Wholemeal apple & almond cake

Delicious, with a hint of cinnamon. Eat warm from the oven as pud, or cold for breakfast/elevenses. Much nicer than the appley-cinnamony pastry I had in Selfridge's yesterday. There's a strong taste of almonds, even though they're cut 50:50 with flour (so economical).

It's from Hugh FW's new book, Every Day; he made it with pears on his show last week (you may need to be in the UK for this link to work).

Apple and almond cake

150g butter
125g caster sugar
2 eggs
75g wholemeal self-raising flour
75g ground almonds

for the apples

4-5 eating apples
25g butter
1 heaped tbsp granulated sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

20cm springform cake tin
pre-heat the oven to 170C

Peel and core the apples, cut them into wedges and fry gently in the butter and sugar. When they are nearly tender, add the cinnamon and take off the heat.

Beat the butter and sugar together; add the eggs, then the flour, then the almonds. Scrape into the tin, smooth over, arrange the apples on top, spoon over the juices from the frying pan.

Bake for 40-45 minutes (until a skewer comes out clean). Leave for a while before unclipping the tin (although this is probably going to fall apart anyway).

Notes:
* I made it on the spur of the moment to use up some apples that had been sitting around for a few days; there were six, not quite too many.
* I had only 140g butter in total; the apples were fine in 10g, and the cake was fine with 130g. So no need for the full 175g.
* My cake is a little stodgy ("but good stodgy", said Amy) because I used plain wholemeal and forget to put in baking powder.
* The apples sit nicely on top of this cake, but when HFW made it with pears, they sank down almost to the bottom.


Related posts

Apple tart - Alfred once ate half of this at one go
Hugh FW's wonderful ginger cake
Easy almond ring cake - another pudding-y cake, better served with a little fruit

Sticky ginger loaf

It's hard to believe that a simple two-egg cake could be so full of flavours and richness. I've been wanting to make gingerbread for ages, but have lost my cousin Rosemary's recipe - it's her signature piece. Sadly, she's too ancient to bake these days, and wasn't too sure about the recipe when I asked her a few weeks ago. So, time to try something new.

This one's from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's new book, Every Day, and it's good. Really good. Is-two-slices-enough?-good. Even if you think you don't like ginger, or black treacle. AND it keeps well.

Sticky ginger loaf

75g butter
150g dark muscovado sugar
150g black treacle
150g golden syrup
75g rum
2 medium eggs
225g self-raising flour
1 tsp mixed spice
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
75g preserved ginger, chopped

Prepare a large bread tin. Heat the oven to 180C.

Melt the butter, sugar, treacle and syrup. Add the rum and beaten eggs. Sift in the flour and spices. Beat until smooth, then add the chopped ginger. Pour into the tin and bake for 50 minutes. Leave in the tin to cool.

If you like, you can brush the cold cake with a little syrup from the preserve jar.


PS Another time, I'd put in more preserved ginger. And I'd be happy to substitute the rum for ginger wine. It's just that I've got a bottle of rum no-one drinks that was old when my mother--in-law gave it to me, half empty, nearly 25 years ago.

PPS This would be good for cricket teas: one would be enough to make half slices for both teams. Great for a cold day at the start of the season.

Easy almond ring cake

This cake is based on one of Nigella's cheating recipes, using shop-bought marzipan as one of the main ingredients. I started by making the marzipan, which probably added about two minutes to the total time spent in the kitchen.

I'm taking it to give my hostess (and best friend) when we go out to dinner this evening, but I really made it to comfort myself with familiar kitchen rituals after a couple of pretty grim weeks. And it's worked.

Damp almond ring cake

250g softened butter
250g softened marzipan
150g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
6 duck eggs
150g self-raising flour

Preheat the oven to 170C. Blitz the butter, marzipan and sugar. When they are smoothly mixed, add the vanilla essence, and then the eggs, one by one. Mix in the flour. Pour into a buttered 25cm ring mould. Bake for 40-50 minutes.

St John caraway seed cake

I wish I could blog the eggy buttery smell in my kitchen since I took this cake out of the oven. Here's the recipe, so you can make it yourself - one to have and one to share. It's Fergus Henderson; this version once appeared in the Telegraph cookery section, and is not quite the same as the seed cake in Beyond Nose to Tail.

St John caraway seed cake

250g butter
250g caster sugar
5 eggs
350g self-raising flour
2 tsp caraway seeds
120-150ml milk

Preheat the oven to 170C. Line two loaf tins with paper (I use ready-made liners, which saves a lot of Blue Peter project work).

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and beat until smooth. Sift in the flour, add the caraway seeds and stir until everything is well mixed and the seeds evenly distributed. Then add milk. In this recipe, FH says add "a splash", but this doesn't make the required pouring consistency for the batter. The recipe in Beyond Nose to Tail Eating has similar proportions and calls for 150ml of milk - more than a splash. You'll have to feel your way. I put in three splashes, probably about 90ml, which was not enough for a dropping consistency, although the finished cake is fine.

Pour the batter into the tins and bake for 40-45 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.

Killer scone recipe

Lettice asked for scones. I made these, following the recipe used at the Lanesborough Hotel in London. As you'd expect from somewhere so swank, this is an extravagent version of a homely classic ... but the egg makes a particularly soft dough - and uses up some of the glut we've got here. Well worth trying.

Rich scones

225g plain flour (I used 00 pasta flour, as it was all I could find)
2 tsp baking powder
40g butter
25g caster sugar
1 egg
100g full cream milk

Heat the oven to 220C (200 for a fan oven)

Sift the flour, add the bp, rub in the butter, then stir in the sugar. Beat the egg in the milk and add to the flour mixture. Gently gather it together into a soft dough, pat it out to an inch thick (you'll need a little flour on the work surface and your fingers), then cut into rounds. I made nine.

Put the scones onto a lightly floured baking sheet*, bake for 10-12 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. Eat warm.

* You could brush the dough with a little milk at this point, but I didn't bother


I found this in A Feast of Cooks (I bought it for Heston Blumenthal's Quaking Pudding)

Old-fashioned parkin

At Beamish they were making Parkin the old-fashioned way:



































































Fabulous coal range .... and did you notice the bread oven to the right? If you want to make Parkin - a kind of north country flapjack - just mix the ingredients together, shape the biscuits (or spread into a tin to cut into squares when it's cooled), and bake in a hot oven. Mmm

Nigella's chocolate mousse cake

It's the birthday season in this house. Lettice wanted chocolate cake, but not the "usual" one. So I made chocolate mousse cake, not quite following the recipe in Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess ... very rich and delicious, quick to put together. Tomorrow it's Eleanor's birthday, and she's ordered up a different chocolate cake - I'm just off to buy the ingredients.

Chocolate mousse cake
for a 23cm tin

350g dark chocolate
175g butter
8 large eggs, separated
100g muscovado sugar
100g caster sugar
1 tbs vanilla extract

Grease the pan. Melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler. Meanwhile, beat the egg yolks and sugar until it is pale and creamy. Stir in the vanilla and the coolish chocolate mixture. Whisk the egg whites until they are peaky, then fold in (best if you loosen the mixture first with one spoonful of white, but I don't always remember).

Pour the whole lot into your tin, then put the tin into a larger roasting pan. Put all this into the oven, then add hot water from the kettle so that you have an inch or two of water.

Bake for 50 minutes. The top should be dry, but the inside will still be gooey. Don't even think about removing this from the tin until it is completely cold. It will crack as it cools; if it looks too much, dust with icing sugar.













































Related links

Homemade vanilla extract
Jennifer Paterson's adult chocolate cake
Nigella's fudge icing for chocolate cakes
Rich chocolate refrigerator cake
Dense chocolate loaf
Tartuffo - very rich, very delicious chocolate pud

Blueberry muffins

We've been eating blueberry muffins this afternoon. Lettice made them. This is how:

for 12 muffins

75g melted butter
200g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarb
2 tsp baking powder
100 ml yoghurt mixed with 100g milk
1 egg
200g blueberries

Heat the oven to 200C. Melt the butter. Combine in a bowl the flour, bicarb and baking powder. In a measuring jug, mix the yog/milk with the egg and butter, then lightly stir this into the flour. Don't overwork, and don't worry about lumps. Fold in the fruit, then spoon into muffin cases. (Nigella mentions the possibility of adding orange zest, but Lettice didn't bother.)

Bake for 20 minutes. They'll be golden and delicious. Eat hot or cold. We thought they'd be good made with raspberries, or chopped up strawberries. Lettice thought they'd be good with bananas; I didn't.


















Adapted from Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess

Escape to Sussex

Suddenly needed to get away for a few days. This is the view from my room by the sea. Yesterday it was sunny, but I didn't have my new camera then. (After months of humming and hawing, took the plunge, bought a Nikon D90, fell in love with the first click.)

I went to Alfriston, to visit the Clergy House, the first building ever bought by the National Trust. Wonderful floor, made of tamped chalk hardened by pouring sour milk and leaving for a couple of weeks. Beautiful oak frames, and an oak leaf carved into one - the centuries-old decoration of a yeoman farmer, now used as the logo of the National Trust. The garden is beautiful, the productive parts much the best to my eye.


















Then to Much Ado Books, where the lovely proprietress slipped a teabag into the book I bought, so that I could enjoy reading it with a cup of tea ... I went straight back to the car and got the kettle out of the boot.

The view from where I'm sitting

... a cup of lapsang souchong is on the way.

It takes a while to boil the kettle on the stove, so you have to start before you get thirsty. In the mean time, I'm tidying - and now that I've seen the picture, I'd better get cleaning, too - does anyone have any tricks for refreshing brick that don't involve paint?

I'm rather fond of this simple fireplace, it's in what was once the housekeeper's sitting room, built in 1918, when housekeepers were already rather thin on the ground. I do such housekeeping as goes on here (not much, not enough), so this now my study. We (or rather Lucius) installed the stove in November (also the lovely Delabole slate), and the room is now warm for the first time any of us can remember.