apricot and almond cake with a cinnamon topping

apricot and almond cake with a cinnamon topping

21 Jan 2019

Christmas heralds the all too brief apricot season. I spent Christmas in Brisbane and when I returned home to Sydney, I spied some beautiful apricots in the fruit shop. I came home with a dozen, determined to turn them into an apricot cake. 



I looked through my copy of the Cook's Companion by Stephanie Alexander and came across the Mieze's plum cake recipe. I've made something similar to this before and wondered how it would work if I used apricots instead? I found an apricot and almond cake recipe in Sweet, which looked very similar to the plum cake recipe, so decided to give it a go.



I made the cake and took it with me to our New Year's Eve beach picnic which unfortunately was washed out. I left without trying a piece of the cake and decided to make it again, this time for my work colleagues.


Here's the recipe for you which makes an 8 inch cake. For all my recipes I use a 250 ml cup, a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C. 

Apricot and almond cake with a cinnamon topping (adapted from Stephanie Alexander recipe for Mieze’s Plum Cake) 

Topping 
5-6 large apricots halved and stoned 
50g caster sugar 
½ tsp ground cinnamon 
30g unsalted butter 
pinch salt 
1 large egg 
25g ground almonds 

Cake 
125g unsalted butter, softened 
100g caster sugar 
finely grated zest of 1 small lemon  
1 tsp vanilla extract 
2 large eggs 
70g self-raising flour 
70g plain flour 
Pinch salt 
1-tbs milk or yoghurt 

Method
To make the topping, combine the sugar, cinnamon in a small bowl. Sprinkle one tbs of the cinnamon sugar over the cut surface of the apricots. Set to one side. Melt the butter in a small saucepan and add the remaining cinnamon sugar and salt. Stir to combine, and then remove from the heat. Allow to cool for 5 minutes, stir through the beaten egg and set aside. 

Preheat the oven to 190°C and grease an 8 inch/20cm round spring-form tin and line with baking paper. Place the butter, sugar, lemon zest and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer and mix until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl a few times. Sift the flours and salt into another bowl, reduce the speed of the mixer to low and add the dry ingredients to the creamed mix. The mixture should be of a dropping consistency so if the mixture is looking too dry add a tablespoon or 2 of milk or yoghurt.  

Spoon the batter into prepared tin (it should not fill more than a quarter of the depth, as the cake rises a great deal), smooth the top and sprinkle over ground almonds. Arrange the apricot halves on top, cut side facing up, starting around the outside edge of the tin and working towards the centre, then spoon the cinnamon topping over and around the apricots. 



Bake at 190°C for about 1 hour, or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Set aside for 20 minutes in the tin to cool before removing and serving warm, with some cream alongside if desired. 

I took this into work worried that the apricots might be a bit too tangy and the cake too dry. The apricots were tangy but in a good way and the longer the cake was stored the more moist and delicious it became. Next summer when apricots are back in abundance I'll definitely be making this cake again.

See you all again next week with some more sweet treats from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

Read more

banana crumble cake

banana crumble cake

1 Oct 2018

When I was in Brisbane last month I had some spare time to fill. I hadn't brought anything with me to read so I spent some time going through my parents copy of Stephanie Alexander's book, The Cook's Companion, bookmarking recipes I'd like to try when I was back home in my own kitchen.



I found lots of things I'd like to make but what caught my eye was this simple banana cake, topped with a walnut crumble. I do like a good old fashioned banana cake.



The key to a good banana cake is to use manky old bananas, the browner the better.  The Asian grocery store across the street from where I work, often sells battered and bruised bananas for $1.00 a bunch. I bought a bunch then waited another week until they were even more battered and bruised before mashing the bananas to make the cake. The ones you see photographed are not the ones I used, as they're not very photogenic. I had everything else I needed in my pantry so come Sunday morning I set to work.



Here's the recipe for you which is adapted from Stephanie Alexander’s Simple Banana Cake, from The Cook’s Companion while the topping comes from Belinda Jeffery's book Mix and Bake. The recipe can be baked in a 8 inch square cake or in a loaf tin. For all my recipes I use a 250 ml cup, a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C. 



Banana Crumble Cake
Walnut or pecan topping
17g plain flour
27g brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon 
15g cold unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
35g pecans or walnuts

Method
Place the flour, sugar, cinnamon and butter into a small food processor and whiz to combine. Add the nuts and pulse until the nuts are coarsely chopped. Tip into a bowl and chill while you prepare the cake batter.

Cake
125g softened unsalted butter
1 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed ripe banana
1 tsp vanilla
200g self raising flour
50 g plain flour
pinch salt
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/3 cup buttermilk or yoghurt

Method
Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease and line the base and sides of a loaf tin with baking paper. 

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla until pale and fluffy. Beat in eggs and the banana. Sift dry ingredients into a bowl and add to mixture, alternating with buttermilk or yoghurt. Spoon the mixture into tin, levelling the top then scatter the topping over the cake batter. Bake for 1½ hours or until a fine skewer inserted comes out clean.

Cool cake in its tin on a wire rack for a few minutes before turning out. Cool completely before cutting and storing in an airtight tin.



The cake came out of the tin smelling delicious whilst the cake itself was dense moist and redolent of bananas. If you don't fancy making the walnut topping you could ice the banana cake with a simple lemon icing or top with cream cheese icing. I still have some mashed banana in the freezer and have a few more banana cake/bread recipes I'd like to try.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

Read more

lemon and ginger syrup cake

lemon and ginger syrup cake

27 Aug 2018

I was in Brisbane unexpectedly last week and with some time on my hand I decided to bake a cake. I was going to make an almond cake but Dad suggested I make something a little less ambitious. I turned to an old copy of the Cook's Companion and after looking through it I made an old favourite, Angie's lemon cake. I hadn't made the cake in ages and I'd forgotten how delicious it is. By the time I left Brisbane the last piece had been eaten.



Now that I'm back home again it's time to return to my normal routine. A few weeks ago one of my long time patients, Peter, brought me some home grown lemons. With lemons in the fruit bowl and preserved stem ginger in the cupboard I planned to make Tamasin Day-Lewis's recipe for drenched ginger and lemon cake. In the end it seemed easier to adapt what I already had so with the addition of some finely chopped preserved ginger and a spoonful of the ginger syrup, I turned my lemon syrup cake into a lemon and ginger syrup cake.



You can make the entire cake in a food processor but I chose to use my hand beaters and a bowl. I first whizzed the lemon rind and sugar in the little food processor attachment that came with my stick blender. If you don't have one of these handy items or a food processor, just rub the finely grated zest through the caster sugar with your hands to release the oils. If you don't have any ginger syrup I think you could add a small piece of peeled ginger to the lemon juice and sugar while making the syrup. It would work just fine, maybe even better!


Here's the recipe for you which makes a small bundt cake. For all my recipes I use a 250 ml cup, a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C. As always if you want to make a larger bundt cake then double all the ingredients and bake for the same amount of time.

Lemon and Ginger Syrup Cake

Ingredients 

1 lemon

90g caster sugar 

125g self-raising flour 

pinch of salt 

½ tsp baking powder 

125g softened unsalted butter 

2 large eggs 

⅓ cup natural yoghurt, buttermilk or milk

40g finely chopped crystallized or preserved ginger 

Syrup 

60g caster sugar 

The juice of 1 lemon

1tbs ginger syrup (home-made or bought) 

Method
Preheat oven to 170ºC. Grease and flour a small bundt tin and place in the freezer until needed.

Zest and juice the lemon. Pulverise the zest with sugar in a small food processor or just rub the finely grated zest through the caster sugar with your hands to release the oils. Sift flour with salt and baking powder into a small bowl and set to one side.

In a medium size bowl cream the softened butter with the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time followed by the flour, alternating with the yoghurt or milk until you have a nice soft batter. Gently stir through the chopped ginger before spooning the mixture into the prepared tin. Smooth the top and bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes or until the cake is golden brown and tests cooked when tested with a skewer.

While the cake is cooking, make the syrup. In a small saucepan, mix the sugar with the lemon juice and ginger syrup and stir over a gentle heat until the sugar has dissolved. Let it simmer for a minute or two to thicken. Pour a little syrup over the base of hot cake when it comes out of the oven then let the cake cool for 10-15 minutes before turning it out onto a rack. Pour a little more of the syrup over the cake allowing it to absorb. You may not have to use all the syrup. 

Tamasin Day-Lewis serves this cake warm as a pudding with some crème fraiche and leftover syrup. Normally I allow the cake to cool completely before serving. Serve as is or if you like you can serve the cake with a dollop of cream and any remaining syrup. The candied lemon slices you see are completely optional.

I hope you all enjoyed your weekends. See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian

Read more

mieze's plum cake

mieze's plum cake

24 Mar 2014

Hi every-one, you'd have thought I'd be over my plum obsession by now but no. Since my last plum cake post, I've been oven roasting plums with honey and orange juice which I serve with homemade labne and I've made a batch of plum jam as well. Next I want to make a rustic plum tart before the plum season is over.



Last weekend I came home with a big bag of plums from our trip into Maitland and decided it was was time to try this plum cake recipe from Stephanie Alexander.



In the end I slightly adapted my usual plum cake recipe and topped it with the Stephanie Alexander plum topping.



I took the cake into work and waited for the response. No-one really said anything about the cake but when lunch time arrived and there wasn't a single crumb left, I took that as a positive sign. I ate my slice of plum cake during the weekend and it's pretty yummy with a moist vanilla scented base and a cinnamony plum topping.



Here's the recipe for you. If you'd like to make a 23 cm cake, just double the ingredients, the cooking time remains the same.

Mieze’s Plum Cake – Jillian’s adapted version

Ingredients

100 g softened unsalted butter

70 g (scant ⅓ cup) caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

½ cup self-raising flour

¼ cup plain flour

¼ cup almond meal

1 large egg, lightly beaten

3 tbl buttermilk

Additional ¼ cup ground almonds or fresh breadcrumbs

6-8 ripe plums, stoned and quartered

Topping

30 g butter

¼ cup caster sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 large egg

Method

Preheat oven to 200°C and lightly grease and line a 16 cm spring-form tin.

To make the topping

Melt butter and stir in the sugar and cinnamon. Allow to cool a little.

Whisk the egg well and stir into cooled butter mixture. Set to one side.

To make the cake

In a small bowl, mix together the flours and almond meal.

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Mix the egg with the buttermilk and then add to flour mixture. Mix to make a softish dough (it should drop easily from the spoon).

Spoon batter into prepared tin (it should not fill more than a quarter of the depth, as the cake rises a great deal), smooth the top and sprinkle over ground almonds. Arrange plums on top, cut-side up, starting around outside edge and working towards centre. Spoon the topping over and around plums on cake.

Place cake in oven and reduce temperature to 180°C. Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, until a fine skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

To serve 

Serve warm with cream, yoghurt or ice-cream. Any leftover cake can be warmed, wrapped in foil, in the oven at 180°C for 15 minutes.

Just the other day I counted the weeks until I fly to Amsterdam and it's now just 7 weeks. With Easter just around the corner the next month will just fly by. As well as Amsterdam, I'll be spending some time in London, Paris, Copenhagen and Brussels. As it's been a while since my last shop shoot I thought it might be fun to shoot a few shops while I'm away.

If any of my blog readers can suggest some new and exciting shops for me to photograph on my trip I'd be grateful. I like to contact the shop owners in advance to schedule a day and time so you can email your suggestions to me (my email address is in the 'about me' section on the blog) or just leave the information in the comments section if you prefer.

See you all again next week,

Jillian

Read more

quince and nut cake

quince and nut cake

27 May 2013

Autumn has finally hit Sydney with a couple of wet and miserable days. You can tell because people have been searching my blog for recipes for hearty food like lamb shank soup (I just made a batch myself) and lemon delicious pudding. Once I get my act into gear I'll start posting some more wintery recipes.

I poached another batch of quince last weekend and decided to make a quince and nut cake from Stephanie Alexander's book, The Cook's Companion. I made the cake to soften the blow of returning to work.



I altered the recipe a teeny tiny bit by leaving out the allspice and adding some yoghurt to thin out the batter. I also toasted the pecans for 10 minutes before breaking them up a bit because toasted pecans have so much more flavour.



The quince tinted the cake batter a very pretty pale pink. This cake is a melt and mix cake and I'm not a huge fan of that method. The batter was really thick hence the addition of the yoghurt cos no-one likes a dry cake. I was a teensy bit anxious as to how the cake would turn out.



Here's the recipe for you adapted from The Cooks Companion
Ingredients
375 g plain flour 
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
2 heaped teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 cup (125 g) roughly chopped pecans
2 cups poached quince, mashed
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
250 g unsalted butter, melted and cooled completely
½ cup yoghurt (optional)
Icing sugar and cream, to serve.

Method
Line the base of a 23 cm spring form pan with baking paper. Grease and flour the tin. Preheat the oven to 180°C. 

Sift the flour, soda and cinnamon together in a bowl. Stir in the nuts.  In a large bowl, stir together the quince and the sugar. Whisk the eggs into the cooled butter and then gently stir this into the quince mixture. Add in the flour mixture and mix until combined. If the mixture seems too dry, add the yoghurt until the desired consistency is achieved.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin then bake for 55-65 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Cool the cake in the tin. When cool, unmould the cake and sprinkle with icing sugar before serving.



The gang seemed to enjoy the cake and I'll certainly make it again. Next time I'll cream the butter and sugar first (I just prefer the texture) and I'm going to use grated apple instead of quince. I think it would make a nice winter dessert topped with ice cream or a big dollop of cream, or both.

I survived my first week back at work but only just. My poor immune system couldn't cope with all those hospital bugs and after only 2 days back at work I caught a cold so I've spent all weekend coughing and spluttering. I must have been missed though because my workmates gave me a huge bunch of flowers.

I hope your weekend was a bit better than mine.

Bye for now,

Jillian

Read more

oven poached quince

oven poached quince

15 May 2013

Autumn brings with it pears, quince and chestnuts. 



When I saw quince in the fruit market I brought a few home with me. I decided to poach them and dived into my copy of Stephanie Alexanders 'The Cooks Companion' for a recipe.



Quince are tough little numbers so you need a sharp knife to deal with them. Some people pot roast them whole but I find trying to remove the peel, seeds and core from the cooked quince a bit too fiddly for my liking.



Quince are inedible unless cooked and they need long slow cooking. As they cook they change colour from pale green to a rich ruby red. I initially cooked the quince for 2 hours and although they were cooked I wanted them to be ruby red, so I continued cooking them for a further 2 hours. You can see how the colour changes with cooking time.



Here's the recipe for you and it's beauty is in it's simplicity.
Stephanie's poached quince
6 quinces, washed and peeled
2.25 litres light sugar syrup
1 vanilla bean
juice of 1 lemon

To make the light sugar syrup, heat 2 parts water to 1 part sugar and stir until the sugar has dissolved.

Preheat oven to 150°C. Cut quinces into quarters or sixths. Cut out cores and tie loosely in a piece of muslin. Put sugar syrup in a cast-iron pot with vanilla bean, lemon juice and muslin bag, then add quince. Cover tightly and bake in oven for at least 4 (and up to 8) hours until quince is deep red. Do not stir or the quince may break up.

Split the vanilla bean and scrape seeds into the syrup. I reduced the syrup over a medium heat for about 10 minutes. Cool the quince in the syrup.  



I can't really describe the taste of quince. It really is unique. So far I've eaten the poached fruit with some stewed apple and yoghurt and I've served it with  pannacotta. I found a recipe for quince cake that I'm dying to try so if I get round to making it, I'll share that with you.

See you all again soon,

Jillian

Read more

mini passionfruit cakes

mini passionfruit cakes

15 Aug 2012

During the London Olympics, due to the time difference between Sydney and London, most of the interesting events occurred in the middle of the night. There's been precious little entertainment on t.v the past 2 weeks so instead of watching television, I listened to the olympics coverage on the radio and read a book.

One show that has been on the t.v, is MasterChef All Stars. I've only caught a few episodes but I did manage to see last week's Country Women's Association cake challenge. As I love all things passionfruit I decided to track down the CWA Passionfruit Cake recipe which featured on the show. I'd bought a bag of passionfruit the previous weekend and had been looking for a way to use them.



The gas supply to my building is still being fixed. When I had no gas Saturday morning, I wasn't sure I'd have anything to put up on the blog, especially when the plumber was otherwise engaged for the day. By 4.00 p.m. the gas was back on, so I pre-measured all the cake ingredients Saturday night as I knew I'd have to be up early to get these in the oven and baked before my 9.15 Sunday morning cycle class. Gosh that was a long sentence, wasn't it?




As is my way, I changed the recipe a little. Instead of making a single cake I made 9 mini cakes from the recipe which took about 20 minutes to bake. I also used strained passionfruit juice instead of passionfruit pulp. Sometimes crunching through passionfruit seeds you're not expecting to find, isn't such a pleasant experience.




I iced the cakes once I returned home from the gym. The CWA recipe didn't come with instructions for passionfruit icing so I used this one from the Cook's Companion by Stephanie Alexander.

Passionfruit Cake 
250g butter, softened 
1 cup (220g) caster sugar 
3 eggs separated 
2 cups (300g) SR Flour 
¾ cup (180ml) buttermilk 
¼ cup (60ml) passion fruit pulp 

Pre-heat oven to 350°F/180°C. Grease and lightly flour a 20cm/8 in round tin, tap out any excess flour. Beat butter and sugar in a small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy, beat in egg yolks, one at a time, beat until well combined. 

Transfer mixture to large bowl, stir in half the sifted flour and half the buttermilk, then stir in the remaining flour and buttermilk and passionfruit pulp.

Beat egg whites in clean small bowl with electric mixer until soft peaks form. Fold into cake mixture in two batches. Spread mixture into prepared tin. Bake in moderate oven, for about 50 minutes or until cooked. 

Stand for 5 minutes before turning onto covered rack to cool. Ice only on top with passionfruit icing.

Passionfruit Icing
1 cup pure icing sugar, sifted
50 grams unsalted butter, melted
the pulp of 2 passionfruit.

In a small bowl combine the icing sugar, the melted butter and the passionfruit pulp. For a runny icing, place the bowl over a pan of simmering water and stir the mixture for 1-2 minutes or until shiny.



As you can see the mini passionfruit cakes are perfect served with a nice cup of tea. I snaffled one for myself and took the rest into work. They were an absolute hit and devoured by every-one, even by my colleague Michael who declared he doesn't like passionfruit.

Just 2 more busy work days to get through before the weekend. Yippee!

I'll see you all again next week,

Jillian

Read more

lamb shank broth

lamb shank broth

13 Aug 2012

Well we've just had a particularly cold and windy weekend in Sydney, just perfect for a warming bowl of soup served with a chunk of bread. I found this recipe for lamb shank broth in Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion. I've made this soup a few times this winter and have adapted the recipe a little.



The first time I made the soup, I forgot to pick up a leek at the fruit market. It tasted a bit blah, so I refrigerated the soup overnight so I could remove the fat from the top, then I went down the street to the fruit shop and bought a leek. I added the sliced leek to the soup and cooked it for a further 30 minutes. I can't tell you how much extra flavour that 1 leek added to the finished soup.



I do like swede so I used that instead of turnip.



After the 3 hour cooking time, the soup was still a bit watery so I simmered the soup for an additional hour and ended with a chunky, tasty soup. The second time I made the soup I reduced the volume of water to 2 litres. Next time I might try adding a second lamb shank just so there's a bit more meat to go round. 

Here's the original recipe for you.

Lamb Shank Broth from the Cooks Companion by Stephanie Alexander - serves 6
printable recipe
Ingredients
1 lamb shank
1 onion, diced
1 bay leaf
1 sprig thyme
2.5 litres water
20 g pearl barley, rinsed
2 carrots, peeled and diced
1 leek, sliced
1 turnip, peeled and diced
1 stick celery, strings removed and finely sliced
salt and freshly ground pepper
freshly chopped parsley

Place shank, onion, bay leaf and thyme in a stockpot and add water. Bring to simmering point. Skim and simmer for 1 hour, then add barley. Simmer for 1 hour. Add remaining vegetables and simmer for 30 minutes until vegetables are tender.

Remove shank and cut meat into small pieces. Return meat to pot and simmer for 30 minutes. Taste for seasoning. Serve garnished with parsley.

I hope you all enjoyed your weekends and weren't blown away by the wind. Congratulations to all those who completed the City to Surf, including Farmer Andrew.

Jillian

Read more

pronto - tomato and mustard tart

pronto - tomato and mustard tart

1 Apr 2011

I made this tart a while ago in the height of summer when the tomatoes were at their peak. I found this simple recipe in Stephanie Alexander's book, The Cook's Companion.



The recipe contains just a few ingredients so quality produce is important.



The recipe is supposed to feed a number of people but I managed to scoff the lot for my dinner. Simple and delicious - the perfect summer recipe.



Well it's finally Friday and I do admit I'm glad the weekend has arrived. 'Someone' forgot to set the alarm clock last night so I slept in this morning. I managed to get out of bed and out the door in a record time of just 11 minutes. I did miss my train though so it wasn't the best way to start the day .

I'll be back again on Monday so until then,

Have a happy weekend.

Jillian

Read more

Lemon Syrup Cake

Lemon Syrup Cake

6 Oct 2008

Now that I'm back home and back at work, I've started to bake again. I'd planned on baking today but the pears needed for the recipe didn't ripen in time, so that cake will have to wait for another day. The weather has also been very dreary and I do prefer to photograph food using natural light. I did have to use the flash for some of the photos on today's blog when the sun just refused to come out and play.



I've attached 2 lay-outs with lots of lemon syrup cake pictures. I've adapted the lemon syrup cake from a recipe found in Stephanie Alexander's 'The Cook's Companion, which has become my go-to Lemon Cake recipe.



I don't normally sample my cakes but I did eat a piece of this cake and it was good!

Jillian

Read more