RHUBARB, GINGER AND WHITE CHOCOLATE CRUMBLE

Depressingly, we are still here, in the house which displays the estate agent’s board outside, announcing to the whole world that we are “SOLD”. 

Things are moving very slowly, as we knew they would, but knowing doesn’t actually make it any easier.  It’s heartbreaking to see the vegetable patch with only weeds in it and the greenhouse empty.  We occasionally drive past our new house, the one we are moving to just a few miles away, and check it’s still there, that it isn’t all just a dream.  We expected to have moved by now, had things gone to plan.  Unfortunately our buyers “changed their buyers” three weeks into the process so went back to square one and we’re now in a chain of five instead of just three.

Anyway, baking is good therapy and to cheer myself up I picked up this little book by Joanne Harris and Fran Warde the other day.  It’s full of recipes inspired by the Chocolat series of novels by Joanne Harris, two of which I have read and enjoyed, the third sits on the bookshelf in our little French cottage, a treat to look forward to on our next visit.

This book has a lot of nice recipes, many of which I am unlikely to ever cook but reading them is a joy.  Being short of baking time, books and equipment at the moment reduces my ability to bake much and I have to say, I don’t really have the heart for it either.  But when my dad comes for his dinner on a Sunday evening a crumble is the order of the day.  He and Nick love a good crumble and in this book there is a recipe called “Roux’s Ginger Crumble” and is described as “Spicy yet mellow, just like Roux”  (Roux being a character in the novels.)

The recipe uses apples, pears, stem ginger and dark chocolate.  Inspection of my ever diminishing store cupboards revealed no stem ginger but a few spoonfuls of ginger preserve in a jar, a bar of white chocolate, a jar of “gelée de coings”  (quince jelly, a gift from a friend in France) and a cooking apple.  There were also a few sticks of rhubarb on our plants in the garden.  Knowing how well rhubarb goes with both ginger and white chocolate, I decided to have a go at a version of the recipe.

When we move I shall miss the rhubarb plant as much as anything.  I still miss the two huge rhubarb plants left behind when my dad moved after my mum died.  It has taken several years to get our own plants going and they provide enough fruit for a few crumbles every year.  The sticks on our plants are a bit short and young yet but…..I decided we might as well have them otherwise “our buyers” will be the ones to enjoy them.

It’s difficult to make a crumble look like anything other than a splodge of pudding on a plate so I didn’t try very hard.  However, it was, without doubt, truly delicious.  It got the thumbs up from both Nick and my dad and I will definitely be making it again.

This is my version, inspired by, rather than adapted from, the “Chocolat” recipe:

Ingredients

For the crumble

200g plain flour

100g butter

75g golden caster sugar

1 tblsp demerara sugar (optional)

For the filling

a few short sticks of rhubarb, wiped and cut into 2cm pieces

1 large cooking apple, peeled and sliced

2 tblsp ginger preserve

1 tblsp quince jelly (optional)

50g golden caster sugar

100g bar white chocolate, chopped

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 180° fan / gas mk 6.  Grease a suitable baking dish, not too shallow, not too deep.

To make the crumble topping, put the flour and butter into a food processor and blitz to make breadcrumbs.  Add the caster sugar and pulse briefly to combine.

Put the rhubarb pieces and apple slices into the baking dish, mixing them together in a single, even layer. 

Put the ginger preserve and quince jelly (if using) into a small saucepan, add a small splash of water and heat gently and stir until they are all melted together into a syrup.  Pour this over the fruit.

Sprinkle over the caster sugar then the chopped chocolate.

Top with the crumble mixture and sprinkle the demerara sugar over the top (if using).

Bake for about 30 minutes until the crumble is golden and the fruit is bubbling up around the edges.

Serve warm with cream, custard, ice cream or crème fraîche.

Serves 4-6.

LOIRE VALLEY CCC

Having joined my local Clandestine Cake Club branch in Derbyshire last year, it occurred to me one day that it might be fun to create a club in France.  A lot of the people we have made friends with in our little corner of France are enthusiastic bakers so I asked a few of them if they would be interested.  Enough said “yes” so I decided to give it a go.

Yesterday we had our very first meeting and I am thrilled to say that it was a huge success.

Considering our actual membership is very small, we had sixteen people turn up and thirteen cakes – a baker’s dozen !!

The theme was “favourite cakes”.  In other words, the cake that each person liked best to eat or to bake.  Everyone embraced the spirit of the theme and a truly magnificent collection of cakes appeared on our table.

There were lots of lovely old fashioned cakes such as ginger, date and walnut, coffee and walnut, banana and walnut, chocolate sponge and strawberry sponge.  There were several gluten free cakes, delicious adaptations of favourite old recipes, plus a variation of carrot cake and an upside down cake.

The number of cakes containing walnuts could be down to it being the nut that people are most fond of, or that we are in walnut country.  They fall off the trees in autumn and you simply help yourself to delicious fresh walnuts. Out of the thirteen cakes, four of them were made by men -  and for two of them it was their very first time – this was the first cake they had ever made.  Now that’s what I call real and brave enthusiasm !!

Several people had made a cake for the first time in their French oven – people who had come to France for the holidays and wouldn’t normally bake a cake on holiday.

I have to admit that on the afternoon before I had a little chuckle to myself when I thought of all those cakes being baked in the Loire at the same time – all those anxious faces peering into ovens they are not used to baking with, hoping it would turn out alright !!

Of course the proof of the cake is in the eating so with formalities quickly out of the way we got down to the main business of the day – eating the cakes!  All washed down with proper English tea and later – naturally – a glass or two of Vouvray.  Conversation was without doubt rather different to meetings at home.  There the talk is of work, children, grandchildren, traffic jams and supermarket prices.  Here it was of brocantes, old cars, holidays, local wildlife, and renovation of ancient houses.

It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon and I hope that that everyone is looking forward to the next meeting!

http://clandestinecakeclub.co.uk/

GLUTEN FREE CHOCOLATE BROWNIES

Easter is synonymous with chocolate for me and I was looking for a recipe to make a gluten free chocolate cake for a bit of a do at a friend’s house.  Having bought a pack of Doves Farm gluten free self-raising flour I noticed a recipe for brownies on the back which looked very easy to make and too good to resist.

Looking at recipes on the Doves Farm website, it’s almost as if they suggest you can use the gluten free flour in place of ordinary flour in anything.  So far I’ve only used the product a handful of times but it’s certainly always been a success. 

Anyway, these brownies were very easy to make and worked out really well.  There was a nice crust and a squidgy middle.  (The dents in the cake are where I pressed to see if it was done!)

The flavour was good and chocolatey and although the texture was slightly different from many other brownies, I think anyone would be hard pressed to identify that this was because of the GF flour. 

Brownies are often better the day after baking but I’m afraid I can’t vouch for this as they all disappeared on the day!

Ingredients

100g butter

150g gluten free dark chocolate

100g Doves Farm self-raising GF flour

200g sugar

3 eggs

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Grease and line a 20cm square baking tin.

Beat the eggs together in a large bowl.  Add the flour and sugar and mix well to combine.

Put the chocolate and butter into a small saucepan and heat gently until melted together, stirring well.

Add the chocolate mixture to the flour mixture and mix well.  Pour into the prepared tin.

Bake for 30-35 minutes until the skewer test is passed.  There should be a crusty top and a soft middle so be careful not to over bake.

Cool in the tin.

Cuts into 25 small or 16 regular brownies.

CHOCOLATE RUM CAKE (for serious chocoholics)

It was our local Clandestine Cake Club’s first birthday recently so I felt compelled to attend the meeting, even though I really haven’t got the time to bake!  (Any excuse!)

A quick shuffle of my last few unpacked cook books led me to a recipe in Mary Berry’s Baking Bible.  Chocolate and booze go well together at any time but are especially good for a birthday!

In the first chapter of her book Mary states that she rarely uses dark chocolate with a high cocoa solids content, believing it to be unnecessarily expensive and not always the best thing for baking.  Luckily I had two bars of Cadbury’s Bournville chocolate in the cupboard so with those in stock I had more or less everything I needed to make the cake.

Apart that is, from the apricot jam.  The recipe states that you should brush the cake with warm, sieved apricot jam before coating it with the chocolate icing.  As we are trying to run down our stocks of everything before we move house, the only thing I had in stock that might do was half a jar of morello cherry jam.  As cherries go really well with both rum and chocolate I decided to use that instead and I have to say, it was a really good choice.  The sweetness of the cherry jam contrasted will with the intensely chocolate flavour of the cake and icing.

 

I decorated the cake with the chocolate icing as given in the recipe and also added some crystallised violets, a sprinkle of chocolate vermicelli and a single candle.

This is not a cake for the faint hearted.  There are after all two whole large bars of Bournville chocolate in the cake and even though they’re not the 70% cocoa solids content of some chocolate, it still adds up to a very strong dark chocolate flavour.  One to which the cherry jam adds a welcome contrast.

You can see the recipe here but in the Baking Bible Mary also incredibly adds yet another almost whole bar of chocolate by making a ganache to pipe decorative swirls on the cake !!  It was already more than chocolatey enough for me so this would have made it inedible for my taste !!  Needless to say, I’m glad I omitted that step in the recipe.

Adding the cherry jam was a lucky alteration to the original recipe so consequently I feel entitled to submit this post to this month’s Tea Time Treats Challenge, organised by Karen of Lavender and Lovage and Jane of the Hedge Combers.  The theme this time is “jam” and you can see the details here.

Ingredients

For the cake

200g plain chocolate, 39% cocoa solids, such as Bournville

100g unsalted butter, diced

3 large eggs, separated

100g dark muscovado sugar

50ml dark rum

75g self raising flour

50g ground almonds

For the filling and icing

225g Bournville chocolate

100g unsalted butter, diced

2 tbslp morello cherry jam

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Grease and a 20cm round springform cake tin and line the base with baking paper.

Melt the chocolate and butter together in a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water.  Set aside to cool.

Put the egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl and whisk together until pale and creamy.

Add the cooled chocolate and rum and mix together until combined.  Sift in the flour and fold in, along with the ground almonds.

Whisk the egg whites separately until stiff and fold into the mixture.

Transfer the mixture to the tin and bake for about 45 minutes until done.

Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes then turn out, remove the paper and cool on a rack.

To make the filling, melt the chocolate as above, then add the butter and mix well together.  Put the jam in a small saucepan and heat gently, then push through a sieve to remove any lumps of fruit.

When the cake is cool, slice it in half horizontally using a bread knife.  Spread two tablespoons of the chocolate icing on the bottom half and put the two halves back together.

Brush the sieved jam over the top and sides of the cake and allow to set.  Then gently spread the remaining icing over the whole cake.  Decorate with sprinkles, candles or your choice of decorations.

Cuts into 10-12 slices as it is very rich.

PLUM AND APPLE DAPPY

Two of my favourite baking challenges have joined forces this month.  Random Recipes by Dom of Bellau Kitchen, and Aphabakes, by Ros of The more than occasional baker and Caroline of Caroline Makes, have joined together to create an Alphabakes Random Recipe Challenge.

The idea is to choose a cook book at random and then randomly choose and cook a recipe in the A section of the index. 

Most of my cook books are now packed ready for moving house so my choice was limited to the remaining few in one bookcase.  Glancing along the shelf I saw this book by Laura Washburn:

Thinking that apples conveniently begin with the letter A, I took it off the shelf and discovered a post-it already attached to a page, one I had obviously bookmarked for baking some time ago.  So I decided to cook that.  I hope that’s random enough to comply with the rules of the challenge!

I deviated slightly from the recipe as I wanted to use up a few plums remaining from baking a crumble the previous weekend, but other than that I was reasonably true to the original.  I also conveniently had half a pack of ready made shortcrust pastry in the fridge left over from making a quiche.

 

I had never heard of a “dappy” before I bought this book (one of my charity shop finds) and essentially it’s like a pastry roly-poly, filled with fruit instead of jam and sliced before baking.  The author describes it as a little known dish from the West Country. 

I now have several of Laura Washburn’s books, the first one I acquired being a Christmas present a few years ago called “the French country table”.  I have cooked quite a few recipes from all of them and they have always been a success.

As well as charity shops I find a good way of acquiring cook books for a very modest price is to use the “used and new” offer on Amazon.  I have collected some really good books for the cost of  only 1p each plus postage, which is usually £2.80.  One or two of the used books have been slightly grubby and very well used, but at that price, if it doesn’t inspire me, I am quite happy to take it back to the charity shops, which is where I imagine most of these 1p books come from in the first place.  Most of the used books have been in near perfect condition.

As shop bought plums can be a bit firm I usually cook them before putting them into a crumble or pie, so I cooked these along with the apples and also added a dash of cinnamon for extra flavour.   There was a bit too much fruit so rather than make the pastry too difficult to roll up by over filling it, I just tucked the extra in between the pastry rolls in the tin.

It was delicious!  A nice change from a pie or crumble and I will definitely be making it again.  I have to say that the shop bought ready made pastry was good too.  I’m using it at the moment to save time but I wouldn’t hesitate to use it again and again.

You can read all about this month’s “Random Recipes meets Alphabakes” challenge here and here.

Ingredients

250g ready made shortcrust pastry, approx half a pack

5 large plums, halved, stoned then cubed

2 medium eating apples, peeled, cored and cubed

2 tblsp golden caster sugar

½tsp ground cinnamon

1tblsp demerara sugar

Method

Put the cubed fruit into a medium saucepan with a splash of water and heat gently for 10-15 minutes until the fruit is tender.  Stir in the caster sugar and cinnamon and set aside to cool.

Preheat the oven to 220°C / 200°fan / gas mk 7.  Line a 20cm square baking tin or dish with baking paper.

Roll out the pastry into an oblong approximately 20 x 30 cm.

Spread the cooked fruit over the pastry and roll up like you would a Swiss roll, from one long side.

Cut the roll into 7* even slices and lay one slice in the centre of the dish, cut side up.  Arrange the remaining slices around the centre one, not touching as the pastry will expand.  Sprinkle with the demerara sugar.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until the pastry is golden brown and cooked through.

Serve with custard, cream, ice cream or crème fraîche.

Serves 4*.

*I followed the instructions and cut the roll into 7 slices but next time I will cut it into 8, to make portioning easier and fairer !!

PEAR AND GINGER UPSIDE DOWN CAKE

Right in the middle of packing I started having withdrawal symptoms.  My resistance failed me and I was overcome by the need to bake something.  I always knew it was too good to last!

I had been disappointed that my self-imposed abstinence from all things cake meant that I couldn’t take part in one of my favourite monthly baking challenges, Alphabakes.  I haven’t entered every month by any means, far from it, but I have done some of the tricky letters, such as Z and I.  This was going to be the final letter, U, and I already had a recipe earmarked for it.  An upside down cake.

Then we sold the house in record time and panic set in.  So much packing to do, so little time!  Baking would have to be put on the back burner for quite a while.

I was looking at some uneaten pears in the fruit bowl and the idea for a pear upside down cake came to me.  I had also unearthed a jar of ginger preserve during my clearing out of a kitchen cupboard.  Perfect for sandwiching the two cakes together!

I used the recipe I intended to use in the first place, which is on the Good Food website and you can see it here.

I simply swapped the peaches for sliced pears and added a little ginger.

The cake turned out spectacularly well, considering it’s such an easy recipe, essentially and all-in-one sponge cake with some fruit in the bottom of one tin.

The sponge was light and moist with just a hint of ginger, the pears beautifully caramelised and the ginger jam and cream set it off perfectly.  I would definitely make it again.

The fact that it was so quick to make, makes me feel a lot less guilty about taking the time to make it when I should be packing or sorting yet another drawer or cupboard!

Alphabakes is a monthly baking challenge organised by Caroline of Caroline Makes and, this time, by Ros of The more than the occasional baker.  You can see the details here.

Ingredients

For the cake

200g softened butter, or spreadable butter

200g self raising flour

1tsp baking powder

1tsp ground ginger

200g golden caster sugar

4 eggs

2tblsp milk

For the topping

3 ripe pears

75g light soft brown sugar

For the filling

2tblsp ginger preserve

125ml double cream

1tblsp icing sugar

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Grease two 20cm sandwich tins, line the bases with baking paper and grease again.

Sift the flour, baking powder and ginger into a large bowl.  Add all the other cake ingredients and whisk with an electric hand whisk (or use a food mixer) until fully combined and smooth.

Sprinkle the soft brown sugar evenly over the bottom of one of the tins.

Peel the pears, halve them, remove the cores (using a melon baller) and slice each half into three wedges.  Arrange the pear slices on top of the brown sugar.

Divide the cake mixture evenly between the two tins, being careful not to disturb the pear slices and remembering that the tin with the fruit on the bottom will inevitably look fuller.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until the cakes are done.  The one with the pears on the bottom will take about five minutes longer than the other.

Allow to cool in the tins for a few minutes then turn out carefully onto a wire rack.

Whisk the double cream with the icing sugar until spreadable.  When the cakes are cold, spread the preserve on the bare cake half.  (Warm it slightly in a small pan if necessary to make it runny enough to spread.)

Spread a thick layer of whipped cream on top, remembering to let the jam cool completely first.  Put the fruited cake on top of that.

Cuts into 6-8 slices.

LEMON DRIZZLE BIRTHDAY BUNDT CAKE

This is the last cake I will be baking for a while.  The house is sold so all my baking stuff will be packed up ready to be stored or moved before long.

I was pleased to be  making this cake, a birthday cake for my mother-in-law’s 90th birthday.  Her favourite cakes are lemon or fruit cake so I decided to go for a rather special lemon drizzle cake.

I used my new Bundt tin, the one that Nick gave me for Christmas, coated it well inside with cake release spray, and the cake slid out perfectly.  That was a relief!  After the previous disaster (here) I can safely say that the tin was not the culprit on that occasion.  I must remember not to put fudge into a Bundt cake again !!

I’m not into fancy icing so I decorated the cake with some pretty number candles and pink roses.  I used a small shot glass to act as a vase which I pushed into the hole in the middle of the cake.  I lengthened the stems of the candles by attaching them to wooden kebab sticks with sellotape so that they would stand up at the right height in the vase.

The recipe comes from the blog Delicious, Delicious, Delicious, which you can see here.  It worked perfectly, although I didn’t prick the cake to make holes for the drizzle to soak in as I didn’t want to spoil the lines of the cake.  I just kept pouring the syrup over, recollecting it as it ran off by putting the cake on a cooling rack over a dinner plate.  That resulted in a nice coating of sugar and some of it definitely soaked in through the crust.  To finish the cake I added a light sprinkling of edible glitter.

It looked very pretty in the centre of the table for my mother-in-law’s birthday tea.  The flavour was good and everybody enjoyed it.

So that’s it for a while.  I have no idea where my next post will come from, but I’ll be back as soon as we’re settled somewhere !!

In the meantime I am entering this cake into this month’s Teatime Treats, hosted by Karen of Lavender and Lovage and this month by Jane of the Hedge Combers.  The theme for March is “Decorative Cakes” and you can see the details here.