COFFEE AND WALNUT TRAYBAKE

I had my eye on this recipe for the next time I needed to make a cake for a bit of a gathering and it didn't disappoint.  It’s from the original "Baking Bible" by Mary Berry.

It’s an all-in-one recipe and instead of butter I used the last of my pack of "spreadable" butter called Norpak which came from Aldi in the UK.  (A number of very similar spreads and butters are available in France.)  After my experience with the lemon cake I did make sure it was very soft by giving it a few seconds of the "soften butter" function on my microwave, i.e. at a very low power.  I have to be careful with this as it’s easy to take it too far and end up with melted butter instead, but it's a useful function.

There are subtle differences between baking products available in France and those from the UK.  A lot of my friends have trouble with the flour and the range of sugars on sale.  I'm getting used to using them myself but on this occasion I used a French brand of icing sugar (sucre glacé) for the buttercream topping.  Somehow this icing sugar seemed "claggy" or almost damp and it was taking ages to sift it.  In truth it had to be pushed through the sieve.  So I resorted to the food processor which made light work of it, giving the icing sugar a blitz on its own first.  Looking at the picture in the book the icing seemed quite soft so I added a few more spoonfuls to make it stiffer.

The cake was not the lightest sponge I have ever made but it tasted good and went down well.  It had risen beautifully and cut into 24 generous squares, ideal for a crowd, just the right size to handle and eat without getting too messy.  I trimmed the edges before icing and slicing to remove the crust from the sides.

Ingredients

For the cake

225g softened butter or spreadable butter product

225g light muscovado sugar (I used mostly soft light brown sugar as that's what I had)

 275g self raising flour

2 tsp baking powder

4 large eggs (I used 5 small eggs as they weighed about the same)

2 tblsp milk

2 tblsp Camp coffee essence

75g chopped walnuts

For the icing

75g softened butter

225g icing sugar 

2 tsp milk

2 tsp Camp coffee essence

walnut pieces to decorate

Method

Line a greased traybake tin, 30 x 23cm (mine was slightly bigger) with baking paper.  Preheat the oven to 180 C / 160 fan / gas mk 4.  

Put all the cake ingredients into a large mixing bowl and beat with an electric mixer until well combined.  

Spoon into the prepared tin and level the top.  Bake for 35-40 minutes until done.  Mine was a little over at 35 minutes probably due to the slightly larger tin, so I would check at 30 minutes next time.

Cool in the tin.

To make the buttercream put the icing sugar into a food processor and blitz for a few seconds to remove any lumps.  Add the coffee, butter and milk and process until combined and smooth.

Make sure the cake is completely cold and slice off the edges.  Spread the buttercream over the top and cut into squares of the size you prefer. 

Decorate each square with half a walnut or a few bits of chopped walnuts.

Cuts into 24 squares.

ICED LEMON SQUARES FOR AFTERNOON TEA

We have a friend whose birthday falls on St Patrick's Day so we held an afternoon tea party in his honour with a couple of nods to the Irish theme.  

A chocolate Guinness cake was the star of the show and of course Guinness was served for those brave enough to drink it so early in the day.

The cake stand had dainty sandwiches including egg and cress, always very popular, on the bottom tier.  The eggs were true free range, a gift from one of the ladies in our watercolour painting class and the yolks are an astonishingly bright orange.  She has a number of hens that lay lots of eggs and she brings everyone a box of half a dozen every week! We also used some home grown cress grown on our windowsill from a packet of seeds smuggled in from our trip back to the UK at Christmas.  (I have never found either cress or packets of seeds other than watercress in France.)

There were also ham and tomato sandwiches, smoked salmon, cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches, all with the crusts removed!  I also made a plate of mini sausage rolls using cocktail frankfurters which were very tasty and well received.

The middle tier had home made scones (made by Nick) and some cream horns.  I wrote about them here.  The top layer had little iced and decorated squares of lemon cake.  I fancied doing French fancies but chickened out when I spotted this Irish recipe by Donal Skehan.  

However, they very nearly didn't happen.  The recipe is an all-in-one method and said to use butter "at room temperature". Well, I ended up with little flecks of butter in the mixture.  I knew that too much beating could make the cake tough not soft and had used up all my lemons so couldn't start again.  I looked for solutions on the internet.  Most said "just cook, it will be fine", a couple said beat harder and several said to sieve the mixture!  I tried that - what a palaver and I soon gave up and went with the "just cook" theory!

I baked it as a shallow tray bake, cut it into little squares and decorated with everything I had to make them look pretty. I made a thin icing using lemon juice and coloured half with yellow food colouring.  They looked perfect and tasted very lemony. The texture was slightly firm, a bit like a madeira cake and there were occasional little holes, presumably due to the tiny lumps of unblended butter.  

I would use this recipe again but make sure the butter was very well softened, not just "at room temperature" next time. I suppose that it very much depends on the temperature of the room!  The creaming method would have worked better to ensure the butter was properly blended on this occasion!

I could imagine my mum saying "you're never too old to make mistakes" and the swish of Mrs Stafford's broomstick as she swooped by!

Ingredients 

225g caster sugar

250g self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

4 large eggs

225g butter at room temperature (well softened would be better)

3 tblsp milk

Zest of 3 lemons

For the icing:

200g icing sugar

Juice of 1 lemon

Sprinkles of your choice

Method

Preheat the oven to 160°C / 140° fan / gas mk 3.  Line a large rectangular baking tin, 30 x 23cm, with baking paper.

Put all the cake ingredients into a large bowl and beat with a hand held electric whisk until well blended.

Transfer the mixture to the tin and level the top.  Bake for 35 minutes until done.  Remove from the oven and after a few minutes carefully lift the cake in its paper out of the tin and onto a wire rack to cool.

To make the icing sift the icing sugar into a large bowl and beat in enough lemon juice to make it runny but not too thin.  

Divide your cake into half if you are using two colours or thirds if you are using three.  Cut into squares of the size you want, very small and dainty or larger.  Separate slightly on the paper or by removing onto the rack.

Coat one section of cake with white icing, allowing it to drip down the sides of the squares.

Transfer half of the remaining icing into a separate bowl if you are using three colours or colour the remainder with just one colour if you are using two colours.

Decorate with sprinkles.

Cuts into at least 20 squares depending on how dainty you want them!

COCTAIL SAUSAGE ROLLS

I have made dozens and dozens of mini sausage rolls over the years to this recipe here.  Then last year we were invited to a friend's house for a bbq party and amongst the nibbles for apéros a plate of tiny sausage rolls appeared on the table.  They were made using mini frankfurters, were very cute, dainty and tasty so I decided to have a go at making them myself.

The sausages come in tubs or shrink wrapped packs of various quantities.

If you can't get mini ones, use long frankfurters and cut them into shorter pieces.

They were easier to make than using sausage meat.  Very quick and one pack of the little sausages contains enough to create about thirty of them.  I made mine by dividing the rolled pack of puff pastry into half lengthwise but this gave each roll quite a thick blanket of pastry.  I think that next time I would try dividing the the pastry into three to get more sausage rolls with thinner pastry out of one sheet.

However, they were very tasty, very popular and I will definitely be using them again.

Follow the guidelines in my recipe for mini sausage rolls but arrange the little sausages in a line along one strip of pastry and cut it into the right length for each one before rolling up.

BROCCOLI, CAULIFLOWER AND BLUE CHEESE SOUP (soup maker recipe)

It's still very much soup weather here in France.  We seem to get one or two warm, sunny days, getting warmer week by week, followed by perishing cold grey, wet or drizzly days and very cold nights.  The 18°C sunshine  and clear blue sky the other day turned into a clear, starry night only a few degrees above freezing followed by a day of cold grey mizzle.  It's not time to put the soup maker to the back of the cupboard just yet and I regretted putting the electric blanket away already!

This soup was very much a "free soup" idea.  I always have to trim the leaves from a cauliflower to fit it into the fridge so had saved them and several stalks from some broccoli with the idea of turning them into soup.  My research told me it would produce a very delicate flavoured soup, which I interpreted as "not much flavour".  The usual way to add flavour to an otherwise bland soup is to add an extra stock pot or seasoning but I had decided on blue cheese, a popular flavour combo.

I discarded the floppy green bits from the cauliflower leaves and used mainly the thick white ribs.  I trimmed the ends and knobbly bits from the broccoli stems and removed the woody outer part.  I went a bit off piste and for once sautéed the leek.  

Into the cooked soup I stirred several dollops of whipped St Agur, a product I spotted here in France not long ago and it's delicious as a spread on toast or croutons.  I think that crumbling in any kind of blue cheese (to taste) would work just as well.  It added a lovely creaminess as well as the blue cheese flavour and the soup was divine.  Definitely a keeper!

Ingredients

cauliflower leaves

broccoli stems

1 leek

1 large potato, peeled and chopped

1 vegetable stock pot

creamed or whipped or crumbled blue cheese to taste

Method

Trim and wash the leek.  Slice into medium slices and fry gently in butter or oil until beginning to colour.

While the leek is cooking, discard any tired and floppy green parts of the cauliflower leaves.  Roughly chop the ribs and rinse well.

Trim the broccoli stems by removing the ends, the knobbly bits and the outer woody part.  Roughly chop and rinse well.

Add enough prepared veg to the soup maker machine to fill as far as the bottom line.  Add the stock pot and enough water to fill to the top line.

Cook on the smooth setting.

When cooked (or when reheating in a saucepan if serving later) stir in your blue cheese spread or other product to taste, until it melts and blends in.  A little can go a long way with some blue cheeses so go steady.  Season with salt and pepper to taste - remember that blue cheese can make it taste salty.

Serves 4 generous bowls of soup or 5-6 as a starter.