A Plum Job

Nearly a month has passed since I posted a note on baking here, an unintended hiatus of sorts. Between revising for exams, then sitting the verdamte things, an unexpected trip to Norway and one albatross of a PhD proposal looming on the horizon I've neglected all whisking and folding recently. Thankfully all the hard work has been mitigated with plenty of japes and frolics, so no need to indulge in spasms of self-pity. Just been a busy bee, that's all.

Anyway, earlier this spring a number of enquiries about gluten-free recipes arrived in my baking inbox, so I decided to test this plum+almond cake recipe yesterday for those who are coeliac or have a wheat-intolerance. It's a super easy and quick to prepare sponge, thus making it a perfect tea-time treat or served with ice cream manifests itself rather well as a dinner party dessert. The recipe is one I adapted from one I found on the Cook's Illustrated site, an awesome repository of recipes tested to the nth degree. You can't go wrong with their recipes, seriously - have a look. All recipes for a bona fide 4th July fiestanza can be found there: ribs, key lime pie, cornbread...

But I digress. What you don't eat of this cake at tea-time or after dinner, try for breakfast. In a moment of Marie Antoinette-esque hubris I abandoned the quotidien smoothie this morning for a generous slice of cake with a dollop of Greek yogurt and some leftover plum sauce. Ideally I would have been reading Wodehouse whilst scoffing such a delectable plum cake with aplomb, but settled for a scan of the news about Iran's nascent revolution.

Enough warbling, here's the recipe folks!

Plum+Almond Cake Ingredients:

• 2 punnets of plums (I only used 1, and that wasn't enough, you wan't this to be plummy)
  
• 3 tsp apricot jam (St.Dalfour is a tasty one, and is made with grape juice)
• 2 tsp raspberry+rose cordial (see photo above)
• 125g ground almonds
• 125g self-raising gluten free flour
• 250g caster sugar (light brown would also be good)
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 100g butter, softened
• 200g half-fat sour cream
• 1 large egg + 1 fat egg yolk
• splash of vanilla
• pinch of salt

Method:

Preheat oven to 180C. Butter and flour a 9 inch cake pan.

Prepare the plums first by halving them. In a large saucepan or frying pan place the apricot jam and cordial, along with a little water (Cook's Illustrated suggests brandy - I didn't have this, but give it a go if you do). Bring to a simmer and allow it to cook for 2-3 mins until syrupy. Add the plums cut-side down and cook a further 5 minutes, basting them with the juices so the tops cook too. Once they're cooked, remove with a slotted spoon and reserve the excess syrup for later.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar. In a separate bowl sift the flour, almonds, raising agent, salt. Beat the egg with the sour cream and vanilla in a cup.

Once the butter is creamed, add the egg mixture and dry mixture in increments, beating with an electric whisk if you have one. You want quite a dense batter for this cake to hold the plums in suspension.

Spoon the batter into your cake pan, bake on the middle oven shelf for 45-50 minutes and check it's cooked through by inserting a skewer. It should come out with crumbs, not wet batter.

Allow the cake to cool, then eat with gluttonous abandon

Lemon Drizzzzzle cake

After spending the better part of this sunny Monday marooned in the library I absconded myself from the mountain of anthropology reading and spent a happy couple of hours baking.

Lemon drizzle cake is a real treat - I don't make it enough, though I love that lemony tanginess and the crunch from the inclusion of poppyseeds. This recipe's from Jamie Oliver's 'Red Nose Recipes' booklet available at Sainsbury's supermarkets. The booklet's in aid of Comic Relief, an annual tradition in this country when money is raised for charitable causes during a day of pranks, high jinks and tomfoolery - hence the 'comic' element ;-) The idea behind Jamie's booklet is to bake or cook something for Comic Relief Day, which takes place - rather inauspiciously - this Friday the 13th March.

So in the spirit of Comic Relief I decided to try one of Jamie's recipes and this lemon sponge cake caught my eye. Who doesn't love citrus-flavoured cakes and citrus fruit? A happy marriage methinks, and in this particular case I've adapted the recipe to make it gluten-free. Frankly the result is better than a sponge made

 with wheat flour, but that's entirely up to you. Use what you have in your cupboard.

Jamie's recipe calls for self-raising flour, and all I did was substitute this with nearly the same quantity gluten-free self-raising flour (if using the latter, drop the quantity by approx. 10% compared to regular wheat flour as gluten-free has a tendency to dry out more than wheat flour). Admittedly gluten-free flour doesn't always produce amazing results when baking, but this recipe called for a large quantity of ground almonds so the flour really is there to act as a binding agent, thus isn't the integral element of the cake. I wouldn't make scones, bread or pastry with this flour as the texture might be mealy or chalky. Anyway, I figured it was worth risking chalkiness in the name of experimentation, and thankfully the result's a success.

Don't be put off by the list of ingredients below - you need a lot of lemons, that's all. The cake's super-easy to make and so tangy it's worth the little bit of effort, and with all that syrup it should keep for a few days. 

Ingredients:

Sponge

• 115g softened butter
• 115g caster sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 180g ground almonds
• 30g poppy seeds
• zest and juice of 2 lemons
• 115g self-raising gluten-free flour, sifted (original recipe called for 125g)
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• pinch salt

Lemon syrup

• 60g fructose (fruit sugar) instead of Jamie's original 100g caster sugar
• 60g lemon juice (basically juice of 1 lemon)

Lemon Icing

• 175g icing sugar (originally 225g icing sugar...far too much!)
• zest and juice of 1 lemon

Preheat oven to 180C. Lightly oil a 20cm diameter round cake tin.

Using an electric whisk, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating to incorporate after each one. 

Fold in all the remaining ingredients and mix til even. Spoon the mixture into your cake tin and place in middle shelf of the oven and bake 40 minutes:

Check the cake's ready by inserting a skewer or toothpick - if it comes out clean, with no wet mixture on it then the cake's done. Allow to cool while making the syrup. All you do is place the lemon juice and fructose in a small saucepan and on a low-moderate heat allow the fructose to dissolve, then turn up the heat for a minute or two until the liquid reaches a light syrup consistency (you don't want a gloopy syrup...)

While the cake's warm, pierce it lots of times with the skewer and then drizzle the syrup over, allowing to soak into the cake. I kept the cake in the tin while I did this as otherwise you'll have syrup all over your kitchen. Keep pouring, be patient. Don't let the cake stay in the tin for too long though, otherwise the syrup will form a sticky glue to the tin!

Finally, sift the icing sugar in a bowl, add the lemon zest and juice and mix thoroughly until the mixture resembles a paste (or a loose face mask), then spoon this on the cake. If it's really a loose consistency, add a few tablespoons of icing sugar to thicken the icing, but I found I just needed to spoon it slowly over and over again the same spots on the cake and then finally the icing set - am loathe to add any more icing sugar than absolutely necessary, it's the lemon flavour I'm after!

And that's it, the lemon drizzle cake is ready for scoffing ;-) Now go and make one this Friday and raise some money for a good cause...

Spiced Christmas Cake Revisited!

Am really getting into this gluten-free business. Except for the waffles on Christmas Eve, the last two cakes I've baked over the Christmas period have been without wheat flour, and I reckon they taste better than cakes with wheat.

This is basically an adaptation of the 'Spiced Christmas Cake with a flourless twist' from last week, otherwise known in my family as "Signe's new favourite cake"! All I did differently was replace the spices, with 4 tbsp cocoa powder to the butter while it was melting, and instead of whisky, I used the equivalent measure of brandy. Oh, and a bit more coffee (closer to half a mug). You could leave the spices in of course, if you like that Germanic Christmas cake flavour, but I went for the chocolate bonanza!

So, here's a redacted version of what is undoubtedly my new favourite cake of 2008! See below for how to make the icing...

Mocha Glaze:

• 80g icing sugar, sifted
• 80g butter, melted
• 2 tbsp cocoa
• 2 tbsp strong coffee
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Simply place all the ingredients in a bowl, stir til it looks like a glaze, adjust ingredients to taste - I like mine quite strong, not too sweet - and then glaze the cake in as messy a fashion as you wish...

Spiced Christmas cake...with a flourless twist

Christmas can be quite unforgiving for those with a wheat intolerance, or Coeliacs. But given the array of fruit, nuts and spices on offer this time of year, it's actually the ideal occasion to bake gluten-free cakes - they can be wonderfully rich and moist, and usually keep better than their wheaten siblings.  I'm not coeliac myself, but a few enquiries about gluten free baking got me thinking it was high time I experimented with some alternatives to wheat flour.

So I thought I'd concoct this festive recipe using ground almonds and a very fine corn "flour" which resembles corn starch. You could also use gluten-free flour if you have it, or potato starch, but I happened to have the first two ingredients in the larder. 

The result? A light, yet moist yuletide cake, replete with all the good things in life - brown sugar, fragrant Christmas spices and a hint of whisky. Fabulous eaten on its own, or with a dollop of greek yogurt. Excellent, of course, with a steaming cup of tea or coffee...

Good tidings everyone!

Ingredients:

• 180g ground almonds
• 120g corn Flour
  
• 180g brown sugar
• 1 pot (125g) greek yogurt
• 100g melted butter
• 3 eggs, separated
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 small shot espresso or 2 tablespoons strong coffee
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp cardamom
• 1 tsp vanilla 
• 1 tsp ginger
• 1/4 tsp clove
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 2 tbsp whisky or brandy (not essential, but this really deepens the flavour)
• pinch salt
  
  
  mmm...whisky!
  
  

Preheat oven to 190C. Lightly grease a 22cm diameter cake tin, or a heart-shaped tin like you see in the photos (am spending Christmas with my parents, this is all I could find...)

You'll need a couple of mixing bowls: in the largest, sift all your dry ingredients: almonds, corn flour, sugar, spices, baking soda and salt

In the medium one, place your egg whites

In a small one lightly break up the egg yolks, and add the yogurt 

Start whisking the egg whites and bring them to stiff peak - see photo below. Add a teaspoon of sugar and whisk again to stiff peak

 

In the dry ingredients bowl, make a well and add the melted butter, coffee, whisky and egg/yogurt mix. Stir through so everything is evenly incorporated

Then take a spoonful of the beaten egg whites and add to the mixture to loosen it. Once you've done this, fold in the remaining egg whites, carefully circulating your spoon (like a figure 8 I was once told) until the egg white is mixed in and the mixture resembles a mousse consistency. This adds a bit of levity to your cake, so try not to over-fold at this point. If a few egg white splodges here and there pop up then panic not...

Finally pour this into your prepared cake tin and place on the central shelf of your oven. Turn down the heat to 180C after the first 10 minutes and continue to bake for 35-40 minutes. The photo here is of the mixture before it went in the oven:

and voila! here's the finished result:

* NB Ground almonds can be quite expensive, what I did with this cake was simply grind whole almonds in one of those Braun handblenders that has a chopping/magimix function. Works a treat! Also allows you to grind the almonds to a coarse consistency, rather than a fine, floury one...

Lemon Poppyseed Cake...with a dollop of Quark and "rips" (norwegian for redcurrants)

Sundays are meant to be relaxing. A time to recalibrate, catch up with family or friends, walk the dog, go to the cinema, an exhibition, or even shopping (my least-favourite activity in the world - seriously). These are things perfectly sane people do on a Sunday, however I decided to do a stock-take of my kitchen cupboard as various items such as jars of pesto and bags of sugar kept falling on my head every time the cupboard door was ajar. Infuriating to say the least, and I'm easily ired, so I spent a couple of serene hours listening to Magic FM, whilst scrubbing the inside of the cupboard, re-organising all the jars of pesto and bags of sugar and then suddenly it occurred to me that I am in possession of far too much food. The mission for Sunday? Use up the remnants of the following: poppyseeds, ground almonds, polenta (uncooked), couple of lemons, etc. There's so much brown sugar in my cupboard that later this week will see a cornucopia of cookies, ginger cake and brown sugar oat & apricot muffins in the scandilicious kitchen...Oh, and I wrote down all the items in the cupboard which will go up as the official cupbopard stock-list on the inside of the door. Clearly I need to get out more. 

This lemony cake is akin to an American-style cornbread, which needs something like quark, or greek yoghurt to go with it (or lashings of butter if you're so inclined). If by chance you're feeling peckish on a Sunday, this is an extremely easy wheat-free cake to throw together - gluten-free, though not dairy-free as you'll see, especially with the extra dollop of quark on the side as evinced in the photo, one step at a time folks... 

Ingredients

• 180g polenta (cornmeal)
• 100g ground almonds
• 140g caster sugar
• 100g melted butter
• 100g Quark
• 2 eggs
• zest & juice of 1 lemon
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/8 tsp salt

You'll need to lightly oil a 20cm round cake tin. Preheat oven to 180ºC

Place all the dry ingredients into a medium bowl and blend together to distribute the raising agents 

In a small bowl, using a fork mix the eggs with the quark and zest & juice of lemon. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add this to the well, blending in with the melted butter, until the mix is even. Spoon into cake tin and bake on the centre shelf for 45 minutes...

Serve with a dollop of either quark or fromage frais. For a more indulgent treat serve with creme fraiche or vanilla-whipped cream...I also squeezed the juice of one more lemon on top of the cake for a bit of zinginess!