With the excess eggs and lemons, I also made a lemon poppyseed cake. This came out a bit denser than I like for a sponge though I understand Maderia sponges are supposed to be like this. Next time I will try adding a little (maybe half a teaspoon) of baking powder and see if it lightens the mixture up a touch.
Lemon and Poppyseed cake From ‘How To Be A Domestic Goddess’ by Nigella Lawson 240 softened unsalted butter 200g caster sugar grated zest and juice of 2 lemons 2 tablespoon of poppyseeds 3 large eggs (or 4 medium), beaten 210g self-raising flour 90g plain flour Line and butter a 23 x 13 x 7cm loaf tin. Cream the butter and sugar, then add the lemon zest. Add the eggs one at a time with a tablesppon of flour for each. Then fold in the rest of the flour and the poppyseeds and finally the lemon juice. Sprinkle with caster sugar. Bake at 170 (150 fan) for an hour or until a cake tester comes out clean. Let cool in the tin before turning out. Unfortunately I had to cook this at the same time as the pastry for the lemon meringue tart, which meant it was at too high temperature and it burnt slightly round the edges. Also my fan oven isn’t very even and I forgot to turn the cake. Will not do that again!‘Recipe Index’ Category
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Eggs and Lemons Part Deux – Lemon and Poppyseed Cake
November 2, 2013 by sarah
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What to do with eggs and lemons? Lemon Meringue Tart
November 2, 2013 by sarah
This week I found an egg mountain in my fridge. Well not so much a mountain as I am not sure if you could stack eggs high enough to make a mountain, but a whole box of my girls’ eggs hiding at the back of the fridge. They are starting their annual moult which is when egg production slumps so these eggs are very precious and deserving of a fitting baking project.
I am not a fruit pie girl. I suppose it stems from my innate fear of pastry, which I am slowly over coming, and lack of tummy space for a desert after dinner but why should pie be restricted to a particular time of day. In fact, I have enjoyed it for breakfast for several days and though I am sure it would not be good for one to do this on a regular basis, it does have a naughty twinkle-in-the-eye element! And it contains eggs and fruit, what is more healthy than that!
Lemon Meringue Tart Recipe from ‘The Great British Book of Baking’ (BBC Books) For the sweet shortcrust pastry- 175g plain flour
- 115g unsalted butter, chilled and diced
- 1 tablespoon caster sugar
- a good pinch of salt
- 1 medium egg yolk, with 2 tablespoons ice-cold water
- 3 medium unwaxed lemons
- 40g cornflour
- 300ml water
- 3 medium egg yolks
- 85g caster sugar
- 50g unsalted butter, diced
- 4 medium egg whites
- 200g caster sugar
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Black Forest Cupcakes
October 20, 2013 by sarah
Wow, I didn’t realise it was coming up for a month since I last posted. I’ve been a busy girl as you will tell from the posts I put up over the next few weeks. I’ve had a full on push with my studies as I am away for two weeks of the month in November. I need to be ahead so I don’t spend the holiday worrying about how far behind I am. My second major project up until now has been finishing a scrapbook for a holiday I went on eight years ago – more about that in the next post. But I have found some time for making things and these are the Black Forest Cupcakes I made for the head nurse’s baby shower.
What is there not to like about chocolate, cherries and cream? I can’t find a reason. Because I had to take these to work, real whipped cream wouldn’t work (no time to pipe fresh and if I had piped at home in the morning they would of had to go in the fridge which is tiny) so I cheated and used a can of whippy cream – it did the job but no where as nice as real cream so please use real cream if you can! Makes 12 cupcakes.
150g butter, softened 150g caster sugar 2 large or 3 medium eggs 175g self-raising flour 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 25g cocoa powder 45ml milk 100g dark chocolate, melted plus extra grated 1 tin of cherries or jar of cherries (especially if in liqueur) 1/2 jar sour cherry jam kirsh, if you have some 300ml double cream, whippedPreheat the oven to 160C if fan. Line a 12-hole muffin tray with paper cases.
Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Break in the eggs then sift over the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder, mix well. Fold in the melted chocolate and the milk.
Spoon or pipe into the cases and bake for 18-20 minutes until well risen, springy and a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 10-15 minutes then take out the tin to cool completely.
At this stage you can drizzle the cakes with some kirsh (could be from the jar if you treated yourself to cherries in liqueur) or a simple sugar syrup made with sugar and the liquid from the tin of cherries.
Once the cakes are completely cool, cut a well in the centre of them (using a cupcake holer if you have one) and fill this well with sour cherry jam; replace a plug of cake in the well to seal. Pipe or spoon over the whipped cream, place a cherry on the top of each cupcake and sprinkle over the reserved grated chocolate.
Enjoy!
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Traditional Dundee Cake
September 29, 2013 by sarah
This is a recipe for a traditional Dundee cake with a texture lighter and crumblier than the Christmas-type fruit cake and a lovely flavour. It takes a while to bake during which it needs some attention but not constant.
175g unsalted butter at room temperature/softened 150g caster sugar or soft brown sugar, or mixture 4 medium eggs (room temperature) 250g plain flour 1 tsp baking powder 100g marmalade or apricot preserve (optional) 350g of mixed dried fruit (currants and sultanas are traditional) 50-100g glace cherries, rinsed, dried and cut in half 50-100g mixed candied peel, finely chopped 75g ground almonds finely grated rind of an orange 1 tablespoon of whisky 100g blanched almonds for the top.A day or two before you want to make this cake, weigh out the dried fruit and splash over some sherry, whisky or rum, cover with cling film and leave until ready to make the cake.
Prepare the tin – this is very important as it will stop the cake from sticking and burning. Line a 20cm (7.5 to 8″) tin with a double layer of greaseproof paper, including the bottom, and grease well. Round the outside of the tin wrap folded over newspaper and tie with string to hold in place. Sit the prepared tin on more folded over newspaper on a baking tray. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees (150 if fan).
Beat the butter and sugar in a bowl until very fluffy. Whisk in the eggs one at a time with a tablespoon of flour between each addition to prevent curdling (it will also help if the eggs are at room temperature). Now add the marmalade or apricot preserve if using and orange zest; make sure it is soft and bit on the runny side by whisking, possibly with the whisky, before adding to the mixture otherwise you will end up with lumps (see – this is what happened to me!).
Now fold in the flour (reserving a couple of tablespoons – see next step), ground almonds and baking powder with a large spoon. The mixture at this stage should be stiffer than your average sponge batter, otherwise the fruit will sink. That reserved flour, sprinkle it over the dried fruit and glace cherries (this stops them from sinking) then fold all the remaining fruity ingredients into the batter.
Put the blanched almonds into a bowl and cover with boiling water while you spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tin, smooth the top and press a very slight concavity into the middle of the cake (so when it rises the top stays level). Drain the almonds and dry on kitchen paper. Next, arrange the almonds in concentric circles on the top of the cake, starting in the middle. Do not push them in when you do this otherwise they will sink into the cake while cooking.
Make a foil hat that sits on top of the paper that surrounds the tin and put the tin in the oven, middle or bottom levels. It will need 2 to 2 and half hours, until a skewer comes out almost clean (err on the side of slight under doing as it will continue to cook for a bit as it cools and you don’t want a dry cake). Keep the hat on the cake until the last half an hour of cooking as this will stop burning and cracking.
When you take the cake out of the oven, brush the top with a sugar syrup made from a tablespoon of water and a tablespoon of caster sugar and put back in the oven for 5 minutes to dry this then repeat the syrup but leave out of the oven. Leave the cake to cool completely in the tin. This cake keeps very well for a week or more in an airtight tin and the flavour improves after a few days. Enjoy!
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Perfect Shortbread
September 25, 2013 by sarah
Perfect shortbread – so simple it is hard! Who would of believed it? But I have found some simple tips that seem to make difference to create that perfect shortbread. Recipes from ‘Mary Berry’s Ultimate Cake Book’ (BBC Books, 2003) and ‘How to make perfect shortbread’ on The Guardian Word of mouth blog (http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/sep/30/how-to-make-perfect-shortbread). To me shortbread should be crisp but short and crumbling as the sand on Mull so it melts in your mouth and tastes of nothing but butter and the subtle sweetness of sugar. No fancy flavourings in this one!
Use the best quality butter your can get i.e. the top shelf butter in the supermarket. You will REALLY taste the butter in this recipe so it must be good and not fridgey either. Handle it very gently using implements not a food processor or your hands. Refridgerate before cooking as with any pastry and do not over cook. It must be crisp but pale – the butter and sugar will make it colour easily so watch it like a hawk and I would recommend checking every 5 minutes maximum towards the end of cooking.
150g unsalted butter, cut onto small pieces and soft
75g caster sugar
150g plain flour, ‘OO’ if you can get it
75 rice flour
good pinch of salt
Use a wooden spoon to cream the butter and sugar together. Then use a fork to mix in the flours and salt. Pour the crumbs into a well greased loose bottom fluted pan of about 8″/20cm diameter. Gently pat down until all the flutes are equally filled.
Refridgerate for 15 minutes or so. Bring out and prick all over with a fork and score into 8 wedges – in a pretty pattern if for a show.
Cook at 170 degrees or 150 if fan oven, for 30-35 minutes, watching carefully towards the end so it stays pale. Bring out and remark the scoring before sprinkling with more caster sugar. Cool in the pan before removing for serving. The shortbread will last for several days in an airtight container – if you can resist eating it all in one go!
An alternative way of shaping is to gently kneed the crumbs until they stick together and form a smooth dough which you can then press into the tin or roll out to make a large round or individual biscuits (bake on parchment). But I found this shortbread was not as crumbly melting as the former method, though the top was smoother which might be important in showing.
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Luscious Lilac Cake
September 18, 2013 by sarah
This is the cake that I entered in the ‘decorated sponge cake – max 8″ tin’ category. I am surprised it only came second – perhaps the judge didn’t know the skills that I was using to make this cake. Or perhaps it was too modern! I thought I was onto a sure winner but it shows how wrong you can be!
I thought I’d share with you the thought processes that I put into creating something such as this. The first part is ‘the brief” which in this case is also very brief and doesn’t give much away as to what they are looking for so I needed some more information. I bought the ‘WI On With The Show’ book which is their handbook for showing. Now, although this local show is not an official WI show, after last years remarks from other competitors I felt that it would probably be best to stick to WI rules and to stick with traditional things (which I didn’t do in the end which was probably my downfall). In the book, there wasn’t a section on ‘decorated sponge’ only for ‘decorated sandwich cake’, though this specified only the top of the cake was to be decorated and both the decoration and cake are judged, no covering of sides with nuts, chocolate etc as this is a gateau, colour design and neatness are important and decorations should not be heavy.
OK, so I now had some idea of what they might be looking for but when decorating I tend to just smear on some frosting or buttercream and dot with fresh fruit or strew with coconut or chocolate which obviously was not going to cut the mustard here. But must not forget flavour. So I looked online and in my cake books so some inspiration and started to sketch a couple of ideas. The first idea was sugar fondant covered cake with either a painted surface (like this http://amelieshouse.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/painting-on-cake-class.html) or traditional sugar paste flowers. Problem. I HATE sugar paste. So I looked at what other coverings could be used for cake and I found some ideas using buttercream covering. Perfect – I’ve made it made before and it is yummy too. I found in Pinterest some cake ideas (http://www.pinterest.com/kimmclain/cake-decorating-ideas/) and a vision appeared in my head one night when I was lying awake; lavender coloured buttercream covered cake of three tiers to get the right proportions, with a swirl of contrasting flowers and possibly butterflies.
So next I was thinking how I could take the buttercream covering to a new level. I read about crumb coating and how to achieve a smooth finish and watched some YouTube videos on how to achieve this. I bought a straight sided scraper but held off buying a rotating cake stand. But I didn’t have time to practice before the day. The American websites were certain that you needed some vegetable shortening in the buttercream to get it firm but my first batch with shortening in was lumpy and tasted yucky! I had planned for the cake to be lemon sponge with a lemon curd filling and lemon essence in the buttercream but I forgot to add the lemon zest to the cakes so had to quickly revise the plan to old fashioned vanilla sponge with raspberry jam and butter cream filling and vanilla flavoured buttercream. Oops!
The colour hasn’t come out quite right on the picture – it was a lovely old lady lilac-lavender colour, as I added Sugarflair ‘Grape Violet’ to the buttercream. I decided to go with contrasting plain white sugar paste flowers and a piped white royal icing beading around the base. So this cake showed skills in planning, design and execution of three major cake skills of smooth buttercream icing, sugar paste flowers and royal icing piping. What more did they want? Sadly they didn’t even cut into it to see the three layers.
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Cool as a cucumber! Cucumber Pickles
August 18, 2013 by sarah
The cucumber plants in the front garden have been enjoying the sunshine. A few too many came at one time so I made some cucumber pickles. I have never made this before but we need to wait a month before we can try it 🙁
550g cucumbers, sliced in 4mm slices
1 tbsp salt
300ml white wine vinegar
100g granulated sugar
1 tsp yellow mustard seeds
3 garlic cloves thinly sliced
In a large bowl layer the cucumber and salt, cover and leave overnight. The next day, rinse well under cold water and dry on kitchen paper.
In a saucepan combine the rest of the ingredients and heat gently until sugar dissolved. Bring to the boil and add the cucumber, bring back to the boil and pot up immediately in hot sterilised jars. It made 2 of these kilner type jars from Ikea.
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Cut-out Sugar Cookies – Baby Feet!
June 30, 2013 by sarah
I took a box of these baby feet cookies to the baby shower. This is my first attempt at cut-out cookies and royal icing and piped icing biscuits. Well, actually second attempt for the cookies because the first recipe, from my trusty Nigella’s ‘How To Be A Domestic Goddess’, were disappointing; not at all buttery or sweet like they should be and easily burnt. So 10pm on Thursday I made a second batch which were much more successful. This recipe is made up from various sources when I noticed I needed to add more butter and to leave out the baking powder. I have to admit to much preferring a nice slice of moist cake or a tasty cupcake to a biscuit or cookie but I may be tempted to make these from time to time, especially as they can be made in advance (supposedly keeping for up to a month).
Butter/sugar cookies for cut out
200g unsalted butter, soft/room temperature
150g caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
300g plain flour, 1 tsp salt
- Cream the butter and sugar until well mixed but not getting to light and airy stage (air will make the biscuits spread), whisk in the vanilla and then the egg.
- Sift over the flour and salt and mix until comes together in one lump.
- Divide the very soft and sticky dough into 2 patties, wrap in cling film and refrigerate for at least an hour.
- Kneed just a couple of times so smooth and warm enough to work. Roll out using minimal flour (can do it between 2 sheets of parchment so no extra flour needed as the flour will change the texture of the cookies) until 1/2cm thick. Cut out desired shapes and place on greased or parchment lined baking trays, allowing a couple of centimeters between each cookie. Place trays in fridge for at least half an hour or the freezer for 10 minutes until firm.
- Bake in preheated oven at 160 degrees fan for 12-14 minutes until just going golden around the edges, allow to cool completely on wire racks and leave at least 24h before icing.
Royal Icing
500g icing sugar
3 tbsp dried egg white powder
100-150ml warm water
- Add 100ml warm water to the dried egg whites in a bowl and whisk until well blended. Add any liquid flavourings eg vanilla extract.
- Sift over the icing sugar and beat until well mixed then continue beating for 10 minutes until thick. Colour at this stage.
- Leave for 24h before uring. To pipe on to biscuits, the correct consistency is that a knife dragged through the mixture takes 10 seconds to fill in.
- Pipe an outline then fill in. Size 2 to 5 nozzle is required, though I only had a size 10 and this worked too.
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Coconut Kitsch! Coconut Cake
June 1, 2013 by sarah
I finally get time to bake a cake again – I needed the therapy. I found a bag of dessicated coconut in my baking ingredients drawer and decide to make a coconut cake. The recipe called for Malibu but I hate the stuff (smells of cheap tanning oil) so substituted rum which works nicely. The recipe is courtesy of Nigella’s Domestic Goddess – I think I must be making my way through the book! Lilac and clematis flowers from the garden.
2 x 21cm sandwich tins, lined and buttered
225g unsalted butter, softened, 225g caster sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, 4 large eggs, 200g self-raising flour, 25g cornflour, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 50g dessicated coconut soaked in 125ml boiling water.
Filling – 25g dessicated coconut, toasted in dry pan, 75g soft unslated butter, 150g icing sugar, 1 tbsp rum/Malibu
Make the sponge by the all in on method and cook for 25mins at 180 degrees until cake tester comes out clean.
Make the buttercream by softening butter then sifting over icing sugar, beat until smooth then add the toasted coconut.
Iced with glace icing made from icing sugar and rum, topped with some more toasted coconut.
Enjoy your slice of coconut heaven!
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Finished! Unique Wedding Cake Recipe
April 21, 2013 by sarah
After several lots of experimentation, the ‘Judith and Tim Hochzeit Kuchen’ recipe is finished! I apologise for my German if it is incorrect! I haven’t actually made the entire recipe at one time as the deadline has crept up but the individual components have been made and I have tasted it in my head!
For the sponges
300g self-raising flour
300g caster sugar
250g unsalted butter, soft
4 large free-range eggs at room temperature
4 tablespoons milk
½ tsp baking powder
Finely grated rind of 1 orange
3 x 8”(20cm) sandwich tins, greased and base lined with baking paper
Heat oven to 180oC. Whisk the butter and sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Add all the other ingredients and mix until blended but not separated. Divide among the 3 tins, level off the top and have a slight depression in the centre. Bake for about 20-25minutes until springy and slightly shrink away from the sides of the tin. Cool in the tins for 5minutes before turning out onto a wire rack and leaving to go completely cold.
For the whisky-orange syrup
Juice of 1 orange
50g sugar
2 tbsp whisky or Glayva liqueur (liqueur of whisky and orange made in Glasgow)
Put the ingredients in a small pan, heat gently until the sugar is dissolved then boil for 1minute. Leave to cool completely.
For the raspberry jam filling
300g tub of frozen raspberries
3 teaspoons cornflour
4 tablespoons caster sugar
2 tbsp whisky or Glayvar liqueur
Put all the ingredients into a medium sized pan, set over a medium heat and stir until the sugar dissolves in the juices. Then rapidly boil for 2 minutes, stirring until thick. Allow to go completely cold.
For the mascarpone frosting
500g tub mascarpone cream
2 tbsp caster sugar
½ finely grated zest of orange
1 tbsp whisky or Glayva liquer
Put all the ingredients in a bowl and beat until light and fluffy. Refrigerate for a couple of hours before using to cover the cake.
To assemble the cake
The cooled cake tiers, trimmed so flat
Cooled syrup
Cold raspberry filling
Cold mascarpone frosting
Punnet of fresh raspberries
Using a pastry brush liberally soak two tiers of the cake on the top surface and one tier on the bottom surface. Place a cake layer on your serving plate of choice, syrup side up, spread over one half the raspberry filling, place on the next layer of cake syrup side up and spread on the remaining raspberry filling, place on the last tier with the syrup side down. Cover with the mascarpone frosting (or other frosting of choice) and decorate with fresh raspberries. Refrigerate until needed but ideally eat the same day it is made.
And here are the photos from the version I made to test the frosting, this time on a two tier genose sponge:
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