APPLE AND RAISIN CAKE

I recently stumbled across a really nice website containing lots of lovely home baking recipes.  It’s for a brand of flour called Odlums which I had never heard of before and comes from Ireland.  From it I had bookmarked a nice looking recipe for an apple cake which you can see here.  

This week’s Monday walk was cancelled for the third time due to the wet weather.  I have to say that the weather has been grim for at least the last four weeks which is very disappointing.  However, our walking group are a social bunch so even if they can’t walk the debriefing in the bar afterwards usually goes ahead!  More often than not someone brings a cake so I decided to make the apple cake.  (I added a handful of raisins to the list of ingredients, just because it seemed like a nice idea.)  

I really liked the decoration for what was a very plain cake - rings of apple arranged on top.  This posed a challenge as my usual method for coring an apple wouldn't work.  I good old rummage in my kitchen drawer unearthed my little used apple corer.

I usually cut the apple in half vertically from north to south and dig out the core with a melon baller.  This method is good for producing thick or thin wedges.  To get the apple rings I cut the apple in half horizontally around the equator and used the apple corer.  I then sliced the apple thinly to get the rings.  Easy peasy.  You can never beat having the right equipment (even if you have to hunt for it).

It was a very nice cake.  I often find that apple cakes can be a bit fragile, especially those containing apple slices.   They can fall apart which makes being handed round rather messy.  This one held its shape perfectly, possibly because the apples were chopped into quite small dice and the mixture was quite stiff.  It had to be spread into the tin rather than poured.  

I baked it in an oblong tin measuring  11" x 7" rather than the loaf tin in the recipe.  It cut perfectly into 12 squares of just the right size for a group.  Definitely a recipe I will be using again.  The only change I would try is to add a little more spice next time.

The more eagle eyed of you might notice a different cat in one of the pictures.  We were so sad to have to say goodbye to our beloved Daisy last month when she (and we) lost the battle with her tumour.  Yvonne came into our lives just one week later.  Her owner had left her with a friend for a couple of weeks in the summer but two months later he made it clear that he was not coming back for her.  Word went out among the walking group that a new home was needed so she is now part of our little family.  She's nine years old and is settling in really well so far.

You can read more about Daisy here.

Ingredients

225g self raising flour

175g softened butter or baking spread

175g golden caster sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp ground cinnamon

3 eating apples

50g raisins

Method

Preheat the oven to 190°C / 170° fan / gas mk 5.  Grease or line a 2lb loaf tin or a 11" x 7" baking tin with parchment.

In a large bowl, cream the butter or spread with the sugar until light and fluffy.  Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a tblsp of flour with each addition.

Sift in the rest of the flour and cinnamon and fold in.

Peel and core the apples.  Chop 2½ of the apples into small dice and add to the mixture with the raisins.  Stir into the mixture and transfer to the tin.  Level the top.

Cut the remaining half apple into thin slices and arrange on top of the cake.

Bake for 40-50 minutes until golden brown and set.  Cool in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.

Dust with icing sugar before serving.

Cuts into 12 squares or 8-10 slices.

CRANBERRY AND ORANGE BUNDT CAKE and a Happy Birthday to me!

 

I recently had a Big Birthday!

Unfortunately I couldn't get all seventy candles on the cake so settled for one!

For my birthday cake I fancied making a recipe I had had my eye on for a while, a cranberry and orange cake by Lynn Hill.  I decided to make it in a Bundt tin for the extra glamour.

It was done in much less time than that specified in the recipe, 55 minutes.  In fact by then it was probably slightly over baked and would have been fine after 50 minutes.  It had a very dark and crispy crust with brown speckling, as warned by Lynn in the write up, due to the very high sugar content.  I decorated it with a drizzle of icing made from 3 tablespoons of sifted icing sugar and enough orange juice to make it the right consistency to run over the sides of the cake.  That disguised the not so attractive appearance of the naked cake!

Once through the crispy crust it was superb!

The mixture was quite stiff so the cranberries didn't sink at all and were beautifully evenly distributed.  I used fewer cranberries than stated in the recipe as my punnet only contained about 220g.  It was plenty I think.

It tasted delicious, cranberry and orange being one of my favourite combinations.

It also kept well in a sealed box and the last few slices made an excellent dessert served warm with custard.  You can see the recipe here.  Apart from the tin, the cooking time, the quantity of cranberries and the addition of the icing I followed it to the letter! 

Cuts into 18-20 portions.

A CRAFTY CHOCOLATE CAKE

 

These have to be some of the worst photos of a cake that I have ever put up in this blog but the cake is one of the best.

 

 

Some time ago Phil of "As Strong as Soup" blog posted about Michael Barry's Crafty Chocolate Cake and ever since then I have been meaning to bake it. It's hard to believe that I have waited seven years to make this cake! (So many cakes, so little time.)  You can read Phil's post about it here.

 

Michael Barry had the cooking slot in the old Food and Drink series on the BBC and I remember enjoying his no nonsense style.  Phil gives more information about him in his post and a link to the recipe on the Oxfam website.  Sadly the link no longer works so I googled the cake and came across it posted as a contributor's recipe on Nigella Lawson's website.  Something about this version of the cake somehow didn't quite ring true and at the back of my mind I thought it was not the same as the original.

 

 

 

Luckily, not long ago I acquired a copy of  the book that it comes from, Michael Barry's Food and Drink Cookbook, published in 1991. (From a charity shop for £1, where else?)  There are subtle differences between his recipe and the one on Nigella's website so I decided to go with the original.

 

 

The cake was destined for a birthday get together of just five ladies and I was dismayed when the cream I intended to fill it with would simply not whip up stiffly enough to use it.  Glurpy cream oozing out of the middle of an otherwise acceptable cake just will not do for a birthday so I left it out and just filled it with a good layer of cherry jam instead.  I was equally, if not more dismayed when the second sponge cracked as I placed it on top of the first.  A good dense dusting of icing sugar was not enough to hide the crack but nobody seemed to mind.

 

Cracked top and lack of cream notwithstanding, this was an excellent cake.  Phil waxes lyrical about it and quite rightly so.  In the book Mr Barry boasts that his cake was quicker to make and preferred by the Food and Drink team over a similar recipe by the WI! 

It is a doddle to make, (although it takes longer to bake than other all-in-one sponge cakes) has a lovely light texture and good chocolate flavour.  What more could you want from a recipe?

 

Ingredients

 

175g self raising flour

4 heaped tblsp cocoa powder

1 heaped tsp baking powder

100g caster sugar

1 dessert spoon black treacle

150ml sunflower oil

150ml milk

2 large eggs

 

For the filling

 

4-5 tblsp cherry jam

approx. 200ml double cream

 

Method

 

Grease and line the bases of two 18cm sandwich tins.  Preheat the oven to 160C / 140 Fan.

 

Put all the cake ingredients into a food processor and blend until you have a dark brown creamy batter.

 

Divide between the two tins and bake for 40-45 minutes.

 

Remove from the tins and cool on a wire rack.

 

To serve, sandwich the cakes together with a good layer of jam and some whipped cream.  dust thickly with icing sugar on top.

 

Cuts into 8-10 slices.

PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY CAKE

I offered to make a cake for a friend’s birthday party and decided that it needed to be quite a large cake due to the number of people who might be coming to the do.  A Bundt cake was ideal.

It also needed to be a bloke’s cake, nothing too girly or frilly, and the idea of a peanut butter cake sprang to mind.  The absence of any topping that might melt or slide off in transit on a very warm summer’s afternoon in the Loire Valley was also a consideration, so a light dusting of icing sugar was perfect.

A quick look on Google led me to this cake on the DollyBakes blog – peanut butter and jelly cake.  It was, as I expected from Rachel’s recipes, a great success. 

I forgot to take pictures of the cake when it was cut which would show how the inside looked and how perfectly the jelly was distributed but, if you look at the original blog post, it turned out exactly like that!  The crunchy peanut butter gave just the right amount of crunch and flavour and the jelly was a nice little surprise in every slice.

I followed the recipe precisely, using blackberry jelly as the jam and taking care to keep it away from the edges of the cake as suggested.  I have experienced before the amazing effect that jam has in gluing the cake to the tin if it gets too close to the edge!

My Bundt tin was just the right shape and size for the cake to accommodate a mansize candle in the middle too.  So we all wished Simon a Happy Birthday and after he’d blown out the candle the cake was cut easily into a huge number of generous slices.

Definitely a good one for a crowd.  To see the recipe, click here.

Cuts into at least 15 slices.

CHOCOLATE AND CHERRY SPICE CAKE (forgotten cakes and bakes of 2015)

2015  was a good year for us, but fairly chaotic. Much time was spent moving our furniture and belongings up and down the stairs, in and out of the barn and, in some cases, across the Channel and back again.  This was all due to the building work going on chez nous in France.  We decided to get on with it sooner rather than later, to get it over with and to take advantage of the availability of the various artisans while we had them hooked – the world of blogging is filled with tales of woe as people struggle to find builders, plumbers and carpenters and commit them to getting on with the job and finishing it.  We have been very lucky that way, largely because of some friends who live nearby who were able to point us in the direction of reliable artisans and keep tabs on the work in our absence. 

Then there were numerous trips across the channel for various crises, always in a tearing hurry and never when it was convenient.  It’s been a heck of a year but we survived smiling (well, more of a grimace at times) and if you’re vaguely interested, there’s a brief pictorial account, starting here.



Throughout all the chaos and building dust I managed to bake quite often.  What I didn’t have the time to do was write about it.  In actual fact the main problem was not so much finding the time to write but in finding somewhere sensible to set up the laptop and do it.  In our French house there are many no-go areas where the rather feeble broadband does not get through the enormously thick stone walls, so in order for the computer to work only certain spots in the house will do.  Finding an unoccupied bit of table or any other flat surface in the right spot was not always possible. 

This next few posts will include a number of my forgotten bakes – things I made and that worked well but never got the chance to write about.

First of all is the Chocolate and Cherry Spice Cake that I made for Nick’s birthday in November.  The recipe comes from a lovely blog called “Life’s a Feast”, written by a lady called Jamie, who, with her French husband, bought a hotel in Chinon last year.  She posts lovely recipes and her cakes look divine.  So far this is the only one I have made but I have several bookmarked for future enjoyment.  You can see the blog here.



My pictures do not do the cake justice for it really is gorgeous.  Essentially it’s a chocolate cake with spices and dark cherries in it, baked in a Bundt tin.

The recipe suggests using the bottled dark cherries you can find in France, called griottes.  I found a jar quite easily as they are readily available but also quite expensive.  I used a large jar as I couldn’t get a small one but the leftover cherries were lovely served with chunks of the cake and a little cream (or just by themselves).  In the UK I think I would use a tin of dark cherries which would be fine. 



In the recipe cherries are arranged carefully in the bottom of the tin so that when the cake is baked they form a nice even ring on the top.  I tried that but the effect was not great, or not nearly as good as in the blog, so next time I think I will just mix them all in. 

Some of the juice from the jar is added to the mixture but I decided to add cherry brandy instead.  As usual I didn’t have all the right ingredients to hand so in place of the ½ teaspoon of ground cloves I used mixed spice.

It was a lovely, moist cake and right up Nick’s street.  He loves chocolate, spices and cherries so it was spot on for his birthday.  It was a large cake but it kept well and was still good after almost a week.  You can see the recipe here.