ramtops

Having made the Christmas cake yesterday, I was all set to make some mincemeat.

I started by blitzing an orange and a lemon in the food processor, and then pulled opened the baking cupboard to get at all the other ingredients (they’re all kept in a pull out cupboard). And there, on the top shelf, was a huge jar of mincemeat from last year. And we don’t eat much …

So, what to do with a pair of marmalised citrus fruit? Make a cake!

1 orange
1 lemon
100g butter or marge
120g granulated sugar
2 eggs
140g desiccated coconut
100g plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
100ml natural yoghurt

Whizz the citrus fruit first – cut it into chunks, then hurl it in, peel, pith and all.

Then add the other ingredients and whizz some more.

Decant into a 2lb loaf tin (either well greased, or use a liner), bake for about 45 minutes at 180C. I suggest you use the fan setting, rather than the grill – it works better :)

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

Dear Reader, I have a confession to make. I had to throw out an orange. Oh, the shame. We’re not very good with fruit – we buy it, and then we don’t eat it, so this orange had languished in the bowl for quite a while, and had gone mouldy. It was accompanied by a companion orange which had not yet succumbed, and turned out to be really quite dry, still … as we were out of cake, I did a quick Google, and adapted a recipe I found, thus:

2 tsp bicarbonate of soda dissolved in 180ml water
125g butter, softened (I used baking marg)
180g granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g plain flour
¼ tsp salt
1 orange
85g dark chocolate, chopped

(The recipe called for 200g chocolate, which would have been overpowering, I think).

Preheat the oven to 180°C / fan 160°C / gas mark 4.

Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the water and set to one side. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat well, then add flour and salt.

Roughly chop the whole orange into chunks by hand and then blitz in a food processor, skin and all. Add this to the cake batter along with the water and bicarbonate of soda, and stir.

Add the chocolate and stir through gentlye. Pour the mixture into your prepared tin (I used a 2lb loaf tin with a liner, and as always, blessed whoever made these available for sale, otherwise grease and flour) )and bake about an hour until a skewer comes out clean when inserted. The recipe I adapted said 40-45 minutes, but that wasn’t nearly long enough, but check and check.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

Neither Pete nor I are especially fond of bananas in their raw form, but I bought some for the GrandToad’s visit a few days ago. He didn’t really want them either, so there were five bananas going brown in the fruit bowl. Not a problem – banana cake!

I use a basic recipe refined over the years:

200g plain flour
100g baking marg
some brown bananas, peeled (quantity is not that relevant, really 2-3 should do it)
60g sugar – anything will do; caster, granulated, brown
1.5 tsp baking powder
a slosh of vanilla extract
2 eggs

Put the lot in a food processor and blitz. Pour into a 2lb loaf tin, bake at 180C for 40 minutes, then 160C for 30. I always use a parchment loaf liner, as it makes it easier to turn out.

This is a remarkably tolerant recipe, and can take other things. Add some walnuts, or sultanas, or a splash of bourbon whisky if you’re feeding it to grownups. One of the nicest thing to add is chocolate chips – I use Bouchard, which I buy from Amazon. And last night, choc chips were deemed to be what we fancied.

So I got the tub out of the baking cupboard, and tipped some into the food processor. Except some turned out to be almost all of the 50% or so left in the tub, as they had presumably melted together into a large ball during the hot summer. Those that didn’t go into the food processor went on the floor.

I shrieked, and Pete came hurtling downstairs. He swept up the floor, while I rescued as many bits of chocolate as I could from the Magimix bowl, which was quite a few, but not really enough for the batter (which was looking severely over chocolated). Still, what could we do? I baked the cakes (I almost always make two at a time, because they freeze beautifully), and we ate a piece while it was still warm. And it was really rather nice.

And as the oven was on, we had sausages and cauliflower cheese, so as not to waste the heat.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

I’ve written before about everlasting chicken. We don’t throw any of it away, except the bones, and then only when they’ve been boiled up for soup. I sometimes put the last bits of the meat into a pie filling, and bung that in the freezer, and when we had a friend coming for supper the other night, I though a chickie! pie would be nice.

This one turned out to have leeks and mushrooms in it, and a mustardy sauce, and I used up a slab of frozen puff pastry too, so that was a result. There might, possibly, be some room in the freezer soon …

I made a variation on the blackberry cake that I did last week; cut the sugar down, replaced the vanilla with lemon juice, and the milk with plain yogurt (as it needed using up). It came out less light, but actually I think we liked it better. So here it is.

Raspberry cake

1 punnet raspberries

230g caster sugar
200g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 eggs
2 teaspoons lemon juice*
200g marg or butter
about 2 tbsp plain yogurt

Grease and line a 22cm springform pan, put the raspberries in the bottom. Whizz all the other ingredients in a food processor, and pour on top of the fruit. Bake at 180c for 40-45 minutes.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

Like most people, I tend to overbuy at Christmas, and that’s even with cutting back a *lot*. We had a couple of punnets of fresh cranberries lurking in the back of the fridge; well, when I say “fresh”, $deity alone know what they do to them to make them keep for over two months, but there they were.

Pete picked through them and we had about 1.5 punnets when done. So, I made lemon and cranberry cakes. This cake recipe is a good basic one, and you can add any dried fruit to it, but fresh is even better – give it a try with blueberries!

This is the recipe for one cake, but I always make two, because it freezes well. And I use the zest and juice of the lemon for two cakes.

160g caster sugar
125g butter or marge
175g self raising flour (or be like me – plain with a teaspoon of baking powder)
2 large eggs
zest of one lemon
a pinch of salt
4 tablespoons of milk

If you like, you can glaze the top with lemon juice and icing sugar mixed together, but that’s too sweet for us.

Cream sugar and butter/marge, add eggs, fold in flour, add lemon bits, berries and milk. If you’re adding fresh berries, I blitz them in the blender for a few seconds to break them up.

I always bake loaf cakes in a parchment liner – much easier. About 40 minutes at 180C should do it. Recommended.

Also, as a hint, chopped fresh cranberries are just lovely added to sausagemeat for home made sausage rolls.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

We went to Staithes (on the North Yorkshire coast) on Saturday, and had a cup of tea and a slice of this delicious cake (or one very like it). It was so delicious that I came home determined to try and make one, and after a bit of googling and adjustment, here’s what I came up with. I actually made two, because it’s hardly worth putting the oven on for just one cake, and have put one in the freezer. It was gorgeous. These ingredients make one.

100g butter or marge
120g caster sugar
2 large eggs
140g desiccated coconut
100g plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder (or use self-raising flour, but I never keep it in)
70ml natural yoghurt
1 lime, juice and zest
2 tsp grated ginger

Put everything in a food mixer and combine. Yes, really. That’s it.

I baked mine in a loaf tin lined with a greaseproof liner. The recipe I cannibalised said 45 mins at gas 3, which it had, then it had another 5 mins at gas 4, then another 5 mins at gas 5, so I reckon 40-45 minutes at gas 4 would do it.

Should you be minded, you could make a syrup of, say, 100g caster sugar and the juice of another lime, but I didn’t bother. If you do this, make some holes in the cake while it is warm, and drizzle the syrup over it.

The cafe served it with cream, which worked rather well. I think I might try some grated lemongrass next time, for that authentic Thai taste.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

We found a kilogram of desiccated coconut in the larder box – no idea why we bought such a huge amount, but it must be used up! There were four small, brown bananas in a box in the fridge - I read somewhere that they will keep for ages like that, so was experimenting; seems to work! So I did a bit of Googling for ideas, and adapted a few recipes, and this is what I did:

4 brown bananas, peeled
2 medium eggs
120g margarine, melted
120g wholemeal flour
75g cane sugar
1.5 tsp. baking powder
125g dessicated coconut

Some dried cranberries as a last minute addition.

(I doubled this lot up to make two cakes. I also added some cream of tartar, but I don’t think it was needed, and it would have benefited from some vanilla extract).

I put the bananas in the food processor and blitzed them up. Then I just bunged in everything else and whizzed that up!

Put the mix in a loaf tin lined with a cake liner (I love these – so easy, no greasing, no sticking!), baked at gas 4 for 1 hour. They’ve come out lovely – quite a heavy consistency, but none the worse for that. Might try dates in them next time.

And the coconut mountain is very slowly decreasing :)

Edited to add: best estimate of carbs per cake is about 250g, so about 20g per slice. I can live with that on an occasional basis!

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

I run a community recipe site called Nibblous, and if you Google for banana cake, you’ll find my friend Jaqui’s recipe is the number one hit, which I’m quite pleased about! I’ve long used a similar recipe to that myself for banana cake, but I’ve refined it quite a bit over the years, and I change it around almost every time I make it.

I’m a fairly recentlly diagnosed Type 2 diabetic, and I try to avoid white flour, so I thought I’d have a bash at a wholemeal banana cake.

6oz wholemeal flour
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
4 ripe bananas – the riper, the better
4oz butter or margarine
4.5oz granulated sugar
a good grate of nutmeg
2 eggs
a generous teaspoon of vanilla essence

Now, I’m lazy – I do this in a food processor. I start with the bananas and whizz them up till they’re all mashed, then I bung in everything else, whizz some more, and it’s done. If you don’t have a food processor, or want to do it the long way round, see Jacqi’s recipe above for mashing and creaming and folding :)

Decant into a well greased 2lb loaf tin (I always cheat and use those pan liners which I get from Lakeland – less trouble) and bake for 40 minutes at gas 4, then 30 minutes at gas 2. Leave to cool in the tin, or if you’ve used a liner, then it comes straight out with no hassle and you can cut a test slice pretty quickly :)

I always double it up and make two cakes, as they freeze remarkably well.

I was really pleased with this wholemeal version – it’s slightly nutty, and the nutmeg was a new addition this evening, and it worked really well.

You can bung anything in this – chocolate pieces, mixed spice, currants, chopped apple, walnuts; it’s a really great basic cake recipe.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

wreath Rather belatedly, I made our christmas cake last night; I’d normally have done it in November, but what with the move and all …

I use a variation on a tried and tested Nigel Slater recipe, and here it is:

Prepare a 20cm deep cake pan – grease well, line with a double thickness of greaseproof paper, with the sides lined to above the top by a couple of inches.

Amass 1kg of dried fruit – I used figs, prunes, apricots, dates, raisins and sultanas, as that was what was in the baking box, and cut it into small pieces. This is tedious, but I didn’t bother so much last year, and it wasn’t as nice.

Cream 250g butter and 250g brown sugar together – I used about half and half dark muscovado and demerara. Beat until it’s light and fluffy, or as light and fluffy as it can be with muscovado in it ..

Add three eggs one by one – don’t worry, it will curdle, probably.

Add 65g of ground almonds, and 100g of shelled hazelnuts, 3 tablespoons of alcohol (recipe says brandy, but I generally use whiskey, and this year I used good bourbon!), zest and juice of an orange, half a teaspoon of baking powder, and 250g of plain flour. And the fruit.

My mixer always gives up at this point and I have to fold it all together by hand.

Put it in the tin, cook for one hour at gas mark 3, then 1.5 hours at gas 2 – don’t open the oven to prod it until the end. Leave to cool in the tin, then wrap tightly in foil, and feed it with more alcohol every few days.

We eat as is, as we don’t much like icing. Merry Christmas!

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

christmas cake 2006
Originally uploaded by ramtops.

but I'm quite pleased with this - it' s a work in progress, but it's coming along nicely.

it has a sort of amateur charm, don't you think?

of a Discworld cake?

so ... I weighed out the ground almonds, the whole nuts (whizzed briefly in the food processor), the mixed tropical fruit, the sultanas, the blueberries and cranberries, the dried apricots. I rummaged in the back of the cupboard for Cointreau and Amaretto.

I beat 225g of butter with 225g of caster sugar and 1 tsp of Madagascan vanilla essence.

I added one egg. ( Then I added another egg )

orange and lemon cake

the desiccated orange made a chocolate orange cake

banana and chocolate cakes

a chicken pie and a raspberry cake

cranberry and lemon cake

lime, ginger and coconut cake

coconut and banana cake

wholemeal banana cake

christmas cake

I said I wasn't much of a baker

fancy a slice?

christmas cake eggstravanza

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