breath and fingers crossed, but if all else fails I might triumph in the bakery disaster category! On the final day of the show (Sunday 18th) and with the owner’s permission, the baking, preserves and beverages will be auctioned off at 4.30pm to close the event!

Entry forms are available all around the museum site for you to take home and complete, and please remember to bring entries with you on the morning of your event before 11am, so we know who is entering each category. The Victoria Sandwich section was particularly fierce last year! If you have any further questions please ask a staff member when you’re visiting, or Debra Calder can be emailed on debracalder@beamish.org.uk

Entry forms can also be downloaded here Agricultural-Show-Entry-Form

Would you fancy mock goose or mock apricot tart if it was put down to you? Would you even know what was in it? If you are part of the generation that experienced rationing, you may remember those dishes and have an idea of what they contain, I for one certainly had no idea! Spreading the joy of replacing goose with lentils (who knew!) is exactly what we’re aiming for in the new traditional experience that we have devised in the Food Team. Go back in time and visit Home Farm and cook the meals that people would have experienced during wartime in the 1940s, you even have the chance to dress up in the outfits of the time! Who could say no to cooking with Spam in a headscarf and dungarees?

Louise and Laura in the Food Team have been putting together lots of tasty recipes that really do give people the taste of this part of the past, where rationing was strict and people were encouraged to grow their own and not throw anything away – waste not want not! The whole landscape of Britain changed during these years (rationing lasted until 1954!) and the health of the nation actually improved! Must be all those lentils and dried eggs! Over six million extra acres of land were cultivated so that more food could be grown, so there was less reliance on imports, this would change the landscape of Britain forever.

Cooking these recipes in the kitchen up at the farmhouse really gives you  sense of what it would have been like at this time, and makes the experience all the more real. Can you imagine being rationed to one egg a week, which would mean any recipes containing fresh eggs had to be swapped with their dehydrated replacements? I certainly couldn’t, (Joseph Herron would be aghast selling an eggless sponge in his bakery!) and can picture all the housewives at the time experimenting with these new-fangled ingredients to desperately try and recreate the dishes their family loved and were used to. This one especially significant during such an unsettling time for the nation, when home comforts would have been greatly relied upon for a bit of normality.

If you would like any more foodie inspiration to whet your appetite, Louise has kindly given me the recipe for the potato pastry that she will be using in the mock apricot tart, if you want to try it out at home!

Potato Pastry Recipe

Ingredients

4oz flour

4oz smooth mashed potato

2oz lard

Pinch of salt

Method

Rub the fat into flour and salt

Mix in the cool mashed potato

If needed add a splash of water to make a soft dough

Use as needed, it will need to be blind baked before you add your filling

 We use this pastry to make mock apricot tart and serve it with mock cream, yum!

For more information, to book the traditional experiences, or see the dates available, please contact the Group & Venue Sales Team on 0191 370 4026 (Monday to Friday 9am to 4pm) or visit http://www.beamish.org.uk/experience/1940s-wartime-cookery-experience/

There are some recipes that always seem to bring a sense of nostalgia when speaking to visitors. A treat that was always made in a Grandmothers kitchen, or a family favourite torn out of a magazine long since faded but always remembered, food really does have the power to take you back to a time gone by. One of the items in Joseph Herron’s Bakery in our 1900s Town that seems to have that power is coconut haystacks. As they are so simple to make, and with very few ingredients, they are an easy go to recipe to make with children, which is probably why so many people have fond memories making them when they were young, usually using an egg cup as a mould, I know this is certainly how I used to make them!

These coconut beauties are a regular favourite in the bakery and as one of our gluten free recipes they are very popular! As you can imagine our usual recipe makes perhaps a few too many for a sunny Sunday afternoon baking with the family, so we had a lot of fun (the crumbs are photographic evidence!) scaling down our usual amount to something a bit more suitable for our lovely visitors if you do wish to give them a try! As you can imagine, the usually preferred ‘eggcup technique’ to shape the haystacks is a tad leisurely in pace for our busy bakery, so you can always tell which member of staff made them as we all prefer slightly different shapes, mine are always slightly-larger-than-they-should-be pyramids, so keep an eye out for them!

Ingredients (makes 18)

12oz Desiccated Coconut

5oz Caster Sugar

3 Eggs

7oz Condensed milk (half a standard tin)

Method

Preheat your oven to 170°c

Line a baking sheet with greaseproof or parchment paper

In a large bowl mix the coconut and caster sugar until combined

Beat the eggs then add into the coconut and sugar, slowly adding the condensed milk. Tip: Depending on the brand and how long the coconut has been in your cupboard, you may need to add a little less or a little more of the condensed milk as desiccated coconut can dry out a lot if the packet has been open a while, it should be the consistency of damp sand. Do not worry too much about the texture, they ‘dry out’ rather than bake in the oven so if the mixture is too wet they will just need a tad longer in the oven!

Once you have your mixture, form into small balls, or pyramids if you are feeling braver, a little larger than a golf ball.

We decorate ours with half a glace cherry on top, but if you would prefer, leave the cherry off and drizzle with the chocolate of your choice after they are cooled.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until they are just starting to colour.

This Saturday and Sunday at Beamish we are celebrating Empire & Flag Weekend.

Empire Day was usually celebrated on Queen Victoria’s birthday, 24^th May (great pub quiz fact!). Around the museum site you will see the Union flag waving proudly and numerous titbits to catch your fancy, there will be something for everyone!

The first Empire Day was held in 1902, which was the year the Boer War ended, so people had something to celebrate! It was also to inspire as sense of duty in the citizens of the British Empire, as at this time the Empire was at its full strength, and was something for the British people to be actively participating in its survival and growth.

Continuing with the military theme and as part of our First World War commemorations, Flag Days raised money for those affected by the war, usually those from the front line and prisoners of war. Traditionally, small flags or flag badges were given to those who had donated to show that they had given their support for the cause.

From a foodie point of interest, we are showing commemorating Empire and Flag Weekend by baking lots of tasty treats around site, any excuse for us to bake! At Miss Smith’s house on Ravensworth Terrace, she will be found baking Empire cake – see if you can pop in for a slice!

Empire biscuits will be made at both No.3 Francis Street down in The Pit Village and in The Town at Joseph Herron’s Bakery, with special Union flag icing! We have our fingers crossed for lovely sunny weather, perfect for wandering around seeing the sights, with a nice Empire biscuit and cup of tea in hand!