Apple & Almond Bake

While I don't follow a recipe for crumble topping in terms of the ingredients themselves, I never hold the proportions of flour to sugar to butter in my head. My 'go to' sanity checker (as I may have previously mentioned), is a Delia recipe from her Complete Cookery Course. She recommends flour, sugar and butter - and if you fancy going out on a limb (go on, you know you want to) you could replace some of the flour with oats.

Well, I like to go completely crazy and use ground almonds too, as well as oats, and although I always start off with Delia's proportions, I usually reduce down the sugar especially if I've added sugar to the fruit - which I did on Sunday in fact as I was using up the last of the bullace plums with some more of the apples.

You might say that it's a pointless exercise me even opening the book at all - but I feel like it's become part of the ritual of making crumble, which is after all the pudding I make most often from September to March.

Or it was.

While I was ignoring Delia's crumble instructions in preparation for said crumble last week (it was a very good crumble by the way - a sprinkle of all spice and some brown sugar over the apples & plums - yummers), my eye strayed north on the page to the method of a recipe the ingredients for which are listed on the previous page. Specifically to the phrases "...gently fold in the ground almonds...spread this mixture over the apples...equally good served warm or cold - either way it's nice with some chilled pouring cream"

So yes, you guessed it. Sold to the lady with the insatiable love of all things almond and a bag of windfalls to deal with.

I made this the next day and it is a LOVELY pudding for Autumn or Winter. A bit more faff than a crumble, granted, but the combination of the cooked apples with the almost frangipane topping - well, it's my idea of heaven. 

I expect you'll enjoy it too.

Apple & Almond Bake

4-6 medium/large cooking apples
50g soft brown sugar
110g ground almonds
110g soft, unsalted butter
110g caster sugar
2 large eggs, beaten

You'll also need a baking dish, about 1 litre capacity - butter this.

Pre-heat the oven to 180C

Peel, core and slice the apples. Put them in a pan with the soft brown sugar and a couple of tablespoons of water and cook down till they are starting to break up and go soft and fluffy - how long this takes will depend on the apples you are using. Keep an eye on them and make sure they don't burn.

When they've reached the required state of fluffiness, spread over the bottom of the buttered dish.

Cream together the butter and caster sugar till pale and fluffy, then add the egg a little at a time, beating after every addition. As with a sponge cake, it pays to go slowly here to stop the mixture curdling. But don't worry too much.

Using a metal spoon, fold in the ground almonds, then spread the mixture over the top of the apples, making sure they are evenly covered.

Pop this in the oven on a high shelf and bake for around an hour till golden on top and cooked.

As St Delia says, equally good served hot or cold, and exceptionally good with some cream...

Clandestine Cake

I've been fascinated by the idea of the Clandestine Cake Club for a few years now. Pretty much ever since I started blogging and doing the whole social media thing. I joined up and found a club near where I used to live, but never went along to a meeting.

As part of my rather disorganised 'plan to make sure I meet some new people once we move' I had investigated whether there was a Clandestine Cake Club here in the Cardigan area, and discovered that there wasn't. Initially, I was disappointed, then I was encouraged.


Perhaps I could START a Clandestine Cake Club...

Another of my 'plan to make sure I meet some new people once we move' involved a little bit of Twitter stalking networking, which resulted in me getting to know a couple of lovely people, all be it virtually, before we'd even crossed the Severn, and I was having coffee with one of them once we'd landed, and mentioned this idea. Well, what do you know? She had been talking to another friend of hers who had been wondering about the same thing.  A coffee date was hatched and the next thing you know, well here we are, and the first meeting of the Cardigan Cake Club took place on Monday 7th April, not 3 weeks later.

If you don't know about the Clandestine Cake Club (where have you been??) the idea is that a meeting is arranged, and knowing the date and time and roughly the area where it will take  place, you book a place. The exact location is then revealed to those who have booked a place a couple of days before the event. Well, we need some excitement in our lives, don't we.

Each event is themed, and you take along your cake, share it with the others and generally have a good old natter.

That's pretty much exactly what happened on Monday. My co-organiser, the fabulous Vicky North, micro-baker, workshop provider and bread club owner, had already found a venue for us, and when the time came, a select but not insignificant group arrived, with cake. You can read our write up of the event if you're interested, thinking of setting your own CCC up etc, but the purpose of this post is to share the cake that I made for the evening.

The theme was 'My Cake, My Story' which we hoped would get people talking about themselves, their baking stories, and just act as a bit of an ice breaker. It was interesting how people approached the theme. Some people baked a cake that included ingredients representing parts of their lives, for others, the cake itself represented something. For me, it was an easy choice.

As you will know, my life was thrown upside down when my 2 year old son was diagnosed with leukaemia. No more high flying legal career. No more structure to my life other than that imposed by his hospital regime. Chaos reigned, and when, 3 months later my daughter arrived by emergency caesarean, chaos doubled. It wasn't a happy time, although there were plenty of happy moments, and much of it has merged into a kind of fug. One thing that did come out of it, indirectly, was this blog. I wasn't writing at that point, but I seized on a self-imposed challenge to cook everything in How to Be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson in an attempt to gain control over something in my life. And from there, eventually, came this blog.

I still haven't cooked everything from Domestic Goddess - I reckon I've cracked about 1/3 of it, but the easy almond cake represented everything I love about Nigella Lawson and about baking, and the escape that it gave me during that period of my life when everything else was so difficult. The alchemy of throwing together some simple ingredients and creating something of utter loveliness will never leave me.

In honour of the Cake Club, I added my own lemon and poppy seed drizzle icing, and very pleased I was with the result, too.

Easy Almond Cake with Lemon Drizzle Icing & Poppy Seeds

250g unsalted butter, cubed, at room temperature
250g mazipan, cubed, at room temperature, 150g caster sugar
1/4 tsp each almond essence and vanilla bean paste
6 large eggs
150g self raising flour
75g sifted icing sugar
juice of about 3/4 lemon
1-2 tbsp poppy seeds

You'll also need a 23-25cm loose bottomed/springform 'ring' cake tin, well greased and floured.

Heat the oven to 170C

Use a food processor and process the butter, marzipan and sugar together.

Add in the almond and vanilla, and process again, then break in the eggs one at a time while the food processor is running.

A top tip is to break the eggs into a little bowl first. I once made this and accidentally dropped a whole egg into the whizzing mixture. The cake was very crunchy...

Once the eggs are all incorporated, add the flour, process, then scrape the batter into the tin and bake for around 50 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

Leave to cool in the tin.

Turn the cake out, and mix up the icing - you may not need all the lemon juice - to quite a runny consistency. I used a clever trick I learned to put the cake on 4 strips of greaseproof paper so you can ice then whip the paper away easily. Get me.

Drizzle over the cake from a height (helps get more even drizzles) then sprinkle over the poppy seeds.

This is delicious with a cup of tea. In fact, at the CCC, we discussed that this was almost a contender for a 'cake for breakfast' type of cake...

Rhubarb Upside Down Cake

When I read other people's food blogs and see what they are coping with in terms of food allergies and intolerances, I have to say that I thank my lucky stars and reach for the peanut butter. To have to think every time you go into the kitchen - or to the shops - about whether something is going to harm someone you love - it must be difficult. I know that people adapt, and often demonstrate a flair for invention in their cookery that those of us not challenged in the same way can lack. I admire that - so what if I/he/she can't eat eggs/milk/nuts/tomatoes - I will make sure I/he/she eats something even more delicious - and I'd like to think that I'd be one of those people, but it must be hard - especially that underlying fear that get it wrong, have a lapse in concentration, and it could all go very badly wrong very 
quickly.

 

The only allergy I am aware of in the RJ flock is one that Blue revealed when he was being treated for leukaemia. One of the more stressful administrations was of a drug that had to be injected directly into his muscle rather than via the Hickman line that he had fitted (to avoid the need for canulas and the like everytime he needed a blood test, a transfusion, or drugs). The drug concerned was a known allergen and as a result every one who received it was required to remain on the hospital ward for an hour after it had been injected.

The second time he received the injection (with a lot of tears and indignation), we waited our allotted hour and made our way downstairs (the children's oncology ward, the wonderful Piam Brown Ward is on the 8th floor of Southampton General Hospital). We'd been in hospital for a long time, and I was desperate to get home, some 45 minutes away up the M3. Blue was fussing a bit in his pushchair, but I assumed he was just tired and feeling ratty from the cocktail of drugs he'd received over the course of the preceding few hours. He started to ask for a drink. My instinct was to just get in the car and drive, but something stopped me, and I went and bought a bottle of water at a vastly inflated price.

I crouched down to give him the bottle with a certain amount of bad grace. Don't judge me - it was exhausting the whole caring for a sick child thing, and while I would do it again in a flash should either one of them become ill again (although that's not an invitation), I spent a lot of time feeling irritable, emotional, and grouchy, especially when we'd spent a day in hospital. And do bear in mind that I was 8 months' pregnant at this stage.

So I was crouching down and helping him with the bottle - he was only 2 and a bit - when I noticed the tiniest, wierd red mark in the corner of his mouth. This time my instincts took over - while me head kept telling me to just get to the car and get home, my heart said "Just go and get it checked - you're in hospital anyway".

I headed back to the lift, getting quicker as Blue became more and more restless. Waited for the lift, back up the 8 floors, hurtled down the corrider, pressed the buzzer to be let into the ward. As I flung the double doors opened and burst into the reception area, Blue did a spectacular projectile vomit and came out in the most massive rash. It was terrifying. And just thank God that I hadn't got in the car and driven off...

Fortunately, the nurses came rushing, drugs were administered and 2 days later we went home. The immediate upshot was that the required waiting time after the injection changed from an hour to an hour and 15 minutes, so sorry about that if it affects you, and for Blue, instead of having one injection of that particular drug every time he needed it, he had to have 6 injections (every other day over 2 weeks) of a variant of the same drug which he didn't react to. My how we laughed...

So I do understand about allergies and how terrifying an allergic reaction can be. 

My children's previous school banned nuts entirely. There were children with allergies, and when I challenged, I was advised that there were cases of children going into anaphalactic shock as a result of a parent coming in and kissing them having consumed some peanuts in the pub earlier. Now I don't want anyone to die or have the same kind of terrifying experience that we went through, but I cook a lot with nuts - especially cake, and the ban meant that the kids were unable to take these treats in to school in their packed lunches. And if they don't take things to school they sit in the cupboard or fridge calling to me...

So the new school. The first couple of weeks they had school dinners. A revelation - proper portions, and leftovers distributed to those who wanted. I kid you not, my gannets have been able to have thirds on occasion... But wanting to balance things out, we've moved back to having some packed lunches as before, and so the issue of nuts arose. I couldn't find any information on the school website or in any of the paperwork I'd received so I made enquiries and was told that nuts were allowed - there was a child with allergies, but as long as food wasn't shared, well that was OK.

Now, I don't know if there was a reason why the previous school couldn't take this approach - and I don't want to downplay the seriousness of nut allergies - I know they can be very serious indeed - and it's probably because I had a few other issues with their old school - but it felt like the voice of common sense washing over me. It also meant that they've been able to take slices of this lush cake to school with them this week.

I'm not shy in my adoration of the pink sticks that are rhubarb, and as we had left a prolific patch behind, I was very excited to see a patch in the garden of the house we are renting. Rhubarb and almond is one of my favourite combinations, and this cake just hit the spot last weekend.

Rhubarb Upside Down Cake 

40g light muscovado sugar
40g butter
grated zest of a clementine
350g rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 5 cm slices
85g unsalted butter
120g caster sugar
2 large eggs
70g plain flour
2/3 tsp baking powder
50g ground almonds

pinch salt
splash of milk
toasted flaked almonds

You'll also need a 20 cm frying pan which can go in the oven.

Pre heat the oven to to 180C.

Put the sugar and butter in the pan and melt together.

Sprinkle over the grated zest, remove the pan from the heat and arrange the rhubarb pieces over the top.

Cream together the butter and caster sugar.

Add the eggs one at a time, still beating. Sift in the flour and baking powder, and then add in the ground almonds, and fold in to the mixture.

Add in the milk - just a splash - then spread the batter over the rhubarb and pop in the oven.

Bake for about 30 mins till the mixture is firm to the touch.

Leave to cool for 20 minutes or so in the pan, then loosen round the edges and turn the cake out onto a plate so that the rhubarb is upper most.

Sprinkle over the toasted almonds and serve.

 

The 8th pint, a dead freezer, and cherry & almond crumble

I keep thinking that I've reached a point in my life where I no longer think about Blue being ill very much, and then something happens to make it all come rushing back like a steam train. 

I certainly don't think about it every day any more, and it's not the first thing (nay, the only thing) that I'll talk about any more. Chances are, if I met you for the first time in person, these days, it would take a good few conversations before it actually came out that he'd been ill at all. There was a time when it was literally all I could talk about.

Fortunately, even the 'steam train' moments are becoming less and less frequent, and usually triggered by something other than a panic that he's relapsed - which was what usually used to make me think about it when he first came off his chemo. The lovely nurse who cared for Blue on his first terrible night in hospital - when we really thought he was dying before our eyes - lives in the same village as us. I see her often these days - she has 2 adorable girls now herself, and I can actually talk to her in the street without crying. I have come a long way.

I gave blood earlier in the week. This always reminds me of the bad times, but more so than ever this time, when I realised that I'd donated my 8th pint - equivalent to all the blood transfusions that Blue had during his treatment. I came over a bit funny and had to have an extra long lie down, and a bag of crisps as well as a pack of fruit shortcake biscuits and 2 glasses of the rather lurid lemon squash they hand out before I felt strong enough to wander home.

Fortunately, tea was pretty much already organised - one of our freezers gave up the ghost at the weekend, leading to a frantic reassessment of what we could chuck and what we could redistribute amongst the 2 other smaller freezers that we have, already pretty full. Bear in mind that we didn't have the option of cooking and re-freezing anything: if it couldn't be eaten then or in the next couple of days, or rehoused, it would have to go. Out went the swede soup dated 2010 and various small pots of unidentifiable stuff that had been in there so long the hastily scrawled labels had worn off... It's always slightly embarrassing, being presented so starkly with one's hoarding tendencies, but I've decided to rise above it. On the plus side, we've eaten the lamb shanks, some of the more identifiable soup, and lots of rhubarb. Blood donation evening, there was more identifiable soup and a fish pie. When Blue was ill, I had to cook fresh for him every day, regardless of how tired I was. I'd never have been able to feed him fish pie from the freezer.

More importantly than my inability to throw food away, do you remember all those delicious cherries I scrumped, back in the summer? I was so utterly delighted with the possibilities they presented, that while I was deliberating what to make, they pretty much all got eaten just like that from under my nose.

I managed to salvage some after a marathon stoning session (stoning the cherries - what did you think I meant?) and stashed about 800g away in the freezer for another day.

Well, 'another day' arrived - they were in the freezer that packed up, along with the fish pie and the lamb shanks...

I absolutely couldn't bring myself to chuck them out, despite the fact that they were scrumped as opposed to produced as a labour of love by the Husband in the garden - for start, they'd only been squirreled away for a matter of weeks - unlike the swede soup - and the stoning had taken a good couple of hours of my life, and given me black finger nails for a few days. On the other hand, as scrumped produce, they came lower down the priority rehoming list...

No longer luscious purple but rather duller, with much of the juice leached out of the fruit, although saved in the bowl they had defrosted in, they still tasted good. I thought pie, but couldn't face pastry. And anyway, to make a pastry worthy of my cherries, I needed an egg yolk, and as my chickens have completely given up laying, preferring to moult drastically and unattractively all over the garden, and I was feeling too weak after the blood donation to walk up to the butchers and buy some, I had to think again. I could have made jam but I wanted something lovely for pudding. Crumble was the obvious choice. 

Comforting, homely, and in honour of Blue (who adores cherries and crumble) and all he went through in those dark days of leukaemia, and in recognition of the 8th pint, cherry and almond crumble it had to be. 

Cherry & Almond Crumble

800g frozen cherries, defrosted, along with any juice that has leaked out
1.5tbsp cornflour
50g caster sugar
good pinch of cinammon

100g plain flour
80g porridge oats
40g ground almonds
100g demerara sugar
75g unsalted butter

Put the cherries and juice in a pan.

In a small bowl/cup/ramekin, mix the cornflour with some of the cherry juice, then tip pack in to the pan, along with the sugar and cinammon. Heat gently, stirring, till the juice all thickens up, simmer for a little, then scrape the cherries into your crumble dish and leave to cool.

Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Make the topping by rubbing together all the ingredients into a rough, crumbley scrummy mess. Try not to eat it as it is - hard as it is to imagine, it WILL taste better baked.

Spread the topping evenly over the cherries then pop in the oven and bake for 20 minutes or so till the fruit is hot and bubbling and the crumble is golden brown.

Cherries and crumble both qualify, I'm sending this to this month's Alphabakes challenge hosted by Ros at More than the Occasional Baker and Caroline at Caroline Makes

Almost Autumn? Blackberry & Apple Cake

Much as I love the summer (well, a decent summer, one where the sun shines, and it only rains about once a week) my favourite season is Autumn. All that mists and mellow fruitfulness, the tang in the early morning air that hits the back of your nose, days still warm, but nights getting cooler. When I was working in London, I used to love the warmer days of early Autumn, escaping from the office for lunch in St James' Park, where the softer sun made the buildings of Birdcage Walk and Horseguards glow.

Pumpkin soup in the making...

Now that we're ensconsed in reasonably rural Hampshire, it's not just the glow of buildings that heralds the change of the seasons. Blackberries and sloes in the hedgerows, the pumpkins, frankly, enormous in the veg patch, massive spiders patrolling the corridors of the house (we're talking spiders so big, you can hear the plop when they hit the pavement after you chuck them out of the windows), spiders' webs festooning the apple trees - and wonderful apples.  We're lucky to have cookers and eaters in the garden, and this year has been a good year.






This weekend has been the first for a long time that we've been at home on a Sunday. Although we had a beautiful autumnal morning, the rain showed no mercy and by lunchtime, was firmly set in, good for nothing but a wet dog walk and homework. Fortunately, roast pork was on the menu for dinner - with apple sauce made with the cookers, and for pudding, Blackberry & Apple cake, inspired by a recipe I've read many times in Good Food, but have never got round to making, crumble always prevailing. This is a little more effort than a crumble, but well worth it. 

Apples & spiders' webs. Autumn is on the way

juice of half a lemon

2 large, sharp eating apples

150g unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for the tin 

130g soft light brown sugar 

3 large eggs, beaten 

50g ground almonds 

100g self-raising flour 

100g blackberries 

1 large pinch cinnamon  

2 tbsp demerara sugar

 icing sugar, for dusting 

Butter a 23cm springform cake tin and line with greaseproof paper.

Pre-heat the oven to 180C

Put the lemon juice in a bowl, then peel and core the apples, slice each apple into 12 and put the slices into the lemon juice. This will stop the slices discolouring while you make the rest of the cake.

Beat together 125g of the butter with the sugar till pale and fluffy, then slowly beat in the eggs, adding a little flour if the mixture starts to curdle.

Once all the egg has been incorporated, beat in the rest of the flour and the ground almonds.

Stir in 2/3 of the apple (16 slices), and the blackberries, then scrape into the prepared tin. Arrange the remaining slices of apple over the top, then mix together the demerara sugar and cinammon. Sprinkle this over the top of the cake, followed by the remaining 25g of butter, cut into thin flakes. Bake the cake for 45-50 minutes till a skewer (or whatever you use to test a cake) comes out clean.

Leave to cool till warm. Dust with icing sugar and serve.

The cake is moist and tasty enough to eat just as it is - but it would go just as well with cream, creme fraiche - or custard as the weather gets colder. Just make sure you get plenty of blackberries in the freezer!

Easy apple & almond cake - or what to do with a rogue can of apple compote

The scoutwives hate to waste food.

At the end of every camp we go through the left overs that have come back and divvy it up - what can be saved for the following year (or for other scout activities through the year) and perishable stuff that needs to get used up.

This year, when we got back from camp, we decided
 we had to do something with some tins

of apple compote that had come back from the Netherlands with us in 2011 from a jamboree we took the scouts to. The tins are very much still in date (good till 2016 no less), but somehow we've never got round to feeding the contents to the scouts. Having taken the tins on 2 camps since Holland, on our return from Derbyshire, we decided enough was enough, and each of us took possession of a tin.

Nigella has a recipe in Feast for a damp apple & almond cake, one of her fantastically easy, whizz it all up cakes, which has no butter, and no flour in it, so possibly a good one for those with gluten issues. The amount of ground almonds, eggs and sugar probably negates any benefit the lack of butter might otherwise have had for any one, so don't try and kid yourself otherwise.

It does have fruit in, though, so not all bad -  the puree of 3 tart eating apples. Bingo. I consulted Google and Lo! there is a website which gives an equivalent apples to puree quantity. But of course there is. 

It was American, so in cups, but I have cup measures, and all was well.

Of course, it didn't use up the whole tin of apple compote, but made a good inroad into it, and I gave the rest of it to the kids. They loved it.

The cake came with us as our contribution to a dinner party last night. I sifted some icing sugar over it and served it with some double cream which I whipped up with a couple of teaspoons of cointreau in it.

Apple & Almond Cake

11/3 (one and a third) cups apple puree/compote
1 tbsp lemon juice
375g ground almonds
250g caster sugar
8 large eggs
50g flaked almonds

Grease a 23cm springform cake tin with vegetable oil and line the base.

Whizz up all the ingredients apart from the flaked almonds, in a food processor.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake. Nigella says 45 mins but check after 35. Mine needed about 50 mins.

An Ode to Rhubarb - and a cake, of course

Rhubarb.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

In crumble, in jam, in cake.

With ginger. With orange, With redcurrants. With almonds. 

Roasted, stewed.

Unlike courgettes, a glut of rhubarb fills me with nothing but joy. 

It's been late this year, but it's here now, in all its glory.

And here's a cake worthy of this most glorious of ingredients, based on one I read on the wonderful Caked Crusader's blog, with a dash of Nigella's rhubarb cornmeal cake thrown in. 

Rhubarb, orange, almonds. Go on. You know you want to.

400g rhubarb
280g caster sugar
225g unsalted butter
zest and juice of an orange
125g self raising flour
100g fine polenta
1 tsp baking powder 
100g ground almonds
3 large eggs

Line a 23cm springform tin.

First slice up the rhubarb into 1 cm pieces and put in a bowl with 50g of the sugar.

Mix together the flour, polenta, baking powder and ground almonds in a separate bowl.

Beat together the butter and the rest of the sugar along with the orange zest and juice. It may take some time but eventually you get a thick lovely batter, into which add the eggs one at a time, followed each time with a spoonful of the dry ingredients. When the eggs are all combined, beat in whatever remains of the dry ingredients, then fold in the rhubarb and any juices that have seeped out as its been sitting in the sugar.

Scrape the batter into the prepared tin and bake in the oven at 180C for about an hour - until a skewer comes out clean.

Easter Baking Part 2 - Fruity Simnel Tray Bake

So along with the hot cross buns, I also made a tray bake heavily based on a recipe I found in April 2012's Good Food mag . Handily, it's on the website, so you can access the original recipe just there.

You see, along with Christmas and weddings, Easter represents another opportunity to embrace marzipan. Weddings don't come along very often these days - we've long passed the 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' stage when we seemed to be at a different wedding every weekend with the same crowd of people - and Easter, like Chirstmas, only comes along once a year, so the mazipan usage has to be maximised. There are other things I use marzipan for throughout the year - Nigella's easy almond cake is one of my all time favourites (although, come to think of it, I haven't made it recently. Better rectify that soon) - basically, butter and marzipan, 6 eggs and a little flour chucked in almost as an after thought. It is heavenly cake. I recommend it.

 

I liked the idea of this tray bake though, because we are out and about this weekend and having squares of cake to pack up in a picnic (I know, I shudder to use that word to describe what will in reality be us shivering in a huddle) appeals. Also, it uses a whole block of marzipan, some chunked in the batter, some grated on the top and some made into the 11 marzipan balls that represent the apostles (again) on top of the traditional simnel cake.




What you get is quite a squodgy, almondy fruit cake, topped with an almondy crumble, and finally drizzled with orange icing - and the marzipan balls. Not one, you'll have guessed, if you don't like almonds, but if you're a fan, this is one for you. 

I adapted the recipe quite a bit (unlike the Hot Cross Buns, which I followed slavishly). If you do use the Good Food original version, bear this in mind: they recommend a  20 by 30 cm tin. I used a slightly bigger tray bake tin - 23 by 30 - and it still made quite a deep thick cake. Also, by using 11 marzipan balls and dividing the cake into 12 with one piece without adornment, you get massive slabs of cake. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, I'm just saying. Also, it might seem like you end up with wasting the zest of a lemon and an orange - I made this at the same time as some hot cross buns and used the zests to flavour the milk for the dough.

Fruity Simnel Tray Bake

110g each of currants, raisins, dates and apricots, chopped quite small
zest of 2 oranges
juice of 2 oranges and a lemon
250g unsalted butter cut into chunks (at room temp)
250g soft light brown sugar
4 large eggs
200g self raising flour
80g ground almonds
1 heaped tsp each of all spice and ground cinammon
a good grating of nutmeg
500g marzipan - 200g cut into small chunks, 200g grated, 100g divided into 11 and made into balls
100g plain flour
100g flaked almonds
3 tbsp golden syrup
85g icing sugar
juice of another orange

30 by 23 cm tray bake tin, buttered and lined

Soak the chopped fruit in the juice of the 2 oranges and lemon for at least 2 hours - overnight if you are organised.

Pre-heat the oven to 160C/140C fan.

Beat together 200g of the butter and 200g of the sugar till light and fluffy, then add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one. Sift in the self raising flour, then mix in the ground almonds and spices, the orange zest, the soaked fruit (and any juice), and the marzipan. Stir it all in then pour into the tin, level and bake for 45 minutes.

Take the cake out and turn the oven up to 200C/180C fan. Make the topping by rubbing together the remaining 50g of butter and sugar along with the 100g plain flour (like a crumble topping). Add the grated marzipan, and stir in the golden syrup, taking care that the mixture doesn't clump - I found this nigh on impossible - I might just leave out the syrup next time. Sprinkle this over the cake and put it back in the oven for 12-15 minutes.

Once the cake is cooked, take it out of the oven, add the marzipan balls to the top, then leave to cool in the tin. Mix together the icing sugar and orange juice and drizzle over the cake, leaving the icing to set a little before slicing.

Happy Easter!

Random Recipes & a poncy ingredient alert - Ottolenghi's Orange Polenta Cake

I was wondering how I was going to fit a Random Recipe in this month, but the blog challenge fairies were obviously smiling on me.

Dom's challenge from Belleau Kitchen this month was to get all those cut out snippets of recipe, those torn out pages, and clippings, throw them up in the air - or spread them out, or do something with them to enable you to randomly select one.

I thought I'd give it a go and see what it came up with. No obligation to complete the challenge if I couldn't fit it in or the recipe was one of the more obscure I'd cut out and kept. But as I say, no need to worry. The selection process turned up Yottam Ottolenghi's Orange Polenta Cake which I'd copied at Christmas from my brother's newly received copy of the Ottolenghi cook book. Fortuitous indeed because we had people coming for dinner, and there had to be dessert. Not that this is a hardship, you understand, but I'd already planned a moorish style chicken & chorizo casserole for the main course, so this fitted perfectly. Caramelised oranges, almonds, some orange blossom water (this is an Ottolenghi recipe after all - poncy ingredients are to be expected!).

First up, though, the challenge of sourcing the ingredients. I know there used to be a bag of polenta in the cupboard, but I must have used it up, because when I looked again, there was nothing. I couldn't get it in my online shop so sent the Husband off to do his hunter gatherer thing. The poor man went to 4 different supermarkets on 2 separate trips after work - he even went and worked at a different office on Friday in order to try different supermarkets, before ending up in Waitrose in Andover. Where, of course, they had at least 2 varieties. Anyway, he came home triumphant with an impressively artisan looking bag, plus some tahini paste and some unsalted pistachios which I also required.

While I've learned my lesson over the years that when people are coming for dinner it's wise to stick to the familiar and easy, there's always a certain amount of frisson to be gained cooking something with a little bit of fiddle factor when you have no idea how it's going to turn out and 10 people expecting to be fed. I have limited experience cooking Ottolenghi, and while it's always turned out brilliantly, I'm not in the same comfort zone with his stuff that I am cooking, say, Nigella. Add to this the opportunity for third degree burns that making caramel presents, and perhaps I should have stuck to something tried and tested, but I like a challenge.

 


The recipe was at least helpful in that it pointed out the need to thoroughly line the tin (if you're using springform, which I was) in order to prevent caramel leaking all over your oven, and as an extra precaution, I also put the cake tin on a baking sheet. A wise precaution as it turns out because even with what I thought was thorough tin lining, I did have a little bit of caramel leakage. But nothing serious.









Anyway, the recipe. I couldn't find it online to link to, but it's in the Ottolenghi cook book. Having lined your tin, you make some caramel which you use to cover the bottom of the tin.

 Next, there are oranges to zest and peel, and place on top of the caramel layer, 

before making a deliciously orangey scented batter using eggs, ground almonds, polenta along with the usual butter and eggs. The recipe also calls for orange blossom water, I forgot to put this on the Husband's foraging list, and having put him through supermarket hell in search of polenta, I didn't have the heart to fess up to needing orange blossom water, so in the end I just squeezed in a little extra orange juice. I think the random recipe rules state that you have to cook the recipe as it is, with little deviation. Well, I'm afraid that as well as missing the orange blossom water, I upped the recipe by a third to make a big enough cake to feed all of us. I hope I'm not disqualified.

 As a result of the increase in ingredients, it took quite a bit longer than the stated 40-45 minutes to bake, and I ended up covering the tin with foil to stop the top of the cake catching, but it all turned out fine. Once baked, the final nerve-wracking turnout passed without a hitch.

Ta daah!

Raspberry & Lemon not quite Crisp

There's a story about this dessert, but it may end up being one of those 'you had to be there' ones, so please bear with me.

While we were at my parents' for half term, I took a step back and quietly observed mum in the kitchen - or, more accurately, pondered how she was catering for us. You see, I am acutely aware that I am turning into my mother in many ways, and I wondered if I could learn something by observing the 'future' me (as it were).

We started the stay with chicken fajitas (she knows how much the kids love them). Then a pheasant casserole from the freezer. It didn't go unnoticed (by me) that she uses the same evasive answering of difficult food related questions from the children as I do - I have clearly been taught by a master. She managed to answer 2 or 3 questions about the casserole without actually telling them that there was pheasant in it. There were a couple of Good Food recipes thrown in - a rather interesting beetroot & caramelised onion tart with a carrot and oat pastry/crust which was actually fine, although we all agreed it could have done with some cheese grated on top, and a delicious Pot Roast Beef with onion gravy. 

There are a couple of days I can't remember what we had, but my story really starts with a Clare MacDonald smoked haddock souffle thing that was supper one evening. I had grave doubts that the children would like it - Pink is funny with smoked fish (although if it's salmon she's happy) and Blue doesn't do milky eggy savoury stuff (he hates macaroni cheese, cauli cheese all that sort of thing) - but I was pretty happy with the idea. It included bread cubes in the bottom of the dish too, and this had all been pre-frozen. It was a disaster - we all agreed (although not in front of the children!) and as they tried hard not to turn their noses up at it, mum and I had a fit of hastily suppressed giggles. Some you win some you lose, eh, Mum! Before now, I wouldn't have had a bad word to say about Clare Macdonald. I don't own any of her books, but I have plenty of copied down recipes, and the promise of a book for my birthday. It won't put me off, but I won't be rushing to make this one.

Before supper, though, I decided to intervene and make sure there was something the kids would eat - a baked potato or something. Not instead of the souffle, you understand but to go alongside it. As I was doing this, I noticed the pudding mum was planning to make. Another Good Food - chocolate pear crisp. Now, I couldn't do much about the haddock souffle, but I could do something about the pudding. You see, I made this myself a few months back, same recipe, and there was simply not enough topping. One egg white to stretch to 4 ramekins? Well, not in my kitchen it didn't. So with my tale of dessert disaster in mind, she doubled up the topping and it was a big hit. Well, all except for Pink who though it was too chocolatey, but she has some strange ideas about things like that.

Back home, and I decided to use the Pear Crisp idea and turn it into something completely different. A friend who is emigrating shortly donated me the frozen rhubarb and raspberries out of her freezer, so I decided to do this with some of the raspberries, topping them with an almondy, lemony topping and baking in the oven. 

Raspberry & Lemon Crisp

serves 4

approx 240g raspberries (defrosted if frozen), divided between 4 ramekins
2 large egg whites
100g icing sugar
50g ground almonds
zest of a lemon
handful of flaked almonds, for sprinkling

Pre-heat the oven to 160C/140 fan

Whisk the egg white to stiff peaks

Sift the icing sugar into a bowl, and stir in the ground almonds and lemon zest, then fold this through the egg whites. Spoon the egg white mixture onto the raspberries and give the ramekins a couple of taps to get the mixture to settle properly. Sprinkle over the flaked almonds.

Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes till risen and golden. Leave to cool before serving warm or cold.

The reason why mine weren't quite crisp was because time was marching on and we were desperate to get the kids in bed.  I think that leaving them to cool allows the topping to harden up making them crispy on top. Still, they were pretty good as they were, if a little hot!

By the way, it's my mum's birthday today, so - Happy Birthday Mum! This one's for you!