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.

Orange and Chocolate Mini Loaves

Last weekend we went to stay with our daughter and visited Bluewater shopping centre. There's a great John Lewis store there, and I love browsing in their kitchenware. A few weeks ago, Phil, from the great As Strong As Soup  blog, posted a 'financier' recipe and I hunted everywhere for my financier tin to make some, but couldn't find it, so when I saw a mini loaf one in John Lewis, I bought it. I don't think it's exactly the same size as a financier tin?
We were given a gift pack of several bars of Lindt chocolate, one of them being their Intense Orange bar, so back home I decided to make some little chocolate loaves with orange in my new tin. They're not financiers as they have no almonds in them, but they're good anyway. The original recipe made 6, so I doubled it up.
To add to the chocolate flavour I made a chocolate ganache, and found some orange and lemon jelly slices in the baking cupboard and used the orange ones to decorate the top.

Preheat oven 200C/gas 6 and grease a 6 hole financier or mini loaf tin [or you could use a 450g loaf tin - a 1lb one in old measures]

Put 110g of soft butter, 110g of caster sugar and the zest of a medium orange in a bowl and beat it till nice and fluffy. Add 2 beaten eggs a bit at a time and mix together well.  Sift 75g of sr flour and 25g of cocoa together and add to the batter. Fold in then add 2 tbspn of orange juice and mix this in.
Spoon into the tins and bake for 15-20 mins till firm to touch.
Leave in the tin to cool for about 10 mins then turn onto a wire rack.
To make the ganache, put 50g of orange chocolate and 3 tbspn of double cream in a bowl over simmering water and melt gently, and stir together till nice and glossy [use a wooden spoon].
Spoon some ganache over each mini loaf and decorate with an orange slice.

You get a double hit of chocolate with the cocoa and the orange chocolate topping. The cake has a good soft texture, just the right amount of orange flavour, and is just the right size for an afternoon treat.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Traybake

This isn't a sophisticated chocolate cake; this is for lovers of milk chocolate and peanut butter. My grandsons were coming for tea, so I made the basic cake and they helped me ice it - or at least one of them did, the other 2 got bored! It's a WI recipe that my mil gave me - I've been sorting out my recipe folders and came across some great recipes I must try, and this was one of them. My grandsons love peanut butter, so to have it in a cake AND in the icing, was great.
It's almost an all in one mixture, as nearly everything goes in the bowl and you beat it together. Then you add the chocolate drops and some milk.

Preheat oven 180C/gas4 and grease and line a 28x18cm tin .

You put 115g of crunchy peanut butter, 115g of soft margarine or butter, 175g of soft brown sugar, 3 eggs and 1 tspn of vanilla extract in a bowl. Sieve together 175g of sr flour and 11/2 tspns of baking powder and add to the bowl. Beat with an electric hand mixer for about 2 mins, making sure you scrape the mixture off the sides. Add 80g of milk chocolate drops and 2 tbspns of milk and mix again.
Spoon into the tin and bake for 30-35 mins till golden. Leave in tin for 5 mins then put on a wire rack to cool.

For the fun part - the topping - you melt 80g of milk chocolate with 50g of crunchy peanut butter and 3 tbspns of milk in a bowl over simmering water, or in the microwave. Stir it till it's smooth, and gradually beat in 115g of icing sugar.
Spread this over the cooled cake and allow icing to set before cutting the cake into pieces.

I'm not a great peanut butter fan, but enjoyed these. Good texture in the sponge, and nice contrast with the pieces of chocolate and peanut. Topping is rich, but finishes the cake off nicely.

Chocolate Cake with Meringue

I wanted to make something special for my friend's birthday. She's a great fan of chocolate cakes, so I decided to combine another of her loves, meringue, with a chocolate cake. I looked through my cookery books and online for ideas, and there were plenty of them. Too many were very complicated and had lots of layers. I wanted a much simpler cake, but with a twist. So I decided on  a sandwich cake with a meringue layer on top and in the middle, and there's also some lime curd in the middle to give the cake an extra bit of zing. I bought a jar of this curd from a farmer's market recently, and don't know what to do with it! It's not a very green colour, so really it doesn't look very different from a lemon curd. The flavour seems to me to be a bit sharper.

For the cake  - beat 115g of butter with 115g of caster sugar till nice and fluffy. Add 3 egg yolks one at a time,  then add 100g sr flour which has been mixed with 55g cocoa powder. Pour in 50ml of milk and stir till smooth.
Grease 2 x 20cm sandwich tins and preheat oven 170C/gas3.
Spoon half the batter into each tin and smooth the tops.

For the meringue - whisk the 3 egg whites with a pinch of salt and 1/4 tspn of cream of tartar till you have soft peaks, then gradually add 140g of caster sugar and carry on whisking till the mixture is thick and shiny.

Spoon half of the meringue over each cake and bake for about 20 mins till the meringue is a golden colour. Leave in the tins to cool.

When cool, take out of the tins and put one cake, meringue side up on a plate, spoon on 2 tbpsn of lime curd and smooth is evenly over the cake. Put the other cake on top, meringue side up.

You can't keep this cake for long, so put it in the fridge or use it within a few hours.

It's an unusual cake and was very popular with my friends. The lemon curd is most unexpected, but gives a lovely sharp contrast to the crunchy meringue and the moist chocolate cake. It would make a great dessert, and you could use some cream instead of the curd, or even fruit - I certainly think you need another texture on top of the meringue. Don't think I'd like just 2 layers of chocolate cake and meringue. This is certainly a cake I'll make again.

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. 

Chocolate Oaties

My husband loves biscuits, so as it was pouring with rain and I felt like baking something, I decided to make some for him.
What to make? I had half a tin of Carnation caramel in the fridge left over from a cake recipe my daughter tried, so thought I'd use some of this - not much, as it's so sweet. I like a biscuit with a crunchy outside but a soft centre, so decided to use oats and some plain chocolate to get the sort of biscuit I wanted. A couple of tablespoons of caramel would give it extra flavour, and add to the softish centre.
I found plenty of oat biscuit recipes on the net, but couldn't find just what I wanted, so I used a basic oat recipe and added my own tweaks to it.

I made 15 chocolate oaties from this recipe.

Preheat oven 180C/gas4

100g butter, 100g soft brown sugar and 2 tbspns of Carnation caramel - spoon these into a pan and melt gently till all the sugar and butter have dissolved.
100g sr flour, 100g oats and 1/2 tspn of bicarbonate of soda - put these in a bowl and mix together then add to the butter mixture with 100g of plain chocolate broken into pieces. Beat well.
Grease 2 baking sheets [or use silicone sheets on baking trays] and spoon dessertspoonfuls of the oat mixture onto the trays, leaving space for them to spread. I put 8 on one tray and 7 on the other.
Bake for 15 mins, then leave the oaties on the trays for 5 mins to harden and put onto a wire rack.

We didn't wait long to try them with a cuppa and they were just right - crunchy and with the softer centre I like, and they have a great chocolate flavour.

I'll certainly make these again, but think I'll try them without the chocolate and add cranberries or sour cherries - there are lots of variations to try.

Cranberry, Pear and Pecan Cake

This is one of those cake that uses up the leftover Christmas bits and pieces. I had some cranberries, half a bag of pecans and some pears that needed using up. It's based on a recipe I picked up from one of the supermarkets - Sainsbury's I think. It has quite a thick topping, but it's delicious. It does take a bit of effort to make, but I think it's worth it. Pears and cranberries are 2 of our 5 a day!

It's an upside down cake, so you need a heavy bottomed pan about 26cms, as it has to go on the hob and in the oven. I used a Le Creuset saute pan, which worked well.

Preheat oven 180C/gas4

Make the topping - melt 75g butter and sugar in the pan over a low heat. Peel and core 900g of pears [about 6] and cut them into about 1cm slices then put them in the pan on top of the butter and sugar. Cook over a gentle heat till the pears are just soft; turn the heat up to caramelize them. Sprinkle 140g of cranberries and 75g of pecans over the mixture and gently mix the fruit together.

Make the cake - cream 120g of butter with 200g of caster sugar. Add 2 yolks [from 2 separated large eggs and a tspn of vanilla extract. Mix in half of 210g of plain flour [which has had 2 tspns of baking powder added to it], add 175ml of milk and then the rest of the flour. Mix it till smooth.

Beat the 2 egg whites till peaks, then fold into the batter gently.

Spread the mixture over the pears and bake for 35-40 mins,

Leave the cake to cool in the pan for 10 mins, but no longer, or the caramelized fruit and nuts will stick to the pan!

Turn out onto a serving plate so that the caramelized side is on top. 

I love the topping on this cake; it's crunchy, soft from the fruit, and goes really well with the soft textured cake.

A French Apple Cake

Our computer has had gremlins, so haven't been able to post. Hopefully this is now sorted!

I'm always happy to find a new recipe for an apple cake, and this one comes from a French friend. It's nice and easy to make, is different from the usual apple cake, and is a nice change from the heavy Christmas pudds and cakes. I've translated it from French, hence the odd looking recipe with tbpns and grams!

200g of plain flour
10 tbspns of caster sugar + 100 g
2 eggs + 1 extra
6 tbspns of milk
2 tspns of baking powder
4 tbspns of sunflower or rapeseed oil
4 apples [I used Braeburns]
100g of butter
1 tbspn of vanilla sugar [or 1 packet]
Icing sugar for the top

Preheat oven 190C/gas5
Grease and bottom line a 23cm springform tin.

Beat the 2 eggs with the 10 tbspns of sugar; add the flour, baking powder, milk and oil.
Peel and slice the apples thinly, then add to the mixture and mix in.
Pour into the tin and bake for about 30 mins.

Meanwhile, in a bowl, beat together the 100g of butter, 100g of caster sugar, 1 egg and the vanilla sugar.

Take the cake out of the oven and pour this batter on top * then put back in for another 15 mins till the top becomes golden. Take out, and cool on a wire rack. Sprinkle with icing sugar.

*I forgot to say that I kept some apple slices back, and put them into the batter on top of the cake. They made it look more interesting!  The cake has a good apple flavour, a nice soft texture.

What does the topping taste like? It seems a strange mixture without any flour. The nearest texture I can think of to describe it is a British macaroon - the one with rice paper on the bottom and an almond on the top. It's not crunchy, but has a similar texture to the inside

. It doesn't really show up in this photo, but it makes a nice contrast with the apple cake.  

Galette de Rois

I wanted to make the traditional Galette de Rois, to celebrate the arrival of the 3 Kings. We ate many of these during our time in France, but only from the boulangerie or the supermarket. My friend who has the teashop, always makes one, and she kindly gave me her recipe. There's a bean or feve in the galette, and the person who finds it in their piece, gets to wear a crown and be king or queen for the day.

Preheat oven 180C/gas4

You take a sheet of butter puff pastry and fill it with a delicious almond cream.

For the cream - you need to beat 125g of butter till nice and creamy. Put 125g of caster sugar, 130g of ground almonds,1 tbspn of cornflour and a pinch of salt in a bowl and mix together.Add this to the butter and mix till smooth. Add 1 drop of almond extract then 2 eggs, one at a time. Put the cream in the fridge covered with clingfilm for an hour or overnight, to chill.
Roll out a pack of  puff pastry [about 500g] and divide into 2. Roll again and cut out 30cm circle using a plate. Then roll out again and cut out a slightly larger circle - about 6mm bigger than the other one.
Put the smaller circle on some baking parchment on a baking sheet. Mix an egg yolk with a tbspn of water or milk then lightly brush it round the edge of the circle. Put the cream into the middle and spread up to the egg wash. 
Put the bean in, but not in the middle, put it near an edge and press it in. Put the 2nd pastry circle on top of the first and smooth it gently over the cream not to have any air pockets; press it down sides gently. Score the pastry with the back of a knife to make a pattern.
Brush the top with eggwash, but don't let it drip over the edges or the pastry won't rise as much. Put 5 holes in the top - 1 in the middle and 4 near the corners. Put the galette in the fridge for an hour or so on the baking sheet.
Bake for 30 mins then take galette out and mix 1 tbspn of icing sugar with 1 tbspn of hot water and brush this over the top and put back in the oven for a minute to give it a nice shiny finish.

I should have made the pattern on the top deeper, as it didn't come out very well. The galette has a really lovely creamy filling, and the pastry is crisp and a good contrast to the soft filling.

Chocolate Tart with Nougat

A very easy, quick dessert.
My younger daughter came yesterday. She is a chocaholic, so dessert had to be something chocolate. Recently I was given a bar of pistachio nougat so decided to use this with the tart, but any nougat would work as it's only the topping.

I made a sweet pastry using 200g of flour, 120g butter and 70g of caster sugar, binding it together with a beaten egg. Put in the fridge for 30 mins.

Preheat oven 190C/gas5 and grease a tart tin or flan dish.

Roll the pastry out to fit the tin/dish and bake blind in the oven for 20 mins. leave to cool.

Grate 200g of dark chocolate finely. Bring 20cl of single cream to the boil, take off the heat and add the chocolate. Carefully mix together and leave to cool. Spread it over the pastry case and smooth it out. Put in the fridge for about 20 mins. 

Chop up 100g of nougat and use it to sprinkle over the chocolate tart.

Sorry, am still having problems with my camera, so photo is a bit blurred! It's an easy basic chocolate tart to make, and it can have whatever topping you fancy - chopped up Mars bar, Maltesers, rosettes of double cream, little Easter eggs at Easter etc. -  the sky's the limit!

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

White Chocolate Mousse Cake

I made this as my dessert contribution to my OH's family's Christmas get together. I had a couple of bars of white chocolate in my baking cupboard, so these were the basis for the cake.
I wanted to make a chocolate sponge base with a light topping, and I'd made a similar topping for a cake before, only using a 50% dark chocolate. It's a bit of a faff to make, as it uses gelatine [not my favourite ingredient], but the results are worth the effort. Hope you think so too!

Preheat oven 180C/gas4
Grease and line a 20cm springform cake tin with baking paper.

To make the sponge base, whisk 2 eggs with 60g of caster sugar till thick and creamy. Add 60g plain flour and 1 tbspn cocoa powder into the batter and fold in. Gently add 30g of melted butter and mix together.
Spoon or pour into the tin and bake for 20-25mins till firm to touch.

For the topping, sprinkle an 11gm sachet of gelatine over 3 tbspns of cold water and leave to sponge.
Melt 200g of white chocolate carefully and add 60g butter. Stir in the yolks of 4 separated eggs.
Whisk the 4 whites into stiff peaks and also whisk 284ml of double cream into soft peaks.
Melt the gelatine over a pan of hot water, then stir into the chocolate mixture.
Fold in the double cream and then the whisked egg whites.
Pour this over the baked sponge base and chill for at least 4 hours, but better still, overnight, till the mousse has set.
Take the cake out of the tin, peel off the baking paper and put on a serving plate.
The mousse cake will keep in the fridge for 2 days, but don't recommend you keep it any longer than that.

I piped some rosettes on top of the cake to make it look more festive. I know it's not a dessert for the diet-conscious, but it is Christmas! It really just melts in your mouth.