Do you remember I made an apple cinnamon cake a few months ago? Whilst it was nice I thought I could make it better so here's my second attempt.
I made the cake when I was home in Brisbane and I thought about making an upside down cake but the cake tin I'd brought with me leaked when I tested it. Instead I baked it in my favourite little spring form tin; iced it with apple flavoured glace icing and topped the cake with some whole walnuts.
Now I can never stop fiddling with recipes or as I like to think of it, improving them. I used more apples in this recipe and instead of grating them I chopped them coarsely before adding the chopped apple to the cake batter.
The chopped apple was pretty chunky so I was a bit worried the apples wouldn't cook through.
The apple glace icing was something I've not tried before. I thought it tasted great and I can see I'll be using it again in the future.
Here's the recipe for you, which makes a 17 cm cake. For a 23 cm cake, just double all the ingredients but keep the baking time the same.
Apple Cinnamon Cake
Cake
1½ cups coarsely chopped, peeled cooking apples
1 (20 ml) tablespoon lemon juice
1¼ cups plain flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
100 g melted unsalted butter
⅓ cup brown sugar
⅓ cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
¼ cup milk or buttermilk
½ cup walnut pieces
Icing
½ cup sifted icing sugar
2 teaspoons butter, melted
The reserved apple and lemon juice.
Additional 1 tablespoon apple juice
Whole walnuts for decoration
Method
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F.
Grease and line a 17 cm spring form tin with baking paper.
Combine the coarsely chopped apple and the lemon juice in a small bowl. Set to one side for 20 minutes. Drain the apples, reserving the juice for the icing. Sift the dry ingredients into a small bowl. Set to one side.
In a medium size bowl combine the melted butter, the sugars and vanilla. Add the egg and beat until well combined. Add the flour and sufficient milk to make a soft batter. Gently fold in the chopped apple and nuts. Spoon into the prepared cake tin and smooth the top.
Place the cake tin on the middle shelf in the oven and bake for 50 - 60 minutes at 180°C/350°F or until the cake is cooked when tested. If the cake is browning too quickly you may have to cover the top with a piece of greaseproof paper.
Place the tin a wire rack to cool. When the cake is cool, remove it from the tin and discard the lining paper.
Icing
In a small bowl, combine the sifted icing sugar and the butter. Add the reserved apple juice and enough juice to make a spreadable icing. Spread the icing over the top of the cake, allowing a little to drizzle down the sides. Let the icing to set a little before decorating with the walnut halves.
If you like, you could leave the cake un-iced and just dust it with icing sugar before serving with a dollop of whipped cream or a scoop of ice cream.
P.S One day I will make the upside down version of this apple cake!
See you all again next week,
Jillian
I've just been on a quick trip home to Brisbane. I did manage to make a cake while I was home but I haven't had any time to prepare the images. Hopefully I'll get that on the blog in the next week or two. Instead I'm bringing you something I made a few weeks ago.
Have you ever cooked with farro? I bought a packet a month ago to make a side dish and with half a packet leftover, I wanted to find ways to use it. I chose this recipe for barley risotto and used farro instead of the barley.
Farro is a very nutty grain and it will never get really soft no matter how long you cook it, so think of this more as a warm grain salad than a risotto.
You oven roast the vegies and next time I make this, I would change the cooking time a little. The beetroot takes quite a long time to cook, so I'd put that in first adding the carrot and pumpkin about 10 minutes later followed by the onion and garlic.
I used my new Le Creuset pan to cook the farro. You may have noticed this blog isn't sponsored so if I use a product, it's because it's something I bought for myself and really use. This was a birthday gift so I now own two; I use them all the time and love them.
It's a very tasty dish which I served with salmon one night and steak the other. I can't wait to make it again, but as I've used all the farro, this time I'll make it with barley.
See you all again next week with something sweet, but if you can't wait and you're looking for some more of my recipes, my latest Delicious Bites post for passion fruit cupcakes can be found here.
Bye for now,
Jillian
My friends know me very well. For my birthday they give me food styling products and subscriptions to food magazines. One of my favourite food magazines is Delicious magazine. Generally the recipes are easy to make and full of flavour.
I found this recipe for spiced moroccan meatball soup in the July 2013 issue and I've made it about 4 times since then. You can prepare the broth and the meatballs in advance, have the vegetables chopped and the whole meal can be put together in about 20 minutes. The recipe uses loads of herbs and spices, fresh coriander stems as well as the leaves and the piece de resistance, Israeli pearl couscous.
Israeli couscous is much larger than regular couscous and doubles it's size when cooked.
The original recipe used beef mince to make the meatballs but recently I've been using lamb mince. I haven't been to Morocco yet so I'm not sure which meat makes the more authentic version but either version is delicious.
I've not made any other changes to the recipe but I have changed the timing a little. I don't like mushy zucchini so I add it last. My couscous takes 10 minutes to cook so I add it in with the carrots. Also fry the meatballs just before you use them for the best texture. Otherwise they toughen so if you do make them in advance, rewarm the meatballs before you place them in the soup.
Here's the recipe for you.
Spiced Moroccan Meatball Soup
2½ tbs olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic coves, crushed
1 teaspoon each ground cinnamon and ground ginger
2 tsp ground cumin
½ bunch coriander, leaves picked and stems chopped
½ tsp dried chilli flakes
2 carrots and 2 zucchinis, cut into 1 cm pieces
4 cups (1L) chicken or vegetable stock
500 g beef or lamb mince
1 egg, lightly beaten
⅔ cup (50g) fresh breadcrumbs
1 cup (200g) pearl (Israeli) couscous
½ cup (40g) flaked almonds
Heat 1 tbs oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add half each of the onion and garlic, then cook stirring for 2-3 minutes until softened. Stir in cinnamon, ginger and 1 tsp cumin, then cook for a further 2 minutes or until fragrant. Transfer to a plate to cool.
Using your hands, combine the cooled onion mixture, mince, egg and crumbs in a bowl and season. Roll into walnut size balls then chill for 10 minutes.
Return pan to medium heat with 2 tsp oil. Add coriander stems and remaining onion and garlic, then cook stirring for 2-3 minutes or until softened. Add chilli flakes and remaining 1 tsp cumin, then cook for a further minute or until fragrant. Stir in the carrot, the couscous, stock and 1 cup (250 ml) water, bring to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes or until the carrot has softened.
While the soup is cooking, heat the remaining 1 tbs oil in a fry pan over medium-high heat. Cook meatballs in batches for 2-3 minutes or until browned. Add the meatballs to the soup and cook for a further 2-3 minutes before adding the zucchini. Cook for a further 3 minutes or until just tender. To serve, sprinkle with coriander leaves and almonds.
I hope you all enjoyed your weekends.
See you all again soon,
Jillian
If you look back through my archives you'll find a few posts featuring blood oranges. When I was growing up, blood oranges weren't available in Australia. It wasn't until a school trip to Europe that I first discovered their existence. I ordered a very expensive glass of orange juice when we were in Italy and when the waiter brought it to me, I thought he'd given me tomato juice. Despite the colour the juice was delicious and almost worth the price we paid.
Now whenever blood oranges are in season I try to find new ways of using them. It's not just the colour that's so appealling, the flavour is a bit more astringent than that of a regular orange.
Last year I made a version of this cake and due to jet lag, it was a bit of a disaster. I thought I'd revisit the cake which I made with a few modifications to the recipe. My polenta flour has gone AWOL, so I left it out entirely making this a blood orange and almond cake.
I made a mini version of the recipe and bought 3 blood oranges at the fruit market and I used every-one of them in the recipe. Blood oranges are a bit smaller than regular oranges so you made need a 4th orange to cover the top of the cake.
When the cake came out of the oven I decided not to douse it with blood orange syrup. Instead I glazed the top with some warm apricot jam thinned down with blood orange juice.
Here's the recipe for you.
BLOOD ORANGE ALMOND CAKE
250g unsalted butter, softened
200g caster sugar
Finely grated rind of 2 blood oranges
3 eggs
1½ cups self raising flour
½ cup almond meal
The juice of 1 blood orange
2 - 3 blood oranges, rind, pith and seeds removed and sliced horizontally
Apricot jam to glaze
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Grease and flour a 23cm/9 inch tin and line the base with baking paper.
Sift the flour and almond meal together into a small bowl. Set to one side. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, orange rind and caster sugar. In a small bowl, lightly beat the eggs then mix into butter mixture. If the mixture starts to look curdled, add a spoonful of the flour mixture.
Add the remaining flour mixture to the batter alternating with the orange juice to make a soft batter. If the batter looks too thick add a little more juice. Spoon the batter into the prepared tin and arrange the blood oranges slices on top.
Bake the cake in the preheated 180°C/350°F oven for about 45 minutes or until the top is lightly golden and cake is cooked when tested with a skewer. Leave the cake to cool on a wire rack.
If desired, just before serving glaze the top of the cake with warmed sieved apricot jam.
I took the cake into work with me today and by lunch time there wasn't a morsel left - always a good sign. I had a little slice and I have to say this is a winner. I'd still make a few changes though. Almond meal is heavier than flour so the cake didn't rise as much as I'd hoped - perhaps a teaspoon of baking powder would help. I'd also add a bit more grated orange rind to give the cake a bit more oomph.
I hope you enjoy the cake as much as I did.
Bye for now,
Jillian
Every week I visit my local fruit shop and come home with a bag of large juicy granny smith apples - my favourite cooking apple. Normally I stew the apples with some sultanas and have stewed apples topped with yoghurt for dessert. Every now and again I need to come up with something a little more fancy for dessert.
These little French Apple Tarts fit the bill.
Apart from apples all you need is some apricot jam and good quality all butter puff pastry and the remaining ingredients you'll probably already have in the pantry.
It's not much of a recipe really. You stew the apples, cut the pastry into rounds, top the pastry with the stewed apples, decorate the tarts with some thinly sliced apples, sprinkle the tarts with caster sugar then bake them until golden, brush the tops with apricot jam and serve. It couldn't be much easier than that!
Here's the recipe for you.
French Apple Tarts - serves 6
375 g good quality all butter puff pastry – I used Caréme
Apple Puree
2 large green apples, peeled, quartered and chopped into chunky pieces (I used granny smith apples)
25 ml water
2 tablespoons caster sugar
15 gm (½ oz) unsalted butter
1 vanilla bean, split in half
Topping
2 small red apples (I used pink ladies)
30 g (1 oz) unsalted butter, melted
caster sugar
Apricot Glaze
½ cup apricot jam
1 tablespoon water
Cream or ice cream, to serve
To make the puree, place the chopped green apples, the water, the sugar, the butter and the vanilla bean in a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and cook gently for approximately 30 minutes or until the apples are soft and the excess liquid has evaporated. Remove the pan from the heat, take out the vanilla pod and allow the apples to cool a little before pureeing them. I used a stick blender but you could use a food processor or you could push the apples through a wire sieve. Check the apple puree for sweetness. You may need to add a little more sugar depending on how tart your apples are. Set the puree aside to cool completely.
Preheat the oven to 250°C/480°F. Line a baking tray with baking paper. On a floured surface, roll the pastry out a little, and then cut out six 10 - 12 cm rounds of pastry. Place the rounds of pastry onto the baking tray. With a sharp knife, mark a border about ½ cm in from the edge of the pastry which will form the side of the tart. Prick the base of each tart with a fork then place the tray of pastry cases into the fridge while you prepare the apple topping.
Peel and core the small red apples then slice into paper-thin slices using a sharp knife or a mandoline. I used a mandoline then cut each apple round into halves. Remove the tray of chilled pastry cases from the fridge and fill the inner circle of each case with 1-2 tablespoons of the apple purée. You may have a little apple puree left over.
Top the purée with the sliced apple, starting at the centre of the tart, overlapping each slice of apple a little to form a circle of apple. The apple slices should completely cover the puree. Using a pastry brush, brush melted butter around the edge of the pastry and gently dab over the apple slices. Sprinkle a teaspoon or so of caster sugar over the sliced apples. This helps the apples slices to colour.
Place the tarts in the preheated oven and bake for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 180°C (350°F) and cook for another 10 minutes until the pastry is golden brown and the apple slices are slightly coloured.
While the tarts are baking, make the apricot glaze. Combine the apricot jam and water in a small saucepan and place over a low heat, stirring until dissolved. Pass the mixture through a wire sieve to remove any chunky pieces, then return the mixture to the pan and bring to the boil. Cook gently until the glaze is clear and the desired consistency is reached.
Remove the tarts from the oven and while the tarts are still hot, brush the apple slices and the edges of the pastry with the hot apricot glaze. Serve warm or cold with ice-cream or cream.
The tarts don't keep well so you'll need to make and serve them on the same day. They're pretty yummy though, so that shouldn't be much of a problem.
I hope you enjoy the tarts.
See you all again soon,
Jillian
I've had some dried sour cherries lingering in the cupboard for about a year. I also have a half used bottle of morello cherries in my fridge. I don't like to waste food so I was looking for a recipe which contained both sour cherries and chocolate. Apart from Black Forest Cherry Cake there are surprisingly few sour cherry chocolate cake recipes on the internet so I decided to come up with my own. I used my old faithful Margaret Fulton chocolate sandwich cake recipe as the starting point, but apart from using jam dissolved in boiling water, everything else is different from the original.
I just love cherries and even though it's not cherry season in Sydney the Washington cherries we get in the supermarket are so nice I can't resist them. I know the food miles involved are horrendous but fresh cherries aren't an integral part of the recipe - I only bought a few for decoration.
I've made the cake twice now, once using dried sour cherries reconstituted in hot water and on the second occasion I used bottled sour cherries drained and halved. I actually prefer the bottled cherries as they're not as sweet as the dried cherries.
The cake is a simple chocolate butter cake that uses dutch process cocoa and berry jam for it's colour and flavour. It could be cherry jam but otherwise any berry jam like raspberry jam will do just fine.
I tweaked the recipe a bit between the first and second version mainly by increasing the cocoa content to make the cake more chocolatey to match the wickedly dark chocolate ganache topping.
I mean, can anything be too chocolatey? Here's the recipe for you. This quantity makes one small bundt cake. For a 21 cm bundt cake, double the ingredients, but keep the cooking time the same.
Ingredients
125 g unsalted butter, softened
⅓ cup caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
¾ cup self raising flour
¼ cup plain flour
3 (20 ml) tablespoons dutch process cocoa
1 tablespoon cherry or raspberry jam blended with sufficient boiling water to make ½ cup, then set aside to cool.
⅓ cup sour cherries, drained and halved or 30 gm coarsely chopped dried sour cherries soaked in hot water for 1 hour then drained.
Topping
75 gm chocolate (I used a combination of milk chocolate and 70% dark chocolate)
75 mls cream
Optional - fresh cherries
Preheat the oven to 190°C. Grease and flour a small bundt tin. I use a 1 tablespoon each of flour and cocoa, sifted if there are any lumps, to avoid getting white flour marks on the sides of the cake.
Sift the flours and cocoa together into a small bowl and set to one side. In a medium size bowl, combine the softened butter, caster sugar and vanilla and beat until light and creamy. Mix in the egg and a spoon of the flour if the mixture starts to look curdled. Mix in the flour alternately with the jam mixture to make a smooth, soft batter. Gently fold in the sour cherries before spooning the batter into the prepared tin.
Bake on the centre rack in the oven for 35 – 40 minutes until the cake tests cooked when a skewer is inserted. Remove the tin from the oven and allow the cake to cool for abut 15 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack. Allow the cake to completely cool before decorating.
Chocolate Ganache
Chop the chocolates into small pieces and place in a small bowl. Heat the cream in a small saucepan or in the microwave until just below boiling point. Pour the cream over the chocolate and allow the mixture to sit for about 10 minutes until the chocolate melts. Stir until the mixture until smooth then set to one side for about 20 minutes until the ganache has thickened.
Drizzle the ganache over the cooled cake, then decorate with the fresh cherries, if desired. Serve the cake at room temperature.
I hope you enjoy the recipe.
Bye for now,
Jillian