Mulling spice cake

I had a thought, would it be possible to make a cake that replicates mulled wine? I love mulled wine so today I had a go at making something that, while not quite a mulled wine cake, is still pretty tasty. I based it on the orange and poppyseed cake, mainly because it uses milk, which is the key to getting the flavours into the cake.

Ingredients

120ml sweetened soya milk
170g caster sugar
2 eggs
170g self raising flour
140g soya margarine
Zest of 1 orange
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Method

In a small saucepan, add the nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon to the soya milk. Warm for about 1/2 hour without letting it boil, then allow to cool.
Weigh out all the rest of the ingredients, place in a large bowl with the eggs, zests and finally add the strained soya milk.
Use an electric whisk to blend all the ingredients to make a smooth, soft batter.
Pour into a lined loaf tin and bake at 180c for about 50 minutes, until a skewer pushed into the top of the cake comes out clean.
Cool in the tin.

I think I need to do more with this cake, but I'm not sure what at the moment. It should have a syrup, I think, like a lemon drizzle cake. What I will try is to reduce down some mulled wine and sugar to make a syrup, then drizzle that on it.

Lemon cheesecake cupcakes

I made my most delicious concoction to date yesterday. It was the combination of a few different ideas that came together beautifully for the school social last night. I was very pleased!

I based the cakes on some I had made a few months ago. I changed the icing and based the biscuit part on the topping from these cakes.

Ingredients

For the cakes:
8.5oz self raising flour
6oz caster sugar
6oz soya margarine
3 eggs
grated rind of 2 lemons

lemon curd

For the cheese topping:
3/4 tub of mascarpone cheese
1 cup icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp milk

For the biscuit topping:
3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs (I was kindly sent some graham crackers from Canada, but you can use digestive biscuits for this part - they are close enough in flavour)
1/4 cup plain flour
1/4 cup soft brown sugar
1/4 cup butter, melted

Method

Make up the cake mix, adding a little milk if necessary to give a soft consistency, it should drop off the spoon into the cake cases with just a little help. Set out 16 cupcake cases and place a heaped teaspoon of mix in each case. Top each one with about 1/3 tsp of lemon curd, then cover with another heaped tsp of cake mix, making sure the lemon curd is covered completely. This method should use up all the cake mix.

In a separate bowl, mix the biscuit topping ingredients together to make a crumble. Tip this out onto a baking tray and place in the oven with the cakes. Keep an eye on it to avoid it browning too much, it benefits form a stir during cooking to ensure it cooks evenly.
Bake at 180c for around 14 minutes until the cakes are starting to brown on top, remove the topping from the oven after about 10 minutes.

Allow the topping and cakes to cool in their tins, then place the cakes on a wire rack to ensure they cool fully before putting the toppings on.

Make up the mascarpone cheese topping by mixing the 4 ingredients until you get a smooth creamy consistency. When the cakes are cool, spread a tsp of the mascarpone on each of the cakes.

As close as possible to serving the cakes (I did this 4 hours before, and they stayed crunchy) sprinkle a tsp of the biscuit topping on each cake.

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.

Denise's lemon cake

My friend's mum, Denise, gave me a lemon cake recipe a few years ago, but I don't often make it - I have no idea why, it is delicious. I guess I always forget to buy lemons, and then when I get the time to bake I can't make it. Anyway, my mother-in-law brought me back some lemons from her tree in Cyprus and it was the perfect opportunity to make a lemon cake as there is no danger of pesticides or wax on the skins.

Ingredients

4oz soya margarine
6oz caster sugar
grated rind of 2 lemons
2 eggs
6oz self raising flour
A little milk (I use soya)

Method

Cream together the margarine and sugar.
Add the lemon rind and eggs and mix well.
Sift in the flour and fold into the mix.
Add a little milk to soften the batter.
Pour into a lined 2lb loaf tin and bake for 45 minutes at 180c.

Make a syrup using the juice of the 2 lemons and 2oz caster sugar.
When the cake comes out of the oven, let it cool a little, then make lots of holes in the top with a skewer and pour the syrup slowly all over and allow it to soak in.
I boiled up the syrup for a few minutes to thicken it, as I find that it then runs off more slowly, allowing it to soak in before it runs down the sides.

Ginger beer

We like ginger in our house. It is possible that we like ginger more than anything else when it comes to both sweet and savoury foods, so it seemed like a natural progression to try to make some ginger beer at home. My mum gave me a kit that she acquired some time over Christmas, and last week we gave it a go.

You mix boiling water with the ginger seasoning, lemon juice and sugar then leave to cool. You then sprinkle the yeast sachet onto the liquid, cover it and leave somewhere warm for 3 days. I used the airing cupboard, and had to be careful not to let any errant socks fall in!

After 3 days you bottle it in a 2 litre fizzy drink bottle and put it back in a warm place for 3 more days. Every day we dutifully released the pressure and returned the bottle to the airing cupboard to brew.

Today was the day of reckoning. We opened the bottle and the ginger beer spurted out everywhere, but mainly into a jug. We added ice to cool it and took our first sip... It was foul. Emma sniffed it and refused to taste it, and I don't blame her! It was like liquid bread dough and I am pretty sure we must have done something wrong (I can't see what, as we followed the instructions to the letter), so I don't imagine we will be using the rest of the kit. This does not bode well for my idea of brewing from our grapes this year.

Ginger and lemon cookies

I have been making apple, oat and cinnamon cookies for a while, and although they are delicious, I thought I might try a new twist on them today. We are going to see some friends tomorrow, and I thought a batch of cookies would be a nice gift for them. I decided to substitute the apple and cinnamon for ginger and lemon, and here is the recipe:

Ingredients

100g soya margarine
70g golden granulated sugar
50g light brown soft sugar
1 egg
140g plain flour
50g oats
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
4 pieces of ginger in syrup
1 lemon

Method

Cream the sugars and margarine together, then add the egg and mix well.
Add the flour, oats and bicarb and mix to form a soft dough.
Drain the ginger and chop it finely.
Use a sharp knife to carefully take the top layer of skin from the lemon, trying not to get too much of the white pith from underneath. Chop the pieces of skin up really small.
Add the ginger and lemon to the dough and mix well.
Dollop 24 blobs of the dough onto lined baking trays and cook for about 13 minutes at 180c.
Leave to cool slightly on the trays, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
When cool, sprinkle icing sugar over the biscuits.

Jubilee biscuits

Yesterday, I thought I'd make something quick to tide us over until the big cake making session on Monday. We will have our village tea party on Monday afternoon, so I need to provide something special for that. I wanted biscuits, but couldn't be bothered with the hassle of rolling out dough, so this recipe was perfect.

Ingredients

300g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground mixed spice
125g soya margarine
100g light brown soft sugar
80g dark brown soft sugar
50ml hot water
1 tbsp golden syrup

Juice of 1 lemon
Icing sugar

Method

Rub the flour, bicarb, ginger, mixed spice and margarine together to make crumbs.
Stir in the 2 sugars.
Melt the golden syrup into the boiling water and then stir this into the crumbs to make a soft dough.
Using a dessert spoon, dollop around 24 balls of dough onto lined baking sheets and flatten slightly with your fingers.
Bake at 180c for about 15 minutes, then leave on the trays to cool for a bit.
Mix the lemon juice and icing sugar together to make a thick paste.
Put the biscuits on a wire tray to finish cooling, then spread a layer of icing on top and finish with some sprinkles.

Lemon cheese-cakes

It's a friend's birthday today, and my husband will be seeing her later, so I decided to send him off with a batch of cakes for her. She also bakes, so I thought I'd try something new to see what she thinks of it, and these little babies turned out remarkably well.

Method

Make up a batch of 5:4:4:2 cake mix with 1tsp vanilla extract in it.
Place 8 large cupcake cases in a 12 bun muffin tin, then put about 2cm depth of mix in each case.
Dollop about a teaspoon of lemon curd on the middle of each cake, then cover it with another couple of cm of mix. I'm not being very specific about quantities as I was rushing a bit, and didn't concentrate!
Bake in a 180c oven for about 18 - 20 minutes until they are browned on top and cooked.

I left them to cool in the tin, before removing them and icing them. You can see that I broke one open to check out the inside. It was still a dollop of lemon curd, and had not stopped the mix around it from rising. Some had leaked out a bit, you can see the dark patches on the cases where the lemon curd started to caramelise.

I made up some cream cheese frosting using 1tbsp full fat Philadelphia cheese, 1tbsp soya margarine and kept adding icing sugar until I got a thick, smooth consistency. I also added 1tsp of vanilla extract to the icing. I am already considering the next batch, and have plans to make strawberry jam ones with strawberries and whipped cream on top.

Dairy-free banana cake

There is always a cake brewing when I notice half a bunch of bananas in the bowl that no-one is going to pick up and eat in a million years. The ones that are more black than yellow and very, very squishy. My mum always used to make banana bread with these rather sad, dejected looking fruits as they make a much better cake than the firm, yellow ones. This is her recipe (almost):

Before mashing

Ingredients

200g self-raising flour
50g soya margarine
1 egg
50g sugar (I use light brown soft sugar)
grated rind of a lemon (I use 1/2 tsp lemon oil)
3 medium sized bananas
1/2 tsp ground mixed spice (optional, not part of the original recipe)

Method

After mashing, not too pretty!

Weigh out the flour and margarine into a large bowl and rub together to make crumbs.
Stir in the sugar.
In a separate bowl, mash the bananas with a fork and mix in the lemon, egg and mixed spice.
Add the wet mix to the dry and stir together.
Pour into a 2lb loaf tin which is either lined or greased and floured.
I like to sprinkle a tsp of demerara sugar on top to give a crunchy crust.

Ready to cook

Cook in 180c oven for 35 - 40 minutes, until a toothpick poked in the top comes out clean.

Cool in the tin for 5 minutes then place on a wire tray to cool.

This cake is most delicious when it is still slightly warm. It doesn't keep for long (maybe 2 days) as it is quite moist, the perfect excuse to have another slice!

A little piece of summer in April

Well, the weather didn't stay sunny for long, did it? The school cake sale is this afternoon and I imagine everyone will be rushing home to get out of the rain instead of buying cakes - better give them a reason to stop and buy, eh?

A slightly smaller sponge cake to make room for squirty cream and strawberries with a meringue on top.
I'm also going to make some with lemon curd and meringue on top, it is going to be really hard not to keep these little babies for us.