Chocolate banana cake

Had a few really ripe bananas to use up so decided to make a banana cake. Then I fancied something chocolate, so changed the recipe into a chocolate version. I'm very pleased with the result. It's a very moist cake.

150g butter or margarine
150g light brown sugar
300g plain flour
2 tspn baking powder
2 eggs, beaten
4 tbspns cocoa powder
50g dark chocolate broken up [or chocolate chips]
100 ml vegetable oil

Preheat oven 180C/gas4

Grease a 900g loaf tin.

Beat the eggs and sugar together.
Mash up the bananas and add to the mixture.
Beat in the eggs.
Mix the flour, baking powder, cocoa and chocolate together, then add these to the mixture.
Lastly add the vegetable oil, and give it all a good mix.

Spoon into the tin and bake for about 45 mins.
I found that because of the lumps of chocolate, the centre was quite soft. I checked to see if it was cooked in several other places.
Leave it to cool for 10 mins in the tin, and then turn onto a wire rack.

You can see the melted chocolate in the centre of the photo.

Pecan and maple syrup tart

Bought a large bag of pecans recently on offer from Julian Graves. My lovely friend Jackie brought us some maple syrup from her recent trip to Canada, so, a marriage made in heaven.

It's such an easy tart to make, and if you have some pastry in the freezer, it's even quicker.

Pastry:
250g plain flour
125g salted, cold butter
2 tbspn sugar
3-4 tbspn very cold water

I make this in the food processor, make double and keep half, wrapped carefully, in the freezer. I let the half I'm going to use, rest in the fridge for a couple of hours. I don't like sugar in pastry, even in sweet desserts, so I don't add it.

Filling:
60g melted butter
100g sugar [I used golden caster]
180ml maple syrup
2 eggs
250g pecans

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas5

Grease a rectangular tart tin. [I bought mine from Lakeland and have had lots of use out of it. It's loose-bottomed!] Roll the pastry out into the tart tin.
Beat the butter, sugar and maple syrup together with an electric mixer and keep beating while you add the eggs.
Put the pecans in the base of the tart then pour over the butter mixture.
Bake for 15 mins at 190C/gas 5 then lower the temperature to 170C/gas3-4 [depending on your oven] and bake for another 25-30 mins.
Let it cool in the tin.

Liz's rocky road cupcakes

I tend to make large cakes, so today, as my grandsons are coming for tea, thought I'd make them some small cakes. This recipe is from my friend Liz.

Recipe makes 12 cakes.

115g soft butter or margarine
115g caster sugar
2 tbspn crunchy peanut butter
2 eggs, beaten
85g sr flour
4 tbspn cocoa powder
100g plain chocolate chips
100g chopped pecans or walnuts [keep 24 to decorate]
200g plain chocolate
24 mini marshmallows

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas4

Put 12 cake cases into a bun tin.

In a bowl, put the butter, sugar and peanut butter and beat till it's light and creamy [with an electric beater].
Beat in the eggs and fold in the flour, cocoa, chocolate chips and nuts.
Put the mixture into the cake cases.
Bake for 15-20 mins till golden and firm. Leave them to cool on a wire rack.
Meanwhile, melt the chocolate and leave it to cool a bit.
Spread most of the chocolate over the top of each cake with a knife, leaving some to drizzle over the top of the cakes, then add 2 marshmallows and 2 nuts.
Leave them to set.
Enjoy!

Not a very good photo, but at least it's a photo! NEED a NEW camera!

Chocolate cake with butterscotch and speculoos

My lovely Dutch friend sent me some goodies recently, including some of my favourite speculoos biscuits. I wanted to use them in a cake of some sort, and found this recipe in a French magazine.
No cooking is needed for the cake.

125g speculoos biscuits
4 dried figs, finely chopped
4 dates, finely chopped
2 tbspns sultanas
60g melted butter
200g milk or plain chocolate - broken into small pieces
15cl cream
2 packets of Werther's originals

22cm cake tin - preferably a silicone mould

Crush the biscuits and mix them with the dried fruit. Press the mixture into the bottom of the tin/mould and put it in the fridge to harden.
Break the chocolate up into a bowl.
Put the cream in a small saucepan and bring to the boil, then pour it over the chocolate.
Stir well till the mixture is nice and smooth. Cool.
Take the base mixture out of the fridge and pour the chocolate over, then put it back in the fridge again to harden [for about 2 hours].
When the cake's ready, put the Werther's into a polythene bag or teatowel and crush them with a rolling pin. Sprinkle them over the top of the chocolate.

Not a very good photo - this is the top of the cake. Am still having problems with my camera.

Orange and apricot loaf

Yet another version of my favourite bakes -  loaf cakes. I like these cakes because they're quick and easy to make and keep well.

175g dried apricots
150ml orange juice
400g plain flour
175g caster sugar
100g raisins
1/1/2 tspns baking powder
1/2 tspn bicarb
1/2 tspn salt
grated rind of 1 orange
1 egg, beaten
25g melted butter of margarine
sugar of choice to sprinkle on top

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas4
Grease a 900g loaf tin

Soak the apricots in the orange juice.
Then put the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together. Add the apricots and orange juice, butter, orange rind and the egg and mix it all together. The mixture is very stiff.

Put it into the tin and bake for about an hour till it's golden and firm.

I used golden caster sugar, and only 100g, as 175g seemed a lot. I sprinkled some golden granulated suagr over the mixture in the tin.
Ready to eat with our afternoon cuppa!

The recipe is adapted from a book I've had for ages but not used much - 1000 Cakes and Bakes.

I found it a bit dry, and there wasn't much flavour from the orange juice, so would use a little more liquid next time and maybe some orange essence. An orange flavoured icing drizzled over?
I don't buy raisins often, but they were on offer - need I say more!

I

Hazelnut tray bake

I love traybakes, so I've treated myself to a new tin - the Wilton 'Biscuit/Brownie' pan [28x18cm]. Now I'm fired up to try it out!
I bought some hazelnuts in Waitrose recently, so thought I'd make something using them.
This recipe is adapted from one that was in a magazine some time ago. I like the idea of a crumble base and then the cake mixture on top of it.

300g plain flour
175g butter cut into pieces
350g demerara sugar
200ml creme fraiche
2 eggs

3 tspns baking powder [level]

150g hazelnuts chopped in half

preheat oven 180C/gas4
Grease and line the tin with baking parchment.
Sift flour into a bowl and rub in the butter. Stir in the sugar. Sprinkle 350g of this mixture into the tin and press it down.
Beat the eggs and creme fraiche together and stir in the rest of the crumble mixture and baking powder.
Pour this over the crumble mixture. Arrange the hazelnuts on top, pressing gently.
Bake in middle of the oven for about 45 mins. I found that the nuts were getting too brown, so I covered them with parchment.

Now comes the fiddly bit! You need to get the bottom crumble crisp, so put a piece of parchment over the cake and put a baking sheet on top. Invert the cake onto the sheet. Take off the lining paper and put the cake back in the oven for about 10-15 mins.

To put it on a wire rack you need to invert the rack over it to get the cake the right way up. It's worth the effort, honestly!

This is what the finished cake looks like. When Bob had a look at the camera, he deleted the good photos!

Hop Pickers' Cake

When I was in town yesterday, I found a Bank Holiday bric a brac market. I love browsing in case I find old cookery books. To my delight, there was a stall selling nothing but cookery books. Heaven!

I bought 'The National Trust Book of tea-time recipes' [1991], an old red 'Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book', 'Good Housekeeping's Picture Recipe Book [1954] and 'The Baking Book' [1996] by Linda Collister and Anthony Blake. I like Linda Collister's recipes - she wrote the book that went with last year's 'Great British Bake Off'.

I decided today that I want to make some more British cakes, so decided on a 'Kentish Hop Pickers' Cake' from the National Trust book.

I lived in Kent for many years and visited hop farms. This is a lovely photo from an old calendar I had many years ago.

I've adapted the recipe to suit our likes in spices and dried fruit.

275g sr flour

1 tspn ginger

1 tspn cinnamon

175g soft margarine or butter

100g soft brown sugar

100g raisins

100g mixed fruit with peel

400ml milk

1 tbspn black treacle

1/2 tspn bicarbonate of soda

1 tspn cream of tartar

Preheat oven 160C/325F/gas 3

Grease a 900g loaf tin

Mix the flour and spices together then rub in the fat.

Add the sugar and the dried fruits and mix.

Warm the milk and the treacle and add to the flour mixture a bit at a time.

Beat this well, then pour it into the tin.

Bake for 1-11/4 hours.

The cake was the texture of my Granny's 'Bread pudding'. All the fruit was at the bottom in a layer. It was a very runny mixture when I put it in the tin. Maybe it's meant to be more of a pudding than a cake? Perhaps it needed more cooking? There are no photos in the book, so I can't tell how it's meant to look!

I've been doing a bit of research, and I found another recipe for this cake on a traditional British cakes site; it says that the cake is much like a lardy cake in texture, so maybe my cake is OK. It tastes good anyway!

Apple sour cream cake

I love apple cakes and this is one I hadn't made before. It's good as a cake and as a dessert.

125g butter
125g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tspn vanilla extract
200g plain flour
11/2 tspn baking powder
1 tbspn cinnamon
2 cooking apples
3 tbspn sour creme
topping
1 tbspn butter
2 tbspn sugar
1/2 tspn cinnamon

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas4

Grease and line a 23cm springform tin

Cream butter and sugar together till fluffy.
Beat in eggs and stir in vanilla essence, flour and baking powder, tbspn cinnamon and the sour cream.
Peel and chop one apple into dice and finely slice the other.
Add the diced apple to the mixture and spoon in the tin.
Arrange the apple slices on top.

                Melt the tbspn butter amd mix with the sugar and cinnamon. Brush this over the apple slices.

                Bake for about 40 mins till golden and cool on a wire rack.

Easter cake

We don't like marzipan, so our Easter cake is usually a chocolate one. We're off to Suffolk to our son tomorrow, and my contribution is this chocolate cake.

This is the recipe I use most often. It has oil instead of butter.

190g sr flour
2 tbspns cocoa powder
1 tspn bicarb. of soda
1 tspn baking powder
150g caster sugar
150ml milk
150ml veg. oil [I used sunflower]
2 tbspn golden syrup
2 beaten eggs

Oven 160C/gas3
Grease and line 2 x20cm sandwich tins
Sift flour, cocoa, sugar, bicarb and baking powder into a bowl.
Beat the milk, oil, eggs and syrup together and add to the bowl.
Beat the mixture till well mixed.
Bake in the oven for 30-35 mins. [My cakes took 45 mins in my gas oven.]
Turn onto a wire rack and leave to cool.

For the icing you can use a chocolate butter cream, a ganache or this one, which I find isn't too sickly.

50g butter
4 tbspn sieved cocoa powder
3 tbspns milk
150g sieved icing sugar

Melt butter in a pan and add the cocoa. Stir and heat gently for about a minute.

Stir in the icing sugar and milk.
Take it off the heat and beat it well, then leave to cool and thicken.
There's enough icing to sandwich the cakes together and to spread some on top.
I added chocolate eggs for my Easter cake.

Hot Cross Buns

I've carried on my family's tradition of making 'Hot Cross Buns', using the recipe that my Mum and Granny used.
I still weigh the ingredients in lbs and ozs.

I've not given the recipe here as there are so many similar recipes on the web or in cookbooks or magazines.

Here's one I've also made and it's very good.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/hotcrossbuns_397

I made 24 buns, freezing 12 when cool, before I brushed on the sugar syrup.

                     I love this plate - it's 'Robin' from Emma Bridgewater's  'Birds' series. The buns are covering the robin! Here he is!

Bara brith

This is my Gran's version of the Welsh teabread. You can also make bara brith [speckled bread] with yeast.

6oz [175g] currants
6oz [175g sultanas]
8oz brown sugar
10fl oz [300ml] very strong tea
10oz [275g] sr flour
1egg

Preheat oven 180C/gas 4/350F

Grease a 2lb [900g] loaf tin

Put the fruit and brown sugar in a bowl and pour over the hot tea. Leave it to soak overnight.
Stir the flour and beaten egg into the fruit mixture and pour into the tin.
Bake for about 1hour and leave to cool in the tin.
Serve as it is or buttered.

I added some cinnamon to the flour, and think next time I'll change some of the fruit for dried cranberries.
I'll also try different flavoured teas and maybe use half white and half wholemeal flour.

Zingy lemon bars

Had a couple of lemons left in the fruit bowl so thought I'd make a cake. Didn't want to make my usual drizzle cake, so found this recipe in an old copy of a French magazine.

I did a very stupid thing and opened the oven to check that the cake hadn't overcooked - so of course it's now sunk in the middle! I still haven't got the measure of this gas cooker - several things I've cooked lately have been overcooked, hence the checking of the cake! That's my excuse anyway!

Bottom of cake
125g plain flour
pinch salt
35g icing sugar
100g unsalted butter
2 drops vanilla extract

Topping
2 medium eggs
170g caster sugar
grated zest and juice of a large lemon
1 tbspn plain flour
1/2 tspn bicarb. of soda
icing sugar to dust

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

Put flour, icing sugar and salt in a food processor and mix. Add the butter and vanilla extract and blitz till the mixture becomes a soft dough.
Press this evenly into the bottom of the cake tin and prick with a fork.
Bake for 12-15 mins till it's lightly golden and firmish.
Leave to cool in tin.

Whisk the eggs with a hand mixer till frothy and gradually whisk in the sugar till thick and foamy. Whisk in the lemon juice and zest then the flour and bicarb.
Pour this over the bottom and bake for 20-25 mins till golden brown.

Leave to cool in the tin and then cut into 12 pieces. Dust with icing sugar.

It has a good lemony tang and I like the crunchy base.