March 2016 – runningforcakedotme

It was the weekend. I had a punnet of ripe plums and the time restriction of a social engagement in the evening, but I was craving something sweet and delicious. This culinary conundrum echoes that posed to budding chefs on the Ready, Steady Cook television show in which two members of the public hand over a bag of unknown ingredients bought on a budget to the chefs. The chefs must create a meal from the ingredients presented before them within the time limit of the program. For my situation I imagine that you, the reader, are my equivalent to Ainsley Harriott. I am explaining to you my solution, my whimsical bake that can satisfy my ingredients (including a generously stocked kitchen of basic ingredients). Well Ainsley….reader….today I will bake a plum clafoutis!

For those of you unfamiliar with this – it is a French dessert of fruit (traditionally black cherries) baked in a flan like batter with a sprinkling of powdered sugar where ‘flan like batter’ euphemistically means a light, wobbly and lovely custard.

My highly edible plum clafoutis ingredients list

(Serves 4)

~400g fresh plums (1 punnet of plums without pips!)
75g caster sugar
3 tbsp of Crème de cassis
20g butter, melted, plus extra to grease
2 tbsp cinnamon demerara sugar
60g plain flour
Pinch of salt
3 small eggs, beaten
270ml whole milk

I de-stoned the plums after washing and cut them into segments about the size of a tangerine segment and added 2 tbsp of caster sugar and the crème de cassis. I tossed them together and left them to macerate for the time it took me to measure out the other ingredients and for the oven to heat up (I used 175°C with a fan oven).

I greased a baking dish that could contain all the plums in a single layer, added a tbsp of the cinnamon demerara sugar to the baking disk and then spun the dish so that the base of the dish and the sides of the baking dish were coated.

I sifted in the flour to a separate mixing bowl, added a pinch of salt and the remaining caster sugar (and a couple more to make sure I satisfied my sweet tooth) before adding in eggs and melted butter. The resulting batter was light and smooth.

I poured this mixture into the baking dish that had been lined with the plum segments and popped it in the oven for about 30 minutes. I took the clafoutis out when the centre looked like it was browning slightly, but retained a slight wobble. Upon taking the bake out it had risen magnificently like a soufflé, but this quickly drops back down as you let the bake cool (this treat should be served warm and not hot). For the final flourish I liberally sprinkled with the remaining cinnamon demerara sugar and brewed a fresh batch of coffee to compliment it. I’d recommend having both with cold cream!

This is a quick and relatively simple bake that is a perfect reward to indulge in after a jog. As it also has relatively high egg content and contains fruit it can perhaps be considered slightly more nutritious treat for an athlete than many other French delights….or at least that’s what I told myself!

I hope your taste buds review this bake as highly as my own did.

Times up! Phew! How did I do Ainsley?

My first post is a rather in medias res affair – On a very brisk, sunny morning (Sunday 6^th of March) I successfully completed my first significant run of the year at the Jones o Gymru Anglesey Half Marathon.

A quick look through the event details the night before revealed that I would need to arrive with the dawn chorus to reach Anglesey with a comfortable window to register. In spite of this, my addiction to the snooze button nearly proved my downfall. Having roused myself sufficiently to appreciate the time, it pierced my consciousness like the shrill starters gun for a race against time. I left the house wild-eyed and half dressed, coffee in hand and a bag of Brazil nuts in the other riding an adrenaline wave.

Nonetheless I managed to convince a friend to collect my racing number before the deadline to compensate for my tardiness and managed a very brief pre-run warm up before lining up on the start line (on time!) that was situated on the iconic Menai Suspension Bridge.

The Anglesey Half marathon follows the coast from the Menai Suspension Bridge to Beaumaris Castle, and back. This route had an imposing, but beautiful backdrop of the Snowdonian mountains that made the race twice as difficult – doubly breath taking!

Screenshot_2016-03-09-20-34-11_1 — The route of the Jones o Gymru Anglesey Half Marathon – Anglesey, North Wales

I like to use the mobile phone app Run Keeper in order to keep a handle on my pace throughout the race, but due to the remote location the application lost my position a couple of miles in so I was left running in the blind old skool fashion. As I was treating this race as a gauge of my fitness rather than as an event I wanted to conquer I intended to try and keep a pace of around 7 minutes and 30 seconds per mile. Without technology to let me know whether I was close to achieving this I decided to use other runners as pace setters. This seemed like a great choice early in the race and to my surprise I felt strong until the 8-mile milestone. The last couple of miles were a painful struggle and I was reminded that running is as much about battling the internal drives, as it is the competitors on the road.

Mental strength is definitely something I hope to post on more in the future, as in the context of endurance events; it can be just as severe a limitation on performance as a poor physical condition. Indeed battling the reptilian brain, the autonomous perceptions of fatigue that encourage you to stop are key because they are realised before the true physical limitation is reached.

I eventually managed to finish in a time of 1 hour and 31 minutes and 50 seconds that corresponded to a position of 69^th overall. I was relatively pleased with this result given that my preparation largely revolved around a cake-eating marathon (more on this soon!).

For those that are interested here is the link to the Jones o Gymru Anglesey Half Marathon

http://angleseyhalfmarathon.com