Marzipan and Cherry Loaf

When I plan my baking, and when I shop, there's always a little space in my mind for the baking challenges I like to do. I'm always hoping I can fit them into my plans, without going out of my way to  make something which wouldn't be happily eaten.

So when my husband had a Homer Simpson moment in front of a cake in Waitrose supermarket (Mmmm! Marzipan and cherry....) my immediate response was "I can make you one of those, if you really want it" and my participation in this month's AlphaBakes challenge was settled! M is for Marzipan.

I only made a small loaf, from a very basic recipe, because I didn't have many glacé cherries, and I also had other baking plans for later in the week.

I used the all-in-one method to mix the cake batter (200g SR flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 100g baking spread (softened butter would be fine too), 75g caster sugar, 2 small/medium eggs, 1 teaspoon almond extract and enough milk to give a dropping consistency), then folded in 70g halved natural coloured dark glacé cherries and 75g marzipan cut into very small cubes. I washed the syrup from the cherries before halving them, then mixed both the cherries and chopped marzipan with a tablespoon of flour from the weighed amount in the recipe. This can stop pieces of fruit sinking through a batter as it warms up in the oven.

I put the batter into a lined 1lb (450g) loaf tin, and scattered over another 25g of marzipan cubes and 1 tablespoon of demerara sugar. The cake was baked at 180C for 60-70 minutes, until a test probe came out clean and dry. Because the marzipan on top of the cake started to brown quite quickly, I had to cover the cake after 40 minutes.

I used marzipan with quite a high almond content, and cut down the usual amount of sugar a bit, but this was still a very sweet cake. The almond flavour was stronger than that of the cherries, possibly because of the added almond extract, but the contrast between the soft pieces of marzipan and the chewier cherries was good. I think, in hindsight, that putting some of the marzipan on top wasn't a good idea - cherries would have looked better, if I'd had any extra to use, and probably wouldn't have burnt.

AlphaBakes is a monthly challenge hosted alternately by Caroline at Caroline Makes and Ros at The More Than Occasional Baker. Each month a letter of the alphabet is randomly chosen, and then participants makes something using that letter as the first letter of a major ingredient or word in the name of the dish. This month, the letter M was chosen by Ros, who will post a round-up of entries at the end of the month.

Pineapple Upside-down Cake

with coconut and lime sponge.

I only wanted a small dessert, for the two of us, so the sponge layer was a two-egg all-in-one mixture. As the coconut oil was fairly liquid, this could easily be made with just a spoon and bowl - no need to get out any electric appliance:

100g coconut oil
100g caster sugar
90g SR flour
50g desiccated coconut
2 large eggs
zest of 1 lime.

I used a metal non-stick pie dish, as I thought the sloping sides might look quite attractive on the inverted cake. I creamed together 50g unsalted butter, 20g golden syrup and 30g light muscovado sugar and spread this in the base of the tin to make the traditional sticky topping. On top of this I then arranged slices of cored fresh pineapple  - about 1cm thick. I put a whole slice in the centre, but had to halve the other three slices to get them to fit into the dish. Into the spaces left in the arrangement of pineapple slices I put some glacé cherry halves.

I spread the cake batter gently over the fruit, so that it wasn't dislodged, and then the cake was baked for about 35 minutes at 180C until the sponge was firm and golden. After cooling for 10 minutes the cake was turned out onto a plate to finish cooling, revealing the neat pattern of pineapple slices.

The mix of pineapple with coconut and lime gave a nice tropical flavour to this dessert, and made a pleasant change from the traditional plain sponge base. Although I used fresh pineapple, once the fruit was cooked it didn't seem very different from using tinned pineapple in the same way, so don't think that fresh fruit is really essential.

I'm entering this cake into this month's AlphaBakes Challenge (rules here), a blog challenge co-hosted by Caroline Makes and The More Than Occasional Baker. This month the challenge is hosted by Caroline, at Caroline Makes, who has chosen the letter P. In this case, P is for pineapple, obviously!

Coconut Cake with Apricots and Cherries...........

made using Cocofina coconut flower nectar.

I was determined to use some of the coconut flower nectar that I received from Cocofina in a cake, but I didn't have much luck finding a recipe for anything I liked the look of. Most people seem to use it for 'health' reasons, and the resulting recipes are correspondingly specialised, often containing seeds, odd grains and lots of raw ingredients that I just don't keep in stock.

OK - maybe coconut flower nectar does have a low GI, but it has a similar amount of calories to any other form of sugar, so it's not exactly the 'guilt-free' eating that some people like to portray. I just wanted to find out how it reacted to baking and what it tasted like in a cake. In the end, I had a brainwave and started looking for cake recipes made with honey. Even then I had difficulties; so many recipes - even those called honey cakes - used a tiny proportion of honey and the usual amount of refined sugar. Same thing when I looked at maple syrup recipes (maple syrup has a similar viscosity to coconut flower nectar). What I wanted was a recipe where the only form of sugar was honey.

Eventually I stumbled across this US site, the National Honey Board, which had a huge recipe section. I found this recipe for Apricot Honey Bread, which served as the starting point for my recipe, although I made quite a few changes. The biggest alteration was reducing the sweetener (honey) by 1/3, as 300g not only sounded a huge amount, it would use up almost all my supply of coconut flower nectar.

Ingredients
250g spelt flour
100g plain white flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
zest of half an orange
300mls semi-skimmed milk
200g coconut flower nectar (or honey)
2 tablespoons coconut oil (or vegetable oil)
1 large egg, beaten
120g dried apricots, chopped
100g naturally coloured glacé cherries, halved, rinsed and tossed with a tablespoon of the measured flour
75g desiccated coconut.

Method
Prepare a suitable baking tin (I used a 2lb loaf tin which was almost too small - I think an 8"(20cm) square deep cake tin might have been a better size). Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Mix the flours, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and orange zest in a large bowl.
In another bowl whisk together the milk, coconut flower nectar, egg and oil; add this to the flour mix and blend until just combined - don't over-mix. Finally fold in the dried apricots, glacé cherries and desiccated coconut.

Transfer to the baking tin and bake for 50-60 minutes, or until a test probe comes out clean. Cover the cake after 40 minutes if it seems to be browning too quickly. Cool in the tin for 20 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

I was really pleased with this cake - although quite sturdy, it had a lighter texture than I expected, and was much more moist too. With such a small amount of fat, and only one egg, as well as using a liquid sugar, I was expecting it to have a much heavier texture.

The flavours of coconut, apricots and cherries complimented each other well, with just a hint of citrus from the orange zest. Reducing the amount of sweetener didn't seem to have a detrimental effect, either. Unfortunately, I think the delicious flavour of the coconut flower nectar was masked by all the other flavours, although it's hard to tell without making the same cake with ordinary sugar and tasting them side by side.

It's good to know that coconut flower nectar can be successfully used in baking, but it's so difficult to find suitable recipes, and adapting recipes can be such a hit-or-miss experience that I doubt I will use it again unless a liquid sweetener is needed in the original recipe. If you are adapting your diet to use less refined sugar, then coconut nectar, with it's low GI, is definitely a good substitute, but for me, it's best used in simpler things such as sweetening cooked fruits or drizzling over natural yogurt (a truly delicious instant dessert!). It's also quite expensive, which is another reason for not using so much in one go - used sparingly in situations where it's flavour comes through means it will go a lot further and probably still do as much good in the long run.

Chocolate & Coconut Bars

 As soon as this month's We Should Cocoa challenge was announced I knew that I wanted to make a layered coconut bar - a chocolate biscuit base with a topping that was mostly coconut. A cake version of a Bounty Bar, perhaps, one of my favourite chocolate bar treats!

I didn't think it would be difficult to find a recipe, but repeated searches, using various combinations of key words, didn't find anything which seemed quite right. These Black-Bottom Coconut Bars, from Martha Stewart, were close but the brownie base looked a bit too rich for me, although I have bookmarked the recipe as a possibility for the future.

The only answer seemed to be to combine two existing recipes, and I turned to my current favourite book (1001 Cupcakes, Cookies and Other Tempting Treats by Susanna Tee) for inspiration. I soon found a simple biscuit base that could be made into a chocolate version by substituting cocoa for some of the flour. The topping was an adaptation of a recipe called Coconut Paradise Slices, although I varied the ingredients to include chocolate. Instead of just using glacé cherries and sultanas, I used a mix of dried apricots, glacé cherries and chopped plain chocolate. I thought apricots paired better with chocolate than sultanas, but left some cherries as they compliment coconut so well.

Although both recipes were designed for a 9" square tin, I used one which was 8" square, so the layers were slightly deeper. The biscuit layer came out lovely and crisp, but I think it might have been a little too fragile if made in a larger tin. Here's my recipe adaptations to make Chocolate and Coconut Bars:

Base layer - Rub 80g butter into 175g  plain flour, then stir in 40g of light muscovado sugar and 25g cocoa. Sprinkle these crumbs evenly into a parchment-lined 8" square baking tin, press down firmly and bake at 190C for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and reduce the heat to 180C.

Topping layer - cream 100g butter and 200g caster sugar until smooth and fluffy. Beat in two large eggs, then stir in 200g desiccated coconut, 75g halved glacé cherries, 75g dried apricots (chopped into pieces about the same size as the cherry halves, and 75g coarsely chopped plain chocolate. Spread this over the biscuit base, and bake for another 30 minutes until the coconut mixture is set and golden brown on top. Cool thoroughly before cutting into bars. I made 12 bars, but cutting into 15 pieces would still have given bars of a good size.

These bars were perfect (and it's not often I say that!). The top layer had a chewy macaroon-like texture and the intense coconut flavour was just what I wanted. The added chocolate and fruit gave just the right balance of flavours and the crisp biscuit base finished the whole thing off with a good contrast of textures. I wouldn't change a thing!

We Should Cocoa (rules here) is the brainchild of Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog. She alternates hosting duties with guest hosts, and this month it was Laura from I'd Much Rather Bake Than.... who chose coconut as the ingredient to be used with some form of chocolate to make delicious treats. Laura will be posting a round-up of entries at the end of the month, and I'm looking forward to seeing them, as I really love coconut!

Cherry Ripe Bars - We Should Cocoa

Phew! I got these Cherry Ripe Bars done just in time for this month's We Should Cocoa challenge to use cherries and chocolate together. I planned to use the recipe much earlier in the month, as soon as I decided that I wouldn't be using fresh cherries, but time ran away with me and I've only just got round to making them.

The recipe is from Dan Lepard's Guardian column, and is inspired by the famous Australian confection of the same name. I used naturally coloured glacé cherries, so my version isn't quite such a vivid colour, even though I added some red food colouring. I also only used 2/3 of the filling ingredients to give what seems to me to be a better ratio of cherry to chocolate layers. For economy, I also cut down the chocolate to 200g, and this still gives an ample thickness of topping. I also added a tablespoon of sunflower oil to the topping to stop it setting too crisply, as it can then be difficult to cut neatly.

As this photo shows, it was still difficult to cut this traybake into neat pieces - the chocolate was thick and the middle layer squidgy, which resulted in broken chocolate, squeezed out middles and fingerprints and crumbs everywhere. This is definitley not something to impress with its looks, unless you know the secret to neat, precise cutting - which I evidently don't!

This is a really delicious treat! The base is a cross between pastry and a chewy cookie and the filling is sweet and sticky, with the mix of cherries and coconut giving a surprising flavour which tastes more of coconut than cherries. However, I have never eaten glacé cherries in bulk - I think I expected a stronger flavour - more like the old fashioned pink liquid antibiotic! Using a strongly flavoured 70%+ chocolate on top helps balance the sweetness of the filling. They are very rich - I cut them into small squares of roughly 3cm, and found it difficult to eat two at a time!

We Should Cocoa is a monthly chocolate challenge hosted alternately by Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog, and Chele at Chocolate Teapot. This month's challenge to use cherries with chocolate was chosen by guest host Janice at Farmersgirl Kitchen, who will also be publishing a round-up of entries at the end of the month.

Viennese Whirl Cookies

When it comes to baking I've found there aren't many ingredients that begin with V, this month's AlphaBakes randomly chosen letter. There's vanilla, and you might get away with the generic 'vegetable' for a carrot cake, or similar. When looking for a 'name' beginning with V, the index in my cook books started with Victoria sandwich and stopped with Viennese, with nothing in between.  I hope the other entrants have a better imagination than me!

Danish pastries are called Viennese pastries in Denmark, but my yeast bakery is a bit hit and miss, and I don't have time for misses at the moment. That left Viennese Whirls, or Melting Moments as they are called in some cookery books. All the available recipes are remarkably similar - some use a little more sugar or vary the proportion of cornflour and plain flour - so I don't really need to give one here. They are usually flavoured with vanilla too, so the letter V gets a double workout!

The dough I used didn't hold it's definition well during baking, but that might be because my piping kit is cheap and nasty and didn't include the right sized nozzle either. However, the flavour and texture was just right - light, crumbly and melt in the mouth - and you can still see the hint of a swirl in the photos. These cookies could be considered a little on the dry side, which is why they are often baked without the glacé cherry on top and sandwiched in pairs with a buttercream and jam filling.

The AlphaBakes Challenge 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 Ros is hosting and her random letter generator picked V!

Pear and Elderflower Upside-down Cake

The theme for this month's Tea Time Treats challenge is floral - either in appearance or flavour. After my disastrous attempt to use rosewater in a Turkish Delight flavoured jam tart, I had a quick rethink and decided to try making something flavoured with elderflowers. In any other year, elderflowers would probably be blooming by now, and could be picked and used, but they are still a few weeks off flowering in this cold and wet part of the world, so elderflower cordial would have to do instead.

I wanted to use the cordial to flavour a sponge cake and decided to make an upside down cake with pears, so that the flavour of the elderflower wouldn't be overwhelmed by the other ingredients. I'm not sure I succeeded totally on that point, but I did manage to arrange the pears to make the cake look almost floral!

I adapted this recipe for a Lighter Lemon Drizzle Cake again, and made it larger by around 30%, so that I could use a larger cake tin.

I used a 9" (22cm) springform tin, lined with baking parchment to come about 1/2" (2cm) up the sides of the tin. (Unfortunately this still wasn't quite high enough to prevent the syrup in the base from leaking out, so I really must get hold of some cake tin liners for these sort of cakes!)

I sprinkled the base of the cake tin with 50g light muscovado sugar, and dotted around about 50g butter. I then drizzled over 2 tablespoons of elderflower cordial before arranging tinned pears and halved glacé cherries into a vaguely floral pattern. I used  7 pear halves, cutting one into a circle for the centre of the arrangement, but I wished I had squeezed in another when I saw the finished cake.

For the cake batter, I used:

240g SR flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
100g polenta
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
190g caster sugar
3 medium eggs
270mls natural yogurt
100mls sunflower oil
3 tablespoons elderflower cordial
few drops yellow colouring

This is a cake which is simple to make - put all the dry ingredients into a large bowl and mix thoroughly. Beat together the yogurt and eggs and stir that and the oil into the dry mix until fully incorporated. Stir in the cordial and colouring at the end, before spooning the batter over the fruit carefully, so as not to disturb the fruit. Bake at 180C for about 60 minutes, covering the cake if it seems to be browning too quickly. Test with a probe to see that it comes out clean, then leave the cake in the tin for 15 minutes before turning out, fruit uppermost.

The cake was well flavoured, and moist, although the elderflower wasn't a very strong influence - I think I should either have used a little more cordial, or left out the lemon zest in the batter.

If I hadn't have been using the floral theme, I would have cut the pears into thinner slices and packed them in more closely - as it was some servings didn't get their fair share of pears!

I served the cake as a dessert with creme fraiche, but  it would be equally at home on the tea table.

Tea Time Treats is a monthly baking challenge to provide goodies for the tea table, hosted alternately by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Kate from What Kate Baked. Karen chose this month's floral theme and will be posting a round-up of enries at the end of the month.