Almond praline creams

Had some friends coming to stay over the weekend, so decided to make some small cakes to have with tea.
I bought a book in a charity shop a while ago, called 'The Encylopedia of Baking'; it has no author and I think it was originally published in Germany. It has some unusual cake and biscuit recipes, so I thought I'd make these almond praline creams, as I had half a bag of flaked almonds left over from the almond and honey cake.
The creams look a bit like whoopie pies, and  I think they're really more like a cross between a cake and a biscuit. It's a basic sponge cake recipe, and whatever they are, cake or biscuit, they taste good, and the ingredient list is short and you've probably got everything in your store cupboard.
The recipe makes about 30 biscuits.

4 egg yolks
20g caster sugar
pinch salt
200g plain flour
75g flaked almonds
200g Nutella or any hazelnut chocolate spread
40g dark chocolate

Preheat oven 200C/gas 6
Grease a baking sheet and dust it with flour.

Put yolks into a bowl and beat them with an electric mixer or beater for a minute on high speed. Then add the sugar and salt and carry on beating for another 2 mins till the mixture is white.
Gradually add the flour.
Put the mixture into a piping bag and pipe thickish rounds on the baking tray using a wide nozzle.
Decorate the tops with flaked almonds.
Bake for 10 mins then take them off the baking sheet.
Melt the nutella in a bowl over some hot water, stirring till it's nice and creamy and smooth.
Spread  over the smooth sides of half the biscuits and cover with the other halves.
Melt the chocolate and drizzle over the biscuits.

These little sponges are a good texture, soft and spongy! Good contrast with the hazelnut filling and the crunch of the almonds.

Think I'll make it my 2nd offering to the April Alpha Bakes challenge, to bake something beginning with A.

This is a monthly challenge hosted alternately by Ros of The More than Occasional Baker blog and Caroline of Caroline Makes blog. Ros is hosting this month - have a look here.

Aberffraw cakes

These were mentioned recently on the GBBO, so I thought I'd find out more about them. They're made on the Isle of Anglesey and are a traditional biscuit really, not a cake. They're served sprinkled with sugar and even with cream and jam, like a scone.
The bit I liked was that a scallop shell is pressed into the top to give it a shell-like pattern. Nowadays, a lot of the Aberffraw cakes have the pattern put on with a knife. I have a bag of scallop shells, brought back from France so I used a genuine one to make my pattern.
The recipe is a 3.2.1  - quite common for biscuits. This means 3 parts flour to 2 parts fat to 1 part sugar.

175g flour
110g butter
55g caster sugar
a little milk
more caster sugar for sprinkling over

Preheat oven 190C/gas5.
Grease a baking sheet.

I used a processor to make my dough.

Put flour and sugar in a bowl and rub in the butter. Bind together with a litle milk to make a soft dough.
Roll out and cut out circles. I used a 7cm cutter and made 12 cakes.
Use a scallop shell to press the scallop pattern onto the top, or cut the pattern with the back of a knife.

Put the cakes to cool on a wire rack and sprinkle with sugar. You can eat them served with cream and jam, but they're delicious as they are.

They have a nice crunchy texture, and the butter gives them a rich flavour.

Easter baking

I've been doing some Easter baking with my grandson and thought I'd post the things we've made.
First were some chocolate nest cakes, you know the ones - cornflakes in melted chocolate. Quick, easy and fun. I'd made some chocolate butter icing for another cake, so I piped a bit under the eggs so they wouldn't fall off!

We also made some rabbit biscuits.

 Tom's favourite is the 3rd one from the left in the top row - he pulled the ear straight before we baked them!
We used some silver balls for their eyes and some bits of glace cherries for their noses and mouths. We made 12 biscuits, and after Grandad and I had eaten one each, the rest went home for his brothers and parents. They were greatly appreciated, as were the chocolate nest cakes.

Here's the recipe, which is from an Easter magazine supplement in 1985!

225g plain flour
175g butter or margarine
115g caster sugar
55g currants
1 medium egg yolk

Preheat oven 180C/gas 4
Grease a baking tray.

Put flour in a bowl, add the fat and rub in.
Stir in the sugar and egg yolk and make into a dough.
Roll the dough out and cut out with a rabbit cutter,
Make eyes out of silver balls and a nose and mouth out of pieces of glace cherries.
Put onto the baking tray and bake for about 20 mins till golden.
Cool on a wire rack.

I also made some Hot Cross Buns, making the dough in my breadmaker.

And I must show you a corner of my lovely Easter tablecloth, bought in Germany.

Welshcakes

I couldn't let St David's Day pass without making some of my Granny's welshcakes. I have her bakestone too [or llechfaen as she called it], rather black but still usable. Her recipe was in ozs and lbs so I've changed it to metric.

450g flour
1 tspn baking powder
110g margarine
110g lard
175g currants
1 tspn mixed spice
1 egg
2 tbspn milk

Sift the flour and baking powder in a bowl then rub in the fat. Add the fruit and spice and mix in.
Beat the egg and add to mixture to make a firm dough. if needed add siome of the milk. Don't make the dough wet!
Roll onto a floured board to about 1/4 " and cut into rounds.
Cook on a greased bakestone or heavy bottomed frying pan for about 3 mins each side till golden.
Cool and sprinkle with sugar.

I don't use lard or margarine, I use butter. Granny used to make about 30 Welsh cakes out of this amount; I seem to make much less - about 16! They're best eaten warm on the day they're made, as they tend to go hard - but they're still good to eat!

Cranberry crumble muffins

I'm sure it's everyone's 'using up leftovers' time this week, and I'd bought some cranberries and not used them. We love muffins and just to make them a bit different, I added some crumble mix on the top. I saw a chef doing this on one of the food programmes. They called it 'streusel topping' and I don't know if it's different from the run-of-the-mill crumble topping?
I used my usual muffin recipe and added the cranberries and some mixed spice.
This is my tried and tested muffin recipe, gathered from a friend in the US.

I'm not sure why, but I seem to make a different number of muffins each time I use the recipe! Today I made 11.

225g plain flour
100g caster sugar]
2 tspns baking powder
1 heaped tspn mixed spice

1/2 tspn salt
1 egg
250ml milk
120ml sunflower oil [ I usually use rapeseed, but only had sunflower left ]

Preheat oven 200C/400F/gas6

Either grease a muffin tin or put paper cases into the holes.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
Mix the milk, egg and oil together in a jug then add to the dry ingredients - just stir it gently and don't overmix.
Spoon the mixture into the cases or into the tin filling them nearly full.
For the topping I used 50g plain flour and 25g butter rubbed together and 1 tbspn of soft brown sugar added to the mixture. I then sprinkled a little on top of each muffin.
Bake for 15-20 mins till golden.
Cool on a wire rack.

A very Happy New Year. xx

ps My lovely dil bought me a cake stand as one of my Christmas pressies. I love it.

Walnut, raisin and cheese teabread

I have a friend coming to stay for a few days and have been baking in preparation for her visit. I've made a spice cake, some muffins and wanted something else a bit different to have with a cup of tea.
I decided that a savoury teabread would be unusual, and found this recipe in an old cookery book called 'Cakes, breads and gateaux'.

350g sr flour
1/2tspn salt
pinch cayenne pepper
1 level tspn dry mustard
75g butter or margarine
90g mature Cheddar, grated finely [keep 15g for the topping]
75g raisins
65g chopped walnuts [keep 15g for the topping]
1 beaten egg
250ml milk
Preheat oven 180C/350F.gas4

Grease and line a large loaf tin - 200g.
Sieve the flour, salt, cayenne and mustard together into a bowl, then add the fat and rub it in.
Stir in 75g of the grated cheese, raisins and 50g of the walnuts.
Mix the egg into the milk then add it to the mixture and beat well.
Put into the tin and level the top.
Mix the rest of the walnuts and cheese together and sprinkle over the top of the mixture.
Bake for about 1-11/4 hours till golden.
Cool on a wire rack and serve sliced with some good butter.

The texture and flavour was very good. Not sure if I liked the raisins; maybe I'd use a different fruit next time.
The crunchy topping was a good contrast to the loaf.

Tyler's cinnamon squares

My favourite spice is cinnamon, so when I found this recipe I had to try it.
It comes from a very old copy of 'Home and Freezer Digest' magazine, which is sadly no more.

250g caster sugar + 2 tbspns
1tbspn + 21/2 tspns cinnamon
11/2 tspns instant coffee
175g plain flour
2 tspns baking powder
175ml milk
2 large eggs
1/2 tspn vanilla extract
140g butter, melted
Bag chocolate chips

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas4
Grease and line a 20cm square tin.

Put the 2 tbspns of sugar, the 21/2 tspns cinnamon  and the coffee in a bowl and mix together.
In another bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, caster sugar and the cinnamon. In a third bowl beat together the milk, eggs and vanilla.
Pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture and beat them together.Fold in the cooled, melted butter.
Put half of the batter into the tin, smooth then sprinkle over the chocolate chips and the cinnamon sugar. Put the rest of the batter on top.
Bake for about 35 mins. Leave in tin for 15 mins then put onto a wire rack.

The cake is delicious as it is, but it's even nicer with a chocolate topping. Use your favourite ganache or whatever you fancy. I used 175g plain chocolate and 45g butter - I put them in a bowl over a pan of simmering water and then let them melt, stirring. Don't let the mixture get too hot or it won't be nice and thick to spread over the top. Swirl it over with a small palette knife.

The cake has a real cinnamon flavour and a soft texture.

Poppyseed cake

I've been reading a book about Eastern Europe and have become interested in itscooking, especially cakes.
This cake is made without flour, and the only hard work is whizzing the poppyseeds in a food processor or grinder, or even grinding them in a pestle and mortar.

4 eggs separated
125g butter, softened
grated rind of a lemon
100g icing sugar
2 tbspns cocoa powder
50g caster sugar
160g ground poppy seeds
 icing sugar for the top of the cake

Preheat oven 180C/gas4
Grease a 24cm round cake tin.

Beat the butter, egg yolks, lemon rind and icing sugar with an electric beater or stand mixer till thick and smooth. Fold in the cocoa and mix together.
Beat the egg whites till frothy, then sprinkle in the caster sugar and carry on beating till the whites are thick and shiny.
Mix the ground poppyseeds into the eggyolk mixture, then add the egg whites mixture and mix together very gently.
Spoon mixture into the tin.
Bake for about 55 mins. Let the cake cool in the tin.
When it's cold, take the cake out and sieve icing sugar over the top. I put a paper doily on top and sieved over this.

The cake's also nice if you ice it with a simple chocolate icing of icing sugar, boiling water and cocoa.

Creme anglaise and apple muffins

Yesterday I made some creme anglaise to have with our rhubarb crumble. There was a little left over, so this recipe was just perfect.

It makes 12 muffins

90g melted butter
300g sr flour
150g plain flour
1 tspn cinnamon [ I love it so used 2 tspns]
165g caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
250ml milk
60ml creme anglaise
150g cooked apples [I used cox and chopped them up before cooking]
2 tbspn demerara sugar

preheat oven 200C/gas 6/400F

Grease a 12-holed muffin tin or use 12 muffin cases.
Mix together the butter, flours, 1/2 the cinnamon, caster sugar, egg and milk till just mixed.
Fill the cases or holes half full of the batter, then make a deepish dent in the middle and add 1 tspn creme anglaise and 2 tspns apple. Add more batter on top.
Mix the brown sugar with the rest of the cinnamon and sprinkle on top of the muffins.
Cook for about 25 mins till golden.
Leave the muffins to rest in the tin, and then put onto a wire rack.

I like the texture of the muffins with the custard and apple and then the  crunchy topping. 

I think next time I'd use my tried and tested muffin recipe* and just add the fillings and crunchy topping.

*My usual recipe is 225g plain flour, 100g caster sugar, 2 tspn baking powder, 250ml milk, 120ml vegetable oil and 1 egg. Usual method of dry and wet ingredients and they're baked at 200C/gas6 for 20 mins.

Blackcurrant loaf

I'm desperately trying to use up the contents of the freezer before we move. Just before we came here, I ended up running down the road to my friend with an enormous plastic bag full of food from the freezer! I want to do a better job this time, so it's 'use up some blackcurrants' day!

I love teabreads and loafcakes, so was very pleased to find this recipe in a little book I bought ages ago from a NT shop. There's no author's name, and the book is called 'Favourite family teabreads and other delights'.

Here's the recipe which I've adapted.

100g fresh blackcurrants
275g sr flour [plus a bit for tossing the blackcurrants]
100g butter or margarine
100g caster sugar [and a bit for sprinkling on the top]
2 large eggs, beaten
a little milk

Preheat oven 160 fan/180C/350F/gas4

Grease a 900g [2lb] loaf tin

Rub the fat into the flour. Add the sugar then the eggs and stir together. The mixture should be fairly dry, but if it won't come together easily, add a little milk.
Put the blackcurrants in another bowl and toss them in a little flour [to stop them sinking to the bottom of the cake] then mix them into the dough.

This shows that tossing them in flour does work - no I didn't eat 2 pieces!

Put into the tin, sprinkle the top with some sugar and bake for about 45-50 mins till golden.

I used light brown caster sugar and added a little cinnamon to the dough, as I love it!

We still have several bags of blackcurrants left, so watch this space!!

Lemon courgette cake

It's that time of year again - courgettes. They're so prolific that if you blink, you miss one, and it's become a marrow! We decided to only plant one plant, but it's still prolific. Reminds me of 'The day of the Triffids'!

I've tried a chocolate courgette cake, so wanted to find something different.

I found this recipe on the excellent site - http://www.allrecipes.co.uk/ and I tweaked it a bit.

200g grated courgettes
150g caster sugar
1 egg
125ml veg.oil
200g plain flour
1/2 tspn salt
1/2 tspn bicarb.
1/4 tspn baking powder
1 heaped tspn cinnamon
2 tspns lemon zest

Icing sugar and lemon juice if you want to ice it.

Preheat oven 160C/gas3
Grease a loaf tin.
In a bowl beat together the courgettes, egg, sugar and oil.
Sieve the flour with the baking powder and bicarb. then add the cinnamon and lemon zest. Stir this into the courgette mixture and gently mix together till just blended.
Pour into the tin and bake for about 40 mins.
Leave in the tin till cool, then turn onto a wire rack.

I made some lemon icing by mixing icing sugar and lemon juice, and poured it over.

You can peel the courgettes before grating, but I like the green specks in the cake.

Banana cake

I had 2 very ripe bananas to use up so decided to make a cake. It's very easy and delicious [I sound like Ina!].

2 ripe bananas [about 400g]
150g butter at room temperature
150g soft brown sugar
100g sultanas
300g plain flour
2 tspn baking powder
1/2tspn bicarbonate of soda
1 tspn cinnamon
2 medium beaten eggs
100ml vegetable oil

Preheat oven 180C/gas4/350F

Grease a 2lb/900g loaf tin
Peel and mash the bananas.
Put the butter and sugar in a bowl and beat together till fluffy. Stir in the bananas and the sultanas.
Sieve together the flour, baking powder and soda.
Add the flour mixture and the eggs to the banan mixture, adding about a third at a time of each.
Mix together well. Then stir in the oil.
Put into the loaf tin and bake for about 40 mins. Leave in the tin to cool and then put onto a wire rack.

I didn't have the 400g of bananas so used more sultanas. I also didn't use any oil this time and it's still a moist cake.

Apple and spice loaf cake

If you read this blog, you'll know that we love teabreads. Wanted to try a new recipe, so found this one on the BBC Good Food site. You'll find it  here.
I tweaked the spices and used some 'quatre epices' which is much like mixed spice in the UK. I found it rather sweet so maybe less sugar next time. I like the sliced apple on top; it gave the cooked teabread  an interesting look.

We had a slice of it with a cuppa.

Irish apple cake

Still more windfalls from the garden, so have tried another apple cake recipe. This time it's from Rachel Allen's book 'Rache's favourite food at home'.
I like her style very much; it's straightforward and makes you feel you can achieve what she's done.

Here's the recipe:
225g plain flour
1/2 tspn baking powder
100g butter - room temperature
100g sugar, plus 2 tbspn
1 beaten egg
100ml milk
1 large cooking apple, about 300g, cored, peeled and diced
1 tspn cinnamon

Preheat oven to 180C/gas4/350F

Grease a 25cm ovenproof plate [I used a tin plate belonging to my mum]
Mix flour and baking powder in a bowl and rub in the butter till it looks like breadcrumbs.



Add sugar, beaten egg and enough milk to make a soft dough - it will be wet.
Then pat half of the dough into the bottom of the plate. Put the apple onto the dough and sprinkle with 1 tspn of sugar and the cinnamon.


Spoon the rest of the dough on the top, covering the apple. Sprinkle top with the other tbspn sugar.



Bake for 30-35 mins till golden and serve with cream.

It's really delicious.

Sue's apple cake

We have a lot of windfall Bramleys to use up, so I made this apple cake. The recipe is from Sue L, a lovely lady on the bbc food forum. This is her blog - http://www.mainlybaking.blogspot.com/ . It's good as a cake and also great as a pudd. with ice cream or cream.
The recipe:
250g butter or margarine
300g sr flour
1 beaten egg
350g apples - peeled, cored and sliced
150g caster sugar
1/2 tspn cinnamon
1/2 tspn mixed spice
1 tbspn brown sugar

Preheat oven 180C/gas4/350F
Grease a 20cm cake tin.

Melt fat in the microwave in a large bowl.
Stir in the beaten egg and caster sugar.
Gradually stir in the flour. The dough should be like cookie dough.
Spread half the dough into the bottom of the cake tin.Use fingers to spread it evenly.


Mix the apples with the spices and arrange in an even layer on top of the dough.


Cover with the rest of the dough, again using fingers to spread it out.Sprinkle top with the brown sugar.

Bake for about an hour, or till golden. Leave in tin to cool.
If using this as a dessert, can sprinkle chopped nuts on top in place of the sugar.



You can see the layer of apple in the middle. It's really delicious.

Chocolate and courgette cake

I've been a big fan of the great 'Chocolate and Zucchini' blog for a while http://chocolateandzucchini.com/ so when Clotilde published a book of the same name, I knew I had to buy it. I'm ashamed to say that I've never cooked from it till today. We had a lot of courgettes [zucchini] to pick in the garden, so I decided to make her chocolate and courgette cake.

It serves 12

110g unsalted butter, at room temperature

or 120ml extra virgin olive oil

240g plain flour

60g cocoa powder

1teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

180g light brown sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

3 large eggs

350g unpeeled grated cougettes [zucchini]

160g good-quality chocolate chips I used a bar of 70% dark chocolate and broke it into pieces]

Preheat oven to 180C/350F/gas4

Grease a 25cm springform caketin/pan with butter or oil.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and baking powder.

Beat the sugar and butter/oil until creamy [you can use a food processor or a hand-held electric beater to do this].

Add the vanilla, coffee granules and eggs, mixing well together.

Keep back about half of the flour mixture and add the rest to the egg mixture. Mix until combined - it will be a thick batter.

Add the courgettes [zucchini] and chocolate chips to the rest of the flour and toss to coat. then fold this into the batter and blend with a wooden spoon. Don't overmix.

Pour into the prepared pan/tin and level the surface with a spatula.

Bake for about 35-40 minutes.

If you like, you can sprinkle icing sugar on the top or glaze with melted chocolate.

It makes a good dessert served with creme anglaise.

from 'Chocolate and Zucchini' by Clotilde Dusoulier