A Blustery-Sunday-in-May Cake

Last Sunday I found it hard to believe it was late May: 7°Celsius (45°F), Dull, Rainy and Windy (yes, with capital letters!). Luckily I had cut some of my early peony flowers a couple of days earlier before they got spoilt.

The perfect activity for such a day, as I’m sure you’ll agree, is to go into the kitchen, tie on a pinny, turn on the oven, and bake a cake!

MARBLE CAKE

After looking through several marble cake recipes, mostly German (Marmorkuchen), I decided to just try out my own. And it worked first time! This is a German classic and was requested a while back by my Man of Many Talents… Really tasty and soft, just the right proportion of chocolate, and nice and moist from adding yoghurt to the batter.

• 175g (1 and 1/2 sticks) soft butter
• 175g (3/4 cup) caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 250g (2 cups) SR flour
• 2 tbsps cocoa powder
• 150g (2/3 cup) plain yoghurt

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease and flour either a 1lb/500g loaf tin and 2 mini Gugelhupf moulds, or a slightly larger loaf tin.

Beat the butter with an electric mixer until smooth, then add the sugar and continue mixing until creamy. Slowly beat in the eggs, adding a little of the flour if it curdles, and the vanilla extract. Sift in the flour and gently fold in, and finally stir in the yoghurt very carefully. Now spoon 2/3 of the vanilla batter into your tin(s).  Add the cocoa to the remaining third and mix in well. Spoon the cocoa batter over the top of the vanilla batter. Using a knife, swirl through the mixture 3 or 4 times in a figure of eight motion. I didn’t bother with this for the mini Gugelhupf cakes, but for a round tin or loaf tin the effect is nice.

Bake for 45-50 minutes. (The mini Gugelhupf moulds only needed about 20 minutes.)

After removing from the oven, wait 5 minutes, and then turn out the cakes to cool on a rack.

That warmed me up, and the house smelt warm and cosy too… hope June has some warmer weather in store!

What do YOU do on a cold and wet weekend when you can’t get out in the garden?

Rhubarb Crumble Chocolate Cake

I found the recipe for this cake on the UK Lindt website – I find Lindt chocolate unbeatable, especially for baking,  although Milka comes a close second. And this rhubarb chocolate combination is fabulous! The cake alone is a perfectly moist chocolate cake recipe which I will certainly use again for other cakes. The rhubarb and crumble topping adds some zing!

Here’s the original recipe, Lindt’s Rhubarb Chocolate Crumble Cake …. and here is mine, slightly adapted:

For the Crumble:

• 50g (2 oz) cold butter, 100g (4 oz) flour, 50g (2 oz)sugar

Rub the butter into the flour and sugar until nice and crumbly

For the Cake:

Beat these ingredients together with a whisk/electric whisk.

• 2 eggs
• 200ml (4/5 cup) milk
• 100ml (2/5 cup) sunflower oil
• 75g (3 oz) icing (powdered) sugar
• seeds of one vanilla pod
• 100g (4 oz) melted dark chocolate (melt in a bain-marie)
  
• a pinch of salt

Sift the next 3 ingredients and gently fold  into the batter with a large metal spoon.

• 200g (8 oz) flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder

Pour into a 20 x 20cm (8×8 inch) pan lined with greaseproof paper.

Press 200g (8 oz) chopped rhubarb onto top of cake.

Sprinkle the crumble on top. Bake for 35-40 minutes at 180°C (350°F). (If making cupcakes, as the Lindt website shows, the baking time will only be about 20-25 mins)

Have you been enjoying rhubarb season?

Rhubarbanana Bread

Recently I was wondering if bananas would go with rhubarb… surely they would add sweetness and take away some of the sharp edge of the rhubarb? Well, only a day or so later Christina (from My Hesperides Garden ) commented on my post Dreaming of Crumble and suggested adding banana. Thanks Christina!

Well the crumble hasn’t evolved yet, but my banana bread has been adapted! Try this – it’s really tasty!

• 150g (1 cup) plain flour
• 75g (¾ cup) ground almonds
• 75g (1/3 cup) brown sugar
• 75g (1/3 cup) white sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 cup roughly mashed ripe banana, (2 large or 3 small bananas)
• 75g (1/3 cup) butter, room temperature (75g)
• 2 tbsps milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 small banana cut into bite sized chunks
• 2 sticks young rhubarb, sliced (about 100g-125g or 1 heaped cup)

Preheat oven to 190°C and grease and flour a loaf tin or similar baking tin (I used a 500g/1 lb tin and had enough for a few cupcakes too).

Sieve flour, salt, ground almonds, sugar, baking powder, and baking soda together. Mash bananas and butter together, and mix in milk and eggs.  Combine with the flour mixture.  Fold in the banana chunks and rhubarb slices and pour into cake tin.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until set.  Cool a little before removing from the tin.

Good served warm (with cream!)

And it stays nice and moist for a couple of days. (Probably longer, but we ate it too quickly! )

Enjoy!

(Another rhubarb cake recipe coming soon!)

How do you like your rhubarb?

Herby Stuffed Mushrooms

My chives were the first herb to appear in the garden, mid-April, and now I also have a little parsley, some sage and thyme.

Time to make something herby!

Clean/peel 400g (14 oz) large mushrooms and remove the stems – chop these and put them on one side. Whizz 70g (2 1/2 oz) wholemeal bread (about 1 slice) with a generous handful of fresh herbs in a blender/food mixer and mash in 75g (2 1/2 oz) cream cheese, some salt and black pepper and 1 egg. Mix in the reserved mushroom stems and press the filling into the mushrooms. Drizzle 1 tbsp olive oil over the top and bake for 30 minutes at 180°C. Just before they are done, sprinkle a little grated parmesan over the top.

These can be made as herby or spicy as you wish. Nice as a starter or side dish.

Do you have fresh herbs in your garden?

Oh Banoffee!

This post has a health warning… not for the faint-hearted!

I have been making this “pie” for years now, but very infrequently because it is just soooo decadent! Recently my friends asked begged me to make it again for them and I agreed. You just have to spoil yourself and your guests occasionally now, don’t you? Then sadly they had to cancel that day, and I had already made this pie… well, we managed to eat half of it between us over a couple of days, but it’s definitely the kind of dessert for a crowd!

The original recipe for Banoffee Pie has a pastry base and the content varies slightly. This one is actually a Banoffee Cheesecake, the recipe coming from an ancient “Vegetarian” magazine in the 90s. Now if you’re still wondering what banoffee is, you haven’t lived! It’s a crossover dessert of caramel, bananas, cream and often chocolate…. Now I’ve got your full attention, here’s the recipe…. no low-fat stuff here – if you’re going to make it, then you have to go the whole hog. Forget the calories and go for the real full-fat cream cheese and the thickest cream you can find!

Banoffee Cheesecake

•  225g (8 oz) can sweetened condensed milk or Nestle Carnation Caramel
• 200g (7 oz) (Philadelphia) full-fat soft cream cheese
• 300ml (1 1/4 cups) double cream, whipped
• 3 bananas
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 275g (9 1/2 oz) milk chocolate digestive biscuits, crushed  (I think “graham crackers” are the same…)
• 85g (3/4 stick) butter

Method:

1. If, like me, you can’t always get hold of the caramel, place the unopened can of sweetened condensed milk in a large pan of simmering water and cook over a medium heat for two hours. Keep the water on a steady rolling boil, and top up with extra water as necessary. DANGER!  DON’T LET IT BOIL DRY! Carefully remove the tin…. HOT! and allow to cool completely. I always do this the night before I assemble the pie.
2. For the biscuit base, grease the base of a 23cm (9inch) flan dish. Grind the chocolate biscuits to fine crumbs – if you don’t have a magic tool like mine you can crush then in a freezer bag. (Tip: cool the biscuits first). Melt the butter in a large pan, then stir in the crushed biscuits until well combined. Press the mixture into the base of the prepared dish and chill for at least 1 hour.
3. For the topping, beat the cream cheese with the caramelized condensed milk/Carnation caramel – using a fork – until smooth. Mash the bananas with the lemon juice and fold carefully into the cream cheese mixture, and finally fold in the whipped cream. Pour over the biscuit base  and chill for at least 4 hours or even overnight until set.
4. If you like, another banana can be sliced and sprinkled with a little lemon juice, and put on top just before serving. Chocolate shavings also look nice as a finishing touch. (It’s a bit tricky getting the first slice out , but having tried all sorts of tins and dishes in the past, both with or without greaseproof paper, this is the best so far.)

Serves about a hundred! (Okay, 8 to 10)

Savour each and every deliciously naughty, creamy mouthful!