Raspberry & Chocolate Blondies

Brownies, blondies, from one bake crush to another. 

The other morning, Pink asked me if I was "On energy saving mode, Mummy?" To be fair to her, I had made a comment to the effect that I hadn't yet done something that morning (I forget what - it was undoubtedly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things), and she was relating this in the context of a discussion she had been having at school with a friend about how to counter an allegation of laziness. I thought it was quite inventive, and actually, I rather like the idea of being on energy saving mode, particularly now that the Indian Summer has come, rather abruptly, to a close, the mellow blue skies and hazy warmth of the last couple of weeks replaced by a rather fitful, sullen wind and rain that can't decide whether to spit, shower or torrential downpour (we've had all 3 today). That plus the fact that in the 2 days since Friday, all of a sudden, 6.30 a.m. when we are dragged from our slumber Monday to Friday, is now very dark. Yes, energy saving mode seems very attractive, as does curling up on the sofa in front of a fire and not doing much till Spring...

But life of course goes on, despite the onset of Autumn. There is work to be done, a dog to be walked (whatever the weather) and children to provide with packed lunches and to welcome home from school. These latter activities can of course be done without fancy kitchen activities when you have juggled enough and are 'in energy saving mode' (that's what shops are for, as I have come to appreciate). However, if you too feel like being in energy saving mode, yet also fancy a rather delicious home made bake every now and again, this is for you, particularly if you have a food mixer and can delegate the beating element. There's nothing innovative about the raspberry/chocolate combo, but let's face it, just as this is the time of year for apple and blackberry, plums and star anise, casserole and dumplings, why try to be adventurous?  And let's face it, anything with a tin of condensed milk in it has got to be a good thing.

Raspberry & Chocolate Blondies

Adapted from the Nigella Lawson recipe in Kitchen, you could play about with the chocolate/fruit combo. White choc and blackberries might be quite good...

200g oats
100g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarb
150g unsalted butter (try and take this out of the fridge beforehand)
100g soft light brown sugar
1 tin of condensed milk
1 large egg
100g milk chocolate chips
150g raspberries

Line a brownie tray with foil or greaseproof paper

Put the oats in a bowl and sift in the flour & bicarb.

Beat together the butter and sugar until very pale and creamy then pop the condensed milk and beat that in until well combined.

Reduce the speed, then tip in the oats & flour.

Beat in the egg, then mix in the chocolate, then lastly, and swiftly the raspberries. You could fold these in carefully but I quite like the raspberry ripple effect a quick beat gives the batter. And honestly, I couldn't be bothered to find a spoon...

Scrape the batter into your tin, smooth it down and bake for 35-40 minutes. Use your judgement - as with brownies, you want to take this out of the oven before it's solid. The surface needs to be cooked, but with some (but not too much) wobble underneath which will solidify as it cools in the tin.

Once cold, you can slice it up. Apparently it freezes very well, but why would you?

Lemon caramel cake

I love food. That's why I have a food blog. There's not much that I won't try, not much I don't like. But there are a few flavours that I keep going back to. Smoked paprika. Almonds. Lemon.

I'd be hard pressed to choose between lemon and almond, particularly when talking about cake (I haven't yet added smoked paprika to a cake) and I'll often seek to combine the 2 rather than choose, but today, it's all about lemon cake. Yet another one, I know, to join Felicity Cloake's perfect lemon drizzle cake (which does include almonds), the lemon cake with feathered icing, a lemon and blackcurrant cake...

This is another bake based on a Dan Lepard classic from Short & Sweet where it appears as Lemon Butter Cake. There's a version of this loaf cake online on the Guardian Life & Style pages from 2006 - slightly different to that which appears in print, but the constant ingredient is condensed milk, one of my other culinary loves. You might think the combination of lemon and condensed milk would be one that I'd find hard to resist, but in fact I've pondered the possibility for some time and never been quite sure. One of the joys of lemon is its sharpness - would the addition of condensed milk take that away?

Well, the fact is that I've had some tinned caramel in the fridge for far too long, left over from making my favourite flapjacks, so in the end, I didn't use condensed milk at all, and here's the result. No cloying sweetness, just a deliciously sharp, moist loaf cake, with massive mouth-appeal.  .

Dan may bake with integrity - me, I just use up what I've got in the fridge. Either way, this is a mighty fine cake.

Lemon Caramel Cake

100g unsalted butter
2 large eggs
150g caster sugar
125g tinned caramel
grated zest of 2 lemons
Juice of 1.5 large lemons (save the other half for the icing)
275g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder

100g icing sugar
Juice of 1/2 a lemon

Line a large loaf tin with baking paper and pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Melt the butter and set aside.

Separate the eggs and measure out 25g of the caster sugar. Whisk the whites till frothy then tip in the sugar with the whisk still running until the mix forms soft peaks. Set the bowl aside.

Beat together the melted butter, the egg yolks, the remaining 125g caster sugar, the caramel, lemon zest and lemon juice until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is smooth and caramel coloured.

Sift the flour and baking powder into the egg yolk mixture and beat together till smooth, then fold in the egg whites till combined and scrape the mixture into the prepared loaf tin.

Bang the tin a couple of times to evenly distribute the mixture, then bake for 40-50 minutes till a skewer comes out almost clean.

Leave the cake to cool, then make up the icing by combining the icing sugar with the juice of half a lemon to make quite a runny icing. Drizzle this over the loaf.

Banoffee Cake

Another Clandestine Cake Club meeting - that came round quick...

Our venue was the beautiful Hammet House Hotel set on the banks of the River Teifi just outside the village of Llechryd - modern luxury in Grade II listed Georgian splendour - how lucky were we?

The theme for the evening was 'Brilliant Banana Bake Off'. I've never cooked a banana cake that wasn't in loaf form, and so determined to produce something more cake-like, I sourced a round version - but couldn't give up the addition of tinned caramel...

The first time I ever had banoffee pie, that glorious combination of broken biscuit base, bananas, caramel, I was about 13. We were at a big family party 'down south' - lots of older second cousins around, and the glamour of it all was almost too much to bear - as was my encounter with the banoffee pie. There was no sorry end, no gorging resulting in horrible after effects, but for someone who had only ever experienced banana tarted up with (a) milk and brown sugar (b) yoghurt and hot chocolate powder or (c) custard, you'll appreciate that the presentation of it in a pie, with the glory of caramel, and in this initial encounter, (as I recall) a liberal amount of cream, it was sophistication that I hadn't even dreamt of - and given that boys didn't feature much in my life at that stage, it was about the most exciting thing I had come across. Ever.


The thing about banoffee though, is that it is very rich. Sickly, even. And while I may often scoff at people who suggest only a small piece of a particular cake, this is just that.  Really. On the plus side it is incredibly easy to make. And given that I had to knock it up after an awesome but exhausting weekend camping on the Gower peninsular in a gale, that was definitely a good thing.

Banoffee Cake

200g soft unsalted butter
100g light muscovado sugar
100g soft brown sugar (or 200g of either one)
4 large eggs
2 ripe bananas, broken into chunks & mashed up
75g walnut pieces, chopped
200g self raising flour

for the icing
150g soft unsalted butter
250g icing sugar
2 tbsp tinned caramel or dulce de leche
8 walnut halves
fudge pieces

Grease & line a 20cm cake tin and pre-heat the oven to 180C

Cream together the butter and butter for about 5 minutes till light and fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition, then beat in the mashed banana. It may look quite curdled but don't worry.

Fold in the flour and chopped walnuts, then scrape into the prepared tin and pop in the oven.

Bake for 40-45 minutes till golden on top and a skewer comes out clean.

Leave to cool.

To ice, add the butter to a bowl, sift in the icing sugar, add the caramel and beat together to make a smooth creamy icing. Spread this over the cold cake, decorate with walnut halves and fudge pieces.

Have a small slice. Especially if eating as one of a selection of banana cakes - who'd have thought they came in so many different guises?

A full write up of the evening will appear on the Clandestine Cake Club's site soon!

Condensed Milk in 'Beaker-Gate' Shocker (and another banana loaf recipe)

The other day I made Dan Lepard's ultra delicious Lemon Butter Cake, which requires 125g condensed milk.

It doesn't take a genius to work out that this left me with 272g condensed milk (give or take). By the way, why are the tins 397g? Does anyone know? Are they really 400g but state a weight which allows for the bits that you can never get out, even with your finger a spatula? Would it be too hard to make a tin that tiny bit bigger? Big enough to carry a full 400g? This is something I genuinely wonder about, so if anyone can enlighten me, please do.

But back to the matter in hand. What to do with 272g of condensed milk? I pondered the question idly on social media and received a number of suggestions, including drinking it in tea, making it into a sandwich and using it as a sex aid (this was the day of 'beaker-gate', after all). I had been contemplating nothing more complicated than a quiet corner and a teaspoon, but only in a half hearted sort of way: not only can I no longer drink 10 pints, dance till dawn, consume a doner kebab with extra hot chilli sauce and survive the next day; it seems that I can no longer face eating most of a tin of condensed milk. Age is a cruel mistress.

 So I did not consume the condensed milk. Oh no. I conscientiously decanted it into a mug (a mug, note, NOT a beaker...), popped some clingfilm on the top and consigned it to the fridge. Now in this house the Husband and I have one of those 'standing jokes that's not really a joke' which has developed over the course of our life together. I hate to throw food away, so anything that can't be frozen in a little convenient portion will find its way into the fridge, and I  genuinely, I mean, really GENUINELY, mean to use it again. But it doesn't always happen.

Sometimes I forget.

Sometimes it wasn't actually that nice in the first place.

Sometimes I just want to cook something else.

Sometimes, it disappears to the back of the fridge, only to re-appear weeks later with all sorts of interesting mould growing on it.

Sometimes, I really do use it.

When we're clearing up after a meal, the phrase you're most likely to hear him say is "Shall I throw this away now, or put it in the fridge and throw it away in a week's time" . You get the idea.

This particular 272g of condensed milk (give or take - I couldn't say for sure that a teaspoon's worth didn't somehow come my way) did get used. It ended up in another version of Banana Loaf. I wish I could settle down to having a 'go to' recipe for things like Banana Loaf, but it seems I can't help fiddling - probably because so much of my baking depends on what's knocking around in the kitchen. I can't even stop fiddling with the flapjacks I swore were the best I'd ever made. In case you're interested, it's worth swapping some of the oats for dessicated coconut...

Another Banana Loaf

100g chopped dried fruit - I used apricots and a mixture of currants, sultanas and mixed peel that was in a value bag of dried fruit I bought last Christmas for mincemeat/Christmas pudding purposes...
100ml black lapsang souchong tea (what I made at breakfast time - Earl Grey would be good too)
100g unsalted butter
272g condensed milk (give or take - obviously, a teaspoonful either way isn't going to make much difference, so go on, treat yourself...)
225g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarb
about 350g (peeled weight) mushy bananas
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs

Soak the dried fruit in the tea - probably an hour minimum, or longer - I started mine off at breakfast then baked the loaf at tea time.

Pre-heat the oven to 180 C and line a large loaf tin with greaseproof paper.

In a large pan, gently melt together the butter and condensed milk, stirring occasionally.  While this is going on, measure your flour, baking powder and bicarb and mix together. Mash up the banana with the vanilla extract, then beat in the eggs with a fork.

Beat the mashed banana & egg mixture into the melted butter and condensed milk, stir in the soaked fruit, then finally, stir in the flour about 1/3 at a time.

Scrape into the loaf tin and bake for about 45 minutes to an hour till a cake tester comes out pretty much clean. Keep an eye on it - if it looks like it might catch, cover lightly with some foil or something.

Leave to cool in the tin.

It will smell delicious - and (and now I really am getting old) it tastes delicious with a nice cup of tea...

Millionaire's Shortbread - and self restraint

Now. why on earth, when I am trying to lose weight, did I make something as dangerous as Millionaire's Shortbread? Well, the answer is the Rainbows Cake Sale in aid of Comic Relief. Pink's Rainbows troop had already contributed 2 fantastic bunting flags to Helen Skelton's challenge to break the record for the longest string of bunting, and they had to raise £50. Cakes it was, then -and a family quiz and a raffle. I'd already siphoned off half the cakes we made for the school Comic Relief Cake Sale, so had 12 cupcakes to take along, but I was flicking through How to Be a Domestic Goddess - idly, as one does when one is restricting oneself, and came across the Millionaire's Shortbread recipe in the 'Baking for the School Fete' section.





You know, I'm not sure I have ever made Millionaire's Shortbread before - that glorious combination of shortbread, caramel and chocolate. I love it, but I never buy it when we're out because it is always disappointing. It's also far too dangerous to make just because. Like the Peanut Butter Squares (also in Domestic Goddess). Having some of it lying around in a tin would frankly, be a recipe for thigh expansion on a colossal scale, and I am hoping to achieve the opposite. However, with the prospect of  cake sale to dispose of the offending end product, and with the Husband away for the weekend leaving me at a loose end on Friday night, I decided to lose my Millionaire's Shortbread cherry. I know how to live.

My goodness but it's divine stuff. Buttery shortbread, golden caramel and a layer of chocolate on the top. Some might say it's too much, but to them I say, you only live once, and if you have a  cake sale coming up to prevent you eating all of it, what's the harm. In my half starved state, I managed to only eat one small (well, small-ish) bit - just for quality control purposes you understand - on Friday night when it was all done, before restrainedly boxing it up ready for fundraising purposes.

Millionaire's Shortbread

You will need

225g plain flour
75g caster sugar
375g unsalted butter
397g can of condensed milk
2 tablespoons of golden syrup
200g plain chocolate
150g milk chocolate

Greased & lined tin 23cm square or similar (mine is rectangular, about 21 cm by 24cm)

Self-restraint

Preheat your oven to 170C. Combine the flour and sugar in a bowl, then add in 175g of the butter, cut into cubes, and cut into the flour, then rub in with your fingers till it clumps together. Squodge this into the bottom of the tin, flatten it out with your hands, prick all over with a fork and then bake for 5 minutes before turning the heat down to 150 and baking for another 30-40 minutes till golden brown. Leave to cool.

To make the caramel, melt the remaining butter in a heavy based saucepan, then add in the condensed milk and sugar and whisk until the butter is all mixed into the condensed milk and syrup. Bring the whole lot gently up to the boil whisking all the time, and simmer for about 5 minutes whisking all the time to prevent burning, until the mixture is thickened and golden looking. Resist the temptation to stick your finger in for a lick, and pour the caramel over the cooled shortbread and leave to set on a flat surface (to avoid uneven spreading of the caramel!)

Once set, melt the chocolate in a bowl over a simmering pan of water - make sure not to let the bowl touch the water. Pour evenly over the caramel and leave to set. Once set, cut into squares, put into a cake tin and seal with a combination lock. Better still, deliver immediately to a cake sale.