Scandi Christmas stall at Covent Garden: Part II

Niamh aka Eat Like A Girl and I larking around at Covent Garden on Thursday - photo courtesy of Lucy Pope






Re-arranging cinnamon buns with Lucy Pope - photo courtesy of A Forkful of Spaghetti



The Scandi Christmas baking spread...photo courtesy of A Forkful of Spaghetti

So market day at Covent Garden came and went, and what fun it was. The gods provided with sunshine and a balmy 10 degrees celsius throughout the afternoon, and I was lucky to share a stall with the lovely Niamh - also known affectionately as the "pork mistress" for her mighty pork sandwiches with lashings of the BEST crunchy crackling in all of WC1! Niamh's a dab hand at this market melarkee as she's been manning a stall twice a week since the summer and her pork sandwiches fast became a staple lunchtime treat for those who work nearby Covent Garden this autumn and I can see why - having sampled her fare I'm now a pork sandwich addict

We had lots of visitors throughout the day, both punters looking around the market on a Thursday afternoon and friends and food bloggers who came down to support us by saying hello, and of course to sample the food! Niamh very kindly proffered a glass of prosecco mid-afternoon and we chatted throughout the afternoon, marvelling at the friendly visitors and the occasional cheeky passesrby - you see the extremes of human nature at a market Niamh said and I completely agree, fascinating stuff to an anthropologist. Believe it or not, someone asked Niamh if she did 2 for 1 on her sandwiches, and when I put out samples of cakes mid-afternoon two modellesque girls came round not once or twice but five times to nibble on samples. The cheek! Having two crazy aunts in Norway who used to model let me repeat my maxim in life here:

"Never trust a model as beauty corrupts the brain"

Anyway, it was a brilliant day and I wish I could do it again next week as Niamh was such fun to pal around with. From Tuesday though I'm off to Lanzarote for yuletide holiday frolics with my Ma and Pa so any reprises down at Covent Garden will have to wait til 2010

Below are recipes from the most popular cakes and biscuits of the day, if you have any specific queries about them drop me an email or leave a comment

Happy holidays to you all :-)



Let's start with the three chocolatey cakes:

tropisk aroma or spiced chocolate marble cake with nutmeg and cinnamon. The nutmeg dominates and with a coffee-chocolate icing I this is a firm family favourite which keeps up to a week and can be frozen if need be for future cake scoffing

Recipe:

Cake:

250g refined spelt flour
250g golden caster sugar
150g butter, softened
2 medium eggs
120 ml whole milk with 2 tbsp plain yoghurt
2 tsp grated nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp strong coffee or espresso
pinch salt

Filling and icing:

200g icing sugar
200g butter, softened
4 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-2 tsp coffee powder (depends how much coffee you like)
pinch salt

Method:

Preheat oven to 180C. Lightly oil 23cm round cake tin and fit the bottom with baking parchment

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar til pale and fluffy (circa 5-8 minutes). Add the eggs one at a time along with a spoonful of flour to stop the mixture splitting, whisking after each egg to incorporate it into the mixture. Add the spices, remainder of flour and alternate this with the milk and coffee to create a thick cake batter

Take 1/3 of the cake mixture and place in a smaller bowl, add the cocoa powder and stir through until the mixture looks even

Place half the plain mixture at the bottom of the cake tin, then layer the chocolate mixture on top. Cover with the remaining half of plain mixture and using a fork, swirl through the two mixtures to create a marbled effect. Bake on the middle shelf for 35-40 minutes. The cake is done when a skewer is inserted and no wet mixture remains on the skewer

While the cake cools on a wire rack, make the filling: cream the butter whilst adding the icing sugar, coffee and cocoa powders, and vanilla extract, taste as you go along as icing is subjective - some like it very buttery, others intensely sweet. I like a balance of butter, sugar and chocolate/coffee myself

When the cake is completely cool, spread the icing all over. Sprinkle extra cocoa powder on top if you like a cocoa hit or simply leave it plain. Savour with a cup of tea or coffee

Cardamom-Chocolate Cake

There was a run on this cake, definitely a hit with both punters on the day and food bloggers who came down to visit Niamh and I. Cardamom and chocolate is a match made in heaven - grind the cardamom pods yourself if you have the time and inclination, I like to coarsely grind them so you get a few small seeds of cardamom rather than fine powder. The occasional cardamom crunch when eating this cake is an unexpected treat I find. This recipe is an adaptation of Nigella's dense chocolate loaf in 'How to be a domestic goddess' but I've substituted plain flour for spelt and reduced the sugar and syrup quantities and upped the chocolate

Ingredients:

250g softened butter
350g dark muscovado sugar (light will do fine)
250g refined spelt flour
150g dark chocolate, melted
2 heaping tbsp cocoa powder
2 medium eggs
200ml boiling water
1 shot espresso or strong coffee
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1-2 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp salt

Method:

Preheat oven to 190 C. Lightly oil a 23 x 13 x 7 cm loaf tin

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time along with a spoonful of flour to stop the mixture splitting. Add the melted chocolate and incorporate fully before adding coffee, cocoa powder, flour, the boiling water, cardamom, bicarb and salt. It should be a thick liquid batter

Pour this into the prepared loaf tin and bake on the middle oven shelf at 190 C for the first 1/2 hour, then reduce the oven temp to 170 C and bake the cake for a further 15 minutes. The cake will rise, but once you remove it from the oven it will shrink slightly and look like it collapses. This is normal.

Cool on a wire rack. Needless to say this is great on its own but also good with a dollop of creme fraiche on the side. As Nigella says, this is like gingerbread in that it improves as it ages so worth making up in double batches if you can


Gingerbread with lemon icing

another Nigella classic. What can I say, the woman can bake

It's worth making this in double batches, it's VERY popular!

Ingredients:

300g spelt flour
150g butter
125g dark muscovado sugar
200g golden syrup
200g black treacle
2 teaspoons fresh ginger
1 tsp cinnamon (and I add 1/2 tsp clove, 1/2 nutmeg)
250ml milk
2 eggs
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda mixed with 2 tbsp warm water
1/2 tsp salt

Icing:

200g icing sugar
zest of 1 lemon
2-3 tbsp lemon juice

Method:

Preheat oven to 170 C. Lightly oil a 30 x 20 x 5 cm rectangular cake tin

In a large saucepan melt the butter, sugar, syrup, treacle, spices, ginger. Add the milk, eggs, bicarb off the heat.

Add the liquid to the flour in a large bowl and beat well until the mixture looks even.

Pour into cake tin and bake 45 minutes to 1 hour

As the cake is cooling, make the icing:

sift icing sugar in a bowl, whisking in the lemon juice and zest. The icing should be thick not runny so don't add too much liquid...

spread over cooled gingerbread with a palette knife and leave to set before cutting slices. Keeps for a good couple of weeks if you can resist eating it in one go

Kokosmakroner or coconut macaroons

these mallowy macaroons are dead-easy to make and the coconut acts as a humectant so they stay soft for ages. Dip in melted dark chocolate for that 'bounty' effect or eat plain as they're moreish on their own

Ingredients:

4 egg whites
180g caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
250g shredded coconut

Method:

Meringue the egg whites and sugar til stiff peak, then fold in the coconut. Bake at 170 degrees celsius for 10-15 minutes and allow to dry on a wire rack before eating

Almond Raisin Cake with Manzanilla Sherry

Manzanilla may seem an odd choice for cake as it's bone dry, but I love that ozone savouryness to Manzanilla and had half a bottle languishing in the fridge so I thought I'd bake a sherry-fied cake with it. Thanks to A Forkful of Spaghetti for tweeting me a recipe! This is my version:

Ingredients:

200g raisins
200g manzanilla sherry
150ml plain yoghurt
150ml melted butter
150g light muscovado sugar
3 medium eggs
150g spelt flour
100g ground almonds
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp salt

Method:

preheat oven to 180 C. Lightly oil a 20cm round cake tin. Whisk the eggs and sugar til pale and fluffy. Add the melted butter, the yoghurt, flour, almonds, salt and raising agents to the mixture and combine til evenly incorporated. Fold in the raisins, adding some of the sherry too if you fancy :-)

Spoon the cake mixture into the cake tin and bake on the middle oven shelf for 35-40 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Drizzle with icing sugar, or skewer the cake a few times and use up the remaining sherry liquid to pickle the cake...

Needless to say, great with a glass of sherry



lefse or potato pancake - cheat's version available at Scandinavian Kitchen

This is usually served with a cup of coffee in Norway and a childhood favourite of mine. I love lefse, which is a soft potato-wheat pancake filled with cinnamon buttercream and folded like a book.

For 10 lefse you'll need 5 sheets of the pre-fab stuff you get at the Scandinavian Kitchen plus:

150g butter
100g creme fraiche
150g icing sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

Cream the butter til pale then add the creme fraiche, whisking til its incorporated and add cinnamon, sugar, salt. Taste to see if it's right for you - remember the potato-wheat lefse is quite bland. Place a dollop of mixture on a sheet of lefse, spread evenly and then fold in the sides. Keep in an airtight container

Julia Child's Reine de Saba

They don't make them like Julia Child anymore

Yep, I'm officially on the bandwagon of Julia enthusiasts. Spank me with a spatula but I grew up reading cookbooks from the 60's so Julia was a familiar figure in our family - my Mother's vintage edition of that other doyenne of American cookery Fanny Farmer sat alongside the Great Scandinavian Cookbook - an ersatz Larousse with some gravlax and smoked sheep heads thrown in - and a signed copy of the Ballymaloe Cookbook (OK, not from the 60's but from the 70's) summers spent in New England meant we accumulated quite a few classic American cookbooks, but Child really was in a league of her own

Patrician, francophile and in possession of an extraordinary voice that bordered on comical, Julia Child was a salt-of-the-earth sort of woman, that breed of tough cookies who were unconventional and ever so slightly eccentric. I like Child for what she represented: a smart, self-assured woman who was didactic and a true enthusiast for all things French, her integrity as a cookery writer lay in her singular dedication to a craft and perfecting the techniques inherent in classic French cooking. This is rather quaint in our age of instant gratification, in which food is entertainment and we're constantly bombarded with bland cookery books and banal TV programmes

A lesser woman would have accepted being placed in a class of bored housewives at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, but Child aimed higher and evinced a diligence and work ethic in the professionals' class that paid off - her determination meant she literally did master all the skills integral to French cooking, and eventually she wrote her magnum opus "Mastering the Art of French cooking" a book now in probably it's 200th re-print

So when Niamh of the blog Eat Like A Girl emailed the London Food and Drink Bloggers last week asking if anyone was interested in attending a screening of the forthcoming film 'Julie & Julia' I jumped at the chance. You can read plenty of reviews about Nora Ephron's film about blogger Julia Powell re-creating every recipe from Julia Child's masterpiece, my only comment on this otherwise well-executed film is why did Julia Child's life not merit a film in itself? Why did it take a simpering, narcissist blogger desperate for a book deal to resurrect the unfashionable, warbling Julia? Meryl Streep stole the show as Child and I suspect that's not merely down to her skill as an actor. Child is the compelling character in this film, and I have to admit that despite my enjoyment of the film as a whole I left the screening with a sense of disappointment that this formidable woman wasn't the main focus

Anyway, enough eulogising about Julia Child. You can read more about her in the following features: AA Gill's piece here in the Sunday Times, Michael Pollan's New York Times article and another Times article on the business of cookbooks finally this piece in last month's Vanity Fair is well worth a read. If you're a keen bean have a look at Child's cookery programmes on YouTube

Without further ado, here's a recipe from 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' for her favourite chocolate cake: the Reine de Saba or Queen of Sheba...a cake as robust and full of character as the 6ft 1" Child was

Ingredients:

• 110g (4 oz) butter, softened
• 110g caster sugar or light brown sugar
• 110g dark chocolate (70% or higher)
• 55g plain flour
• 55g ground almonds
• 3 medium eggs, separated
• 2 tbsp strong coffee, rum or brandy
• pinch of salt

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 C. Lightly oil and dust with flour a 20cm diameter cake tin

Place the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, allow to melt and cool

In a large bowl cream the butter and add the sugar, creaming until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Then add the melted chocolate and coffee/rum/or brandy. In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff peaks form, then add a spoonful of sugar and whisk to stuff peak again. Add a spoonful of the egg white to the chocolate mixture to break it up and then add the flour and ground almonds. Add the remainder of the egg white mixture to the large bowl, stirring through with either a large spatula, a la Child's method, or with a large metal spoon. Use figure of eight motions and fold in the eggwhite to the cake mixture with a gentle motion. If you're heavy-handed you'll knock all the air out. Better to have some pockets of flour or egg mixture dotted through the mixture then to be over-zealous about distributing all the ingredients

Pour this into your cake tin and bake on the middle oven shelf for 25-30 minutes. The cake is ready when it's spongy to the touch, doesn't wobble anymore and a skewer inserted comes out clean

Let the cake cool on a wire rack, then decorate as you wish. Child made a rich chocolate and butter icing which goes well, but I just dusted some cocoa powder on top

* If you're gluten-intolerant simply substitute the flour with the same quantity ground almonds, or about 40g gluten-free flour

Julia Child's "My life in France" published in the UK by Duckworth 2009

Cake & Cocktails

photo courtesy of Simon Majumdar

It must be hard being a man

Seriously, I'm increasingly convinced that girls really do have more fun. If you believe the rants of grumpy newspaper commentators, you probably think men (and boys) are so thoroughly emasculated by women and girls' advancement in every sphere that men are now reduced to quivering jellies in the face of such Boadiceaesque fierceness. "What good are men for?" ask the curmudgeonly commentators, no doubt quivering themselves

Hah! It's a wild exaggeration of course, but I reckon it's easier than ever for women to define ourselves in the way we choose rather than adhere to normative rules. "Real" men are mandated to steer clear of anything too feminine, that smacks of temperamental oestrogen and saddles them with the dreaded tags of 'empathetic', 'sensitive', or even worse ... 'girlie men'

Seriously? Are real men expected to be gruff swaggering autocrats who grunt and eat 16 oz steaks with their bare hands before conquering submissive little women?!

It's an image - note the word image - of the stereotypical chef, and ostensibly food remains one of the last bastions of such fabled masculine prowess. Men dominate the Michelin rankings, and female chefs accorded with that venerable status are - like South African athlete Caster Semenya - questioned whether they might be more XY than XX in their chromosomal makeup

Men supposedly cook manly things like steak, roast suckling pig and other sources of priapic protein. A meal is not a meal without meat, gruffrealgrumpyman will grunt. Women in all their flim-flam and flummery bake cakes, spend their days dreaming about Brad Pitt and salivating over Cath Kidston kitchenware splutter the chauvenist gastronomes. Myths abound - women in kitchens are unwelcome because their hormones interfere with their ability to cook. Yep, I was once told this by a chef, albeit a drunken loon with a potato for a nose. Fearless succubi will distract male chefs from the vital task of producing mind-blowing food say the culinary misogynists, etc., etc.

What blows my mind is why women are saddled with this image of only being interested in cake and the boring aspects of food, like diet and nutrition, or why a woman in the kitchen is cast as either a scary lesbian or dismissed as a succubus? I jest of course, there are countless women who defy such ludicrous cliches. But when Simon Majumdar, author of 'Eat My Globe', one half of the blogging duo Dos Hermanos and self-professed 'Real Man' suggested fellow girlie food blogger Gastrogeek and I give him a lesson in baking last Sunday I relished the chance to dispel the myth that "Real men don't bake"

Um, except when Simon pitched the idea of baking a victoria sponge and making a trifle I uttered an expletive unfit for print. Sponge and trifle rank in the top of least favourite foods - barring cupcakes - for this 'girlie' anthropologist. Anyone who knows me will tell you I rant and rave about how banal cakes in this country are and I may or may not have once referred to the classic trifle as an 'abortion'. A vague anarchic streak in me rebels against anything 'traditional' and these two dishes seem to represent the worst culinary traditions this country has to offer

photo courtesy of Simon Majumdar

As you can tell, I have pretty obnoxious views about food. Anyway, prior to our bake-a-thon, Simon tweeted "are you sure our baking session won't interfere with your Sex and the City marathon?" to which I retorted "I hate Sex and the City, that's where the banality of cupcake evil originated" no doubt to the befuddlement of anyone reading my tweets, after all I'm supposed to be a baker. Clearly we were in for an afternoon of japery, and being a Seinfeld girl I threatened to tweet 'SERENITY NOW!' if the battle of the sexes got out of hand

Of course the great irony is every boy I've ever babysat loves baking. Not that I was babysitting Simon, but boys like to get their hands dirty, which is why I dispatch all my male friends to wash their hands before entering the kitchen or touching any food. Given young boys' predilection for muckiness, it makes sense that they like to get stuck in cracking eggs, mixing cake batter and, if they are younger than age 8, show an endearing disregard for keeping the kitchen clean. Somehow this enthusiasm for baking gets knocked out of boys as they enter adolescence, which is a shame

Anyway, Simon knew better than not to wash his hands in the presence of a Scandi kitchen fascist. In exchange for this tutorial in trifle and sponge making he kindly proffered a bottle of delicious pinot noir, which I assumed we'd be saving for after our bake-a-thon, but then I'd blithely assumed I was going to be teaching Simon how to make cake and trifle

Arriving at midday on a warm Sunday, Simon suggested we fetch ingredients for the afternoon's tutorial. Off we went to buy eggs and butter and about a year's recommended intake of Jersey double cream. Sherry was on our list too and being the sherry novice I deferred to Simon's expertise on the matter - he talked me through the different sherrys available, we settled on a Manzanilla which has a pleasing ozone salty note to it, perfect for soaking the trifle sponge, not to mention sipping

Simon then picked up a bottle of Vermouth and Beefeater gin, again talking me through the different gins (I'm clueless when it comes to spirits, heck I'm clueless when it comes to a lot of things) and suggested with a glint of mischief in his eye that in exchange for entering the girlie orbit of baking, he would reciprocate by giving me a tutorial in cocktail making. Gastrogeek was waylaid by a late luncheon, so in the end it was just us two creaming the butter and trifling away

el maestro de cocteles, or hermano segundo (HS) in action

And so commenced a lovely afternoon of baking and cocktail making. It was honestly one of the more entertaining Sundays I've had all summer - Simon is great company and far from the gruffrealgrumpyman he claims to be. We talked about shooting, his new book, and as one would expect - baking and cocktail-making. Simon pointed out that the two skills, though seemingly divergent, actually dovetail in that they demand a deft touch, precision and a bit of technique. To his credit, Simon also asked a myriad questions about baking methodology, and whether or not he felt emasculated by wearing an apron (I gave him a navy blue chef's stripe one) you'd have to ask him

Needless to say, after the first martini any sensible contribution I made to the conversation vaporised as I tried to focus on standing upright and finishing the task of both sponge and trifle. There was a serious risk I'd end up like the Swedish Chef and the flatmates were decidedly bemused by how much booze was floating about in our kitchen during the bake-a-thon, not to mention how utterly pickled Simon and I were by mid-afternoon

After several delicious, refreshing cocktails, a glass of wine and some nibbles of cheese and olives later we eventually collapsed, I mean sat down and ate both trifle and cake, washed down with a chilled glass of Manzanilla. The whole afternoon was a revelation - Simon had taught me the rudimentary techniques of cocktail making (keep everything chilled) and whether it was the result of transcendent drinking, I came to the conclusion that trifle is not as ghastly as I remembered, and the victoria sponge was extremely tasty. No doubt the generous slathering of clotted cream in the cake helped, and liberal quantities of sherry in the trifle made the experience more memorable

What was the verdict? I retract all snottiness about victoria sponge and trifles - they are great British traditions and I might even make them again. And Simon? Well, you'll have to wait til his next book 'Eating for Britain' is out to read his musings on our cake & cocktail session :D

Recipe for the victoria sponge, or sandwich if you will:

• 170g self-raising flour
• 170g softened butter
• 170g caster sugar
• 3 medium eggs at room temperature
• raspberry jam
• clotted cream
• drop of vanilla essence (not strictly traditional, but gives some flavour)

The classic victoria sponge is all about equal proportions of ingredients so make sure you're fastidious about measuring everything

Preheat oven to 180 C

Grease a round 20cm cake tin and place a circle of baking parchment on the bottom of the tin

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy:

Then whisk each into the creamed butter mixture, making sure it doesn't split by adding a teaspoon of flour. Fold in the flour, stirring through with a large metal spoon in figure of eight motions until the flour is incorporated to the wet mixture. If it looks a little thick or dry, add a bit of milk or water til the mixture reaches a dropping consistency when you lift some with the metal spoon

Place the mixture in your cake tin, bake on the central oven shelf for 30-35 minutes and go have a cocktail

Recipe for Trifle (adapted from p.658 of the Leiths Cookery Bible, Bloomsbury)

• Waitrose sponge fingers
• a liberal splash of Manzanilla sherry (recipe calls for 4 tbsp, yeah right)
• homemade strawberry freezing jam (or compote, you don't want a sticky jam)
• 150ml whole milk
• 150ml double cream
• 5 egg yolks, broken up with a fork
• 2 tbsp caster sugar
• 2 drops vanilla essence
• 290 ml double cream (for whipping)
• handful toasted almond slivers
• handful blackberries or other summer berries

First cut the sponge fingers in half, and lay down in the trifle dish, pour over sherry and see if you can resist drinking a glass of manzanilla whilst doing this

Next, prepare the custard: put the 150ml of milk and 150ml of double cream in a saucepan, scald til it steams and then cool for a few minutes before adding a bit of this liquid to the five egg yolks. Add the sugar and vanilla essence, put this back in a clean pan (something to do with enzymes in milk when it scalds, you want to use a clean pan for the custard making)

Heat carefully over a low-medium heat, stirring all the time until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Do not boil the custard otherwise you will have sweet scrambled egg

Pour the custard on to the soaked sponge, then leave til completely cold

Add the strawberry freezer jam or compote, then whip the cream until fairly stiff and spread over the top of the jam. Sprinkle with toasted almonds and blackberries and eat with gluttonous abandon

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...

Lovely lavender...fragrant and calming

I found myself with a small bouquet of lavender at the weekend and couldn't resist rubbing my fingers along the flowers to catch some of that soothing lavender scent. Long known for its calming properties, lavender isn't an ingredient bakers often turn to. This is curious as lavender is such a delightful, quaint fragrance - you can use it for floral breadsticks to serve with goat's cheese for example, or in cakes. I decided to try the latter...

So, at the risk of becoming a bit of a granny, I made a lavender cake. Thinking this might be a tad old-fashioned for modern sensibilities, I threw in lots of orange zest and ground almonds to make a lovely moist, fragrant cake, dispersed with lavender buds which gave occasional bursts of lavender - a delightful reminder of mediterranean sunshine. Go on, give it a try!

Ingredients:

• 200g plain flour
• 100g ground almonds
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 75g butter, melted
• 150g half-fat creme fraiche (using up what was in the fridge!)
• 180g caster sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• zest of 2 oranges
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tsp lavender flowers
• handful flaked almonds

If you want a lighter cake, whisk the eggs with the sugar for 5-8 mins instead of just lightly beating them as I did. Frankly I don't mind a slightly dense cake as long as the flavour's right, but if you're out to impress a real pastry chef then follow the traditional method.

I simply put the dry ingredients in one bowl, liquids in a second bowl, combined the two and gently folded the ingredients together, poured them into a 20m round cake tin (lightly oiled, of course), scattered the flaked almonds on top of the mixture and then baked the cake on the central shelf of a 180 celsius oven for 45 minutes. Phew, easy!

You could of course make a simple sugar syrup infused with lavender and orange zest to glaze the cake with: just take equal quantities of water and sugar (or indeed, half water and half freshly squeezed orange juice), place in a saucepan with the lavender and orange and bring to the boil, then simmer for 5 mins until the syrup looks, well syrupy. Drizzle on the cake when it's cooled down...

* Other edible flowers include violet and rose, make sure you buy un-sprayed ones though, you really don't want pesticide in your cake. 

* apologies to Fiona, I know you requested the butternut squash bread, but I didn't have any squash in the house this weekend. Going to kick-start Hallowe'en later this week with a squash baking bonanza so watch this space ;-)