Ginger and Apricot Loaf

Another one of my favourite loaf cake recipes. This one uses stem ginger to give a better flavour than ground ginger. I've found a similar shop to the much missed [by me anyway] Julian Graves stores, so I stocked up on walnuts and dried fruit, including apricots. This such a quick loaf to make, and you can chose whether to ice it or not. I think the recipe is a WI one, as my mil gave it to me, and she usually used their recipes.

Preheat oven 180C/gas4 and grease and line a 900g loaf tin.

In a large bowl put 115g wholemeal flour, 115g plain flour, 11/2tspns baking powder, 150g soft brown sugar, 115g soft butter, pinch salt, 2 beaten eggs, zest of a lemon and 2 tbspns of milk - beat it all together with an electric hand mixer. Stir in 175g chopped dried apricots [the no soak ones] and add 3 pieces of stem ginger chopped finely together with 4 tbspns of the ginger syrup. Finely slice a 4th piece of ginger and keep for the top.
Spoon mixture into the tin, level, then arrange the 4th piece of ginger down the centre of the top.
Bake for about 1 hr or so. Mine took 75 mins, and I had to cover the top with some foil, as it was getting too brown.
Leave in tin for about 15mins then turn onto a wire rack.
I decorated the top when cool with some lemon glace icing [I used 115g icing sugar with about 1 tbspn of lemon juice].

A nice treat with a cuppa  - a lovely subtle ginger flavour and a bite from the apricots. A good combination of flavours.

Apple, Date and Walnut Pudding

These day, I only make puddings when we have friends or family for a meal - they seem to expect it! I wanted to make something tasty, but not stodgy.
 Hunting through my cookery books, I found one I'd bought a few years ago from the famous 'Pudding Club' in 'Three Ways House' in Chipping Camden.
If you've nor heard of this club, it was founded in 1985 to save our great British puddings. At the time, puddings were looked on with horror - much too fattening. So the club meets, eat their main course and then 7 different puddings are brought out and devoured. At the end of the evening, they vote for the best one.

Looking through the book, many of the pudds are very filling ,but I found one that was marked as 'healthy', and it does contain fruit, nuts and honey and very little fat. I suppose with the latest bad press for sugar, 120g would be classed as a lot, so perhaps it wouldn't be classed as 'healthy'! Many of the puddings are steamed, but this one is baked - a bonus for me as I don't have a steamer, and find using a saucepan a faff!

Preheat oven 200C/gas6

I used a 20cm square cake tin, but you could use a 20cm baking dish instead. Make sure you grease it well or the pudding sticks!

You chop up 480g of peeled and cored apples, 60g of walnuts and 120g of stoned dates into little pieces and put in a bowl. Add 120g of wholemeal sr flour, 120g of soft brown sugar and 30g of melted butter, 1 tbpsn of honey and 1 beaten egg. Mix it all together and put into your tin or dish. Bake for 30 mins.

We ate it warm with some creme fraiche and it was very moist, packed with soft apple, but I thought it was rather sweet - this was probably because I used eating apples instead of Bramleys, so I should have reduced the amount of sugar. The crunchy walnuts made a nice contrast to the soft apple. It was filling, but not stodgy. I cut it into 6 pieces, which gave everyone a very generous sized pudding. 

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.

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.

Spiced Banana Cake with Butterscotch icing

Yet another loaf cake to add to my repertoire - well the recipe used a 900g loaf tin, but I wanted a round cake so used a 20cm springform tin. Inspiration for the cake was a few very ripe bananas in the fruit bowl. I rarely use alcohol in cakes, but this time I did what the recipe said, and soaked the sultanas in the rum.
I wanted to try a different topping so I used a butterscotch one I'd wanted to try for ages - I know it has a lot of sugar in it, but for a special occasion..........!

100g sultanas
50ml rum
185g plain flour
2 tspn baking powder
½ tspn bicarb
pinch salt
2 tspn cinnamon - I used 3 tspns
125g soft unsalted butter
150g light soft brown sugar
2 large eggs
4 small very ripe bananas
1 tspn vanilla extract

For the icing:
75g golden caster sugar
15g butter
50g light muscovado sugar
1 tbspn golden syrup
75ml double cream

In a small pan pour the rum over the sultanas and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat and leave to soak.

Preheat the oven 170C/150C fan/Gas 3.
Grease and line a 20cm springform tin or a 900g loaf tin

Put flour, baking powder, bicarb, salt and cinnamon in large bowl and mix well.
In a separate bowl beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer till light and fluffy.
Beat in the eggs one by one, then stir in the mashed bananas, sultanas, rum and the vanilla extract.
Fold in the flour and pour into the tin.
Bake for 1-1¼ hours until golden. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

For the icing - simmer all the ingredients over a low heat for 6-8 mins. Stir to make a smooth sauce, then leave to cool and thicken, and pour over the cooled cake.

I liked the rum flavoured sultanas in the cake, but I did find the icing rather too sweet, even for my palate. The friends I made it for however, loved it. The cake had a good crumb, as Mr Hollywood would say, and was moist, with a good banana flavour which wasn't overwhelmed by the rum sultanas. Will make it as a loaf cake next time, without the rum and the sweet icing. Enjoyed the cinnamon in the background, which gave the cake that extra something.

ps I have a new photographer - OH has bought a new camera and will take the photos for me!

Rhubarb crumble muffins

I've posted muffin recipes several times, adapting my favourite recipe. I made a rhubarb tart yesterday, and had enough rhubarb left to make some muffins.
I wanted to make something different, but having looked online and not been inspired, I decided to adapt my old faithful recipe  We love rhubarb crumble, so muffins with rhubarb and crumble sound ideal. I usually make the crumble with half oats and half flour, and I use oil instead of butter in the muffins. A healthier option! I used soft light brown sugar instead of my usual caster.

For the crumble topping:

50g butter,
50g plain flour
25g porridge oats
50g demerara sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon

For the muffins:

225g self-raising flour
100g soft light brown sugar
1 medium egg, beaten
250ml milk
120ml sunflower or rapeseed oil
200g rhubarb, sliced lengthways and chopped
2 tbspn cold water
50g caster sugar
icing sugar [opt]


Preheat oven to 200C/gas mark 6.
Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases.

 Crumble - rub the butter into the plain flour and oats till mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
Add the sugar and cinnamon, mix again and set aside.

 Muffins - sift the flour into a bowl, add the brown sugar and mix.
Whisk together the egg, milk and sunflower oil.
In another bowl mix the chopped rhubarb with the caster sugar and the cold water.
Add the egg, milk and oil to the flour and brown sugar. Add the rhubarb mixture and stir to mix. Don't over mix.
Divide between the muffin cases, and then sprinkle over the crumble mix, pressing it gently into place.
Bake for 20-25 minutes. Leave in the tin for 5 minutes then move to a wire rack to cool. Sprinkle over some icing sugar.

These were delicious - lovely and moist from the rhubarb and not too sweet. Home made muffins are a world away from the shop-bought ones. They have a different texture, and are not so dry, but some people prefer the shop ones - my older daughter is one of these. The shop ones look very tempting, and are much bigger than the home-made ones - but the taste is, imho, greatly inferior.

Plum tart

As I said in a recent post, plums are one of my favourite fruit. I love making crumbles and tarts with them, but wanted to find something different to try.
This recipe is from a Woman's Weekly magazine; it's one of the hundreds of recipes I have to sort out in my cuttings folder!
I bought a punnet of plums from the supermarket which were marked as seconds, and they were really hard. Anyway I thought I'd use them in my new recipe, and they turned out soft and juicy.

250g plain flour
170g chopped up butter
1 egg yolk

I used my processor to make the pastry, putting in the flour, butter and egg yolk and adding a tbspn of water and blitzing till the pastry started to come together. Roll out and line the flan tin and chill for 30 mins. it's a very short pastry and breaks easily, but is easily patched up.

Filling:
1 tspn cinnamon
2 tbspns soft brown sugar
750g plums, stoned and quartered

Topping:
1 egg + a yolk
125g creme fraiche
45g soft brown sugar

Preheat oven 200C/gas6
Grease a 28cm shallow flan tin

Remove flan tin from the fridge; mix the cinnamon and sugar together and sprinkle over the pastry base.

Arrange the plums, cut side up and pack them together. If there's any left over, put them skin side up on top in a pattern. I just about had enough fruit to fill the tin.

Mix the ingredients of the topping together and spoon over the plums.

Bake for 25-30 mins till lightly browned.

I really like the flavour of the tart; the cinnamon and sugar come through in the background and the texture of the creme fraiche topping is creamy and not too sweet [for my taste anyway]. I'll certainly make this again, and it would work with other fruit like apples, cherries etc.