Flapjacks with Blueberries and Cranberries

A friend gave me a box of 8 sachets of  'Super Goodness' Porridge, with ingredients designed to boost the immune system. As the freeze-dried fruit was only 10% of the porridge, I'm not sure how much effect it would have (3.5g of fruit in each serving), but I suppose if you ate porridge for breakfast every day you're not going to do any harm, and might gain some benefits! There were some added vitamins too, which never hurts!

However, I don't like porridge, but could see the potential for the mixture to be used for flapjacks. The oats in the porridge were wholegrain rolled oats, not instant oats, so I figured they would work as a direct substitute for plain oats. The only adjustment I made to my usual recipe was to reduce the added sugar to compensate for the sugar already in the porridge mix (16%).

Ingredients

160g butter

70g golden syrup

50g caster sugar

280g Quaker Oats 'Super Goodness' Porridge with Blueberries, Cranberries and Guava.

Method

Preheat oven to 180C/160C fan and line a 20cm square shallow cake tin with baking parchment.

Melt the butter, golden syrup and sugar together  - I do it in the microwave, but a saucepan on the hob is fine too. Don't boil the mixture, just heat enough for the butter to completely melt.

Stir in the porridge mixture and mix thoroughly. 

Transfer the mixture to the baking tin, spread evenly and press down firmly.

Bake for 30 minutes until golden brown. Cool for 5 minutes then mark into bars or squares, but allow to cool completely before removing from the tin.

Despite the fruit content of the porridge being only 10% (and 2% of that was guava powder), there was enough to give the flapjacks a strong fruit flavour. I think being freeze-dried makes the fruit lighter than ordinary dried fruit, so there's more volume of fruit in the 28g in the recipe - it certainly looked a lot!  These flapjacks were a little crisper than those made following my basic recipe, but they were still chewy enough!

Blueberry and Citrus Flapjack

I was looking for something quick and easy to make, which would just fill the gap until the bank holiday dessert was made - so nothing too large. Rootling through the storecupboard - in reality a large plastic box  - I found dried blueberries and mixed peel which needed using. They seemed ideal additions to a chewy flapjack, and 2/3 of my usual recipe was perfect in size.

Ingredients
100g dried blueberries
finely grated zest and juice of 1 mandarin orange
1 tablespoon boiling water
1 tablespoon limoncello (optional)
50g diced candied mixed peel
160g unsalted butter
65g golden syrup
100g light muscovado sugar
240g rolled oats



Method
Line a 8"(20cm) square baking tin with parchment, and preheat the oven to 180C.
Soak the blueberries and zest in the juice of the mandarin, the boiling water and the limoncello (if using) for a few minutes to plump up the fruit.
Melt the butter, sugar and syrup together, in a saucepan, stirring until the sugar has dissolved.
Put the oats, blueberries and mixed peel into a large bowl and stir in the butter mixture.
Spread the mixture evenly in the baking tin and press down firmly.
Bake for 25 minutes for a chewy flapjack, or a little longer if you prefer the flapjack to be crisp.
Mark into 16 squares while still warm, but cool completely before removing from tin.

These were delicious. The blueberries and mixed citrus flavours went really well together, and both the berries and the peel were soft and chewy.

Blackcurrant Jam Cake

with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

Things are busy at the moment; CT is moving out (eventually) but his new place needs some work on it first, and he's not very practically minded, so needs our help. There are the also the contents of his room, and his new things, to move into his home - although he can carry his own books up two flights of stairs! In addition, my mother is getting old and frail, and needs more help with errands and the increasing number of hospital appointments. Then there's the battle between the garden and the weather - the weeds are growing fast at the moment, so there's always work to do out there. With all this vying for my attention, time is running out to take part in my usual monthly baking challenges.

Luckily, this odd cake fits the brief for two of the challenges that I take part in regularly - We Should Cocoa (using chocolate and blackcurrants together) and AlphaBakes (where W is the randomly generated letter). I was going to include it in the Tea Time Treats challenge, as a traybake suitable for a cake stall, but decided that anything with nuts in carried a risk of triggering an allergy, so was best avoided, even though I do label my cake stall donations with an ingredient list.

Blackcurrants  are a fruit that I've never considered pairing with chocolate before this We Should Cocoa challenge, and even after scouring the internet for ideas, I couldn't come up with anything using dark chocolate that sounded a good way to combine them. White chocolate seemed a much better option. There was also the not inconsiderable problem of not finding any fresh fruit in my usual supermarkets, so having to use a processed version instead - in this case, jam. However, my searches threw up 'jam cakes', a speciality of the southern states of the USA, although I did find one reference to them also being a wartime adaptation to deal with sugar shortages here in the UK - presumably using jam laid down in the years prior to rationing.

After reading a lot of recipes, I decided to use this UK recipe from Annie Bell, as she is a reliable recipe writer, and this cake wasn't as huge as those produced in other recipes. Although this recipe uses a buttercream filling, many of the US recipes use a cream cheese frosting, and it seemed a logical step forward to add white chocolate to a cream cheese frosting, which would fit the challenge brief perfectly. As well as combining chocolate and blackcurrants for We Should Cocoa, white chocolate gave me the W for AlphaBakes

I decided to bake the cake as a traybake, and use a topping instead of a filling - a wise decision, as it turned out, as the cake wasn't really deep enough to split easily. My only adaptations to the recipe were to use blackcurrant jam instead of strawberry (many US recipes specify blackberry jam - a similar dark colour) and to add dried blueberries instead of raisins. I then added a white chocolate cream cheese frosting of my own devising. I intended to bake the cake in a 20 x 30cm tray, but it was clear after making the batter that it wouldn't go that far, so I changed to a 20cm square tin.

While the cake was cooling I tried to make the frosting, which reminded me how much I hate working with melted white chocolate. Melting 100g white chocolate with 20g butter, in a bowl over hot water, left me with a thick paste in the bottom of the bowl. This was made liquid by the addition of a tablespoon of milk. After cooling the mixture a little, I incorporated 100g icing sugar, followed by 150g full fat cream cheese. The sugar made the mixture very stiff, but beating in the cream cheese turned it back to a thinner consistency which needed refrigerating to get it to a spreadable texture - unfortunately it never did set to the firmer consistency that I hoped for.

I called this an odd cake earlier because the outcome didn't really match the ingredients put in - I expected a fruitier flavour, but the spices were predominant, although even there, the flavour was quite delicate. The cake stayed an interesting purply colour and the nuts and dried blueberries added a chewy texture. The frosting was a pleasant vanilla flavour, but didn't really do anything to enhance the cake - it would have been better if had set more firmly. Overall, although we didn't dislike the cake, no-one liked it enough for it to be made again - bland and tasteless was one description, but others might think differently!

PS - July 19th. The flavour of the cake matured overnight! It was a much better flavour the next day, but it still wasn't special enough to make me want to make it again.

The We Should Cocoa Challenge (rules here) is hosted jointly by Chele from Chocolate Teapot and Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog, this month's challenge, to use blackcurrants, was set by Choclette. The round-up of entries will be on Chocolate Log Blog at the end of the month.

The AlphaBakes Challenge (rules here) is a monthly baking challenge to make something  featuring a randomly chosen letter - this can be part of the name of the product or one of the major ingredients. It is hosted jointly by Caroline, from Caroline Makes, and Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker, who take turns to generate a random letter and collate the entries. This month Caroline is the host, and her random letter generator picked W!

Lemon and Blueberry Cake with Coconut Streusel

This recipe is proving to be one of the best I've found. Not only can the basic flavour be varied easily, but the batter is stiff enough to take additions such as chocolate chips and dried fruit without them sinking during baking. The polenta and almonds can also be swapped for more flour, if that is more convenient, without spoiling the recipe. I find it really comforting to know I have a set of good recipes that I can rely on when my imagination fails or time is short.

This time I followed the basic recipe (leaving off the lemon syrup after baking), and added 70g of dried blueberries that had been soaked in boiling water for 15 minutes. For the topping, I mixed 75g plain flour, 50g sugar, 35g desiccated coconut and 50mls sunflower oil. The oil brought the other ingredients together into a nicely clumped crumble, which wasn't too dry and powdery when sprinkled over the cake. The topping seemed to insulate the cake from the oven heat, which meant the cake took about 10 minutes longer to bake. The coconut browned nicely during baking, giving the streusel topping an attractive appearance.

This was a lovely textured cake, moist but still light, with a delicate flavour. If it wasn't for the addition of the coconut and blueberries, I might have liked a stronger lemon flavour, but as it was, the three flavours were perfectly balanced.

My next step is to try this recipe with fresh fruit - if it works well then I have an almost complete set of low saturated fat, adaptable recipes which don't need improvement - a light chocolate cake, a sponge cake, a brownie recipe and this one which covers most other needs. I don't expect that I'll give up trying other recipes though - I'm always finding goodies I want to bake, and CT is hoping to leave home soon, so low saturated fat baking won't be necessary much longer!

Chocolate Chip and Blueberry Oat Bars

This is a delightful tray bake for busy days - you only need a large mixing bowl, a sieve, a wooden spoon, a measuring jug and a fork, and you can have the whole mix into the baking tray by the time the oven has heated up. With only 20 minute baking, you can have the whole job done in half an hour!

I used this recipe for Choc-chip Muesli Slice from Taste.com.au, substituting 75g dried blueberries for the same weight of chocolate. You could view this as a healthy version of flapjack - less fat (and oil instead of butter) and less sugar, but all of the tasty bits. In fact it's more like a chocolate chip cookie dough baked in a tray.

I found the bars a little on the dry side, but that might be because the blueberries absorbed some of the moisture. An all-chocolate version, like the original, might be better in this respect. They were not very sweet at all - which is why milk chocolate is specified in the recipe.

As Blueberries and Bar begin with B, I am entering these into this month's AlphaBakes challenge - the letter randomly chosen for this month being 'B'. AlphaBakes is hosted alternately by Caroline from Caroline Makes and Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker - this month the random letter B was generated by Ros, and must be used as a predominant part of the name of the recipe or one of the main ingredients. See the full rules on this link if you'd like to know more!

Blueberry and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Not everyone likes mince pies, and the other traditional Christmas goodies. We always have two desserts for Christmas  lunch - one is chocolate and the other something fruity and fresh tasting - no Christmas puddings here, although I adore them! I make sure both desserts can be made in advance and that they will keep for a few days if not eaten straight away. More about them later!

However, for those who won't even look at a mince pie or a slice of fruit cake, I've baked some Blueberry and Chocolate Chip Cookies to sit alongside the Biscotti I made a few days ago. I used my favourite Dan Lepard recipe, changing it slightly to use vanilla extract instead of almond and spelt flour instead of wholemeal. This was the first time I've used spelt flour on it's own and it gave a really interesting flavour - hard to describe it really - nutty, perhaps? It certainly made the cookies an unusual colour too!

Upside-down Pear and Blueberry Cake

I've been given some windfall Conference pears which, although bruised in places, are still so hard that they are never going to ripen for eating. Fortunately, I love pears in any form and both Hubs and CT will eat them cooked. I toyed with the ideas of a chocolate or gingerbread upside down cake, but decided in the end to be a little more subtle; I flavoured the cake batter with orange zest, and added some dried blueberries soaked in orange juice, too.

I basically followed this recipe from Nigel Slater, although I quartered the pears before cooking, as there were so many bruises to cut away. I needed to use 4 pears to get enough quarters to fill the base of the cake tin. I made the cake batter by the all-in-one method, using SR flour and just beating all the ingredients together, adding the grated zest of a medium orange, plus 50g of dried blueberries which had soaked in orange juice for 2 hours. I used the unabsorbed orange juice instead of the tablespoon of milk in the recipe.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of using a springform tin, and most of the honey flavoured sauce, which should have formed round the pears, ended up on the oven floor. Despite that, the cake was still very tasty, with just the slightest hint of honey still being noticeable, and the orange flavour complimenting the pears and blueberries very well. The pear juices made the sponge very moist although it still seemed quite light; this is definitely a dessert type of cake, best served with whipped cream or a spoonful of natural yogurt.

Blueberry Choc-Chip Cookies

This is the second time I've tackled this recipe from Dan Lepard in less than a month. The first time I didn't have dried blueberries, so made a cherry version instead. The cookies were a great success, so I vowed to try the recipe as written, as soon as possible. I soon found dried blueberries on special offer in the supermarket - £15 per kilo instead of £20. Doesn't it sound awfully extravagant when you say it like that? It's certainly more than I pay for most of the chocolate I buy for baking!

The blueberry version, with the addition of almond extract was just as delicious, but I wasn't entirely happy with the flavour of the extract. Although I bought a natural extract it still tasted artificial compared to the delicate flavour of real almonds - I think one teaspoonful was too much for my taste. Dried blueberries worked better than dried cherries in one respect - they are much smaller, so were better distributed throughout the dough. This time I used chopped eating chocolate - 100g of 74% and 50g of 60% - but still had the problem of some of it melting during cooking. Doesn't matter though - it doesn't affect the flavour!