Autumn Fruit Frangipane Tarts

It's a measure of how little baking I do these days, that it's over three weeks since I last posted. When I do bake anything, however small, half of it usually ends up in the freezer, meaning there's always cake there if needed, but as a result I don't need to bake as often. My waistline doesn't need cake every day, either!

When making this tart I realised that I hadn't made any pastry since the festive baking at the end of 2018 - an indication that calorific desserts are also becoming something for special occasions; I usually just have fresh fruit and yogurt!

These Autumn Fruit Frangipane Tarts had plum jam in the base and fresh blackberries and pieces of eating apple embedded in the frangipane mixture. I made two small tarts instead of one big one, as I was taking one to my local Cake Club. The frangipane comes from this Jamie Oliver recipe, but I made half as much again, after seeing the amount the original ingredients gave.

I made sweet shortcrust pastry to this recipe, but this made enough for the two tart cases with quite a lot leftover: 300g plain flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 150g butter, 50g icing sugar, 1 medium egg, water as necessary to bind. If you reduce the quantities you could use just an egg yolk instead of a whole egg.

Once the pastry is mixed, rest in the fridge for 20 minutes, then roll out as thinly as possible to line 2 x  20cm (8") tart tins (or one 23cm tin if you're following the recipe). Refrigerate again while you make the filling - there's no need to blind bake with a frangipane.

Preheat the oven to 180C (160 fan) and put a baking sheet in to heat up too.

Put all the frangipane ingredients into a bowl and beat until well combined. I added just a few drops of almond extract, to give a better flavour, instead of the lemon zest in the recipe. Then prepare the fruit.

(I used one large eating apple, which I peeled and chopped into quite thin pieces, about 1cm square, and put into acidulated water so that the pieces didn't turn brown. I also used fresh blackberries, as I was worried that frozen would release too much juice and spoil the colour of the frangipane - I didn't weigh the amount I used but the quantity give in Jamie's recipe sounds about right.)

Spread a couple of tablespoons of plum jam (or whatever red jam you prefer) into the base of each pastry case. Divide the frangipane mixture between the two tarts, working from the edge inwards, and trying to get a good seal between the frangipane and the pastry, so that the jam doesn't boil out around the edge. Spread evenly and then dot the drained and dried apple pieces and blackberries over the surface, pressing down gently to embed them in the frangipane. Sprinkle over a handful of flaked almonds, then a little extra caster sugar.

Transfer to the heated baking sheet and bake for about 45 minutes until the frangipane is a good golden colour and feels firm. Cool on a wire rack.

I decorated the tart which I was taking to Cake Club with a drizzle of glacé icing, but it's not really necessary, and the icing soon dissolved where it was in contact with the pieces of fruit, so didn't really give the desired effect by the time it was eaten.

Adding fruit to a frangipane tart is a tasty bonus, although in this case the plum jam had a stronger flavour than the apples and blackberries - I should have looked for a blackberry jam, I think.

My tart looks darker than most frangipane because I was using almonds which had been ground with the skins still on; the jury is still out on whether this really gives a good look.

Chocolate Slice with Macaroon Topping

I found this recipe for a Chocolate Slice with Macaroon Topping while looking for a way of using up three egg whites. I knew I wanted a chocolate element in the recipe, as part of the traybake was being given to my son, who is a chocoholic like me, and I think the idea of almond macaroons was floating in my subconsciousness as I'd recently made a frangipane topped tart. If I hadn't found this recipe, I would eventually have combined parts of other recipes I've used in the past to make something very similar - perhaps with a chocolate shortbread base.

I made a few adaptations to the recipe, both to cater for what was in the store cupboard and to avoid using more than one extra egg, which would then create more leftovers. This meant that I cracked one more egg to get 4 egg whites, then used the yolk and 2 tablespoons of milk in the chocolate layer, instead of a whole egg. I also used less jam between the chocolate base and the macaroon topping, and missed out the white chocolate chips altogether. Obviously I haven't tasted the original recipe, but I don't think this slice suffered from losing the sometimes sickly sweetness that white chocolate brings to already sweet enough recipes.

Ingredients
for the base:
125g unsalted butter, at room temperature
150g plain flour
pinch salt
3 tablespoons cocoa
60g icing sugar
1 egg yolk
3 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
100g apricot or raspberry jam, warmed slightly
( I had to use a mixture of apricot jam and marmalade to get this amount of jam, and sieved the mixture after warming to remove pieces of apricot and orange peel)

for macaroon topping
4 egg whites
150g ground almonds
150g caster sugar
a few drops of almond extract
flaked almonds for sprinkling

Method
Preheat the oven to 170C and line a 20cm(8") shallow square baking tin with parchment, making sure the paper covers the sides of the tin too.
Place all the ingredients for the base, except the jam, into a bowl, sifting in the flour, cocoa and icing sugar to avoid clumps. Beat with an electric mixer until smoothly combined, then spread the batter evenly into the baking tin. Bake for 15 minutes until firm.
Cool for 5 minutes, then spread with the jam.
Increase the oven temperature to 180C.
Make the topping by whisking the egg whites to the soft peak stage, then fold in the ground almonds, sugar and almond extract.
Pour this mixture over the base and sprinkle with flaked almonds. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until top is golden and firm.
Cool in the tin before cutting into bars.

This was really delicious; definitely something to make again! The chocolate base was somewhere between a cake and a biscuit in texture. It wasn't very sweet either, which provided a good contrast to the sweet, chewy macaroon topping, and the jam between the layers.

Unfortunately, the slice was cut, wrapped and delivered to my children before I had time to look at the photographs, so I've only got good photographs of one of the two pieces I kept, so that we could taste it too.

Pistachio and Cranberry Loaf Cake

The first thing I'm going to say about this cake is that the flavour is amazing! I knew it was going to be something special when I scraped the last of the raw batter from the mixing bowl, just to get an idea of what it tasted like. The name of the cake doesn't do enough justice to the flavours within - as well as pistachios and dried cranberries there was lime, fennel seeds, cardamom and vanilla, which combined to make something unlike any of the constituent parts - I love it when that happens!

The recipe wasn't perfect and there are things I would change next time, but I thought I'd get the praise in first, as the nitpicking doesn't detract from what a great cake it was. I didn't realise when I decided to make the cake, that it was a recipe from Honey & Co, who specialise in Middle Eastern cooking. I can't find the recipe anywhere online - although if you have a subscription to the online Financial Times, I believe it was published there - but there is a book 'Honey & Co: The Baking Book', which is now on my 'must have' list, even if it doesn't contain this particular recipe!

Ingredients

200g SR flour
1 teaspoon ground fennel seeds
5 cardamom pods - ground to a powder with the pods
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of salt
100g whole pistachios, peeled
150g dried cranberries
zest of 2 limes
150g butter
150g caster sugar (the recipe specified golden)
2 eggs (I used large)
100g jam (the recipe specified a red jam such as raspberry or cherry)
the juice of 1 lime
about a tablespoon of demerara sugar to sprinkle on top (I used crushed raw sugar cubes)

The cake is made by the traditional method of creaming the softened butter and sugar together, with the lime zest and vanilla, then slowly adding the eggs. All other dry ingredients are added to the flour, then folded into the batter, then finally the juice of the lime and the jam is folded in. After the batter is levelled in the baking tin, the surface is scattered with demerara sugar, then the cake is baked at 160C in a large (1kg/2lb) loaf tin, for about 60 minutes, turning halfway through cooking so that it bakes evenly. Cool in the tin.

I baked at 160C in a conventional oven, and the cake took over 90 minutes to bake, so I think the temperature given must be for a fan oven ie 180C in a conventional oven. Things I did differently: I used the pistachios as they came from the pack (do they really need peeling?) and chopped them roughly rather than leaving them whole, and because I didn't check my storecupboard properly, I had to use apricot jam. Things I'd do differently next time - take the pods away from the cardamom seeds - they didn't grind to a powder very well in my spice grinder and left little bits of husk in the mixture; add the juice of the second lime, as the batter was quite thick, and the limes were small.

The cake was a little crumbly the first day it was made, but settled down overnight to something a bit firmer. The extra lime juice might have made it a bit less inclined to crumble, and a little more moist - the slight dryness is the only criticism I have (apart from the lack of clarity over the baking temperature).

Orange and Ginger Jammy Oat Squares

For someone who always declares that there is no point in making jam, as it rarely gets eaten by anyone in the house, I seem to have accumulated a lot of half-eaten jars of the stuff - each bought for a specific baking purpose, rather than jam-on-toast type treats.

In order to use up some of these remnants, I decided to make a jam-filled oaty traybake, rather than the flapjacks I'd been thinking about. I followed this recipe, and was halfway through rubbing the butter into the other ingredients when I realised that it wasn't a lot different to my standard mix for fruit crumbles. This worried me a little, as I then began to doubt that the crumbs would stick together to make a solid base, even after being firmly pressed.

For the jammy middle layer, I used a mixture of equal quantities of coarse-cut orange marmalade and ginger preserves, which contained small cubes of ginger.

I baked in a slightly smaller tin (20cm (8") square) as past experience has shown that many American recipes for traybakes produce something far too shallow. The cooking time was the same.

Metric conversion of ingredients - 130g plain flour, 100g rolled oats, 140g light muscovado sugar, 1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda, 115g butter, 300g jam for filling. Reserve 170g of the mixture for the topping.

These oat squares were really delicious, although the jam in the middle soaked into the base, rather than staying in a separate layer - but that might have been all that held the oaty crumbs together! The combination of sharp orange marmalade and fiery ginger preserves was particularly good! They made a nice change from flapjacks, and were just as quick to make and bake, but I've used nicer oat mixtures in other bakes, so probably won't use this recipe again.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Brownies

Two of baking challenges that I like to take part in have the theme of  'America' this month. We Should Cocoa, which is guest hosted by It's Not Easy Being Greedy, wants participants to make something with an American theme, containing chocolate and the Formula 1 Foods challenge at Caroline Makes has reached the American leg of the F1GP circuit, so is inviting entries of any American inspired cooking.

On the face of it, American inspired baking, containing chocolate, is easy - I imagine almost everyone would suggest brownies at this point, but Devil's Food Cake and Mississippi Mud Pie spring to mind too. Once I'd decided to go with brownies (as they fitted in with my baking plans), I wanted produce a brownie with flavours that couldn't have come from anywhere else but America, which is why I ended up with the idea of adding peanut butter and jelly (jam) - a delicious combination which is rarely seen in Britain.

I looked at a few recipes online, and found various suggestions, such as making a batter with added peanut butter, or mixing it with cream cheese. I couldn't decide on the best approach until I found a blog post which said - take your favourite brownie recipe, and ripple in half a cup of peanut butter and half a cup of jam. Simple! So that's what I did.

My favourite brownie recipe involves melting 140g each of butter and dark chocolate, stirring in 300g of light muscovado sugar, three eggs and a dash of vanilla extract, then folding in 160g plain flour and 3 tablespoons cocoa. Once the batter was made, I put roughly 3/4 of it into a 20cm(8") square baking tin (lined with baking parchment). Then I dotted teaspoonsful of smooth peanut butter and 'cherries and berries' jam onto the batter, using about 125g of each. The remaining brownie batter was drizzled over the surface, covering some of the peanut butter and jam, but not all of it. Lastly, I used the handle of a teaspoon to mix the peanut butter, jam and top layer of batter together in random swirls, and scattered over 30g of chopped roasted salted peanuts. The brownie tray was cooked at 180C until firm but not too dry. The end point was difficult to  determine as a probe hitting peanut butter or jam made the mixture seem underdone. I think, having given it 40 minutes, that I over-baked this batch slightly. Next time I'll try a few minutes less.

Over-baking aside, these brownies were really good. Using the peanut butter undiluted by cake batter or cream cheese meant that the flavour was still strong, and the cherries and berries jam added little bursts of tart fruitiness. The crunchy topping of salted peanuts added another layer to the complexities of flavour and texture.

I was particularly keen to try peanut butter and chocolate together, as I recently tried a pack of peanut butter flavoured Oreo biscuits. I've seen these cropping up in a lot of blog posts recently, so was intrigued enough to try them when I saw them in stock in my local supermarket. What a disappointment! I couldn't taste the peanut butter at all, so it was no surprise to read the ingredient list and find there were no real peanuts in the biscuit filling - only 'flavouring'!

It's also been National Chocolate Week this week, so my post is just in time to celebrate that, although chocolate is part of my everyday life - I don't need a special week to celebrate it!

We Should Cocoa (rules here) is the brainchild of Choclette, who writes the Tin and Thyme blog, although she often has guest hosts to share the duties of taking in the entries and compiling the end of month round up.

Caroline, at Caroline Makes, started the Formula 1 Food challenge at the start of this season, because her boyfriend is an avid motor racing fan. It hasn't gained a huge following, but I've had a lot of fun trying to find foods from the various countries where the races have taken place. It's sometimes been difficult to find something which I feel competent enough to tackle. The last three races of the season are in Mexico, Brazil and Abu Dhabi, the last of which sounds particularly challenging.

Jam-swirled Crumb Cake

Being away on holiday for most of the first half of the month has limited my entries to the various cooking challenges which I try to participate in regularly - I got an early entry into Belleau Kitchen's Simply Eggcellent, and the first of Caroline Makes' Formula 1 Foods, but the challenge from We Should Cocoa to use blackberries and chocolate together has fallen by the wayside due to lack of time.

Despite needing to lose the holiday weight, and get my diet back on track, I found time to make a simple crumb cake for the AlphaBakes challenge this month, which is to use the letter J, either for the first letter of a main ingredient, or the first letter of part of the name of the dish (eg J for Jalapeno or J for Jalousie). See the full set of rules here, for a complete explanation.

My J was for Jam - I swirled some reduced sugar 'cherries and berries' jam into the top half of a crumb cake batter, hoping the result would be colourful and add extra flavour to a fairly plain cake. My recipe is a slight adaptation of this one, found on the blog Bake or Break, which I've been reading for several years. I reduced the sugar a little, altered the topping to accommodate what I had available, and baked the cake in a 20cm (8") round tin.

Ingredients

Cake
210g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch salt
115g butter, softened
100g caster sugar
50g light muscovado sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
120mls milk
1/3 cup jam

Topping
50g light muscovado sugar
2 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground almonds
25g cold butter, cut into small pieces
2 tablespoons chopped toasted hazelnuts

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 175C, and base line a 20cm springform tin.
Make the topping by putting the sugar, flour, almonds and cinnamon into a small bowl, then rubbing in the butter until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Stir in the hazelnuts, then set aside at room temperature.
Mix the flour, baking powder and salt together. In a large bowl beat the butter and sugars unril light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla, with a tablespoon of the flour mix. Then fold in the rest of the flour, alternately with portions of the milk, to make a stiff cake batter.
Spread about 2/3 of the batter into the cake tin, then spread on the jam, leaving a border of batter around the edge of the tin. Carefully spread on the remaining batter, then use a teaspoon handle to swirl through the cake batter, trying to keep in the top half of the mixture.
Sprinkle the topping over evenly, squeezing it together in your fingers to make it a little clumpier, rather than powdery.
Bake for 35 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 160C and bake until a tester comes out clean - about another 15 minutes (45-50 minutes in total). Cool in the tin.

Sadly, the finished cake didn't look as good as I'd hoped. It rose unevenly, sank back badly during cooling and when cut, it revealed that the jam layer had sunk during baking and lost a lot of it's vibrant colour. The hoped for swirls of colour in the top of the cake just didn't materialise! The crumb crust hadn't really adhered to the cake batter either, which made the cake difficult to cut and serve. It tasted fine though - the topping was sweet and nutty and the jam added a good fruity flavour to the cake. Overall, something that needs a little more work, but could be a good store-cupboard recipe!

The AlphaBakes Challenge is hosted alternately by Caroline, at Caroline Makes, and Ros, at The More Than Occasional Baker. Ros is this month's host, and will post a round-up of entries at the end of the month.

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.

Jammy Bread and Butter Pudding

As a cake and dessert maker, a lot of what I make contains eggs - cakes, tray bakes, brownies, cookies, mousses and cheesecakes. They are indispensable for perfect results, and often the most nutritious part of many recipes. So I'm happy to join in with Belleau Kitchen's new blogger link-up - Simply Eggcellent - which celebrates the versatility of eggs.

Bread and Butter Pudding is made from bread soaked in a simple egg custard - usually just eggs and milk or cream, and maybe some sugar. The fun comes with the extras that can be added - dried and fresh fruit, chocolate, alcohol, preserves, nuts and spices.

This Jammy Bread and Butter Pudding was a spur of the moment dessert, to use up the end of a stonebaked sourdough baguette and the last of a carton of sour cream. I decided to keep things simple and use gooseberry jam to provide the main flavour, some sultanas for juicy fruit chewiness and a little nutmeg to spice it up a little.

I sliced the bread thinly and made jam sandwiches, which I fitted into a small ovenproof dish, interspersed with a handful of sultanas. The baguette was quite thin, making it impossible to remove the crusts, so I arranged the bread with the crusts uppermost, so that they would make a crisp topping after cooking.

I was only making two portions, with about 100g of bread, so a custard made from one large free-range egg, 50ml sour cream and 150g milk was sufficient. I didn't add any extra sugar to the custard as the jam was going to provide a lot of sweetness.

I poured the egg mixture over the bread and left the dish to stand for about an hour before baking, to allow the custard to soak into the bread. Before baking I sprinkled the top of the pudding with Demerara sugar and a grating of nutmeg. I baked the pudding in a bain marie, at 180C for 45 minutes.

Using jam to flavour this bread and butter pudding worked very well; together with the sultanas and sugar topping it was plenty sweet enough. The custard soaked bread was light and moist, with a lovely crisp crunchy topping made from the crusts on the slices of bread and the sugar.

As usual, it isn't good for food photography to take something out of the oven at 6pm, and need to get it photographed before it's eaten a few minutes later, so I apologise for the strange colour!

You can read all about Simply Eggcellent on the link above. I look forward to seeing how Dom, at Belleau Kitchen, develops the core theme of eggs over the coming months.

Hazelnut, Apricot and Chocolate Tart

It might not look like it, but the inspiration for this tart was the Bakewell tart. The first step in a gradual change was to add cocoa to the usual frangipane filling to make a chocolate version. After a while, I changed the jam used, because apricot seemed to be a better partner for the chocolate and almond combination than the traditional raspberry. That version, sometimes topped with flaked almonds, and sometimes with a glacé icing, has been a family favourite for many years, and has also helped to stock many fund-raising cake stalls, when made in small foil cases.

This time, I decided to use some of the foraged hazelnuts, instead of almonds, and to up the chocolate content by adding 100% cacao to the filling, as well as cocoa powder. This gave the filling extra richness and depth of flavour which contrasted well with the sweet, yet tart, apricot jam. I was fortunate that although my choice of jam (Aldi's own brand conserve) had quite a soft set, it contained large pieces of fruit which improved the texture.

I'm entering this tart into this month's We Should Cocoa challenge, which is to use jam and chocolate together. We Should Cocoa was the brainchild of Choclette, over at Chocolate Log Blog, and the rules for the challenge can be found on this link. Choclette alternates her hosting duties with guest hosts, but it is fitting that she should be the host for this month's challenge, as it is entering it's 5th year. I think that's a fine testament to the universal appeal of chocolate!




Ingredients
A loose-bottomed flan dish (about 20-22cm in diameter) lined with shortcrust pastry (no need to bake blind).

200g apricot jam

Filling: 60g ground hazelnuts, 40g SR flour, 100g caster sugar, 100g baking spread or softened butter, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 2 large eggs, 25g cocoa, 25g 100% cacao (finely grated), milk to mix.

To finish: 50g coarsely chopped hazelnuts, blanched if necessary.

Method
Preheat the oven to 200C and put in a baking sheet to heat, too.
Spread the jam into the pastry case, and chill while making the filling.
Put all the filling ingredients, except the milk, into a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until the batter is well blended. Add a little milk, if necessary, to give a soft dropping consistency - you shouldn't need more than a couple of tablespoons.
Fold in half of the chopped hazelnuts, then spread the batter into the pastry case, being careful not to leave any gaps around the edge where the jam might bubble up during cooking. Scatter over the remaining hazelnuts.
Put the tart on the heated baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes, then lower the temperature to 180C and cook until the filling is firm - roughly another 30 minutes. Serve at room temperature.

Blueberry Jam and Rye Crumble Bars

 Sometimes you read a recipe and know instantly that you want to try it as soon as possible, rather than filing it away as something that you might get round to in the future. I'd be the first to admit that I have a huge file of recipes I might want to use sometime, some of which are several many years old now, and still not tried. I'll also admit that, if  I try a recipe quickly, then it's more likely to become an established part of my repertoire, providing it works out well.

This recipe, published in the Telegraph less than two weeks ago is a good example of acting quickly. I didn't have raspberry or gooseberry jam, as recommended, but I did have a blueberry conserve with extra fruit, which I was sure would have a similar tartness.

I've made lots of oaty sandwich bars where the lower and upper layers of dough are made from the same basic mixture, but here each layer is quite different - it means a bit extra work, but it's well worth the effort. The base is a shortbread made with rye and wheat flour and dark brown sugar, and the crumble topping is made with mainly oats,  plus small quantities of both flours and light brown sugar. I followed the instructions for a clumpy crumble and refrigerated the topping for a while. It then needed crumbling to the right consistency to sprinkle over the base and jammy layer.

This all worked very well to produce a delicious crumble bar - Hubs described it as a portable fruit crumble, which is his favourite hot dessert, so I think he liked it! The jam was very fruity and still quite runny even after baking - I thought it might set more solidly after 45 minutes in the oven, but it kept it's soft-set consistency. This lead to the bars being quite fragile, so I think that next time I will make them in a slightly smaller tin (20cm square instead of 23cm) so that a thicker base will make them a little sturdier and easier to handle. Otherwise, no complaints!

Cherry Cheesecake Swirl Brownies

This was a recipe which didn't quite work, but which was so tasty that it will be worked on to achieve an improvement. The only problem was the brownie batter - I chose one of my favourite low saturated fat recipes which was too thin to support the weight of the cream cheese mixture and the blobs of morello cherry jam.

I've previously had success with making cheesecake swirl brownies using a brownie batter made with mayonnaise, but I didn't have enough mayonnaise in stock to use it this time. All I wanted to do was repeat this recipe adding some teaspoons of cherry jam swirled into the brownie mix with the cheesecake, but you can see from the second picture that although the cheesecake swirls weren't too bad, most of the jam sunk straight to the bottom of the tin, and sat in separate blobs after the brownies were cooked.

To be honest with you, the only way we could eat the brownies easily was to serve them upside down, and a lot of the jam had to be scraped off the non-stick baking paper and put back into the holes left in the baked brownies.

But they were delicious - the flavour of the rich, sweet cherry jam was stronger than the brownie flavour, but the plainer cheesecake swirls in the brownie helped balance the flavour and sweetness. Definitely a recipe worth working on, particularly as I know exactly what went wrong.

Linzertorte

Amongst the things my thrifty nature wouldn't allow me to throw away, while I was clearing and tidying Mum's house prior to selling it, were several pots of home-made jam. I don't know why I couldn't have been more ruthless, as we don't really eat jam, but here I am with a medley of miscellaneous flavours of fruity preserves to be used. I can forsee a use for redcurrant jelly, and I just had to open the blackberry and rhubarb jam to try on a rare treat of toast - such an unlikely combination of flavours, you might think, although unforced rhubarb and early blackberries can be harvested at the same time (see this cake). It was a strangely addictive flavour, so that will be kept for more toasty treats, on the days I'm allowed to eat more than 500 calories (aren't we all doing IF?)

I was a bit more flummoxed by strawberry and gooseberry jam as I'm not keen on the flavour of cooked strawberries, although I expected the gooseberries to alter the flavour a little. Clearly a dessert using a lot of jam was called for, although something as stodgy as a jam roly poly was out of the question. A Linzertorte seemed ideal - a high ratio of jam to pastry, and capable of being eaten in small portions. I've tried Delia Smith's recipe before, and really like the extra flavours of hazelnuts, spices and lemon in the sweet rich pastry.

The nutty, crumbly pastry was not the easiest dough to work with, but a bit of careful patchwork got me out of difficulties with the base. Not being able to roll the pastry really thinly meant I didn't get many strips for the lattice work, but there were enough to give the basic appearance of a lattice.

After baking, I couldn't decide whether I liked the heavy dusting of icing sugar, which hid the jam, but after a while the sugar which was in contact with the jam had dissolved, and resolved the problem by itself!

Delia's recipe suggests cranberry or redcurrant jelly as a filling, and I do prefer this dessert when made with tarter preserves, but in this case the combination of strawberries and gooseberries in the jam worked reasonably well (although my mother's jam is incredibly sweet!), and helped reduce the jam slick a little!  Any suggestions for plum jam, anyone?

Pear and Ginger Frangipane Tart

Our little lunch club - five blokes who used to work together, plus their partners - had christmas lunch yesterday. A little early, I know, but things get too busy later in the month. The hostess cooked the turkey and all the trimmings, and the others brought along desserts. As there are two gluten-free eaters in the group, one of whom is also dairy-free, one dessert was a gluten and dairy-free bread and butter pudding. My contribution was this frangipane tart; I had intended to make one with mincemeat in the base, as a nod to the festive season, but changed my plans when I heard, only at the last minute, of the planned bread and butter pudding - two desserts based on dried fruit seemed too much, even for Christmas.

Instead I raided the storecupboard and produced this delicious tart using ginger jam in the base, and studding the frangipane mixture with tinned pears. The only mistake I made was to put the pears into the tart case before the frangipane - I think the tart would have looked nicer if they were pressed into the frangipane.

 

There's not much of a recipe to share with you, more of a set of 'how to....' instructions. I used a shallow flan tin with a loose bottom, about 11" (27cm) in diameter, which I lined with standard short crust pastry made with all butter. I drained the tin of pear halves and picked the best five for the topping. Any leftover were roughly chopped and added to 200g of ginger jam. The jam and pear mix was spread over the raw pastry case and the pears arranged on top - I cut the rounded part of each pear into three to spread them a little flatter. A frangipane mixture made from 100g each softened butter, ground almonds, caster sugar, plus two eggs (just beat everything together with a hand held electric mixer) was spread between the pears and topped with a few flaked almonds. The tart was baked at 180C for 30 minutes, then the temperature reduced to 160C until the filling was set and golden brown - another 25 minutes or so.

I served the dessert at room temperature, with pouring cream. The ginger jam was just right for the base - it gave a gentle warmth and zing, without overwhelming the delicate flavours of the pear and the frangipane mixture.

Delia Smith's Oat Slice (with Cherry Jam)

FB requested 'something jammy, like the oaty things you made a few weeks ago'. Well, I wasn't entirely happy with the recipe I used that time, as the slices seemed thin and crumbly, so I had another look around for more Oat Slice recipes. This time I decided that I ought to try a recipe from Delia Smith, the quintessential British cook, whose recipes seldom fail even the novice cook. Her recipe uses cooked fresh fruit, but it didn't seem too radical to use jam instead - this time, 250g from a jar of Morello cherry jam.

A slightly different method - melting the sugar and butter together - and different proportions of flour and oats produced a much better result. The base layer was firmer and thicker, even though I baked the slice in a slightly larger tin than stipulated (8 x 8" rather than 10 x 6"). There was less sugar in the oat mix too, which offset the sweetness of the jam nicely.

All in all, a great quick bake when time is short, as happens all too often at this time of year.

Because of this shortage of time, I'm going to have to abandon my original idea for this month's AlphaBakes, and submit these instead.   AlphaBakes (rules here) is a blogging challenge which is hosted on alternate months by Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker and Caroline from Caroline Makes. This month's letter, randomly chosen by Caroline, is J, so I'm using J for Jam.

Jammy Oat Slice

I love layered traybakes, but don't often have the time to fiddle around with two or three different mixtures for a base, filling and topping. This is where oat slices come in handy, as the same mixture is often used for the base and topping, and the filling, as here, can be something as simple as a fruity jam. If you have more time, and the right ingredients available, you can cook fresh or dried fruit to a thick purée, flavouring it with spices or citrus zest. Mincemeat (the Christmas kind, not minced meat!) also makes a good filling. I couldn't remember which recipe I usually use, as it's been a while since I made it, so picked this one from an online search.

It's also around this time of year that I start thinking of clearing out cupboard, fridge and freezer space in preparation for Christmas. I don't do anything about Christmas this early in the year, but I do like to have space ready when I need it. So for this slice, which needed 250g jam, I mixed the ends of three jars - apricot and strawberry jam, and orange marmalade - and added from a jar of Cherries and Berries to make up the weight. This cleared out the preserve and condiment shelf in the fridge of quite a lot.

The only change I made to the recipe was to add a tablespoon (about 20g) of chopped toasted hazelnuts to the oat mixture reserved for the topping. However, there was the usual problem of there not really being enough mixture to make a slice of enough depth and solidity - if I make this again, I will definitely increase the  oat mixture by at least 25%.

There's not much to say about this from a consumer point of view - it's a quick bake which is made chewy from the oats and tastes of whatever you use as the filling. My odd mix of jams tasted pretty good!

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!