Chocolate Chip Loaf Cake, with Hazelnuts, Raspberries and Lime

Although chocolate, raspberries, hazelnuts and lime sounded a very tasty combination of ingredients, this was a case where the sum total was less than its parts. I think the problem was that none of the ingredients stood out, so that, although these were pleasant cakes, overall the flavour was too non-descript. This could probably be easily remedied by more lime zest, more raspberries, a chocolate with more cocoa solids, or some chopped hazelnuts as well as the ground nuts, depending on which added ingredient you wanted to accentuate.

It was a double disappointment as these two cakes were to mark my and my son's birthdays in the middle of July, and I would have liked to make something a bit more memorable.

I made a double batch of what has become my 'go to' recipe for small loaf cakes, and divided it between two tins. This time, instead of chopping a bar of chocolate I bought dark chocolate chips as I thought the regularity would look better - perhaps it did, but I think the flavour would have been better with a bar of chocolate, as I usually use one with higher cocoa solids than in the bought chips.

Ingredients
220g caster sugar
220g softened butter
4 eggs
230g SR flour
50g ground hazelnuts
zest of 2 limes (reserve juice for icing)
10g dried raspberry pieces
100g dark chocolate chips
a little milk if necessary

Topping -  50g icing sugar, lime juice

Method
Put all the cake ingredients except the raspberry pieces and chocolate chips into a large bowl and beat until smooth and fluffy, adding a little milk if necessary to give a dropping consistency. Fold in the raspberries and chocolate. Divide the mixture between two small (1lb) loaf tins, lined with parchment or a pre-formed liner, and bake at 180C (160C fan) for about 60 minutes, or until a test probe comes out clean and dry.

When cool, make the icing by sifting the sugar and adding the lime juice a teaspoon at a time to give a thick, just-pourable consistency. I find it easiest to drizzle this over a cake by putting the icing into a small freezer bag, and snipping off one corner.

When the first slice was cut from the cake I thought the chocolate chips had sunk, but this was just the bad luck of random distribution - I took this photo of a slice further into the cake, just to prove they hadn't!

Rose and Raspberry Chocolate Chip Cake

It's not often that I turn my hand to fancy cake decorating - I'm usually happy with a dusting of icing sugar or a drizzle of glacé icing. However, the challenge of producing a cake on the theme of 'In Bloom!' for a Clandestine Cake Club meeting spurred me on to decorate the cake too. I used fondant icing and gel colouring to produce a simple ribbon effect, and added a few dried rose petals and chopped pistachio nuts for added visual appeal. I think, later in the year, crystallised fresh rose petals would look very pretty, and for the more artistic sugarcrafters, flowers made from fondant icing could be added.

I used the basic Madeira Cake style recipe I made recently, and added 2 teaspoons Nielsen-Massey rose water, 50g chopped pistachio nuts, 100g chopped dark chocolate flavoured with raspberry and 10g of freeze dried raspberry pieces (a whole tube of supermarket own brand).

I was a little disappointed that the cake was a bit dry and crumbly when cut, but the it tasted just right. Rose was the predominant flavour, which was what I wanted, but the other ingredients were all noticeable. It looked quite pretty too, with the little flecks of pink from the raspberries contrasting with the green pistachios and dark chocolate. Ideally, larger pieces of dried raspberry, and more of them, would have been better, but I hadn't planned well enough ahead to get hold of any by mail order and had to make do with what was stocked locally.

Using floral essences in baking is difficult - too much and the perfume overwhelms the flavour and makes the cake taste of Granny's toiletries, too little and the subtleness of the floral notes is lost. I was happy with the level of rose flavour in my cake, but I know that different brands of rose water differ in strength, so it's something that each baker needs to judge for themselves if trying a similar cake.

At the Clandestine Cake club meeting there were several other cakes also flavoured with rose, the most ambitious of which was a layer cake with Turkish delight flavours - lemon, rose, pistachio and vanilla layers with lemon cream filling and rose frosting. This was delicious, but very rich! One of the more unusual cakes was a chocolate cake with a cream filling flavoured with parma violets - an interesting combination! Lavender and elderflower flavours were also used in cakes, and some cake-makers chose to interpret the theme visually - decorating cakes with flowers, or to look like a flower pot with buds beginning to show through, in the case of one ambitious baker!

The raspberry chocolate I used in the cake was from the Divine range of Fairtrade chocolate. It's currently Fairtrade Fortnight, and this year the campaign is focusing on Breakfast. This cake isn't breakfast food, but using Fairtrade chocolate does give me an excuse to mention the organisation! Read about the aims of the Fairtrade foundation here.

This is the sort of cake which probably should be promoted for a celebration of  Mother's Day tomorrow, but as I made it myself, and what was left for us to eat after Cake Club has long gone, it's not being used as such here. Let's call it a celebration of the coming Spring!

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.