STRAWBERRY AND LEMON CAKE and success plucked from the jaws of disaster.

 

During one of the blisteringly hot heatwaves we had in France last summer, I offered to take a cake to a garden party.  The party was to celebrate both a couple of birthdays and a wedding anniversary so I wanted it to be a bit special.

Bundt cakes are great for large gatherings as they can be cut neatly into lots of slim slices.  Most people don't want a big slice of cake at a party, just a taste of it.  For this particular party the host asked for a lemon cake so I picked a recipe that I had used several times before with huge success. 

 

 

This time, it went horribly wrong.

I have no idea why.

 

Despite using a good slathering of home made cake release the cake stuck firmly to the tin.  I had that sinking feeling as I inverted the tin.  Instead of the welcome sound of a cake plopping cleanly out onto the plate - nothing.  No amount of tapping, shaking or cursing would persuade it to come out.  Eventually it landed on the plate with a good third of it still stuck inside the tin.  Rats !!

 

I wondered if the high sugar content combined with the high ambient temperature had something to do with it.  I really have no sensible explanation why a recipe that has worked perfectly before should fail me now - and on such an important occasion, too!

 

 

This is how it looked the previous time I made it!

 

I put my thinking cap on and made a quick trip to the nearest supermarket.  Which was not that quick as it's a twenty minute drive away.  We have a choice of two supermarkets - twenty minutes away in one direction or ten minutes in the opposite - but that one closes for two hours at lunchtime.  (One of the rather quaint features of life in rural France.)  So it was Hobson's choice as I headed for Descartes in search of fresh strawberries. 

I was in luck and armed with two punnets of strawberries I was able to rescue the cake.

 

I sliced off the ragged top of the cake where it had stuck to the tin, spread it with a good coating of whipped cream, filled the middle and decorated the top with strawberries and added a final flourish of strips of lemon zest and a sprinkling of freeze dried strawberries.  It looked perfect for a summer garden party and tasted delicious!  Nobody asked any awkward questions so I had no need to confess that it was very nearly a huge disaster!

You can see the recipe for the cake here.

STICKY GINGER CAKE and a new cake stand!

 

For Nick's birthday last November he requested a ginger cake (again).

 

No surprise there but I was glad to have a reason to bake a recipe I had been hanging my nose over for some time.  It's on the Clandestine Cake website and is one of Lynn Hill's own recipes.  The Clandestine Cake Club as such folded some time ago but the concept is still alive and well in websites and social media.

 

 

It was easy to make and ticked all the birthday cake boxes.  Very gingery with a lovely crumb and a slight stickiness - there's a clue in the name.

 

 

I was also pleased to have a reason to use my new black cake stand.

 

As a person who has more cake stands than a sensible person should ever need I did hesitate briefly before buying it.  (Very briefly.)  I had been hankering after a black one for a few years but never found one that I liked.  Last year I made one for myself - from a black plate glued to an almost black (charcoal grey) candle stick.  It's fine but, just like buses, when you have finally given up hope and ordered a taxi, the bus you were waiting for turns up.  This one turned up in an antique/vintage shop at Cromford Mill and was very modestly priced, so I swooped.  It's made from black glass and is said to be vintage 1950's.

  

The cake was so good it will be my go-to ginger cake from now on.  You can see the recipe here but it can be difficult to read due to the multiple adverts obscuring the text.  If, like me, you mostly use an iPad it can be impossible.  Consequently I have given my version here.

I used a 23cm round springform tin instead of the square one in the recipe and it worked fine.

Ingredients

180 softened butter or baking spread (I used Sainsbury's Buttersoft)

180 soft light brown sugar

3 eggs

180g self raising flour

2 tsp ground ginger

2 pieces stem ginger from a jar, chopped

3 tblsp golden syrup

For the topping

2 pieces of stem ginger from a jar, chopped

4 tblsp ginger syrup from the stem ginger jar

For the icing

4 tblsp icing sugar

1 tsp boiled water

Method

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

Cream the butter and sugar together using a hand held electric whisk (or a wooden spoon and beat like mad!).

Beat in the eggs one at a time.  Adding a tbslp of the measured flour with each egg will help to prevent the mixture from curdling.

Fold in the flour and ginger powder then stir in the golden syrup and stem ginger.  Mix well.

Pour or transfer the mixture to the tin, level the top and bake for 30-35 minutes.

Cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack.

While the cake is still warm, poke a few holes in the top and pour over the ginger syrup.  Scatter the chopped ginger pieces evenly over the top.

To make the icing, mix the icing sugar with enough water to make a runny but creamy consistency and drizzle imaginatively over the top.

Cuts into 8-10 slices.

ECCLES CAKE

We often had Eccles cakes at home when I was a child.  A Saturday afternoon treat when Mum had been shopping in the morning, on the bus, and called at the baker's for four little cakes, one each.  She actually made excellent buns and tarts for us every weekend but in those days one from the baker's seemed more special.

Those Eccles cakes were about the size of a mince pie, made with flaky pastry, golden brown and sprinkled with sugar on top, filled with a sweet and sticky currant mixture.  They were impossible to eat tidily, inevitably producing a scattering of pastry crumbs and the odd escapee currant.  As for speaking with a mouthful.....

So when I saw a recipe for an Eccles cake in my little Good Food book I was intrigued.  There is no pastry but there is a layer of currants in the middle of what is basically an apple cake.  I had no idea that an Eccles cake could actually be made as a cake so was looking forward to have a go.

I was most disappointed to find that my currants sank to the bottom of the cake - not like the picture in the book where they are nicely in the middle - harrumph !!

The other odd thing is that the quantity of mixture was actually way too much for the size of tin stated.  I merrily poured all of it into the tin and vaguely thought "that looks a bit full" as I put it in the oven.  I rechecked the recipe and that I had used the right size of tin, which I had.  Minutes later it looked like it was going to overflow - eek!  Luckily it stopped at the top but it did take a bit longer than stated to bake.

It also took a long time to cool and with guests arriving I didn't have time to drizzle the lemon icing over it prettily as in the book so it had to do with a dusting of icing sugar instead.

It was yummy!  Next time I might try adding a little flour to the currant filling to see if that stops it sinking.  And I will definitely be making it again but using a larger tin - 23cm instead of 20cm.

You can see the recipe here on the Good Food website, or on page 102 of "Easy Baking Recipes" in the Good Food series, in the "celebration cake" section, sandwiched oddly between rose and almond cupcakes and red velvet cake.  A thorn between two roses perhaps.

Ingredients**

250g softened butter (I used Lurpak Spreadable)
250g light soft brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 large eggs
100g plain flour
250g SR flour
100g buttermilk*
2 eating apples, peeled, cored and diced

For the filling
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp mixed spice
2 tblsp melted butter
2 tblsp light soft brown sugar
85g currants
85g raisins
50g mixed peel

For the decoration
85g icing sugar, sifted
zest and juice of 1 lemon
a few sugar cubes, crushed

Method

Preheat the oven to 160 C / 140 fan / gas mk 3.  Butter and line a 20cm round springform tin.  (I suggest 23cm instead).

Put all the filling ingredients into a small bowl and mix together.  Set aside.

Put all the cake ingredients apart from the apples into a large bowl and beat together with an electric whisk until smooth.  Fold in the diced apples.

Put roughly half of the mixture into the tin and level the top.  Scatter the filling over the top, leaving a clear border of about 2-3 cm all the way round the edge.

Spoon the remaining mixture carefully over the top.  Start by plopping spoonfuls around the edge of the tin and gradually fill in the middle, so as not to disturb the filling.  Level the top and bake for 1 hour and 25 minutes or until done.  Cool in the tin.

To ice the cake, mix the icing sugar with enough lemon juice to make a runny icing (about the consistency of single cream).  Drizzle over the cake with a spoon and sprinkle the crushed sugar cubes and lemon zest over the top.

Cuts into 8-10 slices.

* Buttermilk was not available in my local supermarket so I made my own by adding 1/2 tsp lemon juice to 125 ml milk.  Stir well and leave to stand for 5 minutes before using.  (As per a tip on Nigella's website.)

** On the website the zest of 1 lemon is added to the filling ingredients.  I'll try this next time.

FRITTATA

 

This is yet another of those very useful recipes that I wish I had heard of decades ago.

 

 

I always had the idea that a frittata was some kind of exotic dish that required a lot of faffing and was therefore in the category of "not for us".

 

The very first time I had a frittata (as far as I know) was about two years ago, in France, when a new friend served mini ones as nibbles for apéros.  She made two varieties, cooked in a mini muffin tin and served slightly warm, and both were utterly delicious.  She gave me a copy of her recipe and I soon sussed that this was simply a kind of omelette and why oh why had I never made one myself?!

 

 

Since then I have been making frittatas for us at every opportunity.  By opportunity I mean the need to use up some bits and bobs in the fridge.  Believe me, there is never any need to go out and buy something specifically for a frittata, as long as you have eggs and a few tasty bits to use up you're ready to cook.  As a quick and tasty way of using leftovers it's up there with "fridge bottom quiche" and "Sunday dinner pie" but much, much quicker.  It makes an excellent meal for lunch, supper or even breakfast.

 

For this one I used green and yellow peppers, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and about half of a Matteson's smoked sausage.  In the past I have also used bits of potato, cooked broccoli or other veg (peas and asparagus are very good), cooked lardons, smoked salmon or shredded chicken.

 

 

We had ours with garlic potatoes and a (small) green salad.  For the potatoes I just boiled a few baby potatoes (while the frittata was being created) and, when they were cooked and drained, tumbled them in a good tablespoon of Heinz garlic sauce while still warm.  Deelish.

 

Ingredients

 

Roughly half each of a green and yellow pepper, washed, de-seeded and cut into chunks.

a handful of mushrooms, washed and thickly sliced

6-8 cherry tomatoes, washed and halved

Roughly half of a Matteson's smoked sausage (or any other cooked sausage), thickly sliced

4 eggs, beaten and seasoned with salt and pepper

 

Method

 

Preheat the oven to 200 C / 180 fan.  Heat a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a frying pan, preferably one with a metal handle that can be used in the oven.

 

Add the chopped veg and cook on medium heat until just tender.  Add the smoked sausage and heat through.

 

Pour the eggs over the filling and cook gently as if you were making an omelette for about 5 minutes.  Check if the eggs are set underneath by lifting up the edge of the frittata to see if the underside is set and golden brown. 

 

If your frying pan handle is oven proof, transfer the pan to the oven.  If not, gently slide the frittata onto an oven proof plate or dish of a suitable size.  Cook in the oven until the eggs are set on top and beginning to brown.  (You can also do this under a hot grill if you prefer.)

 

REMEMBER THAT THE HANDLE WILL BE HOT - USE OVEN GLOVES!

 

Serve immediately with whatever you like to go with it - potatoes, salad, chips, veg, beans.....anything.

 

Serves 4 as a light lunch, 2 as a main meal.

CHRISTMAS LEFTOVERS

 

Just in case you STILL have some turkey leftover, this is what we do each year with ours.

 

 

This year I made a version of our traditional Christmas Dinner Pie (which you can see here) using leftover potatoes instead of pastry as a topping.

All you do is to put all the Christmas dinner leftovers, including shredded turkey, sprouts, carrots, stuffing, bread sauce, parsnips, pigs in blankets - everything in fact - into a suitable sized dish.  Pour over the leftover gravy or make more if needed.  Top with sliced potatoes and spray those with oil spray (or brush with melted butter).  Bake for 30 minutes at 180 fan until the potatoes are browned and the filling is bubbling around the edges.  Delicious !!  We enjoyed ours on Boxing Day but many of the leftovers will keep for a day or two longer in the fridge before you have to use them up.

 

 

The next day I used my recently discovered risotto recipe to make a turkey, leek and pea risotto.  I used this recipe here but I used chunks of turkey (including the last couple of pigs in blankets that had amazingly escaped discovery in the fridge) and chicken stock (Oxo cube) instead of the smoked haddock and fish stock. I replaced the spinach with frozen peas, adding them with the turkey before the risotto went in the oven. 
The recipe serves 4 people so I simply halved the quantities to make a satisfying dinner for the two of us.  It was scrumptious!

We still have a little turkey left which is still good so for tonight's dinner we will probably have a turkey, leek and mushroom pie with a pastry lid.  There will be sprouts (fresh ones!) and carrots to go with it and almost certainly reheated leftover Christmas pudding with custard and home made brandy butter to follow.  Long gone are the days when I threw out the remaining turkey when I ran out of ideas to use it up.  Nowadays leftovers are one of the best parts of Christmas for me!

FRESH PINEAPPLE UPSIDE DOWN CAKE

 

It's not that long since I made my first upside down cake, only about forty years since they were fashionable!

More recently I found myself with a fresh pineapple that hadn't been used for its intended purpose so I looked on the internet for suitable cake recipes and stumbled upon this recipe on the Tesco website*.  It looked incredibly straightforward, but see note at the end of the recipe.

 

In fact it could hardly have been easier, simply arranging the sliced pineapple in the tin and spooning the cake mixture on top.  No caramel topping to leak out of the tin and the easiest possible sponge cake mixture which I made even quicker using Stork soft margarine and the all in one method.  I didn't have a 25cm tin as specified in the recipe so used my 23cm tin and it was fine, just the right depth I thought.

 

 

In place of the caramel topping on the fruit you simply drizzle runny honey over the finished cake.  I didn't have any in stock so used golden syrup instead.  It was yummy!

 

 

The sponge was light, tasty and altogether delightful, the pineapple was sharp and delicious, offset by the subtle taste of the golden syrup which was not overly sweet.

 

 

It was such a success that I decided to make it again for this year's alternative to Christmas pudding, decorating the finished cake with a few glacé cherry halves and sprigs of rosemary from the garden for a festive touch.  It was quickly rustled up on Christmas Eve, the longest part of the preparation being to trim and slice the pineapple!  It went down really well, enjoyed with a little cream, custard, or home made brandy butter, or in some cases, all three!

 

Ingredients

1 medium fresh ripe pineapple

175g Stork soft margarine for cakes (or softened butter if you prefer)

175g caster sugar

3 eggs

175g self raising flour

2-3 tblsp milk

1 tblsp runny honey (or a good squirt of squeezy golden syrup)

 

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 C / 160 fan / gas mk 4.  Butter a 23 cm springform tin and line the base with baking paper.

 

Prepare the pineapple by removing the top and bottom and slicing off the outer skin and tufts.  Cut in half vertically and remove the woody core with an apple corer or sharp knife Slice into thinnish slices about the thickness of a £1 or 1€ coin.  Arrange the slices in the bottom of the tin, covering as much area as possible.  (You may have some pineapple left over.)

 

To make the sponge beat together all the remaining ingredients except for the golden syrup in a large bowl until smooth and well combined.  Add enough of the milk to loosen the mixture but not make it too soft. 

 

Spoon the mixture carefully over the fruit and level the top.  Bake for about 45 minutes until done.

 

Leave in the tin for 5 minutes then release the clip and leave to cool.  When cool, remove the ring, put a plate or cake stand upside down on top and invert the cake.  Remove the circle of baking paper and drizzle a little honey or golden syrup over the top.

 

Cuts into 10-12 slices.

* Since I first wrote this post Tesco have changed the recipe on their website and it now uses tinned pineapple, which is a shame.

SMOKED HADDOCK AND LEEK RISOTTO

Whoosh, where did the last few weeks go?

 

It's certainly not that there has been no baking going on chez nous.  Indeed, there has been an above average amount of baking, cooking and entertaining and consequently a shortage of time to write about it.

 

We returned to the UK at the end of October and immediately turned the house here upside down to have two bedrooms decorated, one upstairs and one downstairs.  (It's a bungalow with a dormer extension.)  So far we have done all the decorating ourselves but by now are thoroughly fed up with it so this time wielded the wallet instead of the paint brush.  Paul the decorator was a joy to have in the house (he is very house trained and totally unlike any workmen we have ever had the displeasure to meet before).  He did a brilliant job of first the upstairs bedroom then the downstairs, on consecutive weeks.  All very good but it still meant moving furniture yet again from one room to another then back again.  I swear I never ever want to do that again.

 

With the furniture still displaced we then put Daisy into the cattery, loaded Hugo into the car to return to France for just one week to "close up" the house there and say goodbye to it until next Spring.  When we got back to the UK we then had to restore the house here to something like habitable and get back to normal life.  Not that I can actually remember what normal is like. 

 

 

You may wonder what any of this has to do with a risotto but I have to say that this recipe is a joy to have discovered.

 

Our nephew and his girlfriend cooked this for us when we went round to theirs one evening last week to meet their new cat and dishwasher.  They bought their very first house a couple of months ago and Nick went round soon after to put in place the plumbing and electrics for a dishwasher - their first one of those too.  Having only ever previously lived in rented houses they haven't had the opportunity to gain DIY skills, all repairs having to be done by landlords, or, more often than not, put up with undone.  The dishwasher finally arrived and was successfully installed at about the same time as they got their own cat, having not been able to have one of those before either.

 

The cat Mavis is adorable, the risotto was delicious and rustled up in no time at all and the dishwasher worked brilliantly.  They are busy people, often getting home from work quite late, so having a repertoire of quick dinners is essential.  I asked for the recipe and couldn't wait to try it myself. 



You can see it here on the BBC Good Food website.  Curiously, some of the reviews describe it as bland.  Well, au contraire, for me/us it was packed full of flavour, utterly delicious, rich and creamy.  I made it myself this evening and even my dad enjoyed it too, it being the first risotto he has ever eaten (at the age of 91).  I used a Tesco fish stock pot (little plastic thing) and skinless, boneless smoked cod as that was what was available.  I am also looking forward to adapting the recipe using bacon and mushrooms instead of the smoked fish.

 

Ingredients

 

a small knob of butter

1 large leek, washed and thinly sliced

300g risotto rice

700 ml fish or veg stock

250 ml whole milk

375g (approx) smoked cod or haddock, skinned, boned and cut into large chunks

3 tblsp crème fraiche

100g baby spinach

 

Method

 

Preheat the oven to 200C / 180 fan / gas mk 6.

Melt the butter in a large ovenproof dish or casserole over medium heat and cook the leek slices for 4-5 minutes, stirring, until just tender.  Add the rice and stir for two more minutes.

 

Add the stock and milk, bring to the boil and bubble for 5 minutes.  Remove from the heat and sit the fish chunks on top.

 

Cover with a lid (or foil) and bake in the oven for 18 minutes until the rice is tender.

 

Remove from the oven and stir through the crème fraiche and spinach.  Season with salt and pepper and cover with the lid again.  Leave out of the oven for 3 minutes by which time the spinach will be cooked.  Serve immediately.

 

Makes 4 generous portions.