A Festive Plum and Gingerbread Dessert

This is what happens when one has a hankering for something sweet, and there's no chocolate to reach for! 

I had the following ingredients:

• Pepperkaker, or gingerbread as they're known in English 
• Plum compote from my grandparents' farm
• Plain yoghurt and a tub of Quark

The pepperkaker, I'm sorry to admit, are not homemade but from Ikea. Nothing wrong with Ikea, in fact these spicy cookies are delightfully crisp and moreish, but really if one's going to blog about baking well there should be some baking involved.

But if you happen to have an abundance of cookies in your larder this yuletide season, try this devilishly simple dessert:

All you do is combine equal quantities of yoghurt and quark, stir them together really well to get rid of any lumps.

Place this in a glass, either a pretty martini one as I did (see photo) or in any small cup/glass you have.

Then swirl some plum compote on top, or a compote of your choice - apple, pear, cherry or blueberry would all be excellent I reckon - then crush the gingerbread, sprinkle on top and voila! you've made the easiest, tastiest little dessert this Christmas...

Plums galore

Well, this was certainly a longer than anticipated hiatus from blogging! After an unexpected trip to Norway, I arrived back in London to autumnal greyness and gloom. Actually, that's not strictly true - it's been lovely here. Crisp, cool days with glimmers of sun, and the shops are full of the best autumnal produce - I absolutely love the myriad of plums available this time of year, from Damsons to Greengages, and that old favourite Victoria. There's so much you can do with these little gems, and frankly they're much more interesting than apricots, which so many people obsess about...can't quite see why, apricots are often bland, mushy and weakly perfumed with an indifferent aroma. Make jam from apricots I say, or dry them for use in cereal. Plums, clearly the superior fruit, are the way to go this September! 

And what better way to celebrate these babies than with a fabulous German-inspired 'pflaumkuchen', or plum cake if you will. The ideal way to treat yourself and friends at tea time, this cake lasts for several days. Serve this warm as a naughty pudding if you can't squeeze in an afternoon tea break :-)

Be generous with the plums, the fruitiness of this cake is what makes it so sublime

Ingredients

• 12-14 plums, quartered
• 200g butter, melted
• 170g caster sugar
• 150g self-raising flour
• 150g ground almonds
• 125g plain, unsweetened yoghurt
• 4 medium eggs
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon - or indeed any spice you have a predilection for! Orange zest also goes v.well with this...
• handful of slivered almonds or coarsely chopped hazelnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 180 ºC. Lightly grease a 24cm round cake tin

Whisk the eggs and sugar in a large mixing bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the dry ingredients and stir through with a large metal spoon a few times. Then pour the melted butter around the perimeter of the bowl (stops the butter from sinking into a blob at the bottom of the bowl), and fold through, scraping the sides of the bowl to incorporate as much of the butter as possible. Then add your yoghurt and give the mixture a few more stirs until it looks even.

Don't worry if there are pockets of flour bobbing about, you want to keep as much of the air from the whisked eggs as possible, so the plum cake is light and fluffy!

Spoon the cake batter into the round cake tin, and then add the plums, lightly pushing them down into the batter. They will sink slightly during the baking process so don't bother arranging them too much...

Scatter the nuts on top if you're using them, and then bake on the central shelf of the oven for 45mins-1 hour. The cake will look a little underdone initially, so it's worth checking with a skewer for doneness.  The skewer should come out clean, with no uncooked cake batter on it.

When the cake is baked, allow to cool on a wire rack for 10-15 minutes. Delicious served warm, with a dollop or three of either sour cream, vanilla custard or (healthier option, and not any worse for it!) Greek yoghurt...mmm!

Recession-busting Raspberry & Almond Muffins

High summer has just passed its peak, and we're being buffeted by autumnal gusts of wind, the occasional drizzle - or indeed downpour as I write - of rain. Not to mention gloomy economic news. The evenings are cooler, but I love the fact that fresh air is breezing through my window at night, as opposed to the humid, warm air of weeks gone by. Historically, I've always been a fan of summer - months spent in the sun, by the sea, and plenty of opportunity for grazing on berries and yummy fresh beans and peas and other seasonal gems. This year's buzz word for a trendy holiday? A "staycation" which is an abomination of the English language, but kinda sums up the mood of the nation - stay at home this August, and reap the benefits of, well, the rain. Instead of gloom and doom, I'm embracing the imminent arrival of autumn. It's less frenzied, everyone's returning to work or school, but the highlight for me has to be the colours - soft and warm and pleasing to the eye. There's nothing like a walk through one of London's parks in September and October - and I can't wait for plums, in all their shades from yellow to purple, to be fully in season. Not to mention indigo blueberries, tart apples and sweet juicy pears. Bring on autumn I say!

So this recipe is a swansong for summer's princess of red berries: a muffin speckled with the last of British raspberries, fragrant orange zest and lovely ground almonds - with a helping hand from some yogurt too. The method? Couldn't be easier, so no excuses, get baking!

Makes 6-8 jumbo muffins or 12-14 regular ones. These freeze like a charm...

• 200g ground almonds
• 100g melted butter
• 125g plain flour
• 125g caster sugar
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• juice and zest of two small oranges
• 75ml yoghurt - milk will do fine, just happened to have yogurt to hand...
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 150g raspberries - reckon chopped dried apricots would work too (a la the great birthday cake my flatmate made last week!)

Preheat oven 190ºC, and line the muffin tins with parchment paper or lightly oil each cup

Put all dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl, add the eggs, melted butter, yogurt, and stir through, then add the raspberries, scoop into muffin tins and bake for 20-25 minutes (longer for larger muffins, add 10 mins extra)

The virtues of Bircher muesli with vanilla-infused honey

At the risk of plumbing the depths of blogging banality, I decided to post a feature on bircher muesli: a breakfast cereal which originated at the start of the 20th century when Swiss physician Dr Maximillian Bircher-Benner advocated soaking oats and grated apple with a teaspoon of lemon juice in lots of condensed milk, then eating it the next day. If the thought of condensed milk with your breakfast cereal makes you feel a little nauseous, then remember these were the days before dairy pasteurization was widespread, and fresh milk carried rather severe health risks such as tubercolosis...

Anyway, bircher muesli is my summertime breakfast favourite, a welcome ersatz for winter's oatmeal porridge. Plenty of other people have written extensively about the health benefits of oats: a source of slow-releasing energy seemingly capable of preventing all sorts of illnesses from diabetes to cancer. Be that as it may, I just love the taste of oats, so if you're a breakfast fiend like me, try this muesli during warmer summer months - not only is it full of fibre, but the soaked oats are more digestible so you're not left with a bloated belly after breakfast. 

Make sure you use large, rolled oats though, not the quick-cooking kind for instant porridge which will turn into a unpalatable, gloopy mush! Some people like to use apple juice to soak their oats, others use yoghurt or plain old milk - in Germany I had bircher muesli soaked in cream, a decadent treat, but perhaps too filling early in the morning. The best way I've found is to follow this simple formula: rolled oats, grated apple, and milk. This is your bircher base, and then you can top it with fruity things such as summer berries, bananas, nuts such as almonds or walnuts, and seeds such as linseeds, sesame seeds, etc. 

Makes 5 servings (weekends are reserved for pancakes, waffles and other brunch treats!)

• 225g oats (ca. 3 tbsp oats per day)
• 2 grated granny smiths (or similarly tart apples)
• enough milk to cover

Place the oats and grated apple in a large bowl or tupperware container, stir through with a spoon, and then cover with milk. The oats will swell during the night, so make sure you don't fill the bowl/container all the way to the top! Cover with clingfilm

In the morning, take your portion out and top with whatever you have available. This morning I used a dollop of plain bio yoghurt, some rather crimson-coloured strawberries and a few squirts of my favourite sweet treat: acacia honey infused with the seeds (and pod) of half a vanilla pod, the perfect foil for nutty oats and slightly tart grated granny smiths...breakfast bliss!