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.

Tiramisu Cookies

                                      Merry Christmas and a very Happy and Healthy New Year.

These are a nice treat to have if anyone pops in for a coffee or a hot chocolate over the festive period. The recipe makes about 14 cookies. The biscuits have a chocolate filling with a coffee mascarpone topping.

Preheat oven 200C/gas6 and line 2 baking trays with baking paper or silicone sheets.

For the biscuits you cream together 60g of softened butter with 90g of caster sugar till nice and fluffy. Add 1 beaten egg and mix in, then fold in 60g of plain flour. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag with a 1cm plain nozzle and pipe 28 blobs on the baking paper, spacing them a bit apart.
Bake for 6-8 mins till firm in the middle and beginning to go brown at the edges.

For the filling - put 150g mascarpone cheese in a bowl; stir 1/2 tspn of instant coffee powder into 1 tbspn of dark rum and stir till the coffee is dissolved, then add to the mascarpone together with 1 tbspn of light muscovado sugar. Cover this and put in the fridge to chill.

For the topping - melt 90g of white chocolate with 1 tsbpsn of milk and stir it till it's nice and smooth.

To assemble the cookies - spread a little of the filling over half of the cookies, put the other halves on top and spread over the white chocolate topping.
To finish them off, break up a couple of  Flake bars and sprinkle over the cookies.

These are very moreish

Kitchen

We're having a new kitchen installed starting on the 28th, so today is my last day for using my oven.

Tomorrow, OH and friend are taking out the last part of the old kitchen which I've been hanging on to, the sink unit, dishwasher, cooker and washing machine.

From tomorrow, I'll have a microwave and a slow cooker in the dining room for 2 and a bit weeks.  What fun!

So I decided to have a bit of a Bake In today, last time in my gas cooker, as it will be looking for a new home on Freecyle. I'm having a new electric oven and gas hob. The gas cooker was in the house when we bought it, so we decided not to change it till we changed the kitchen.
The Bake In - I made some chocolate chip muffins, a banana loaf, cheese scones and a very easy Bara Brith - not using Gran's recipe, but one a new friend gave me.


  I made the cheese scones from the Good Food site; here's the recipe:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/cheesescones_1287

The banana bread recipe is on  here:

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5128909220207442213#editor/target=post;postID=322625739046901167

The choc. chip muffins recipe is also on here, as a variation of the blueberry muffin one:

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5128909220207442213#editor/target=post;postID=4498877915182098045

I'm not going to post photos of these.

You might like to try the easy Bara Brith loaf. It's an 'all in the pan together' sort of recipe.

300g mixed dry fruit
150g light muscovadi sugar
150g butter
200ml strong cold tea
50ml orange juice
275g sr flour
2 tspns mixed spice

preheat oven 180C/gas 4 and grease a 900g loaf tin.

Put all the ingredients except the flour and mixed spice into a big saucepan and heat gently till the sugar's dissolved and the butter has melted. Mix the flour and spice together and mix this into the saucepan. Make sure you mix it thoroughly.
Spoon into the tin and bake for about an hour till golden. Cool in the tin. This teabread will keep for a week if you wrap it in foil. I think it's best eaten a day after it's made, to give the flavours time to mingle, and it's easier to slice too! Serve it buttered, of course.





 It's so quick and easy to make, and it has a good firm texture and a nice lot of dried fruit. I used a tablespoon of mixed spice as we really like it.

So I won't be posting for a couple of weeks, unless I find a great recipe to make in the microwave or the slow cooker!  Promise I won't post microwave meringues or chocolate cake made in a mug!