PLUM AND BLACKBERRY DRIZZLE CAKE (or a tale of two cakes and a mishap because of The Archers)

I made this cake using some of those gorgeous little yellow plums called mirabelles that are so common in France but seen so rarely in the UK.  In fact I can’t recall ever seeing them in English shops at all yet in France they fall off trees by the roadside and are just left.  Not long ago we drove along a stretch of road that was a sea of squashed plums in places, which seems such a terrible shame.

I used a recipe for a cake I first saw on the cover of Good Food Magazine two or three years ago and have been meaning to make ever since.  I did a bit of research and found it on the Good Food website here.  

However, backpedalling slightly, before I used my precious mirabelles, I decided to make a “practice” cake with some apricots and plums that were slightly past their best and needed eating up.

The cake is definitely a bit fiddly to make.  You put pieces of fruit on top of the cake mixture then cover it with more mixture and because it’s so stiff, it’s quite difficult to spread the mixture evenly. 

You end up with a cake something like the texture of a Madeira cake with a very convenient crack on the top to hold the fruit topping.  Having looked at some of the reviews on the website I decided to reduce the amount of sugar in the drizzle as per many of the comments.

This is one of those cakes I will no doubt make again and again, not because it’s quick and easy, which it isn’t, but because it looks great and is quite delicious.  In fact we had visitors the evening that I made the apricot version and it all disappeared in one sitting!

The sugar content was perfect I thought, but there was a bit too much of a vanilla flavour, so I decided that when I made the cake again I would reduce the amount in the mixture.

Now we come to my plum and blackberry cake, using my precious mirabelles!

While I was making this cake I decided to catch up with my podcasts of The Archers.  We don’t have a TV or radio in our little French house but we do now have internet so I no longer have to cope with Archers withdrawal symptoms as I can get the programme as a podcast.  I had several episodes to catch up on and got thoroughly engrossed as I baked.  I remembered that I had decided to put half of the vanilla extract in the mixture but………

  

When it came to making the drizzle I got to the part where Elizabeth Archer was having an affair with Roy Tucker and I completely forgot about reducing the sugar as per the previous cake!  So I ended up with a very sugary drizzle which was not as good as on the apricot cake, as predicted by the comments on the Good Food Website.  C’est la vie !!

In actual fact the recipe is rather confusingly written on the website so I have rewritten it in a better order for myself and that’s what I have given below.  Here is my version, with the amendment for the vanilla and drizzle that I think works best.

Ingredients

For the cake

175g softened butter

175g golden caster sugar

250g self-raising flour

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

For the drizzle

100g granulated sugar

1-2 tblsp citrus juice (lemon, lime or orange)

Fruit content

175g of a mixture of blackberries and stoned, diced plums, or apricots*

Method

Prepare the fruit and divide into two bowls – 100g in one for the cake and 75g in the other for the drizzle.

Butter a 900g/2lb loaf tin and line the bottom with a long strip of baking parchment that runs up and over the short sides. 

Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°fan/gas 4.

Put all the cake ingredients into a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer, or by hand, until pale and creamy.  The resulting mixture will be very stiff.

Spread roughly one third of the mixture in the bottom of the tin and scatter roughly 50g of fruit on top.

Dot another third of the cake mixture on top of the fruit and spread out as evenly as you can. 

Repeat with the other 50g of fruit and the last third of cake mixture.

Bake for about an hour until the cake is browned and risen and passes the skewer test.

While the cake is baking, make the drizzle by mixing together the granulated sugar, citrus juice and remaining 75g of fruit in a small bowl.

When the cake comes out of the oven, leave in the tin and prick all over with the skewer.  Spoon the drizzle over the cake, and leave to cool in the tin.  As it cools, gently push any runaway fruit back up to the top of the cake, where it most of it will ultimately stay.  The topping will become crisp as it sets.

When cold, remove gently from the tin using the baking paper overhang as handles.

Serves 8-10.

*You can make this cake with various fruits, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, apricots, plums, nectarines and all the currants – and any combination you like.  Fruit should be stoned and diced or chopped to roughly 1cm pieces.

STICKY TOFFEE PUDDING CAKE

 

Whilst briefly back in the UK in between French house-hunting adventures a local Clandestine Cake Club meeting cropped up.  After my limited success with the new oven, even though I didn’t trust it, I decided to have another go at baking a cake and Nick decided he would too.

Then we decided to do something radical with the oven.

We took it out!

We have not been thrilled with the oven or hob in our new house, both are much more basic than the ones we left behind.  Setting the oven temperature is guesswork, there is no timer programme, just a minute minder and the grill is half the size of my previous one.  It had to go!

I was looking online to get an idea of how much it might cost to replace it with something more sophisticated and spotted a great offer in John Lewis which included a large trade-in discount.  The offer finishes at the end of August so we decided to go for it. 

 

The timing of the oven removal was such that if I was going to make a cake, it had to be one that could be baked a couple of days before it was needed.  I looked through my recipe books and found one by Delia Smith for a cake that sounded very much like a sticky toffee pudding that she said would improve over a couple of days.  Perfect!

I followed the recipe precisely and it turned out perfectly.  It was however absolutely done in the minimum amount of time given in the recipe, something I am not used to.  This may be due to the characteristics of the oven or the fact that it’s almost impossible to set the temperature accurately on the dial.  Nick made a lovely ginger and orange cake and that was also done in less than the time stated.

You can see the recipe for my cake here.  The only change I made was to decorate it with some pecan nuts.  The fudgy icing tasted like butterscotch and was a total revelation – I have never made anything like it before.  The cake itself was moist and with the dates and pecan nuts was very much like a sticky toffee pudding.  It was lovely and I would definitely make it again.

We take delivery of the new oven – of our own choosing – at the beginning of September, when we next go back to the UK.  I’m really looking forward to it!

BANANA CLAFOUTIS (gluten free)

Recently I have had good results with gluten free baking by simply using Dove’s Farm gluten free flour instead of normal flour in the recipe.  I simply substitute one for the other.  A good tip is to add slightly more liquid than given in the basic recipe and so far it seems to work fine.

Clafoutis is basically a pudding made of a layer of fruit with a batter poured over, which is baked and then served warm or cold.  I have made many a clafoutis in the past based on a recipe featured some time ago on my friend Susan’s blog, which was originally for cherries, but I have used apricots, plums and prunes soaked in brandy (delicious!)
Not long ago I saw a comment in another friend’s blog where banana clafoutis was mentioned.  It never occurred to me to make a clafoutis from bananas before and the idea is slightly problematic as Nick does not like cooked bananas at all – he can just about bring himself to eat a fresh one!  This is a shame as I love bananas in any form, but eating a whole banana pudding by myself is not a great idea!

Luckily the need for a gluten free pudding cropped up sooner rather than later so I decided to give the banana clafoutis a try.  I actually made two gluten free desserts, in case anyone else disliked cooked bananas.  The other one was indeed much more popular – details to follow - which in fact left most of the banana clafoutis for me to eat up!  I was sensible and wrapped slices of it to put in the freezer!
I thought it was delicious.  If you like bananas and want to make a really easy pudding that’s a little bit out of the ordinary, this is a recipe worth trying.  You can use normal flour or gluten free flour and of course you can use other fruits than bananas!  In this case, because there is lots of liquid in the batter, I didn’t add any extra and the clafoutis turned out just right I thought, nice and firm and easy to serve in slices, rather than with a spoon.
Recipe for easy clafoutis (huge thanks to Susan for the original idea)
Ingredients
50p gluten free plain flour (or normal flour if you don’t need to be gluten free)
50g ground almonds
2 eggs
100g caster sugar
125ml cream
125ml milk
½tsp vanilla extract
3 large bananas, ripe but not overripe
Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Grease a suitable baking dish*.
Put all the ingredients except the fruit into a bowl and mix together using an electric whisk or stick blender, to make a smooth batter.
Peel the bananas and slice thickly, arrange in the bottom of the dish.
Pour the batter over the top and sprinkle with flaked almonds if you like.
Bake for 30-40 minutes until no longer liquid and lightly browned.
Serve warm or at room temperature, by itself or with cream.
Serves 6.
*Also excellent as individual puddings, just grease 6 ramekins and bake for 20-30 mins.

PEAR AND CHOCOLATE PUDDINGS

I spotted a recipe in a magazine recently that I felt compelled to try.  It was a Rachel Khoo recipe for individual chocolate puddings with a pear in each one.

I bought a bag of those own-brand, basic range pears from the supermarket.  There were only five useable pears in it and the recipe was for six but I soldiered on.  I also had only five ramekin-sized dishes in my new kitchen, under the new regime of minimal possessions including bakeware.  Somewhere there are dozens of other ramekins, probably packed and stored in a mystery warehouse somewhere in darkest Rotherham.  Or maybe I took most of them to the charity shop, I can’t quite remember.

In the recipe Rachel uses a steam oven and makes much of its benefits for baking over other ovens.  If only !!  Luckily instructions for using an ordinary oven are also given.

Although the quantities of the chocolate sponge are for six puddings I made a full batch and divided it between my five dishes.  Predictably there was a little too much mixture in the finished puddings meaning that some pears sank from view and others had a muffin top effect. 

I adapted the recipe slightly, omitting the salt from the pudding mixture as I was to be serving them for Sunday dinner and I was not at all sure salted puddings were to my dad’s taste – or mine either.  The recipe also includes a good measure of black treacle and I was curious to see how that would turn out.  Being short of time I used spreadable butter and made the sponge using an all-in-one method.

Mine turned out rather less neat and tidy than in the picture in the magazine but they were still quite delicious.  The flavour of the treacle came through strongly and I loved it.  I also found that they had an uncooked middle – a kind of chocolate fondant or lava pudding effect.  This was not implied in the recipe or the title but when I looked for it online the puddings were indeed called pear and chocolate fondants – moelleux aux chocolat et poire.  You can see the recipe here.  After several attempts in the past with unremarkable results I now seem to have made the perfect chocolate fondants by accident!

They were fun to look at and quite delicious.  Next time I think I would make the six puddings, making sure I had six pears and finding another dish!  Either that or not overfill the dishes in my usual waste not, want not fashion.  The ones that turned out with the pears the right way up would be a great dessert for a dinner party!

I am submitting the little puddings to this month’s Alphabakes Challenge, a monthly baking venture presented by Caroline of Caroline Makes and Ros of The more than occasional baker.  This month the chosen letter is P and you can see the details here.

Ingredients

6 small pears

500g caster sugar

750ml water

150g spreadable butter

150g light soft brown sugar

3 eggs

1tblsp black treacle

120g self-raising flour

30g cocoa powder

Method

Peel the pears, leaving the stalks in place, and remove as much as you can of the cores from the base.  Put them in a large saucepan with the caster sugar and water and bring to the boil.  Simmer for 10 minutes until the pears are tender.  Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Butter 6 ramekins.

Put the rest of the ingredients into a food processor and process for a couple of minutes until the mixture is smooth.

Divide the mixture between the ramekins and push a pear into each one, with the stalk sticking up.

Bake for 12-15 minutes until a crust has formed on the sponge but the centre will still be liquid.  Serve warm in the ramekins.

Serves 6.

GINGER CAKE

We moved house eight weeks ago and after three weeks abandoned ship and went to France to continue our house hunting adventures there.  Consequently we are not as far forward as we would have been if we had stayed here and continued diligently working our way through the mountain of cardboard boxes.

 

The kitchen is brand new and, although beautiful to look at, its size is a proving to be a challenge.  We have moved stuff from cupboard to cupboard over and again in order to find the sensible places to store things in a way that makes best use of the space.

I like my new larder unit but added a couple of extra shelves to get all my baking stuff in it. The new dining set arrived this week, which makes mealtimes much more comfortable than the old garden chairs.  The “dining area” is simply a space at the end of the kitchen next to the fridge, but it has a nice view over the garden.

The open view at the back of the house is one of the main reasons that we bought it.  Being able to sit outside and look at the view has been a real joy during the stressful process of downsizing and moving – which is exhausting, mentally, emotionally and physically.  Sitting outside with a glass of something nicely chilled at the end of the day has been great therapy!

However, as you can see, we’re not out of the woods yet! 

We are not very thrilled with the new oven.  In fact Nick absolutely hates it, and the hob.  Although brand new they are both very basic models and we have promised ourselves that once the dust settles, if there is enough left in the kitty, we will have new ones of our own choosing.

Anyway, I had been itching to bake a cake, new oven or not.  I had successfully made several crumbles and a rather delicious blackberry and apple sponge – a version of Eve’s pudding made using dessert apples and blackberry jam – so I thought it was time to bite the bullet and just do it.

Nick chose the recipe.  It’s called “preserved ginger cake” and he found it in my copy of “Delia’s Cakes”.  That in itself was another challenge.  Most of my cookbooks were still in cardboard boxes until a few days ago.  We couldn’t empty the boxes until we built some flatpack Ikea furniture to house other stuff that was in other boxes on top of the boxes they were in.  If you see what I mean.

Another challenge was getting all the ingredients ready.  It took me over half an hour to find all the bits and pieces and the right tin, but I have to say it was a tremendous success.  The cake was moist and light with an even crumb and a good ginger flavour.   I am very chuffed to have made my very first cake in my brand new kitchen in my new house. 

You can see the recipe here.  I decided not to put any icing on it as we were to be taking slabs of it as part of a packed lunch for a day out.  It’s a great picnic cake, tasty and easy to pick up and eat.  For that reason I am entering it into this month’s Teatime Treats, organised by Karen of Lavender and Lovage and Jane of The Hedgecombers.  Karen is in charge this month, which is all about picnic food, and you can see the details here.