Hummingbird cakes

Today, I had promised Charlotte that I would make chocolate cupcakes with her. A friend of mine made some lovely chocolate cupcakes for the Macmillan coffee morning the other week, and when I asked her, she said the recipe was from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook. I have that book, so Charlotte and I dipped in and found the recipe - yippee! Also, Emma was loitering and looking over our shoulders, so I agreed to make a batch of vanilla cupcakes with her too.

The sponge was much less fine textured and moist than my normal sponge recipe, which meant that the cases didn't peel away from the sides of the sponge for once, which was fantastic. Also, as the recipe uses a lot less margarine and milk instead (soya, obviously, for us) there were no ugly oily marks bleeding through the cake cases. These people know what they are doing!

Anyway, Charlotte did all the measuring and mixing and filling of cake cases herself for the first time. She also iced them with the icing that I made. Emma made hers with a little interference from mummy, but iced them herself. I tried half filling some cases and then dolloping a 1/2 tsp of lemon curd in, then topping up with mix. I haven't tried one of these yet, but they smell delicious.

Japanese sauces

I have been back in my Wagamama cookbook, making up batches of sauces to keep in the fridge. It's a nice feeling to know that when we use sauces they have been homemade, and the ones I made today are dead easy too.

Yakitori - Made using sake, light soy sauce, mirin and sugar.

Teriyaki - Made using sugar, light soy sauce, sake and dark soy sauce.

My own noodle sauce (enough for 3 portions of noodles)

2tbsp light soy sauce

1tsp runny honey

1/2 tsp dark soy sauce

ginger, to taste (I use chopped, frozen ginger or even ground)

1/2 tsp sesame oil

Teriyaki pork skewers

I immediately put the teriyaki to good use, as a marinade for strips of pork to be made into skewers. My children love teriyaki pork, beef or chicken, I guess it is because it is a reasonably mild yet sticky and sweet flavour. For some reason, they also love eating food off a stick, I think this is true of most children, I must take advantage of this fact more often!

I tend to use the same method to cook whichever meat I happen to have at the time, today it was pork loin. I cut the pork into strips about 1.5cm wide, then left the strips to marinade in the teriyaki sauce for a couple of hours (sometimes more, if it fits into my day to make it earlier). I then threaded the pork onto bamboo skewers and baked them in the oven at 180c for about 20 minutes.

I served these with noodles (served with my noodle sauce and toasted sesame seeds) and steamed edamame beans. There was not a scrap left at the end of dinner. Job done.

Orange and poppyseed loaf cake

I mentioned a while back that I love making the orange and poppyseed cake from one of my recipe books. It is made in a baba tin and I was wondering if it would be possible to scale it down a little and make it as a loaf instead.

Here is a picture of it, made correctly in the baba tin.

So here is the new recipe:

Ingredients

30g poppy seeds
120ml sweetened soya milk
170g caster sugar
2 eggs
170g self raising flour
140g soya margarine
1tsp vanilla extract (not necessary, but I love vanilla with orange)
2 oranges

Method

Warm the milk in a cup in the microwave carefully (about 30 seconds with a stir half way), then add the poppy seeds and leave to stand while you do the rest of the preparation.

Zest the 2 oranges and add to a large mixing bowl along with the flour, sugar, margarine, eggs and vanilla. Finally, add the poppy seeds and milk and whisk the whole lot up until it is a smooth, creamy batter.

Pour the batter into a lined loaf tin and bake at 180c for around 50 minutes.

Leave in the tin to cool.

Make a thick icing with orange juice (around 3 tsp.) and icing sugar and spoon over the slightly warm cake and spread to the edges.


I made the icing too thin, so it ran off too quickly, next time I'll make it thicker, like the cake at the top.

Meringues and custard

I made a resolution at New Year to cook something new every week. Each new food would be something that I had not tried before, to increase my culinary skills. I have spent a lot of time with my nose in the Wagamama cook book, and have been pleasantly surprised by the ease of cooking those dishes. My addiction to baking has meant that most of my new dishes have been sweet ones, often eye-wateringly sweet at that.

I have a fabulous book that my husband bought for me called Homestyle Cookies, Muffins and Cakes which I am working my way through. I have to adapt most recipes to make them dairy-free as Charlotte is allergic to milk protein, and all the recipes I have tried from this book have adapted beautifully. Two of our favourites are the ginger tray bake and the orange and poppy seed cake (my version is below).

Anyway, I realised that I had never tried to make a meringue before. This thought escalated, as my ideas generally do, to incorporate the school bake sale that is happening this friday, themed around St George. White meringues and red fruit, it all seems to be coming together nicely. So I did a practice batch to see if I could do it and voila, the result:

I used natural sugar, not white, so they are a bit brown, but they are fluffy and crunchy so I guess I got the cooking right. A good friend who has chickens dropped some eggs in for me this morning, so I have the ingredients to make some more with white sugar, ready for the sale tomorrow.

All good? Not quite. I tried to make dairy-free custard with the extra egg yolks, and created a bubbly, lumpy, wobbly goo that the children refused to eat for their pudding last night. The flavour was ok, but the texture was so wrong it was untrue. I think I'll stick to Alpro cartons in future.