Rosh Hashanah Honey Cake

Last weekend I met my boyfriend's family for the first time. They invited me round to dinner on Jewish New Year.

As if that wasn't scary enough, I was also set the task of baking the honey cake. This was, of course, my cue to completely freak out.

I am a very irrational person. So when I pulled out all my cookbooks and found no honey cake recipes and found absolutely no consistency between recipes online, I decided the best solution was to make up my own recipe.

Surprisingly, it actually went quite well.

 
It's traditional at Rosh Hashanah to dip apple slices into honey, so I wanted to include apple in the cake. To do this I followed part a recipe I made a while ago (see here for the honey apple and almond kugelhopf), cooking apples in rum, honey and butter. I then drizzled the liquid over the cake to keep it moist as I'd read dryness is a common problem with honey cake.

The bees are made of marzipan. I had to make them because I saw a beehive cake on the internet and went crazy for a while and thought I should make a beehive cake. Then I came to my senses and compromised by making marzipan bees.

This recipe will serve 12.

You will need:

For the cake: 

100g butter

2 tbsp caster sugar

4 tbsp clear honey

2 eggs, beaten

175g self raising flour, sifted

1 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp water

50g flaked almond

greased and lined spring form cake tin

foil

For the honeyed apples:
50g butter
good glug of brandy
half tsp vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract
240g honey
1 tsp lemon juice
2 green apples, peeled, cored and diced 

For the marzipan bees:

150g golden marzipan

40g dark chocolate

a piping bag

24 almond flakes, as whole and even in shape as possible

1. Preheat the oven to 170C. Add all the ingredients for the honeyed apples save for the apples and almonds to a large frying pan and bring to the boil. Add the apples and reduce the heat to produce a gentle simmer. Cook for 8-10 minutes, turning the apples often until they have softened and the liquid thickened a little.

2. Drain the liquid off the apples and set aside. Beat together the sugar and butter for the cake.

3. Beat in the honey. Beat in the eggs, adding two tbsp of sifted flour with each egg to stop the mixture from curdling.

4. Fold in the honeyed apples. Fold in the flour and baking powder.

5. Spoon the cake batter into the tin and bake for 10 minutes before sprinkling over the flaked almonds and covering the cake with foil to stop it from browning too much. Bake for another 20-30 minutes until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.

6. While the cake is in the oven, roll the marzipan into 12 equal sized ovoid shapes.

7. Break the dark chocolate up in a bowl and heat it in the microwave for 30 second bursts, stirring in between, until melted. Spoon it into the piping bag and cut off the tip to leave a very small opening. Pipe chocolate across the marzipan balls in two stripes and then, without squeezing, just touch the tip of the piping bag gently against the marzipan to do the eyes and stings of the bees.

8. While the chocolate is still wet, carefully place two almond flakes on the back of each bee.

9. Remove the cake from the oven and pierce several times with a cocktail stick. Place on a wire rack to cool with something underneath to catch the drips.

10. Brush all over with the liquid from the honeyed apples. Depending on how long the liquid has been cooling, the butter may solidify on top. If this happens, just give it 30 seconds in the microwave and stir well. Brush the liquid onto the cake a couple more times after 10 minute intervals. If you like, reserve the rest of the liquid to use as a sauce. Put the bees on and around the cake and serve.

I'd glad to say the boyfriend's family liked the cake, especially his grandfather, who ate quite a few of the bees.

L'shanah tovah!

Ellie
xxx

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies

At the weekend, I went on an outing to the races with two friends. We got all dressed up, packed our picnic baskets with prosecco, carefully selected our horses based on the time-honoured method of picking ones with funny names and, in my case, proceeded to lose every single race of the day.

You may have noticed I mentioned picnic baskets in my opening paragraph. The picnic is of course an integral part of any race day. Last time I went to the races, on my 21st birthday, I spent weeks planning provisions for the outing and eventually produced sandwiches in several flavours, fluffy buttercream cupcakes in three colours, strawberries and a croquembouche (although that stayed at home).

This time I didn't go overboard. I baked a camembert and chutney-filled brioche (for the recipe for that see my post from January 2013) and some peanut-butter and chocolate chip cookies. 

If you know me or regularly read my blog you probably know that I love peanut butter. I fell in love with it while training for a 10km run and a couple of months ago purchased a 1kg bucket of the stuff.

So when I saw the recipe in my Hummingbird Bakery recipe book, it struck me as the perfect thing to make for a picnic. Easy to make and transport, tasty and full of two of my favourite ingredients - chocolate and peanut butter.

There they are, nestled between the prosecco and the still-warm brioche loaf and on top of the paper plates, wrapped in cellophane and decorated with curling ribbon. 

This recipe makes 24 large cookies. You will need to either bake these in 4 batches or have a very large oven and 4 large lined baking sheets. Before I give you this recipe, a note of caution: the cookie dough looks more or less the same all the way through. Sorry about that.

You will need:

240g crunchy peanut butter (I consider smooth heresy)

225g unsalted butter

200g caster sugar

200g soft light brown sugar

2 eggs

half a tsp vanilla extract

340g plain flour

2 and a half tsp bicarbonate of soda

half a tsp of salt

75g roughly chopped dark chocolate

1. Preheat the oven to 170C. Beat together the butters and sugars until light and fluffy.

   

2. Beat the eggs and vanilla extract into the mixture.

3. Mix in the plain flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt.

4. Drop tablespoons of cookie dough on the baking sheet, spacing them as far apart as you can and flatten them with the back of a spoon slightly. Bake for about 10 minutes until light brown before cooling on a wire rack.

 

There, wasn't that easy? Don't get cocky though - be very careful at the baking stage as a minute can be the difference between pale, undercooked cookies and singed edges!

Happy baking!

Ellie

xxx

Quick Cornbread

I love making bread. I love the smooth, elastic feeling of well-kneaded bread. I love the spongy feel of the risen dough. I love the smell of the bread in the oven.

And, of course, I love eating it.

There's a sense of reward that comes from baking bread that doesn't come from many other bakes. Bread takes time and it takes effort. You have to knead the bread and wait for it to rise twice before you even put in it the oven. You really have to work for those gluten strands.

That's the reason I rarely make bread any more. It can take up to a whole afternoon. It can take longer.

But this week on Great British Bake Off the contestants made quick breads, which use baking powder or bicarbonate of soda to get the bread to rise. It can take less than an hour, easily.

So I followed suit this weekend and made cornbread with guacamole.

If you want to make a quick bread, here's how.

You will need:

150g fine polenta (cornmeal or maize flour to my American friends)
150g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
half a tsp bicarbonate of soda
half a tsp salt
1 tbsp caster sugar
300ml milk
half a tbsp lemon juice
2 eggs
melted butter, to grease
a square 9 inch baking tin, 2 inches deep

1. Preheat the oven to 220C, grease the baking tin and put it in the oven to heat up. Mix together the flour, sugar, polenta, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt in a large bowl.

2. Whisk together the eggs, milk, lemon juice in a separate bowl.

3. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients, pour in the egg and milk mixture and fold together the wet and dry ingredients. Pour into the preheated tin.

4. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the bread is pulling away from the sides of the tin and a skewer inserted into the middle of the bread comes out clean. Leave to cool and then slice into wedges to serve.

This recipe serves four people (depending on how hungry they are).

Happy baking!

Ellie
xxx

English Muffins

For those who are not familiar with English muffins, let me explain the difference between English and American muffins.

The English muffins is a bread product that is round in shape, fluffy in texture and dusted with semolina or polenta. It is traditionally sliced open and toasted, then buttered and eaten while still warm. For a more substantial meal, the muffin is sometimes topped with ham or smoked salmon and then with a poached egg and hollandaise sauce.

An American muffin is an oversized cupcake that you get overcharged for in Starbucks.

I and my housemate, Julie, had a lengthy “discussion” with another colleague during the week on which was the “proper” kind of muffin and which was invented first. I can confirm that the answer to both of these questions is the English muffin.

So when I fancied making something special for breakfast this weekend, it was to the humble English muffin I turned. I made eggs royale - muffins topped with smoked salmon, poached eggs and homemade hollandaise.

The muffins were excellent - fluffy inside, marked with the distinctive pale golden brown circles on the top and base and only improved by their toppings.

I used a Paul Hollywood recipe. This will produce 8 muffins.

You will need:

a 9cm straight sided biscuit cutter
300g strong white bread flour plus extra to dust
6g fast action yeast
6g salt
15g caster sugar
15g softened butter
15g polenta or semolina
1 egg
170ml milk
olive oil, for greasing

1. Put the flour in a large bowl and add the yeast to one side of the bowl and the salt on the other side. Add the sugar.

2. Stir the flour, sugar, yeast and salt together. Make a well in the middle of the mixture and add the butter, egg, milk then beat in to form a soft dough.

3. Tip onto a clean, floured work surface and knead with well floured hands for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.

4. Roll the dough into a ball and put in an oiled bowl, Cover with clingfilm and leave for an hour until doubled in size.

5. Dust the work surface with a mixture of flour and semolina or polenta and roll out the dough to a thickness of 2.5cm. Cut out 8 muffins with the biscuit cutter and place on a tray dusted with the same flour/polenta mixture.

6. Cover the tray with clingfilm and leave to prove for 30 minutes. Close to the end of proving. heat an ungreased griddle pan over a low-medium heat. When the muffins finish proving, cook them in the pan, flipping after 5 minutes to cook on the other side until each side is cooked to a pale golden brown.

7. To serve, slice open, toast and butter the muffins, add your desired topping and eat.

Happy baking!

Ellie
xxx

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Icing

I love eating carrot cake. It's moist, lightly spiced, has a great texture and certainly doesn't make me feel like I'm eating a vegetable.

Not that I mind eating vegetables, being a vegetarian and all.

The only problem is, I hate making carrot cake. Grating five to six carrots, quite probably chipping a nail as I do so, is not my idea of fun.

Luckily for everyone else (except my housemate, who will probably be finding carrot gratings for weeks), I can be easily persuaded to make carrot cake.

I made this cake for my friend and colleague Karolina's birthday.

You will need:

For the cake:
225g self-raising flour
250ml sunflower oil
250g carrots, peeled and coarsely grated

½ tsp nutmeg

½ tsp cinnamon

large pinch of salt

225g soft light brown sugar

3 large eggs 

2 cake tins of the same size

a handful of pecan nuts, roughly chopped

For the icing:

225g cream cheese (such as Philadelphia)

25g icing sugar

50g butter at room temperature

1. Grease and line the cake tins and preheat the oven to 180C. Beat together the brown sugar and oil. Beat in the eggs one by one.

2. Mix together the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and fold into the sugar mixture. 

3. Add the grated carrots and fold into the cake mixture.

4. Divide the mixture between the two tins and bake for 30 to 40 minutes. If a knife inserted into the centre of a cake comes out clean it is ready. 

5. Leave the sponges to cool. Beat together the cream cheese, icing sugar and butter.

6. When the sponges are completely cool, spread the icing over the top of each sponge and stack one on top of the other.

And there you have it. 

Bye,

Ellie
xxx

Lime and Ginger Cheesecake with Mango Coulis

Today I am sharing with you a cheesecake recipe.

I have always been a bit suspicious of the cheesecake. I like cheese and I like cake, but bring the two together and you get something that doesn't really resemble either very much.

But then again, cheesecake is the perfect cake for someone who isn't a great lover of the usual variety. It's rich, but has a fresh quality about it, brought by the cheese, and you can easily cut through the richness and sweetness of the filling with a fruity topping.

This is what I've done here. This cheesecake recipe cake came about one year when my dad asked me to make one for his birthday and requested a cheesecake that was "a bit different".

After I repeatedly watched a remix of Masterchef clips about cheesecake (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfeyUGZt8nk), I got down to work on this recipe, adding some tropical flavours for a classic baked cheesecake with a twist.

The first time I made this cheesecake I had a few hiccups along the way but this time I like to think I had learnt from these mistakes and it went off with barely a hiccup.

I took the cheesecake along to a picnic, where it was greatly appreciated.

You will need:

For the cheesy bit:

900g full fat cream cheese
115g soured cream
2 eggs
115g caster sugar )
grated rind of one lime
½ tsp vanilla extract

3 tbsp cornflour

For the base:

250g ginger biscuits (I used ginger nuts)

150g melted butter

For the coulis:

2 ripe mangoes
1 tsp agar agar
juice of half a lime

1. Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and line a 24cm spring form cake tin. Crush your ginger nuts (alright, stop giggling).

2. Mix the ginger nuts with the melted butter and press them into the base of the cake tin. Bake for ten minutes then place on a wire rack to cool.

3. Turn the oven up to 200C. Mix together the cornflour and caster sugar in a bowl.

4. Add the cream cheese and beat until fully combined. Add the eggs, vanilla extract and lime rind and beat again.

5. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until the top is slightly browned and the filling is set round the edges. Then turn the oven off and stand cake for as long as possible while the oven cools. Do NOT open the oven door, even for a cheeky peek. This stops the cheesecake from cracking too much on top.

6. Take the cheesecake out of the oven and put in the fridge to set properly.

7. While the cheesecake is chilling (getting cold, that is, not relaxing with a G&T), peel and stone the mangoes, blend in a processor and then force through a sieve with a spoon into a small pan. Be persistent - it may seem like you won't get much mango through, but keep at it and you should be able to get it all but a lump small enough to fit in a tablespoon through. Make sure you scrape any remaining mango puree off the bottom of the sieve. 

8. Add the lime juice and agar agar to the mango puree and heat. stirring regularly until it starts to spit and bubble. Take the mixture off the heat and pour it gradually on top of your cheesecake, spreading it all over the surface of the cheesecake as you do so. If the cheesecake has not cracked, you may not need to use all the coulis, so set aside the rest in a jug for pouring. If it has cracked, you may want to pour extra in the middle, to hide the cracks. If you keep the cheesecake horizontal this should not be a problem, as the cheesecake should be slightly bowed in the middle.

8. Refrigerate the cheesecake until serving. Do NOT, as I once did, tilt it whilst looking for space in the fridge, as you will tip mango coulis off the side. Clear a space in the fridge, leave the door open and then and only then go and get your cheesecake and place it carefully in the fridge. Treat it like a baby or housepet, that, for some inexplicable reason, needs to be refrigerated.

There you go, a beautiful, fruity cheesecake.

Happy baking!

Ellie

xxx

Almond Croissants

I've been experimenting with puff pastry this week. On the whole it went really well. I made salmon en croute and it was delicious, but I'm not completely sold on the recipe. I used a recipe that used half bread flour, and the pastry was almost too crisp, it was hard to cut through the base. 

So I'm not going to give you that recipe. Instead I'm going to give you this awesome recipe I learnt at the weekend. It's not strictly baking, but it does involve baked goods. 

As most of you will probably know, it was Gay Pride in London this weekend. My flatmate had some friends to stay and after a late night on Friday, I woke up early feeling like something had died in my mouth, which is inevitable when beer and I get together. I naturally decided that what I needed to take the taste away before we headed out to watch the parade was an almond croissant and some good strong coffee and that I might as well make enough for everyone.

A few minutes and a quick Google on my phone later I had a recipe for the baked treats and let me tell you, they were so easy to make, I couldn't believe they tasted so good.

This recipe takes  very little time at all and the results are impressive. Brew some coffee, whip up these almond croissants and you can serve up an awesome breakfast and look like a domestic god/goddess with very little effort.

One of the best things about this recipe is it uses stale croissants. Come on! You bought too many croissants? No problem. Almond those bad boys up. Instant awesome.

You will need:

8 one or two day-old croissants (croissants that have previously been frozen also good)

3 tbsp flaked almonds

icing sugar, for dusting

2 large eggs

250g ground almonds

115g butter

120g caster sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 200C. Mix together the ground almonds and sugar in a bowl. Beat in the butter and then the eggs and whisk until fully incorporated.

2. Slice the croissants in half horizontally and spread a good 2 tbsp of the almond paste on each bottom half. Put the top half back on and spread a 1 tbsp on top.

3. Sprinkle the almonds over the croissants and bake for 15 minutes. Dust liberally with icing sugar and serve.

That is it. Can you believe you just made something that looks so good so easily? Go you. 

In other news, Pride 2015 was really fun and we all looked fabulous. Here's a picture of me sporting the rainbow flag on my cheek and pouting, because I'm like that.

Stay fabulous,

Ellie

xxx