Salted Caramel Flapjacks, with Chocolate and Hazelnuts

If I'm going to carry on baking regularly, I'm going to have to find recipes for smaller cakes, or experiment with halving some of the recipes I use regularly. Flapjack recipes are easy to divide, because there are no fractions of eggs involved, and the quantities of ingredients aren't critical to the nearest gram - a bit more or less of any of the main ingredients and you end up with a slightly crunchier, or chewier flapjack. Not a disaster, and a lesson for revised quantities next time.

This recipe was inspired by this Annie Bell recipe, which I've used once before, and was chosen to use up an open jar of salted caramel - mainly to stop me just dipping in with a spoon and eating it on its own. I used half quantities of all the ingredients, but rather than drizzle melted chocolate over the baked flapjacks, I added 40g of chopped dark chocolate and 30g of coarsely chopped hazelnuts to the oat mixture.

As I expected, the chocolate melted in the heat of the flapjack mixture, but I was careful to add the chocolate as the last ingredient, and fold it in quickly. This meant that most of the chocolate stayed in discrete areas, giving the flapjacks a marbled appearance. The chopped nuts added an extra texture of crunch to the very chewy flapjacks, as well as flavour.

I baked the oat mixture in a tin measuring 20cm x 12.5cm (8" x 5") - I used a deep adjustable cake tin - but finding the right size baking trays for brownies and other traybakes is proving difficult. Everything I look at is either too big or too small for half-sized recipes, but I'm not sure fiddling around with more complicated calculations is worth the effort!

Ingredients: 120g salted butter; 90g light muscovado sugar; 112g salted caramel*; pinch sea-salt crystals; 175g oats; 30g chopped hazelnuts; 40g chopped 70% chocolate.

*If you only have basic caramel, add a little extra sea-salt

It's the usual flapjack method - melt together the butter, sugar and caramel. Stir in the oats, salt and nuts, then lastly, quickly fold in the chocolate. Spread into a baking tray lined with baking parchment and press down well. Bake for 25 minutes at 180C. Mark into portions while still hot, but cool completely before removing from the tin.

There was a lot of butter bubbling on the surface of the flapjack when it was removed from the oven, but it was all absorbed back in as the mixture cooled. It does make me think that the amount of butter in the recipe could be cut back a little, though.

Salt Caramel Flapjacks

A few days ago, I opened a tin of ready made caramel to make a toffee apple and pecan cake, which needed just 200g of the caramel. It turned out to be a waste of caramel, because although the cake was just about edible, it took twice as long to cook as the recipe stated, and was very dense and stodgy, and not particularly well-flavoured, as the added ingredients of apples and pecans were in quite small quantities.

As I was so disappointed with the cake, I decided not to even write a blog post about it, but you can follow the link above, if you want to know what to avoid!

That left me with roughly half a tin of caramel to use, and I also had some really good quality Sainsbury's gluten-free rolled oats that I wanted to compare with ALDI porridge oats and Tesco everyday value oats. Obviously, finding a recipe for caramel flapjacks was a priority, but it had to be a recipe that used the amount of caramel available.

It didn't take long to find this Annie Bell recipe for Salt Caramel Flapjacks. I was a little flabbergasted by the amount of butter, but I've cooked enough of Annie's recipes to trust her, especially as I was a little short on the amount of caramel needed. I had to use unsalted butter for the recipe, so added extra salt, in the form of 1 teaspoon of vanilla flavoured salt I happened to have in the store cupboard.

The recipe was simple to follow and quick to put together and cook. I cut the finished flapjacks into 16 portions - 25 seemed ridiculously small, although they would have been less calorific per portion! The results were absolutely delicious; my only criticism of the flavour was that I couldn't taste the salt. If (or, more likely, when) I make them again I will increase the amount of salt added. The flapjack was chewy and fudgy flavoured, and very rich. They were perhaps slightly on the crumbly side, but I think a few minutes extra baking will take care of that.

As for the oats - the gluten-free oats were miles ahead in quality - they were whole grains rolled flat, to make large crisp flakes. The Tesco everyday value oats were next in quality, with smaller, less crisp flakes ( I have to say that I've been using these for baking for years, with no complaints about the results). The ALDI porridge oats were very small pieces of flake, which probably make great porridge, but were too fine to give a good result if used on their own in baked goods. I think in future I will use a mixture of the Tesco everyday value and the gluten-free oats to improve the texture of things such as biscuits and flapjacks. But for things like cakes, where the coarser texture isn't as important, and perhaps not even necessary, I'll continue with just the Tesco oats.

I'm just in time to submit this recipe to this month's Tea Time Treats challenge, which is to produce food suitable for a bonfire night party. TTT is a cooking challenge hosted alternately by Karen of Lavender and Lovage, and Jane of The Hedge Combers, who is this month's host.

Orange Marzipan Cake

My Alternative Xmas Cake

I've wanted to make this cake for years - ever since I bought Annie Bell's book 'Gorgeous Cakes' - but every Christmas something has happened to stop me making it. This year nothing interfered, not even the thought that I'd got for too much food already, and a cake wasn't really even necessary!

The cake consists of a shortbread layer, a madeira style cake flavoured with rum and dried fruit, and sandwiched between the two are layers of marzipan and marmalade. All this is topped of with a sprinkling of flaked almonds and pine nuts. It's always sounded a really delicious cake to me, perfect for those who don't like or want a traditional rich fruit cake at this time of year.

It was a delicious cake, but not perfect! One fault was mine, but if I was going to bake it again, I would make some changes to produce something even more delicious. My fault was being too enthusiastic with my new Kenwood Chef mixer, and believing the recipe book, which said that beating the eggs into the creamed sugar and butter at maximum speed would lessen the likelihood of curdling! I now know that you still need to go the traditional route of adding a little flour with each egg! The bad curdling resulted in a slightly stodgy texture, rather than the sponge-like appearance I had been expecting.

The recipe's problems, to my taste, were two-fold - firstly, there was not enough marzipan (although you could taste the marzipan, you couldn't really see it as a separate layer). I think the layer either needs to be thicker or it needs to be made from a better quality marzipan. I usually use Anton Berg marzipan which is 60% almonds, but it has disappeared off the shelves this year, possibly due to the much publicised almond shortage. Using a standard supermarket marzipan which was only 25% almonds might explain why it seemed to melt into the cake mixture. I guess a good alternative would be a homemade marzipan, although most of the recipes I've seen are less than 50% almonds when the sugar and binder are factored in

The second problem was not enough orange flavour. I think the cake needs at least the zest of an orange in the cake batter, and I would probably replace the rum with orange juice, as the rum flavour wasn't very noticeable. I used sultanas and dried cranberries in the cake, and these could be plumped up first in orange juice, if you wanted to keep the rum.

Apart from those problems, it was a really good cake. Having a crisp shortbread layer, and the marzipan only at the bottom of the cake, and pieces of nuts only at the top, made it interesting to eat, as there was a variety of textures and flavours depending on where you took a bite. Definitely a good alternative to a rich fruit cake - even FB, who avoids most dried fruit, liked it!

A few recipe details, to make a cake in a deep 20cm tin with a loose bottom - the shortbread layer was made from 90g butter, 40g golden caster sugar, 75g plain flour and 50g ground almonds. This was pressed into the cake tin and chilled. A circle made from 200g marzipan, spread with 75g coarse-cut marmalade was placed on top of the shortbread before the cake batter was added. The cake batter was made from 225g golden caster sugar and 225g unsalted butter, creamed together. 4 whole eggs and one egg yolk were added next, followed by 90mls rum. 225g SR flour plus 1 teaspoon baking powder was folded in, then 75g each of sultanas and dried cranberries (raisins in the original recipe) was stirred in gently. After this was transferred to the cake tin and spread evenly, 20g each of flaked almonds and pine nuts were scattered on top. The cake took around 70 minutes to bake at 170C, and was cooled in the tin.

AlphaBakes, a monthly baking challenge based on a randomly chosen letter of the alphabet is running out of easy letters. Providentially, December's letter is X, and X-mas is considered an acceptable choice of word to use as part of the name of what we produce. Hence I am entering this as my alternative X-mas cake! AlphaBakes is jointly hosted by Caroline of Caroline Makes, and Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker. The rules can be found here, and Ros is the host this month. There will be a festive round up at the end of the month, although I wonder if there will be any entries that found an alternative to X-mas!

Chocolate Fudge Cake with Apricot and Almond Filling

When will I learn to check the store cupboard before starting out on a baking session? I was sure there was still a packet of marzipan left over from Christmas, but no - there was only a measly 50g, wrapped in foil in the fridge (there would have been more, but for the thin slices I keep sneaking off leftover marzipan stored this way!)

So let me start by saying, the thicker the slice of marzipan you can put in the filling of this cake, the better it will be. I carried on with just the 50g that I had, but usually I would use half a pack - around 125g.

I saw a new chocolate cake recipe by Annie Bell recently, again, using oil insted of butter. I really wanted to try the cake, but didn't want fresh cream and fruit in the middle nor a marshmallow frosting. I decided to top the cake with chocolate fudge frosting and fill it with a family favourite - layers of apricot jam, marzipan and chocolate frosting. After 24 hours or so, the layers meld together as the marzipan dissolves, resulting in a sticky almond flavoured filling. Of course, we never wait for 24 hours before cutting the cake, so it tastes different on the first day, with each different flavour being noticeable.

The chocolate fudge frosting is made by melting 175g plain chocolate and 30g of butter together, then whisking in 2 tablespoons of golden syrup and 3 tablespoons milk. This is left to cool until it just holds it's shape - just under half is used in the filling and the rest spread on top of the cake.

I assemble the cake with a thick layer of apricot jam on the bottom layer of cake, then a circle of marzipan rolled to fit the cake, then the chocolate frosting, before putting on the top layer of cake.

This was a really delicious cake - the large amount of sugar did not make the cake over-sweet, but gave it a dense, moist texture, and counteracted the bitterness of the large amount of cocoa used. I'm sure this is good enough to use as the basis of a gateau, or a celebration cake - it tastes much richer than the ingredients would suggest. I'm certainly pleased to have had this recipe pointed out to me - it's a good companion to the lighter sponge recipe, also by Annie Bell, that I already use! Thanks to my friend, Jude, who searches out likely looking recipes.

Hazelnut & Cinnamon Cake with Chocolate Streusel

Between having the kitchen taken over by plumbers performing emergency surgery on the hot water and heating system, and the rush to catch up with gardening jobs now that it's drier and warmer, there hasn't been much time for baking during the last week or so.

But I've got the kitchen back now, and have also been handed a project by FB, so there's no excuse (except the extreme heat) for avoiding it any longer. Not that I think baking is something to be avoided - I spent ages last week looking at the bakery shelves in the supermarkets, thinking either that things were too expensive to buy, or were too small to be worth the money asked for, or that I could make similar things much better. I played safe with muffins in the end - relatively cheap and I'm safe in the knowledge that CT often prefers commercial muffins to my home-baked ones, so he'd be happy, at least!

FB is moving on to a new job soon, and has promised a cake for her colleagues when she hands in her notice (and another when she leaves, no doubt!). She said she had thought up the idea of a cinnamon flavoured cake with a chocolate and hazelnut topping, and was quite miffed when I showed her that this idea wasn't original!

I didn't have any buttermilk, so decided that I'd have a trial run using the very adaptable Annie Bell recipe, which has been so useful in the past. I left out the lemon, and flavoured the cake with 2 teaspoons of cinnamon and a teaspoon of cocoa, and substituted 50g ground hazelnuts for the same weight of flour. Then I sprinkled over a crumble topping made by mixing 55g melted butter with 50g flour, 50g light muscovado sugar, 20g cocoa and 25g finely chopped toasted hazelnuts.  This makes a solid dough, which is then crumbled over the raw cake batter before baking - it usually works much better than a dry crumble mix, but in this case it sort of melted into the surface, and didn't look like a streusel topping!

This was a really well flavoured, light textured cake, but there are several things which need improving before FB can take it into work. The first is to increase the amount of topping, to give a complete streusel covering, and perhaps go back to a dry crumb mix. The chocolate flavour needs strengthening too - use chopped chocolate instead of, or as well as, the cocoa, maybe. There also needs to be more cinnamon in the cake mix - at least another teaspoon. Other than that, I'm pleased with the first version of this flavour combination, using this particular recipe.

Mocha Traybake

There are two ways to use coffee and chocolate together in cakes - one is to use a little coffee to deepen the flavour of the chocolate, which often means the coffee isn't detectable in the flavour, and the other is to use more coffee and less chocolate to make a cake which tastes of the coffee as much as the chocolate. The second is what I tried to do here. The flavour was successful, but the grated chocolate that I added to the batter disappeared during baking, so I didn't get the flecky appearance I was hoping for. I was worried that the very wet batter wouldn't support chocolate chips, but my grated chocolate was too fine and melted into the batter.

This was yet another adaptation of this Annie Bell recipe, which is the nearest I've come to getting the texture of a sponge cake, using oil instead of butter. In this case, I left out all the lemon flavouring and dissolved 3 teaspoons of instant coffee in the milk before mixing the batter. I then folded in 30g grated plain chocolate before baking.

For the topping I made my favourite chocolate fudge frosting - melt 175g plain chocolate and 30g butter over a low heat, then beat in 2 tablespoons golden syrup and 3 tablespoons milk, leave to cool but use while still spreadable - and finished off with a light sprinkle of 'cappuccino pearls'.

Note added 23rd March: At Baking Addict's suggestion I am entering this in the AlphaBakes Challenge, a new monthly baking challenge hosted alternately by The More Than Occasional Baker and Caroline Makes. Caroline is hosting this month and the letter M has been randomly chosen. M for Mocha, obviously!

Coconut and Lime Drizzle Cake

This is another adaptation of this fabulous Annie Bell recipe, which is turning out to be very adaptable and versatile, as I'd hoped. The fact that I can take out flour and substitute desiccated coconut, without affecting how well the recipe works is very encouraging.

This flavour combination was delicious, very light and delicate, and the texture of the cake was light too, quite unusual for coconut cakes, which often turn out quite stodgy. I kept the topping simple - just a dusting of sugar on top of the lime drizzle - but a lime flavoured glacé icing and some shreds of toasted coconut would have made the cake more interesting if it was being used for a special occasion, rather than an everyday cake.

Ingredients

180ml sunflower oil
270g caster sugar
3 eggs
zest of 2 limes (reserve the juice for topping)
100ml milk
250g plain flour
50g desiccated coconut
2 teaspoons baking powder

Topping - 2 tablespoons golden syrup, juice of 2 limes, granulated sugar for sprinkling

Method
Prepare a 23cm(9") square baking tin and preheat the oven to 190C.
Whisk the oil, sugar, eggs, lime zest and milk together in a large bowl, until the oil appears amalgamated.
Sift in the flour and baking powder, add the coconut and whisk until smoothly blended.
Transfer the batter to the baking tin and bake for about 30 minutes, until a test probe comes out clean.
While the cake is baking, blend the golden syrup and lime juice together.
Prick the hot cake all over with a fine probe, such as a cocktail stick, and drizzle over the lime juice mixture. When any puddles of juice have been absorbed, sprinkle over a little granulated sugar, and leave the cake to cool in the tin.

Hazelnut and Coffee Cake with Nutella Frosting

Phew! A successful cake after what seems like a stream of disappointments. It's not really that long since I baked something that I was (almost) completely happy with, but it seems like it when you're having to eat second-rate cakes!

This is my first attempt at adapting the Annie Bell recipe for a Lemon Drizzle Traybake, which I tried recently. I left out the lemon (obviously!), dissolved some coffee in the milk and substituted ground hazelnuts for some of the flour. The batter was baked in two sponge tins and then sandwiched and topped with a soft Nutella and plain chocolate frosting.

Ingredients - cake
180ml sunflower oil
270g caster sugar
3 large eggs
100ml milk
1 tablespoon instant coffee
50g chopped toasted hazelnuts
1 teaspoon cocoa (see note)
220g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder

Frosting
60g plain chocolate
30g butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup
3 tablespoons milk
roughly 100g Nutella*

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 190C, and prepare two 8"(20cm) sandwich tins.
Dissolve the coffee in the milk. Put the hazelnuts, cocoa and 20g of the flour into a food processor or mini-chopper and process until the nuts are very finely ground, but not turning greasy (the flour helps prevent this).
In a large bowl whisk the oil, sugar, milk and coffee, and eggs until emulsified. Sift in the plain flour and baking powder, then add the ground nut mixture; whisk together until just combined.
Divide the mixture between the two sandwich tins and bake for about 20 minutes, or until done when tested.
Cool in the tins for ten minutes then turn out onto a wire rack.
When cool, sandwich with half the frosting and top with the other half.

While the cakes are cooking make the frosting - melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl, over a pan of simmering water. Remove from the heat and beat in the other ingredients. Allow to cool to a spreading consistency before using.

* I tried to add an extra 50g of Nutella and the mixture started to split. I rescued it by adding a little extra milk, but this meant that the frosting didn't set as firm as I'd hoped. If you like thicker layers of filling and frosting, I suggest increasing all the ingredients by 50% (or even more!).

note - adding a little cocoa to cakes containing nuts is a tip from Dan Lepard to increase the nuttiness of the flavour.

This was a really well-flavoured and textured cake. The coffee flavour was a little overwhemed by the Nutella frosting, but I think the amount of coffee I used was enough - any more would have been bitter. The flavour of the nuts in both the cake and the frosting was very good.

With a differently flavoured  frosting - perhaps a vanilla or coffee buttercream - this would make a good coffee and nut cake with the coffee flavour more predominant. I'm really pleased that the recipe adapted as well as I'd hoped, and will be experimenting further with this.

Lemon Drizzle Traybake Cake

I think this cake might be my Eureka! moment - I think I've found a well-textured sponge cake made with oil, which could be varied in flavour. I have baked other cakes with oil, which have been wonderful, but it hasn't been easy to see how to adapt the best of them so that I can use different flavours. For instance, this Chocolate Swirl cake is almost perfect, but will always be a  chocolate swirl cake because of the way it's made!

However, this Lemon Drizzle Traybake Cake recipe, by Annie Bell, looks as if it could be adapted to other simple flavours such as coffee or chocolate. I need to experiment further to see if the batter bakes as well in other shapes such as loaves or deeper tins, and I'm not sure that it's dense enough to take solid additions such as chocolate chips and chopped nuts, but I'm hopeful that it will prove to be a really useful recipe.

As is often the case with oil based recipes, this was really simple to make - mix the sugar with the wet ingredients and the flavourings, then sift in the flour and baking powder and combine. However, I've had other similar recipes collapse after baking - I'm beginning to think that the proportions used in oil-based cakes are much more important than with buttery cakes. Fortunately we can  trust an Annie Bell recipe to be as reliable as always!

The flavour wasn't anything special - just a pleasant lemon flavour - and the topping didn't add a lot, but I was so pleased with the texture! It's not quite as light as a traditional Victoria Sandwich, but I'd say it's almost as good - somewhere between a sponge cake and a Madeira cake. Watch out for more cakes based on this recipe.