baking

Apple Cake

- Alex 1 Comment

apple cake

We have an apple tree. Last year we didn’t see a single apple – not sure if it was the lack of rain or the local wildlife. In fact, we didn’t even KNOW it was an apple tree.

This year, the planets lined up and, about a week ago, I picked our small harvest. Some research (thanks google!) suggests that our tree might be a Grimes Golden – the apples are like Golden Delicious but tastier and the fruit is very late. Anyway, what to do with all these apples?

If you’re me, the obvious answer is to make cake. A bit of research saw me with a selection of apple cake recipes that didn’t quite fit what we had in the house and some which did, but seemed a bit unexciting. In the end, my cake was very similar to the Dorset apple cake which you can find on both the Delicious website and over at the Goddess’s Kitchen (Maria does loads of baking – if you like cake I suggest you check out her blog).

This is, essentially, a pound cake with apples added. It’s easy and quick to put together but does require a slightly longer cooking time than many cakes. Because I was adding chopped apple at the end, I used my KitchenAid rather than the Magimix for this one. Of course, there’s no harm in doing things by hand, either!

Preheat oven to 180°C (160°C fan). Grease and base line a 23 cm spring form tin.

Begin by softening 225g of unsalted butter. It’s freezing* in Adelaide at the moment and I’m never organised enough to leave butter out so it was the microwave to the rescue. Mix this with 225g of caster sugar and, when the butter/sugar mix is smooth, add 225 self raising flour and 2 tsp of baking powder.

This will be a stiff mixture so now add 3 large eggs, one at a time. Add 25g of ground almonds and 1 teaspoon of allspice.

Peel and cube apples so that you end up with about 300g of apple ready to go in the cake mix. As you work with the apples, toss them in a little lime juice mixed with lime zest which will stop them going brown and will add some crispness of flavour to the finished product.

Gently stir the apples through the cake batter and spoon into the cake tin. Smooth the top as best you can and make sure you push the mix out to the edges. It is quite thick and difficult to manage but you don’t want a lopsided cake.

In my oven, at 160°C fan the cake took an hour to cook. A skewer wants to come out cleanly and the top needs to be set.

The cake kept quite well – thanks to ground almonds. It had lovely caramelised crunchy bits around the sides and if you were after more of this, you could sprinkle the top with a tablespoon of demerara sugar before baking. Everyone liked this cake: it had a good apple flavour and the allspice added a warm lift. And served with cream – what’s not to like?

* I may be exaggerating … but it is pretty cold!

Naan Bread

- Alex 1 Comment

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This is my go-to naan bread recipe that I use whenever I need a flatbread.  It doesn’t have to go with a curry and they’re quick enough to put together for any mid-week meal.  This recipe comes from The Big Book of Bread which I won a few years ago through the excellent Baking Mad website. This is an English site run by the Allinson flour people but it’s a great resource and worth checking out wherever you are.

Take 300g of strong white flour and add 1½ tsp of dried yeast and 1 tsp of salt. If making this by hand, make a well in the centre and add the wet ingredients. If you’re using a stand mixer, you can get away with just dumping everything in the bowl! Add 4 tbsp of natural yoghurt, 1 tbsp of neutral vegetable oil (the recipe specifies sunflower but we rarely have this at home so I often use peanut oil – you just don’t want anything with a strong flavour so leave your best extra virgin olive oil in the cupboard …). Mix this together and blend in 125mL of warm milk to make a soft dough.

I usually add a 1 tsp of nigella (kalonji) seeds to the mix too. Or you can sprinkle them over the naan before baking. Or you can add a clove of crushed garlic, a teaspoon of ground coriander … you get the idea.

When the dough has come together and been kneaded (by either you or the machine) leave the dough for an hour or so to rise.

Preheat your oven and your baking trays to HOT (I usually go for 220°C fan, the recipe specifies 230°C convection). Make sure you preheat the baking trays – it helps the naan cook more quickly and prevents them from sticking.

Punch down the risen dough, knead it and divide it in to four. Roll out and stretch each quarter into a tear drop shape. The recipe specifies leaving the naan, covered, for 15 minutes. I rarely do that because by the time I finish rolling them out and getting them on trays I figure that’s rest enough. If you’re organised enough, brush the naan with melted butter or ghee before baking.

Baking for 10 minutes – the naan will be puffed up and golden. Wrap them in a clean tea towel and serve.

The naan will keep til the next day but they are better eaten straight away. They are just such an improvement on the shop bought ones that you’ll never go back!

Coffee Poppy Seed Cake

- Alex 6 Comments

Coffee & Poppyseed Cake

You know how sometimes a coffee cake doesn’t have any coffee in it? It’s actually a cake to eat with coffee and the whole thing turns in to a disappointing experience?

Well, this is not that cake. A few weeks ago Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall published some coffee recipes in the Guardian and one of them was this cake, complete with coffee, poppy seeds and a very syrupy glaze/icing.

I can’t remember the last time I made a cake with poppy seeds in, even though I like them (both the poppy seeds and the cakes!) and I’m always thinking I should be a little more diverse in my cake making. Poppy seeds, like sesame seeds, are one of those things that can go off. They need to be stored in cool, dark places and used relatively quickly, otherwise they can go a bit rancid – and that’s not what you want in cake.

This is a simple recipe and is almost a one bowl wonder.

Begin by soaking, for at least 2 hours, 100g of poppy seeds in 80g of mascarpone (the recipe specifies sour cream, but I had mascarpone in the fridge). The poppy seeds soaked up all the mascarpone and it became quite a stiff mixture.

Preheat oven to 170°C and grease and baseline a 22cm spring form tin.

If you’re so inclined you can sift the dry ingredients first: 150g plain flour, 1 tsp bicarb, 1 tsp baking powder, ½ tsp of cinnamon and a pinch of salt. If you’re making this by hand (that is, without the kitchen trickery that is a food processor or a stand mixer) make the effort. Even with gadgets to hand, I’m starting to do more and more sifting …

Now cream 150g of unsalted butter with 250g of caster sugar, before mixing in three eggs, one at a time. Ensure each egg is well beaten in before adding the next. Mix in a 1 tsp vanilla essence and 40mL of espresso coffee. If you don’t have a coffee maker to hand, make up some really really strong coffee and use that.

Add in the flour a bit at a time, alternating this with the poppy seed/mascarpone mix. Mix until just combined and then spoon in to the tin and bake for 35-40 minutes (until the toothpick comes out clean).

Allow to cool for a little in the tin and then cool completely on a cake rack.

Now, for the icing HFW suggests using 125g of icing sugar (definitely sift this – it makes your life so much easier and your icing a lot less lumpy) and 50 mL of espresso. I did this but we found this icing too runny and, by the time it had soaked through the cake, it made the whole thing far too sweet. So I suggest making your favourite icing and adding a bit of coffee to it. Or dust it with icing sugar before serving – the poppy seeds make it quite an attractive cake even without icing so there’s no need to go mad.

I personally thought that the cake had a good coffee flavour which was accentuated by the cinnamon. The universal opinion was that it was too sweet and I really regretted making the icing.

So while I’ll definitely be making the cake again I’ll be passing on the icing.