Rhubarb and Orange Cake

This month I got the opportunity to think outside the 'birthday box', since I wanted to make a cake for my friend Messner's birthday, and he ain't a sugarpaste kinda guy. It was also a rather big birthday, and since I spend so much of my time making up recipes as I go along, I thought I'd make a special effort to actually follow a real recipe. And had it not been for a minor shortage of ground almonds in my cupboard, I'd have managed it.

He's a big fan of rhubarb (who isn't?!) so that seemed an obvious place to start, and I found a great-sounding recipe in my BBC Good Food 101 Cakes and Bakes book.

It's a little involved, but the end result is magnificent, and you should really give it a go!

Here's the original BBC Good Food recipe (together with my very minor necessary amendment).

Rhubarb and Orange Cake

Ingredients:
350g/12oz prepared rhubarb, cut into 4cm lengths
200g/8oz golden caster sugar
finely grated zest and juice of half an orange
140g/5oz butter, softened
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 tsp baking powder
85g/3oz self raising flour
100g/4oz ground almonds
(I only had 75g/3oz ground almonds and it turned out fine!)

For the topping
25g/1oz butter, melted
25g/1oz light muscovado sugar
finely grated zest of half an orange
50g/2oz slivered almonds
icing sugar, for dusting (I totally forgot to do this)

Method:
1. Mix the rhubarb with 50g/2oz of the caster sugar and the orange zest. Leave for one hour, stirring a couple of times.

2. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celcius/gas mark 5/. Butter and line the base of a deep 9inch round cake tin. Cream thebutter and remaining caster sugar. Add the eggs, baking powder, flour and ground almonds. Beat gently, but don't overmix.

3. Stir in the orange, juice, spoon into the tin and level. Drain the rhubarb and spoon over the top. Bake for 25 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, combine the butter, sugar, zest and almonds.

5. Reduce the oven to 180 degrees Celcius/gas mark 4. Sprinkle the topping over the cake and return to the oven for 15-20 minutes or until firm.

6. Cool in the tin, then transfer to a wire rack.

7. Dust with icing sugar (or don't!), and serve warm with whipped cream, or just on its own with a cup of tea. Yum!

Simplicity defined - customisable cupcakes

I love a good cupcake. It's amazing when you have a tiny package of sugary perfection with unexpected treats hidden inside and lashings of frosting on the outside. It puts me in mind of a sucrose-loaded wonderland where all your diabetic dreams can come true.

 

But I also love an easy ride, and sometimes there's just not time to faff around with complicated recipes. At these times, I return to a trusted favourite - standard cupcakes 'like Granny used to make'. This was back in the days of pounds and ounces, which makes the recipe super easy to remember. In ounces, it's

 

The same of everything, and half as many eggs.

 

This simple mantra is a revelatory truth in the kitchen.

 

e.g. 2oz each of Sugar, butter and self raising flour, plus one egg.

 

It's easy to multiply up, and it's also very easy to customise. So here are some ideas and examples...

 

 

Classic cupcakes

 

Ingredients:

 

2oz (55g) unsalted butter

2oz (55g) sugar

2oz (55g) self raising flour

1 free range egg, beaten

 

 

Method:

 

1. Cream together butter and sugar.

 

2. Stir in the egg.

 

3. Fold in the flour.

 

4. Divide the mixture between 9 cupcake cases and bake for 20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius/gas mark 4.

 

 

Customise those bad boys!

 

You want a classic chocolate cupcake? Remove a dessert spoon of the flour, and replace with two dessert spoons of cocoa powder.

 

You prefer a bit of chocolate fudge? Replace the caster sugar with muscovado sugar. And while you're at it, why not cut up some small chocolates, and plonk a lump of each into the centre of each cake!

 

Vanilla's more up your street? Well, be my guest and add a teaspoon of vanilla extract to your batter! Hell, if you're fancy, you can even scrape the seeds our of a vanilla pod instead and add those.

 

Want something delicate and fluffy - go for golden caster sugar instead of the standard stuff!

 

Fancy a bit of fruit? Stir a spoonful of berries or jam through your batter before spooning it into the cupcake cases! Or stir in half the juice and the grated zest of an orange, lemon or lime (save the rest of the juice to make up a simple icing with icing sugar).

 

 

Get decorating

 

Batman cupcakes

Go for a simple icing of icing sugar and water, or icing sugar with fruit juice (and colouring for a bit of a change). Whilst it's wet, you can add whatever jellies or sprinkles you fancy.

 

Add a thin layer of melted chocolate - super simple! And why not chuck on some mini eggs for giggles?! Another variant of this is to melt Mars bars in a bain-marie, and spread the resulting fudgey gloop over the top of your cupcakes. Yum.

 

Load it up with a fancy ganache or a simple buttercream (see here) or if you're feeling lazy, you could always try a shop-bought frosting - though I have to admit when I tried Betty Crocker's chocolate fudge, I was pretty darn disappointed. You can use custom-made (non-edible) decorations for super-speedy decorating.

 

Get creative with sugarpaste - the key to effective sugarpaste tops is to simplify ideas to their component parts and that way you'll have really eye-catching designs. I made some chocolate fudge cupcakes for a friend's recent Batman-themed birthday party, and based the tops on the motifs and costumes of some of the characters from the comics.

 



Batman cupcake

Robin cupcake

Joker cupcake



Harvey Dent/Twoface cupcake



Poison Ivy cupcake

Harley Quinn cupcake














 

 

 

 

 

Hey, remember me?

Ladies and gents, please accept my most humble apologies. I know I have neglected you lot awfully in recent months. I could wax lyrical with the sincerest sorries you could imagine...

 

...or I could just shift the blame.

 

Onto this little snookie pookum.

 

Yeah, I think I'll do that. I'll blame her.

 

Just after my last post I was taken into hospital with some pregnancy complications, making blogging on of my lesser priorities. Anyhoo, long story short - a couple of weeks later, I emerged from the hospital, chrysalis-like, with my very own healthy hungry little caterpillar in tow.

 

And what wonder should await me, but this amazing 'congratulations cake' made by my usual cakey partner-in-crime the wonderful Mel. Pretty damn good, huh?

The period since then has been something of a milky blur of poo, posseting, and an awful lot of baby giggles. But I'm going to endeavour to do better. Although I warn you that my posts are going to be a bit different from now on, relying, as they do, on a hell of a lot of one-handed chopping-whilst-balancing-a-baby-on-one-hip and other similar feats of multitasking motherhood. But bear with me and you might just enjoy the ride.

 

And just to whet your collective appetites, I'll leave you with a picture of the fist sugarpaste creation I have made since the little caterpillar's arrival - a flower-power wedding cake for a low-key 70s wedding.

 

 

 

Hope you like it! And let's not leave it too long next time, eh?

 

 

 

Welsh Laverbread Cakes

This New Year, Mr P and I spent a lovely few days with our friends Beth and Pete on Anglesey. the trip was memorable for many reasons, not least the following conversation:

Pete: Ooh, I'm going to cook this egg in the log burner.

Me: I'm pretty sure it'll explode.

Pete: Don't be daft, it'll be amazing.

Me: Hmm.

A couple of minutes later...

Me: I really think you should get it out before it explodes.

Pete: It's going to be perfectly cooked, and then you'll be laughing on the other side of your [BANG].

Sometime life grants us comic timing that would just look implausible in a sitcom. As you can imagine, I was laughing on both sides of my face after that little incident. Hysterically. For a long time.

But I digress.... why am I telling you a story about a trip we took almost 4 months ago?

Because it was on that trip that I decided to buy a tin of laverbread, a traditional Welsh delicacy that I'd neither eaten, nor used, before. And I only just got round to trying it out. So after checking out various recipes for laverbread cakes, I came up with this one. It's got a higher proportion of oats to laverbread than you often see, mainly because when I opened the laverbread it absolutely stank (and not in a good, brie-esque way). Although I don't know what authentic laverbread cakes are supposed to taste like, these actually turned out to be not half bad.

 

Welsh Laverbread Cakes

Makes 4

Ingredients:

120g laverbread

45g jumbo oats

1 tblsp sunflower oil

Method:

1. Mix together the laverbread and oats.

2. Form into four 'cakes', and fry in the oil in a frying pan on a low-medium heat until the oats are crisp and the laverbread is cooked through (flip half way through the cooking time).

These are traditionally served with bacon, I believe, but wold be lovely with a nice poached egg on top!

Chocolate and Ginger vegan cupcakes

Call us stingy if you like, but due to our grand plan of trying to save for a house deposit one day before we are both old and grey, Mr P and I try to stick to a budget of £50 per week for our food and other household shopping. I'm constantly amazed by how well we live on this, even though the inspirational Michelle Rice at Utterly Scrummy Food for Families has totally blown our efforts out of the water this week, with her £50 family meal plan - epic!

 

Anyhoo, occasionally if we have extra expenses like bus/train tickets etc, we end up 'borrowing' from a futue week, and then trying to claw ourselves back by living on whatever we have in our store cupboard. And this often leads to a great tendency to experiment, and also to some interesting foodstuffs making an appearance on our table.

 

This week, when I fancied a naughty little sweet treat but we were out of eggs, the obvious answer was vegan cupcakes. We had the syrup from some stem ginger left over from Christmas ready for just such an emergency, so I adapted the Basic Chocolate Cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes take over the world to come up with this scrumptious Chocolate and Ginger delight.

 

Chocolate and Ginger cupcakes (vegan)

makes 12

 

Ingredients:

1 cup soya milk

1tsp apple cider vinegar

3/4 granulated sugar
1/3 cup rapeseed oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1 cup self-raising flour

1/3 cup cocoa powder

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cream of tartar (original recipe called for baking powder, which I'd run out of)

 

For the toppings

1 tablespoon ginger syrup

1/2 tablespoon granulated sugar

1/2 tablespoon icing sugar

orange/yellow food colouring (optional)

jelly sweet decorations (optional)

 

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 10 degrees celcius and line a muffin tray with cupcake cases.

 

2. Whisk the soya milk and vinegar together and set aside to curdle for a few minutes. Then add the sugar, oil and vanilla extract and beat until foamy.

 

3. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, cream of tartar and ground ginger.

 

4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in a few small batches, and beat together until there are no large lumps, then pour the mixture into the cupcake cases.
 

 

5. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.
 

 

Ginger Drizzle topping (top)

This topping needs to be made whilst the cupcakes are still warm: Prick all over the surface of the cupcakes with a cocktail stick, then drizzle 1 tsp of ginger syrup over each of them. Sprinkle generously with granulated sugar.

 

Ginger icing (middle)

Mix the icing sugar with approximately the same amount of ginger syrup, and a little food colouring, if required. Add a little water if needed to thin the icing out. Use this to cover the top of your cupcakes, and finish with a jelly sweet, if you like.

 

Chocolate buttercream topping (bottom)

I had a batch of vegan chocolate buttercream in the freezer, so used some of this to cover my remaining cakes. To make it yourself, you can veganise this buttercream by replacing the stork with Pure vegan spread.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chilli and Vodka pasta

We've had a couple of days of really blustery gusts in Manchester this week, and poor Mr P has had to cycle to work in - not very nice at all. So I decided the best way to mitigate this would be by making him a nice bone-warming dinner to sort him out after his latest 14 hour day.

 

This dish has a little bit of everything you need in this situation - the pasta helps you to carb back up after a tough bike ride, the protein in the kidney beans helps to keep you full, the chilli peps you up when you're dog tired, and although the cooking process destroys the alcohol content of the vodka, it leaves behind a little bit of fiery 'je ne sais quoi' that leaves a satisfied smile on your face.

 

Plus, the whole meal can be easily prepared in under half an hour - bonus!

 

I'm entering this recipe into the monthly Pasta Please, run by Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes. This month the theme is chilli, and it's hosted by hosted by Shaheen at A2K.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chilli and Vodka Pasta

serves 2-3

 

 

Ingredients:

 

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 red chilli (with seeds), chopped

1 tablespoon tomato puree

2 measures (50ml) vodka

1 tin chopped tomatoes

1 tin kidney beans, drained

 

enough pasta to feed 2/3 people

 

 

 

Method:

 

1. Start to cook the pasta on the hob, whilst you prepare your sauce.

 

2. Gently fry the onion in your oil in a saucepan until it starts to soften. Then add the chilli, garlic and tomato puree, and cook for a minute or so more. Adding the tomato puree at this early stage helps to take away any bitterness and give a slightly sweeter flavour.

 

3. At this point, add the kidney beans, vodka and chopped tomatoes and stir well. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for a further 15-20 minutes or so until the sauce has thickened somewhat.

 

4. Meanwhile, when the pasta is cooked al dente, drain well. Serve either with the sauce on top, or stir the pasta into the sauce at the last minute for full coverage.

Draniki (potato pancakes)

After its vague and short-lived attempt at Spring, Manchester has gone drizzly and miserable again, and if there's one thing guaranteed to make me crave comfort food, it's miserable weather.

 

This recipe is for a traditional Russian/Belarusian dish of Draniki, or potato pancakes. In fact, according to wikipedia, variants of this item are fairly common in the cuisines of countries across Central and Eastern Europe and beyond, and when you've tasted them, it will be obvious why they enjoy such widespread popularity.

 

When I've had these in Russia and Belarus, the traditional accompaniment is sour cream. However, I've also had them with vegetable slaw (in Russia) and apple puree (German style). Here's the basic recipe for the Draniki, together with two alternative condiments to serve them with. Although these are best served fresh, they can be reheated and still taste pretty darn good. Though I have to admit, I've rarely experienced a case of leftover Draniki... just sayin'.

 

Draniki

 

Ingredients:

1kg potato, peeled

1 onion

1 tblsp plain flour

1 medium egg

a liberal amount of sunflower oil

 

Method:

1. Grate the potato and onion. Considering that Draniki are a traditional peasant dish, the idea of doing this manually fills me with dread - if you've got a processor with a grater attachment, let it take the strain!

 

2. Mix the grated vegetables with the flour and egg in a large bowl.

 

3. Heat a little oil in a good frying pan to a low-medium temperature (use several frying pans if you have them - you'll save a lot of time if you get a few on the go at once). Place a dessert spoonful of Draniki mixture into your pan, and flatten with the back of the spoon. Repeat with as many as you can fit in the pans. Gently allow the Draniki to fry without burning. You will know that they are cooking at the right kind of rate if the top side starts to go dry whrn the underside is just pale golden. At this point, flip the Draniki to cook from the other side. Make sure you keep topping up the oil, as this helps them to cook evenly.

 

4. When the Draniki are cooked through, drain them on a piece of kitchen towel. If you've still got a large batch to fry up, you can keep them warm by placing on a warmed plate and covering with tin foil, or popping in an oven on a very low heat.

 

5. When ready, serve with your choice of accompaniment.

 

 

 

 

Spiced carrot slaw

Ingredients:

2-3 medium carrots

3 pieces of stem ginger, finely chopped

1 dessert spoon of ginger syrup

 

 

Method:

1. Peel the carrots and grate finely.

2. Combine with the other ingredients, and serve. Simplicity itself!

 

 

 

 

Apple puree

 

Ingredients:

2 eating apples

dessert spoon of honey

1/2 tsp cinnamon

 

Method:

1. Peel the apples and cut into small cubes.

 

2. Put the cubed apple into a saucepan, and add enough water to rise about a third of the way up the pieces.

 

3. Simmer over a medium heat until the apple is tender, adding the honey towards the end of the cooking time.

 

4. Allow to cool slightly, then add the cinnamon and blitz to a puree. Can be served warm or chilled.