Rhubarb and Orange Cake

Our rhubarb patch hasn't been as productive as usual this year, and is already showing signs that we won't be harvesting much more. I only needed 400g for this recipe, but had to throw away several stems which were just too tough and woody to use. I think the less prolific growth is probably because last winter wasn't cold enough - rhubarb seems to need a really cold spell to perform at it's best. Although it's not a major problem, and many people say that you shouldn't harvest field rhubarb past the end of June, anyway, it's quite sad to say good-bye to rhubarb for another year!

On the whole, the fruit and vegetable garden isn't doing very well this year - June has been colder than usual, with less sunshine, and nothing is growing very fast. We had good weather at the right time for the apple blossom, though, so I have high hopes for a good harvest later in the year  - at the moment it looks as if we may actually have to thin the fruit, although there's a thing called 'June drop' apparently, so we'll wait a while before deciding whether or not thinning is needed.

At this time of the year it's good to use recipes which make a little rhubarb go a long way, and this Rhubarb and Orange Cake, from  Good Food, is a recipe I'll be returning to in future. It's very similar to another favourite recipe from Waitrose, for a cake with the same name, but the Waitrose recipe uses less flour and eggs, which results in a denser, more moist cake better suited to a dessert than a cake for the tea table, or coffee time. The Good Food cake was light and very well flavoured, and thanks to a few tips in the comments about the recipe, the fruit didn't sink and it wasn't too moist.

My oranges were quite small so I used the zest from two of them, but the juice of only one (which was 60mls) as I was mindful of the commentators who said they found the cake too moist. (In fact, the cake was a little crumbly when first cut, and I wondered if I had been too mean with the liquid, but the following day it was just right, so I wouldn't increase the liquid!) I also cut the rhubarb stalks into quite thin pieces (about 1cm), as some people found that large pieces of fruit sank to the bottom of the cake.  I used a small proportion of light muscovado sugar in the cake batter (30g with 200g caster), as I didn't have any golden caster sugar. Apart from these small changes I followed the recipe closely. My cake cooked in 60 minutes, and needed covering for the last 20 minutes to prevent over-browning. I would have been happier with a few more flaked almonds on top (I was using the last of a pack), but overall, I'm very pleased with this cake.

Linzer Squares

This variation of the famous Austrian pastry, Linzer Torte, was inspired by this recipe I saw on the blog Bake or Break - it looked so pretty! However, I really love the hazelnut pastry that Delia Smith uses in her Linzer Torte, so I decided to combine the best of both recipes - Delia's pastry and the presentation style from Bake or Break. Traditionally, I think Linzer Tortes are usually filled with either redcurrant or raspberry jam, but even Delia seems to have tossed tradition aside, and now uses cranberry jelly, so I had no qualms about using three different jams to fill this version of the recipe.

I made 1.5 times the amount of pastry in Delia's recipe, but used a whole egg and some water to bind the dough, rather than 3 egg yolks, as I didn't want egg whites waiting to be  used up. This amount of pastry was enough to line a 12 x 8" (30 x 20cm) tin, after 200g had been put aside for the topping. I raised a shallow wall of pastry along the edges of the tin, just to stop the ram running off, then used 3 varieties of jelly-style jam to spread over the pastry base - redcurrant, apricot and blackberry. The redcurrant and apricot were ends of jars that needed using up, and there wasn't quite enough to use equal amounts of each, unfortunately  - I think the squares would have looked better with less of the darkest jelly.

I rolled out the set aside portion of dough and cut out small circles of various sizes, and dotted them over the jam. This was certainly much easier than making a lattice, especially as the dough is fairly soft and can be difficult to work with. The tray was then baked for 35 minutes at 190C, until the pastry was beginning to turn golden brown. After cooling, I cut the pasty into 12 squares, which wasn't easy, as the pastry circles wanted to sink into the jam, rather than yield to the knife!

These made a tasty little treat, although my husband always reminisces about his mother's jam tarts whenever I bake them. She cooked hers at a very high temperature until the jam had cooked to a very sticky  texture, and was quite chewy, rather than still jam-like! I think my pastry would have been burnt before that happened with this recipe.

The bottom of the three photos, a piece taken from a corner of the traybake, was the best picture to show all three colours of jam together, although it's not a good looking piece of pastry!.

Despite these squares not being traditional to Austrian cooking, I am entering them into the Formula 1 Foods challenge on Caroline Makes, which asks us to make something inspired by the country where each stage of the F1 GP season is taking place. This coming weekend the race takes place in Austria - a relatively easy country from which to take inspiration.

White Chocolate, Coconut and Raspberry Flapjack

This recipe was devised to use up a carton of Jordan's 'Country Crisp with Raspberries'  breakfast cereal. The cereal is made up of clusters of oats and barley flakes, stuck together with sugar and palm oil and flavoured with small quantities of dried raspberries, hazelnuts and coconut. It's very tasty, and very calorific if you eat the recommended portion size, but unfortunately my husband didn't find it as filling as his usual brands of granola and muesli. Never one to waste food, flapjacks seemed a good use of what was left after he'd tried it for a few days.

I adapted my usual flapjack recipe, reducing the amount of  butter, sugar and syrup used to allow for the fat and sugar already in the cereal, and adding rolled oats for substance and a little more coconut for flavour. I also threw in the remains of a pack of white chocolate chips, just to use them up!

Ingredients
200g butter
75g golden syrup
125g light muscovado sugar
250g Country Crisp cereal
150g rolled oats
30g desiccated coconut
50g white chocolate chips

Method
Melt the butter, syrup and sugar together in a large bowl in the microwave, or a saucepan on the hob, then mix in the other ingredients. Spread evenly into a 30 x 20cm (12 x 8") baking tin, lined with baking parchment, and press down firmly. Bake at 180C for 30 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes, then mark into bars with a heavy knife (I get 18 pieces out of this size of tin, but you may prefer smaller bars). Leave in the baking tin until completely cold before cutting into pieces, and storing in an airtight tin.

These flapjacks were light and crunchy, as I think some of the cereal is puffed during the manufacturing process.  This crunchiness made them harder than those I usually make, but it's nice to have an occasional change from chewy flapjacks. Although there was only a small percentage of dried raspberries (2.5%) in the cereal, their flavour was noticeable, and complimented the coconut well.

The AlphaBakes challenge,  hosted by Caroline at Caroline Makes, and Ros at The More Than Occasional Baker, is to make something whose name, or principal ingredient begins with a randomly chosen letter of the alphabet.

This month the challenge is hosted by Caroline, and the chosen letter is O, so I'm entering these flapjacks because they contain OATS.

Gooseberry and Elderflower Cheesecake

While checking around the garden recently, I noticed how quickly the gooseberries were growing. That reminded me that there were still some of last year's gooseberries in the freezer, which ought to be used before this year's excess fruit went in. So when I needed a dessert to take to lunch with friends, something that could be made with frozen gooseberries seemed the best idea.

The biggest problem with taking desserts to other people is carrying them with no damage. It's also a good idea to take something ready to serve, so you're not doing last minute cooking in someone else's kitchen, or taking up oven space at an inconvenient time. A cold dessert, which was not likely to spill while travelling, seemed ideal and I eventually decided on cheesecake. After looking at several very different recipes, I chose a Mary Berry recipe (from her book 'Ultimate Cake Book') for a set gooseberry and elderflower cheesecake using gelatine. A gelatine based cheesecake could be transported still in the springform tin in which it was made, and the sides removed when ready to serve.

I never like to make an untried recipe for other people, so I had a trial run with the cheesecake the weekend before it was needed.

I adapted the recipe slightly so that I could use leaf gelatine, which I find much easier to use than powdered. I also made a few other changes, such as leaving the sugar out of the biscuit base, using the whole 250g tub of cream cheese, rather than having 25g left over, and leaving off the whipped cream decoration, as extra cream didn't seem necessary for the trial run. All I needed to do, to use leaf gelatine, was to soften nine leaves in cold water, then add them to the sieved gooseberries while the purée was still warm.

As with the rhubarb meringue pie I made recently, the addition of cream to the fruit seemed to mute the flavour. It was good, but decidedly 'delicate', and not as sharp as when using gooseberries in a pie or crumble. The crumb base was thin but this was good, as thick bases can be too hard to cut and eat easily. The set cheesecake mixture had bonded with the base well, so there wasn't any danger of things falling apart. The texture was very light and aerated - very mousse-like - so it didn't really seem like eating a cheesecake at all.

Because I was a little worried about the lack of flavour, I decided to make a tangy gooseberry sauce to eat with the cheesecake when I made it the second time, for those who liked the sharpness of gooseberries. I made this by simmering 550g of gooseberries with 80g of sugar until softened. I strained the juices back into the pan and reduced them by about half, until syrupy, while I sieved the cooked gooseberries to remove the pips. The concentrated juices were stirred back into the purée - more sugar could be added at this stage, to taste, but I decided to leave the sauce quite sharp.

By the time I made the second cheesecake, the elderflowers were almost out, so I decorated the cheesecake with small sprigs of flower buds and gooseberry leaves, rather than whipped cream, and served it with creme fraiche. Unfortunately, as I had to leave it in the springform tin for transportation, I couldn't get a good photo of the second cheesecake.

As the mousse-like texture of this cheesecake relies on beaten egg whites, I'm entering this into Belleau Kitchen's Simply Eggcellent bloggers link-up for June, which is for recipes where free-range eggs feature heavily. Dom hasn't set a theme for this month - anything goes - but a light cheesecake with seasonal fruit is perfect for this time of year.

Impossible Coconut Pie

Impossible pies are so called because it's impossible to believe that such a large quantity of very  sloppy cake batter could ever cook into something edible. However, while baking, the mixture separates into layers - a thin dense bottom crust that is very much like pastry, with a custard like layer in the middle that gradually changes to a lighter airy sponge on top. When the impossible pie is a coconut pie, the top becomes golden and crunchy, which is a good contrast to the moist custard layer below.

After some discussion about impossible pies (also sometimes called 'magic custard cakes') with other online foodies, I decided to try one out for myself. I used a recipe taken from Sue Lawrence's book 'On Baking', which just mixes all the ingredients together and pours them into a large pie dish before baking for 50 minutes. Some recipes make things a little more complicated by whisking the egg whites separately and folding them into the batter.

I really didn't expect my husband to like this, as he's doesn't usually like anything that even hints of custard, but he surprised me by saying he thought it was quite good! Perhaps it was the coconut that won him over!

This was so quick and easy to make, using ingredients that any baker keeps to hand, that I think I'll be investigating other recipes for impossible pie soon - I've heard there's a chocolate version!

In the photos of the cut pie, I think you can see how the custard layer gradually becomes lighter and spongy  as you get towards the top.

Rhubarb Meringue Pie

It was only after making this dessert that I realised it was somewhat similar to Delia Smith's recipe. I hadn't knowingly read Delia's recipe beforehand - perhaps it just a case of great minds thinking alike (ha ha!). It was an idea that had been  in the back of my mind for a while but it wasn't until I had some double cream leftover from something else that I finally got round to trying it.

The filling was 500g chopped rhubarb cooked to a pulp with 80g sugar. Once it was cool, I mixed in 2 egg yolks and 100mls double cream. This was poured into a pre-cooked shortcrust pie case and cooked for 20 minutes at 170C.

I made half a batch of this meringue mixture from the two egg whites, spread it over the pie filling and baked for a further 15 minutes, until the meringue was beginning to colour.

The pie filling was quite soft at room temperature, although it firmed up more after chilling. I think, for this quantity of fruit and cream, 3 egg yolks would have been better. Three egg whites would have made a better quantity of meringue too.

Using cream in the filling muted the flavour of the rhubarb quite a bit. I think if I made this again I would try Delia's method of thickening the filling with cornflour, and leaving the rhubarb in pieces rather than cooking it to a purée. Despite my criticism of the taste, this made a nice change from the crumble I usually make when we want a weekend dessert.

Butter Tart Squares

I decided that Butter Tarts would be my contribution to the next Formula 1 Foods challenge. Caroline, at Caroline Makes, has challenged participants to cook something inspired by the location of each race of the F1 Grand Prix season. This year, the Canadian race, held in Montreal, takes place on the first weekend in June.  Having spent a few days in Montreal, at the end of a tour of Nova Scotia and the Eastern Canadian coast, I know that maple syrup is used in many dishes in that region, both sweet and savoury. This is what made me decide on Butter Tarts rather than that other well known Canadian traybake, Nanaimo Bars, which have their origins in Western Canada.

Butter Tarts are traditionally filled with raisins and a butter/egg/corn syrup mixture which sets like a custard when baked, but there are lots of versions of the recipe around using nuts as well as raisins, adding chocolate or coconut, and using maple syrup instead of corn syrup. I was delighted to find, while researching recipes, that Canadian Butter Tarts could be made as a traybake; as one recipe said - all of the flavour with none of the fiddle! That sounded just the sort of recipe for me.

Once I'd decided to use maple syrup, and make a traybake version of butter tarts, it didn't take me long to come across Anna Olson's recipe for Maple Pecan Chocolate Squares. This was fortuitous, as Anna is a Canadian celebrity TV cook, perhaps best known for her baking recipes, so most appropriate for this challenge. I followed her recipe exactly, although I had to use walnuts instead of pecans (showing my support for the British drivers, is one way to look at it!).

I liked the deep filling on these squares, but I thought the base was a little too thin. In places the filling had seeped through the shortbread base, although that might have been because I didn't realise the significance of cooling the cooked base properly before pouring on the filling. If it had been really cold it might have resisted the liquid poured on top. However, if I were to make these again, I would make a thicker base - say half as much again of the shortbread mix. I would also like to try a version without chocolate - the walnuts stood out as a dominant ingredient but the chocolate overwhelmed the flavour of the maple syrup.


These squares need refrigerating, but are best allowed to warm up at room temperature for 20 minutes or so before you eat them, to get the best flavour. More than that and they become too soft and difficult to handle - something else that might be remedied with a thicker base.