Honey and Coconut Cake

I had some dessicated coconut in the cupboard, so decided to make another cake. I also had a lovely pot of local honey bought in a recent farmer's market, so would use this too. I found a lot of recipes online for a honey cake, but they weren't exactly what I wanted.
This recipe is a mixture of bits of several recipes I've used before.

Grease and line a 200g loaf tin.
Preheat oven 180C/gas4

Beat 125g butter with 100g brown sugar till nice and creamy; then add 2 beaten eggs, 1 tspn vanilla extract and 60ml honey. Add 25g dessicated coconut and mix in. Fold in 250g sr flour, 1 tspn nutmeg, 1/2 tspn cinnamon and 1/4 tspn allspice. Stir in 125ml milk and mix gently till smooth.
Pour into the tin and bake for 30 mins. Leave in tin for 10 mins then turn onto a wire rack.

Cream cheese and honey icing:

Beat 125g cream cheese [like Philly] till creamy, then add 75g sieved icing sugar and 1 tbspn honey. Beat together till smooth and fluffy.

Spread icing over cake and sprinkle with some extra nutmeg.

You could add more coconut if you want, but I really wanted the honey flavour to shine. Lovely mix of spices, giving the cake another layer. It's got a fairly dense texture, but is still moist. The icing gives it that finishing touch - it's fairly sweet, but not cloying like some butter creams.

Banana flapjacks

Seem to have had a lot of very ripe bananas lately. Am a bit fed up with banana loaves and cakes, but was given a recipe booklet recently about Fairtrade bananas, made up with recipes given by some of our church members. We love flapjacks, so banana ones seemed a great idea. I made them in a swiss roll tin, as we like them thin, but if you prefer thicker ones, use a square cake tin instead.

125g butter
85g light brown sugar
2 tbspn syrup
350g oats
1/2tspn baking powder
1 tspn cinnamon
2 medium ripe bananas

Preheat oven 180C/gas4

Grease a Swiss roll tin  23 x 33cm or a 20cm square cake tin

Melt butter, sugar and syrup in microwave or on hob.
Add oats, baking powder and cinnamon then add mashed bananas.
Spoon in tin and smooth top with back of a spoon.
Bake 20-25 mins till golden and firm.
Cut into bars while hot then cool in tin.
I made 15 bars.

We really liked the added texture of the banana, but they are a soft flapjack, not a crisp one. I'll certainly make them again - it's good to have something else to do with ripe bananas.

Rhubarb and Cinnamon Muffins

A quick post as I'm off to my daughter in London till Sunday.

I made these muffins to use up the last sticks of rhubarb in the garden. I usually use oil instead of butter, but thought I'd give these a try. The recipe is from a tatty book I picked up in a charity shop, called '100 Muffins' , but it doesn't have the writer's name in it. 

150g caster sugar
280g plain flour
21/2 tspns baking powder
1 tspn cinnamon
1/2 tspn bicarb.
1/2 tpsn salt
250ml creme fraiche 
110g melted butter
2 eggs
1 tspn vanilla
150g diced rhubarb
Topping:
3 tbspn caster sugar
1/2 tspn cinnamon

Preheat oven 200C/gas6             Grease a 12 hole muffin tin.

Combine flour, baking powder, sugar, cinnamon, salt and bicarb together in a bowl. In another bowl whisk together the creme fraiche, eggs, butter and vanilla to a smooth batter. Stir the wet mixture into the dry one, but don't over mix. Stir in the rhubarb. 
Spoon the batter into the muffin tin.
 Mix the cinnamon and caster sugar and sprinkle over the muffins.
Bake for about 20 mins till golden. Cool on a wire rack.

They're very tasty - like the contrast of the crunchy top. A good use for a small amount of rhubarb.

ps thought the muffin looked good against the bright green pvc tablecloth I bought in France for the garden table!

Walnut and Courgette cake

Another one of my favourite loaf cakes. This one's another quite healthy cake, as it uses wholemeal flour, sunflower oil and nuts. It came about because in France we always had a glut of courgettes and were finding ways to use them up. The recipe came from a neighbour who had the same problem!
I suppose this is a bit of nostalgia too, as we don't have room to grow courgettes in our small garden, so the ones I used were lurking in the veg drawer.

3 eggs
90g light muscovado sugar

125ml sunflower oil

250g wholewheat flour

1 tspn baking powder

1 tspn bicarb. of soda

1 tspn cinnamon

1 tspn allspice

150g grated courgettes

125g chopped walnuts

60g sunflower seeds

Preheat oven to 180C/350F/gas4

Grease and base line a 900g loaf tin.

Beat eggs and sugar together and gradually add oil.

Sift flour into another bowl and add the baking powder, bicarb, spices and nuts. Add the grated courgettes and mix well.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones and spoon into loaf tin.

Bake for about 40 mins. Cool slightly in tin and then turn on to a wire rack.

A nice moist texture, with a good hit of spice. You can see specks of green in the cake, but I don't think people would realise that it's a courgette cake.

Chocolate gingerbread

This recipe is for a 'pain d'épice' [spice bread]  type of gingerbread - a French classic. Each country has its own version of gingerbread, but I love the French one best.

I wanted to do something a bit different for a special tea, as I'd invited the French conversation group I belong to. I decided to push the boat out, so instead of making just a normal cake looking gingerbread, I made it into a sort of millefeuille version, and added chocolate to it.

The basic recipe came from my French friend's mother, and unlike our English gingerbread, it uses several spices. It's not difficult to make, but making it into a millefeuille was a bit of a faff!

You need:
100g of dark chocolate
100g of honey
*200ml cold double cream
130g flour [my friend's Mum used rye flour but I didn't]
11/2tspns baking powder
2 tspns vanilla sugar
20g icing sugar

for the spices:
1 tspn of cinnamon, 1/2 tspn ground ginger, 1 tpsn freshly grated nutmeg and 1 star anise [crushed in a mortar or a grinder]

100g bar of chocolate to make chocolate curls - or buy some
4 tbspns of cocoa powder

a little flour and 1 tbspn of oil to grease the cake tin

Preheat oven 180C/gas4


Grease and flour a 15cm springform tin - the original recipe asked for a small 'moule à manqué, so I judged that this would be about the right size, and it worked out fine.

Melt the chocolate, honey and 10ml of water in a bowl over a saucepan. Add the spices and mix together.
Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl then add to the chocolate mixture a little at a time. if the mixture seems too thick, add a little water.
Spoon into the tin and bake for 35-40 mins.
Cool on a wire rack.

Tip:
It's best to make the pain d'épice the day before you need it, as it's easier then to cut it into disks. This is what I did, and it wasn't too difficult to cut the layers.

Whip the cream till thickish then add the icing and vanilla sugars at the end and mix in gently.

Cut the cake into disks using a bread knife. Make a layer with a disk of pain d'épice then some cream, another biscuit layer and finish with a layer of cream.
Decorate the top with the chocolate curls and sprinkle the cocoa over [I used an old tea strainer].

Everyone enjoyed this, and loved the subtle spice flavours mixed with the chocolate and then the cream layer. It really is a cake of contrasts.


*Sorry, I originally said 20ml of cream - it was 20cl of cream in the French recipe and I just typed 20ml, but it's 200ml of course.

Cinnamon, Cranberry and Apple Turnovers

I recently bought myself a Patisserie book, by Murielle Vallette. Among other things, I wanted to have a try at making my own puff pastry. This is an excellent book, as it has photos showing you all the steps. This time I didn't fancy making any of the suggestions in the book with my puff pastry, so made these easy turnovers. I adapted the ingredients from an idea I saw on Pinterest, which were turnovers using pear and walnuts. I had a search through my cupboard and found some cranberries lurking in the back. When I'd cooked the apples they were rather too mushy to put in the pastry, so I thickened them with some cornflour. I used Braeburn apples as they were in the fruit bowl, but you could use any apples. I decided to ice them with some simple glace icing.

2 apples peeled, cored and chopped into small dice
sheet of butter puff pastry
50g brown sugar
¼ tspn cinnamon
30g dried cranberries
250ml water

thickening:
30ml cold water
½ tbspn cornflour

Cinnamon Icing:
65g icing sugar
sprinkle of cinnamon
water to mix


Preheat oven 180C/gas 4.  Line a baking tray with parchment paper or a silicone sheet.
Cut the apples into small dice and put, with the dried cranberries, brown sugar, cinnamon and the 250ml of water into a pan and cook over medium heat for about  8-10 minutes till the apples become soft.
You need to thicken this mixture, so mix 30ml of cold water with 1/2 tbspn of cornflour and mix well. No lumps!
Take the apples off the heat and stir in the cornflour mixture till the apple mixture has thickened.  Cool.

On a floured board roll the puff pastry into a 15 x 12" or 38 x 30 cms [approx] rectangle (1/2 cm thick). Cut into 4 x 4" or 10cm  squares. Put a heaped tbspn of filling in the centre of the pastry square.  Fold the pastry into a triangle and press your fingertips firmly into the edges to seal the pastry together (if the pastry will not stick together you can use an egg wash brushed along the edges to help).  Put on a baking tray spaced out evenly.
Bake for 25-30 minutes till golden.  Let them cool and drizzle with some cinnamon icing if you fancy.

To make the cinnamon icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl.  Add the cinnamon and add a very small amount of water, adding more if you want thinner icing. Drizzle over the turnovers.

You can see by my photo that I didn't seal the edges very well, but they were delicious anyway! Liked the combination of apples and cranberries and the cinnamon gives them that gentle hint of spice. Think it was a good way to use my pastry, and maybe next time I'll try the turnovers with a different filling - like the idea of the pear and walnut, but maybe rhubarb and ginger .... ? Will make puff pastry again, but will try one of the ideas in the book, like chocolate millefeuille.

Louisiana Banana Cake

I'm going through a 'nostalgic phase' at the moment, having made coconut ice, coconut pyramids and an orange coconut cake in the last few weeks - all recipes from my Mum's notebook, and which I remember from my childhood.

I wanted to continue with the coconut theme, and I remembered a recipe I'd always meant to try. I have a few US cookery books and magazines brought back from when we lived there, and I've adapted this cake from a book called 'Cakes That Mom Baked' - it has 2 of my favourite ingredients in it - bananas and coconut. I've changed to metric measures and altered some of the ingredients.

When living in the US, we got used to the fact that a cake wasn't a cake unless it had 'frosting' on top.
This was usually a heavy butter cream, flavoured or coloured. This cake has a 'frosting' which is flavoured with banana and rum, and it's then sprinkled with shredded coconut [which I bought on Amazon UK]. I made it in a 900g loaf tin, but the original was made in a 24cm springform tin. It's quite a lot of ingredients, but I think the end result is well worth the effort.


Preheat oven 190C/gas5 and grease a 900g loaf tin [23x13cm] or a 24cm springform tin.

In a bowl mix together 300g of plain flour, 40g of cornflour, 2 tspns of baking powder, 1 tspn of bicarbonate of soda and 1/2 tspn of nutmeg.
Beat together 200g of soft butter and 200g of soft brown sugar till nice and fluffy, then add 3 beaten eggs and 2 tspns of vanilla essence; mix together well.
In a small bowl, mix together 100ml of buttermilk and 3 medium ripe bananas which have been mashed.
Add half of the flour mixture and half of the banana mixture to the batter and mix well.
Then add the rest of the flour and banana mixtures and stir to mix.
Add 45g of toasted pine nuts and 45g of shredded coconut. I found the coconut in a local Asian shop, but dessicated coconut would do. Mix it all together and spoon into tin.
Bake for about 45-50 mins till the cake is springy when touched.
Cool cake in the tin for 30 mins then put onto a wire rack.
For the frosting - beat 200g of soft butter with 450g of icing sugar till it's pale and fluffy, then fold in 2 small mashed ripe bananas, 125ml  rum, 1/2 tspn cinnamon,1 tbspn vanilla extract and 1 tbspn lemon juice.Beat it well to mix thoroughly then spread over the top of the cooled cake. Sprinkle with 150g of toasted shredded coconut to cover all the frosting.
To toast both the pine nuts and the coconut, I browned them in a dry pan on the hob, over a lowish heat; I know you can toast them in the oven, but you have to be very careful they don't burn, so I prefer to watch them.

I love the great mix of flavours - banana, vanilla, pine nuts, coconut etc. It's a lovely moist cake, and we loved the topping. I know it's a lot of calories, but for a treat, it's great!

Toffee Apple Cake

Recently it was Bramley Apple week, so I decided to make an apple cake, and found this WI recipe amongst my mil's collection, but to be honest, for me, it doesn't really live up to its name. It needs a stronger toffee flavour, but I liked the idea of enhancing the apple flavour by using Calvados. We love apple cakes, and I have lots of recipes, but this is the first toffee apple cake I've tried.
I had a look online and there are lots of different ideas  - I liked  this one from Rosie Bakes It blog, but there seems to be a bit too much topping for me and she adds dates, just as I did for my Sticky Toffee cake, and I didn't want to use dates - I want the toffee flavour to come from something else. Another idea was to put some Carnation Caramel in the cake mixture - this recipe uses it, one from the Good to Know site.


225g self-raising flour
150g soft butter
150g soft dark brown sugar
50g  mixed nuts, chopped
1 large Bramley cooking apple, peeled, cored and chopped finely
4 tbspn Apple Brandy [ I used Calvados]
2 large eggs
4 tbspn milk
½ tspn cinnamon

50g (2 oz) pecan nuts
1 tbspn demerara sugar

A 20cm springform tin, greased and base-lined

Preheat oven 180°C/Gas 4.

Beat butter and sugar till fluffy; add eggs one at a time. Then add the milk and apple brandy and beat in. Add the nuts and chopped apple and fold in. Fold in flour and cinnamon and mix well.
Spoon into the tin and smooth the top. Decorate edge and middle of  cake with pecan nuts. Then sprinkle over the demerara sugar.
Bake for 40 – 45 minutes or till firm to touch.
Leave the cake in tin for 10 mins before turning onto a wire rack.

In the original recipe the apple was grated, but I chopped it up finely, as I wasn't in a grating mood!

The cake has a good soft crumb, is a light texture, and I like the little bites of apple and the background flavour of the Calvados, but as I said, it could do with something to give it more toffee flavour. There is a hint from the topping and from using the dark brown sugar, but I'm going to see if I can make my perfect toffee apple cake. Watch this space!

I think the cake would make a good dessert if you served it with a toffee sauce.

Pain d'Epices au Miel - Honey Gingerbread.

I was inspired by a recent post on the excellent Strong as Soup blog          http://asstrongassoup.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/black-sticky-gingerbread-random-recipe.html  to look for a recipe my neighbour gave me for a gingerbread made with honey. This is a very different gingerbread from the dark moist one on Phil's blog.
The method is unusual in that you put the dry ingredients into a bowl, then heat the honey and pour it over.
It's got a good spicy flavour and as Phil said in his post, gingerbread is great for taking on an Autumn walk, or with your afternoon cuppa, or even as a dessert with some custard.
The original French recipe used 'quatre epices' but I don't think there's much difference between that and our mixed spice, and I found some ground aniseed in a local deli, but you could leave it out if you don't like it.

250g runny honey
250g plain flour
100g caster sugar
1 tspn baking powder
1 tbspn vanilla sugar
1 tspn ground aniseed
1 tspn grated nutmeg
1 tspn cinnamon
1 tspn ginger
1 tspn mixed spice
2 eggs
10cl of warm milk

Preheat oven.160C/gas3

Put the flour, baking powder,sugars and spices in a bowl.
Heat the honey in a microwave or in a saucepan then pour the hot honey over the flour mixture.
Mix together with a wooden spoon then add the eggs a little at a time, then the warm milk and mix together.
Grease and flour a 900g loaf tin then pour the mixture in and bake for 1 to 1hr 15mins till golden.
Leave to cool in the tin and wait 24 hours before eating.

This cake keeps well, up to a week, if you wrap it in foil, so a useful standby for Christmas. Maybe a little cinnamon or ginger icing would make it look more festive? But with this cake, it's all about the flavour - spicy with a lovely honey flavour too.

Spicy Christmas Trees

We have a houseful for Christmas this year, including 2 lovely people from Poland, so thought I'd try out a few family biscuit recipes from the French friend I mentioned recently. The first one is spiced Christmas trees.
G's paternal family live in Alsace, so she's grown up with the lovely spicy biscuits and bakes they make at Christmas. I'm going to try out a few and have my grandsons help me, and then they can choose their favourites [as they're going to be here for Christmas anyway].
My daughter and dog came up for the weekend, so we roped her into helping us. She loves decorating cakes and biscuits, so she helped the boys with their trees, and the photo is of her creations. The boys didn't want their efforts put on here, so they ate them!
I expect every family in Alsace has their own recipe for Christmas biscuits, but this is the translated Ruff family one, but the decoration is the boys' idea - they wanted garlands on the trees and baubles!


100g butter at room temperature
85g soft brown sugar
250g plain flour
125g honey [I used some local honey, not the runny sort]
1 tbspn rum [opt]
1 tspn lemon zest
1 tspn baking powder
1 tspn ginger
1 tspn cinnamon
2 pinches of salt
To decorate - icing sugar and silver balls.

Preheat oven 180C/gas4        Grease and flour a baking sheet.

 Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the honey, lemon zest and rum.
Beat well together.
Add the spices, baking powder and salt to the flour, then mix gently into the batter to get a nice dough.
Make into a ball and cover in clingfilm and put in the fridge for 2-4 hrs.
Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface as thinly as possible. Use a Christmas tree cutter to cut out shapes and put onto the baking tray.
Bake for 8-10 mins till lightly golden and cool on a wire rack.
Make up some thickish glace icing then pipe garlands on the cooled trees. Decorate with the silver balls to look like baubles.

 You could cut the biscuits out with any Christmas cutters and decorate them as you like. It's a good basic spiced biscuit to have in your repertoire.

Crumbly Plum Cake

We love plums, but despite this being a bumper year for fruit, I've only managed to find 3 lots of British plums. Victoria's are my favourite and I wish we had the room for a tree in our small garden.
I succumbed to a BOGOF offer in the supermarket and bought some Italian plums. I decided to make a cake, one with a crumbly topping and use them as a layer in the cake. The idea for the recipe came from this recipe on the Good Food site, but I used bits from several recipes in my folder to make the final cake.

If the plums aren't very ripe, I like to roast them first to add to their flavour.

Put 450g of plums cut side up in a tin, sprinkle with 2 tsbps of granulated sugar and bake them in oven 180C/gas4 for about 20 mins till they've become soft. Take out, but leave the oven on.

You need a 20cm springform tin lined with baking paper.

It's an all in one cake, so put 175g soft brown sugar. 175g butter or margarine, 175g sr flour, 2 eggs, 1/2 tspn baking powder and 1 tspn vanilla extract in a bowl and beat together till nice and creamy.
Pour the batter into the tin, then put the plums in a layer on top and pour in the juice [shouldn't be much].

Make the topping by melting 50g butter, then take it off the hob and add 50g flour, 1 tspn cinnamon, 25g oats and 25g flaked almonds. Stir them together, then sprinkle over to cover the plums.
Bake 180C/gas4 for about an hour or so till the top is nice and golden.

The idea was a crumble topped cake, but when the cake was cooked, a lot of the topping had sunk down into the cake, and the cake itself had a flapjack type of taste with a nice chewy top. You could use apples, or any fruit of choice instead of the plums. A good versatile recipe for a dessert or a cake for tea.

Welsh Harvest Cake

I went to a farmer's market yesterday and couldn't resist buying yet more apples. It's the time of the year for them, for pies, cakes, chutney, jam. What could I do with them that would be something different? I remembered some apple recipes I'd cut out of a magazines ages ago, so I looked through them and found this one. I'm sure there are many recipes for regional Harvest Cakes, but my being Welsh, this recipe seemed very appropriate, and it's not long since we had Harvest.The countryside around us has been buzzing with combines and tractors.
It's an unusual cake because the fruit is put in in middle like a sandwich filling, and it seems as if there's much too much fruit for the batter. But have faith, all will be well!

Preheat oven 180C/gas4 and grease and line a 18cm cake tin

Melt 175g butter with 175g soft brown sugar - don't worry if it's not all dissolved, but stir it. Cool for a bit then add 2 beaten eggs. Sift 225g sr flour together with 1 tspn mixed spice and 1 tspn cinnamon then add the melted ingredients and mix together.
Put 450g apples [this is the weight after coring and chopping] with 100 g of dried fruit [sultanas and currants] and 50g flaked almonds in a bowl and mix together.
Spoon half of the cake batter into the tin then add the fruit and nuts then spoon the rest of the batter on top. It looks an awful lot of fruit to mixture, but don't worry.
Smooth the top of the cake batter and bake for about an hour.
Leave it in the tin for about half an hour to cool then turn out onto a wire rack.

I served this as a pudding today with a little cream; the fruit was nice and juicy and the cake had a good hit of spices. A good cake to have in my folder. We'll try it cold tomorrow, and see which we prefer.

Apple Ginger Cake

Another simple but delicious apple cake.
Many years ago I entered a competition in a small magazine called 'Home and Freezer Digest'. You had to send in your favourite apple recipe, and the best 100 would be published. I did get a recipe [called 'Nutty Apples'] in the book, and I won a copy of the book [100 Best Apple Recipes] and a year's worth of the magazine. Why am I saying all this, well I found the rather tatty book in the loft recently, and it has some great apple recipes in it.
I still had a few of the windfall apples left so decided top make an apple and ginger cake from the book.
It's a small cake, so perfect for the 2 of us. It's unusual because the apple puree is mixed into the cake mixture rather than being a layer in the middle of the cake. This gives the cake a good flavour.
It could be used as a pudding with some custard - ideal for this colder weather.

Preheat oven 180C/gas4 and grease and line a 20cm cake tin.

You need:
225g of apples [I used the windfalls and an odd Bramley to make up the amount] - cored, peeled and sliced.
You cook these with 25g of sugar and 2 tbspn of water over a low heat till soft, then beat them into a puree.
Put 50g soft brown sugar, 100g golden syrup and 75g butter in a large pan and gently melt. Leave to cool down.
Sieve 150g sr flour with 2 tspns of ginger and 2 tspns of cinnamon and add to the pan with 1 beaten egg and the apple puree. Mix together well.
Spoon into the tin and bake for about 35-40 mins till golden. Cool in tin for a few mins then cool on a wire rack.
I made a rather poor layer of icing for the top [ ran out of icing sugar!] using a little apple juice instead of water.

As you can see from the photo, I decided to take out a little of the apple before it was cooked, to give a bit of texture to the cake.

It's a spongy texture, quite dense, with a fresh taste from the pureed apples. Glad I left some apple a bit chunky as it added another bit of texture, and there's a good hit of spices. Liked the icing, and it was enough for us, as we don't like things too sweet. A different kind of apple cake, and one I'll certainly make again.

Autumn Apple Loaf

This is my kind of cake - a nice simple apple loaf cake - just right for using up some apple windfalls which a friend gave me. Have been busy making chutney and trying apple butter [delicious]. I made some apple muffins and scones for my children to take, and this loaf for us. It's also nice as a dessert.

You preheat oven 170C/gas3 and line a 900g loaf tin with some baking parchment.

Using an electric mixer, beat 175g caster sugar and  175g butter together till nice and fluffy then add 3 eggs, one at a time. Add a tspn of vanilla extract and mix in.
In another bowl mix 225g of plain flour together with a tspn of baking powder, a tspn of ginger and a tspn of cinnamon.
Add this to the batter and fold in. Then add about 25ml milk to make a soft batter.

Peel and core about 3 small apples - chop most of it into small pieces, but leave a few pieces to slice for the top of the loaf. Mix the apple pieces into the batter.

Spoon the batter into the tin and arrange the slices along the top. Sprinkle about a tbspn of dark brown sugar over the slices.

Bake for about an hour till golden.

                          A lovely moist cake; you can taste the spices and then the soft apples pieces.

                                   I suppose the recipe is really a variation on a basic Madeira cake.

Blueberry Buckle

Have been trying to unravel the difference between various American words used in desserts - slump, grunt, cobbler and buckle. I've made a cobbler a few times, cutting out scone-like cobbles to put on top of the fruit but what's a grunt or a slump? Great words, and what  pictures they conjure up.
I found a recipe in an American book I bought from 'The Works' years ago, for a Blueberry Buckle. This sounded intriguing so I had to make one. What is it? It's a cake mixture with the fruit added which is put into the bottom of the cake tin, and a streusel type mixture is spooned on top. The name Buckle is supposed to have been used because the top of the baked dessert looks like it's buckled under the heat  - it does, so maybe there's some truth in this idea.

I altered some of the amounts in the recipe, as there seemed to be too much flour in the cake part. I'll certainly make the recipe again, but I'd use less sugar in the topping as it was way too sweet for our tastes.

I should also have tossed the blueberries in some flour before adding them to the cake mixture, as most of them sank to the bottom of the cake.

If you want to try a Buckle, then here's my adapted recipe - the original was in cups, so I converted it to grams, and it worked out fine.

The original recipe came from a book called 'The Big Book of American Recipes' -  it has no named author and was published in 1992

150g sugar

                                                                55g butter [in the original recipe they used shortening]

1 egg

125ml milk

                                       200g plain flour [original used 300g]

                   2 tspns baking powder

   1/2 tspn salt

                   about 250g blueberries

Preheat oven 190c/gas 5

cake mixture - cream the fat and sugar, beat in the egg; mix the baking powder and salt into the flour and add to the mixture, alternating with the milk. Add the blueberries and spoon into a 8" square cake tin, well greased.

   100g sugar

45g flour

  55g butter

                                                1tspn cinnamon [my addition as I love it!]

 topping - rub the fat into the flour and add the sugar and cinnamon. Don't rub it too fine - you need it a bit lumpy. Spoon this over the cake mixture in the tin. Bake for 25-30 mins.

You can see how most of the blueberries have sunk to the bottom of the cake layer.  I loved the contrast between the soft cake layer with the juicy berries and the crunchy topping.  It's a delicious dessert, warm or cold, and OH ate his with cream.

Oh, I forgot to say that a slump and a grunt are the same thing; different parts of the USA use different names for them. It's stewed or baked fruit with a scone-like topping rolled out over the top [or put underneath in some areas with the fruit on top!]. This is one definition of them, but I'm sure other people would disagree and have their own ideas.

Plum tart

This is a really quick dessert I did to use up some plums which were going soft. It was in a supplement in Woman's Weekly magazine ages ago, and I've made it with various fruit - apricots, pears, apples as well as the original plums. I add cinnamon as we love it. It uses bought puff pastry and store cupboard ingredients, plus the fruit.

You need 500g puff pastry, 10 plums which you halve and stone, 4tbspn ground almonds, 1 tbspn icing sugar, 1 tbspn vegetable oil, a tspn cinnamon, about 55g flaked almonds, 2 tbspn honey and milk or beaten egg to brush around the edges of the pastry.
You can also use 100g marzipan which you grate, but I didn't use any.

You preheat oven 190C/gas5 and you need a baking sheet.

Roll the pastry out to a 30x20cm rectangle. Score it 2cm in from the edge all the way round, but don't cut it through.
Put the ground almonds, icing sugar and oil in a blender a make into a paste. I used a little more than 1 tbspn oil as my paste wouldn't come together. Then you spread this over the pastry, inside the lines you've scored, and sprinkle with the grated marzipan. Put the plum halves face down on top of this and sprinkle over the flaked almonds. Drizzle with some honey. Brush the edges with milk or egg wash.and bake for 25-30 mins till the pastry's golden and the plums are soft.
Cut into 8 slices when cool.

A nice easy, quick dessert.

Indian Banana Yoghurt Cake

I wanted to make something different and this recipe fitted the bill. It was given to one of our friends when they were staying in an hotel in Mumbai and is supposed to be a good ending to a spicy meal.
I've made yoghurt cake before, such as the one using a yoghurt pot as a measure, but this is completely different; for one thing it uses ghee, clarified butter. There's a big Indian community locally so I was able to find it in one of the Indian shops, but I think I've also seen it in the supermarket.You can make your own - heat double the amount of butter you need and pour it into a dish. Allow it to cool for 15mins then carefully pour off the clear golden liquid on top - this is the ghee. You don't need the milk solids underneath.
The cake has an icing made with sour cream and icing sugar. I made a few changes to the recipe as I don't like dessicated coconut, which was used to coat the sides of the cake tin after they'd been greased. The leftovers were added to the cake mixture -I didn't do this, but I did toast some shredded coconut, which I also found in the Indian shop, and used it to decorate the top of the cake.
Here's the recipe - I don't know the name of the hotel B got it from, but thank you to them!

125g ghee
160g caster sugar
40g brown sugar
2 large eggs
3 medium bananas, very ripe
200g thick plain yoghurt
250g sr flour
1 tspn cinnamon
1/2 tspn mixed spice
Icing:
200g sour cream or creme fraiche
100g icing sugar
50g toasted shredded coconut to decorate [opt]

preheat oven 190C/gas5
23cm springform cake tin - greased and base lined

Beat the ghee and sugars together till creamy then add the eggs one at a time, beating well.
Mash the bananas and add to the mixture with the yoghurt, flour and spices. Stir well to mix together.
Spoon into the tin and level the top.
Bake for 45-55 mins till firm and springy.
leave to cool in the tin for 15mins then turn out onto a wire rack.
For the icing - mix the sour cream and icing sugar together till it's thick and spreadable, then spread over the top of the cake and sprinkle on the shredded coconut.

This is a very dense and rich cake, so cut it into small slices. It keeps well in an airtight tin.
I loved the texture, but found it rather sweet; I think Indian desserts are often very sweet, so would use less sugar if I made it again. The banana makes the cake moist, as does the yoghurt. The shredded coconut was a good addition, and gave it another texture. A cake with a difference to try, but maybe only for a special occasion.
To make the cake exactly as the recipe said, you also need 80g of toasted dessicated coconut. When you've greased the cake tin you pour in the coconut and tip the tin around to coat the sides. Tip out the what's left and add it to the cake batter.

Honey and Cinnamon Cheesecake

We're going to have a quiet Easter this year, just the 2 of us on Easter Sunday, but we had friends coming on Good Friday. I'd made  Hot Cross Buns, but wanted to make a nice dessert to have after the fish pie.
I fancied a cheesecake, but a baked one, and looked in my books and online for inspiration.
I found this recipe, and as we love honey and I adore cinnamon, it was just the thing.
It was on an Australian blog, in cups, so I've changed the measures and adapted the recipe to suit our tastes. It uses cottage cheese and cream cheese and I wasn't sure about this, but it tasted delicious. It's an unusual cheesecake in that it has a pastry base - so is it a cheesecake? Well, seeing how much cheese is in it, I think so!

pastry:
225g plain flour
125g cold butter, chopped up
55g caster sugar
1 egg yolk
2 tbspn finely grated lemon rind
about 3 tspns cold water

Filling:
250g cottage cheese
250g cream cheese
265g honey
110g caster sugar
2 tspns cinnamon [or more!]
4 eggs

grease a 22cm springform tin.

preheat oven to 200C/gas6

Rub butter into flour; add egg yolk, sugar, rind and enough water to make a dough.
Wrap in clingfilm and put in fridge for 1/2 hour.
I rolled the pastry out between 2 sheets of clingfilm, as I find this easier. Lift the pastry into the tin, and again put in fridge for 1/2 hour.
Cover pastry with foil or baking parchment and beans and bake for about 10 mins, then take beans and paper out and bake for further 10 mins or till it's light brown. Take out and leave on the side.
Turn oven down to 160C/gas 3
Filling - beat the cheeses, honey, sugar and cinnamon with electric mixer till nearly smooth, then add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each one.
Pour into pastry case and bake for about 11/2 hours or till filling is firm. Leave to cool, then put in fridge overnight.
When you're ready to serve, drizzle with a little honey.

Everyone enjoyed this. Nice contrast between the pastry and the soft filling, and the flavours of the honey and cinnamon together was delicious. It's very rich, but not too sweet for our taste.An unusual cheesecake, but one I'd certainly make again.

Israeli Date and Pecan Cake

This month's challenge from Alpha Bakes is a hard one - baking something beginning with letter I . Lots of recipes begin with 'iced ....... ' but I wanted to find something different.
I borrowed a book from the library called 'Cakes, Tortes and Gateaux'  - it has no author, and I found a recipe for an Israeli cake. I love cakes with nuts and I like dates, so had to give it a try. I changed a few things in the recipe, and had to convert it to grams. It worked out really well, and is full of good things.

2 eggs
180ml honey
150ml buttermilk
1 tspn vanilla essence
3 mashed bananas
300g sr flour
1 tspn baking powder
100g soft brown sugar
2 tbspn cocoa
1 tspn cinnamon
1 tspn allspice
pinch salt
125g butter
150g chopped dates
125g chopped pecans
2 tbspns honey for top of cake

Preheat oven 180C/gas4
grease a 23cm springform tin

Beat together the eggs, honey, buttermilk and vanilla essence, then add the bananas.
Keep 2 tbspn of the flour, then put the rest with the baking powder, sugar, cocoa, spices and salt in another bowl and add the egg mixture. Mix together gently with an electric beater or stand mixer, then add the butter and beat till smooth. Takes about 4 mins.
Mix the 2 tbspn flour with the dates and pecans and fold these into the mixture.
Spoon into the tin and bake for 1 hr and 20 mins.
Heat the 2 tbspn of honey and brush over the cake, then leave it to cool.

It's a lovely nutty cake, not too sweet, and it also keeps very well in an airtight tin. We had it as a dessert with some creme fraiche, but ice cream would be good too. It's full of flavour and is moist, but not too soft. You can really taste the dates and pecans. I expected it to be like a sticky toffee pudding, but it wasn't.

Alpha Bakes is a monthly baking challenge hosted alternately by Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker blog and Caroline of Caroline Makes blog. This month Caroline is hosting, the letter is I and you can find out more about the challenge here .

Norfolk apple cake

I love apple cakes and am always very happy to find a new recipe. It's a very country looking cake with little chunks of apple and dried fruit. Nothing refined about it, but the taste is good. I love spices and this one has cinnamon and mixed spice.
It's made using the rubbing in method, and I found it difficult to get all the ingredients together. I didn't think I'd mixed it properly, but it came out fine. There's a lot of mixture for 1 egg!

400g apple chopped into dice
125g mixed fruit
125g brown sugar
125g butter
1 large egg
1 tspn cinnamon and 1 tspn mixed spice

Preheat oven 180C/gas4

Grease and line a 20cm springform tin.

Rub together the butter and flour till it looks like breadcrumbs.
Add the egg, sugar and spices and mix together.
Then add the apple and mixed fruit.
Bake for about 35 mins till the middle feels firm when you touch it.

I didn't have any mixed fruit so used raisins. You can see that the apple stayed in little chunks; it's very moist from the apples. It's more of a dessert cake than one to have with a cuppa; we had some with creme fraiche. I like it's chunky look and spicy flavour, and it's a cake I'll make again.