Rhubarb Vanilla Yogurt Cake

I happened upon this recipe, on the Riverford Organic Farmers website, by chance, while looking for new recipe for a rhubarb cake. I wanted one which didn't use a lot of fruit, as my crowns aren't doing well this year (I think it was the lack of a prolonged cold spell during last winter).

All I can say is that I'm thrilled to have found this recipe; it made a perfect cake! As an added bonus, it couldn't be simpler to make - dry ingredients in one bowl, wet in another then combine the two and mix briefly. The rhubarb was even mixed with the dry ingredients, reducing the steps needed to mix the batter even more, as fruit is often folded in separately at the end. I think it's probably quite important to keep the rhubarb pieces small, so that they don't sink through the cake during baking, but the raw cake batter was thicker than normal, which also helps.

I did make one change to the recipe - I only had vanilla yogurt available, rather than plain, but as I wasn't adding an additional flavour, only a little more sugar, I decided to go ahead anyway. The resulting cake was light but moist, with a really tender crumb, and it wasn't too sweet either (even when using a sweetened yogurt), allowing the tart flavours of the rhubarb and orange zest to show through. It was fantastic while still warm, as a dessert, and almost as good when it was completely cold, eaten as a cake. This is definitely a cake to make again!

Nun's Seed Cake

In over 40 years of baking, I've never made a caraway seed cake, so it's a little strange that the notion of making one suddenly came to me. The traditional seed cake is usually made by adding a few teaspoons of caraway seeds to a Madeira Cake recipe, instead of the lemon, but while looking through one of my recipe books I found a recipe called Nun's Seed Cake, which added a little cinnamon and orange flower water too. The author of 'Ultimate Cake', Barbara Maher, said that her recipe is adapted from Hannah Glasses's recipe in 'The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy', written in 1747.

The version I made used 200g butter and 150g caster sugar, creamed together, followed by the addition of three eggs. 200g SR flour, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 2 teaspoons of orange flower water and 2-3 teaspoons of caraway seeds are folded in, before baking in a 2lb loaf tin for an hour at 180C, or until a test probe comes out clean and dry.

Barbara Maher was particularly pleased with how caraway and orange flower water complimented each other, and I have to agree with her. Caraway seeds are not to everyone's taste but as long as they are used in moderation they don't overwhelm this particular cake. The three flavours of cinnamon, caraway and orange flower water blended together very subtly and harmoniously in a moist, close-textured cake.

Aniseed and Orange Frangipane Jalousie

Or ...... my homage to the elusive Monegasque fougasse!

Monaco is a tiny principality nestled on the coast between France and Italy, so as you'd expect, the traditional foods of the country take their inspiration from both those countries, and from the sea. There are very few foods that are unique to Monaco; I found references to a salt cod dish, sweet and sour onions, and a sweet fougasse, but not much else.

Naturally, the sweet fougasse is what grabbed my attention when it came to making something for the Formula 1 Foods challenge over on Caroline Makes blog. The idea is to make a recipe inspired by the country where each round of the F1 Grand Prix is taking place. The Monaco GP stands out from the others - it's  a street race in very glamourous surroundings. Even if you're not interested in the race, you can admire the super-yachts as the cars race past the marina, or wait for the inevitable collisions as two powerful machines both try to take the same restricted road space at the same time!

At first, I thought the Monegasque fougasse was just a sweetened form of the usual bread recipe, flavoured with almonds, aniseed and orange flower water, but the more I looked for a recipe, the more doubtful I became about this. Many websites referred to pastries, and some to crisp biscuits. Admittedly, the only recipes I could find were for bread (and all the recipes looked as if they came from the same source), but a commentator on one of the recipes I looked at was adamant that the dough should not contain yeast!

Anyway - you know that I don't get on well with yeast doughs, so in the end I decided to take my inspiration from the flavours contained in the sweet fougasse, and make a frangipane filled pastry instead.

I used half a block of ready made all-butter puff pastry, which I rolled out and cut into two rectangles approximately 18 x 12cm. I made a frangipane mixture from 50g ground almonds, 50g caster sugar, the zest of a mandarin orange, 2 teaspoons orange flower water, 1/2 teaspoon of ground aniseed, 1 egg yolk and about half of a lightly beaten egg white, to make a stiff paste.

The frangipane was spread onto one of the pastry rectangles, leaving a 2cm border around the edge, which I brushed with some of the remaining egg white. I rolled the second piece of pastry a little larger, so that it would fit over the mound of frangipane, and placed it on top of the base, pressing down well around the border, then knocking up the edges of the pastry with the back of a knife. Finally I brushed the top with more egg white and sprinkled with a little crushed raw sugar mixed with a pinch of  whole aniseeds, and cut some slits across the top of the pastry, through to the frangipane beneath. This was baked for about 20-25 minutes at 200C, until the pastry was well risen and a dark golden colour.

We both really enjoyed the flavour of the filling for this pastry. The aniseed was strong but not overwhelming, although, like caraway, it's a flavour that some people dislike. If you're not sure you like it, I'd recommend using less the first time you try it, especially if it's a sweet recipe. The orange notes were a more subtle backnote to the almonds and aniseed, but still noticeable. I also really liked the way the soft frangipane filling and crisp puff pastry worked together - a match made in heaven as far as I'm concerned!

The next F1 Grand Prix is in Canada - that should be easier to bake for!

Semolina Cookies

One Batch of Dough, Two Delicious Cookies

The same basic dough is used for these Date Bars and Pistachio Cookies. It's a Dan Lepard recipe, given Middle Eastern flavours with pomegranate molasses, rose water and orange blossom water. I made one batch of dough from this recipe, and made a half quantity of the Date Bars and half a batch of these Pistachio Cookies.

I had decided to use semolina for this month's AlphaBakes Challenge (Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker has chosen the letter S), and was trying to decide between a cake  or biscuits when Janie of The Hedge Combers announced that the March Tea Time Treats challenge was for cookies and biscuits. The decision was made for me - I would make semolina cookies which could be an entry for both baking challenges.


Semolina seems to be common in Middle Eastern and Asian cooking, but is less well known in the UK as a baking ingredient. It's sometimes added to shortbread to make it crisper and crumblier, but is best known as the basis for the sort of milk pudding that we all hated at school! Semolina is the coarse centres of durum wheat grains, left after the flour has been milled away. 

I looked at many recipes for semolina cookies, which all looked similar, but they had small differences in the proportions of fat, flour and eggs, so that it was impossible to decide if one recipe was going to work out better than another. In the end I found Dan's recipe and was persuaded by the extra flavours added to the cookie dough. After trying it, I'm sure the dough on it's own would have made delicious cookies.

In the first recipe the dough is rolled out and wrapped around a filling of spiced date purée and in the second, chopped pistachios and a little more sugar is added, and then the dough is just rolled into balls. Both recipes were fairly straightforward - just a little fiddly - and gave good results. One tip I can pass on - if you are going to purée dried dates in a food processor, cut each one in half across the length, to check that the stones have been removed. I found two left in in my pack of dates. Trying to process a date stone could be a costly blunder!

The dough was a little dryer than I expected, and I eventually realised (after it was too late to put things right) that I hadn't added quite enough liquid, as I had used less of the rose water and orange flower water (mine are quite concentrated and I've been caught out in the past by following recipe instructions and finding out I'd used too much) but hadn't made up for the lower volume of liquid.

The dry dough was difficult to roll out and meant that the dough round the Date Bars cracked a little during baking. It was also difficult to incorporate all the chopped nuts for the Pistachio Cookies, but I'm not sure if that was due to the dryness, which made the dough crumbly, or the sheer volume of nuts - probably a bit of both.  At least I know how to remedy the problem - a couple of tablespoons of milk or water is all that is needed next time.

Additionally, next time I will flatten the Date Bars a little before cooking. This wasn't mentioned in the instructions, so I expected that they would flatten naturally during cooking to turn out as in the photograph accompanying the recipe (see the link above). As you can see from the photographs of my Date Bars, this didn't happen!

Both these cookies were delicious, in different ways. The Date Bars were the best - the moist spicy date filling and the crunchy sesame seed coating were a good contrast to the crumbly cookie dough.

However, with the Pistachio Cookies the added flavours in the dough shone through, particularly the rose water, as the pistachio nuts did not have a strong flavour.

AlphaBakes (rules here) is hosted alternately by Ros, of The More Than Occasional Baker and Caroline of Caroline Makes.

Tea Time Treats (rules here) is hosted alternately by Janie of The Hedge Combers and Karen of Lavender and Lovage.

Fig, Pistachio and Honey Balls

These could almost be considered guilt-free Christmas treats - no dairy, no gluten, no refined sugar, no added fat. There's just a tasty mixture of dried fruit, nuts and honey, with orange zest, orange flower water and cinnamon for flavouring. The recipe comes from the December 2013 issue of Good Food magazine, but isn't available on the website yet.

Here's a brief overview of the recipe - it isn't difficult, but you do need at least a mini-chopper, if not a full sized food processor.  My mini-chopper was big enough to process all the dried fruit in one batch.

200g soft dried figs and 100g dates are processed to a purée with 40g of well-flavoured honey (I used wild thyme), 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, the finely grated zest of an orange and 2 teaspoons of orange flower water, then 100g chopped pistachios and 50g of chopped blanched almonds are worked into the paste. The mixture is rolled into cherry-sized balls and placed on baking parchment to be chilled. I found it easier to roll the very sticky paste by chilling it first, and got the recommended 25 balls out of the mixture.

There is an option in the recipe to roll the fruit balls in cocoa before serving, but I was taking them to a dinner party where one of the guests could not eat chocolate, so decided not to do this. A tempered dark chocolate covering might be a tasty, sophisticated finish too. For presentation I put each ball into a petit four case before filling a shallow box with a single layer.

I'm entering this into this month's Tea Time Treats challenge, the last to be hosted by Kate, of What Kate Baked. The theme she has chosen is one which fits well into December - Festive Foodie Gifts. The rules for the Tea Time Treats challenge can be found here, on co-host Karen's blog (Lavender and Lovage). Karen will be carrying on setting TTT challenges in the new year.

Navettes - a French Tea Time Treat

When Karen, at Lavender and Lovage, announced that the theme for this month's Tea Time Treats challenge was to be French baking, I thought it would be easy. I try to fit all my blogging challenges into my usual baking routine, which basically means not making anything which the family won't eat, or which isn't needed, or which is too similar to the last few things I've made. I also like it to be something which challenges my baking skills, if possible, although I don't always have time to try something new.

But French baking still sounded OK, as there is so much to choose from. Additionally, I've always wanted to try making macarons, the classic and currently fashionable, French treat. The fact that they were reputed to be difficult to make only added to the challenge, and made them a more suitable thing to try. It was after the fruit of a morning's labour ended up in the rubbish bin that I realised I was in trouble. If that wasn't going to work, what else would fit my own requirements?

There were eclairs - but I didn't want the fuss of choux pastry after going wrong with macarons. How about palmiers? Unrolling a sheet of puff pastry was hardly in the spirit of the challenge, was it? Gateaux were too fussy for a mid-week bake, and besides, I wanted to save the more extravagent bakes until Easter. Similarly, not eating desserts midweek ruled out things such as lemon and chocolate tarts, glazed fruit tartlets, and pithiviers, which is something else on my 'to do' list! Madeleines - I'd need to buy a tin! Cake salé - FB didn't like them!

Then I remembered that Phil, from As Strong as Soup, was keen on traditional French baking - perhaps I could find inspiration there! I ruled out his plainer cake recipes on the grounds that they were similar to a lot of the cakes I've made recently, but his biscuit/cookie recipes caught my eye. In particular this recipe for Navettes looked very appealing. Further investigation found some more interesting stories, other than Phil's, about the origins of the shape and name of these biscuits - either they were named after the boats in which Saint Mary Magdalene and Saint Martha were travelling when they reached Provence, or they were shaped and named after the shuttle used on weaving looms - also navette in French. You can judge from the picture above whether that's likely.

Most of the recipes I found were very similar to Phil's - the only question was whether or not to add baking powder? In the end, I chose a recipe which didn't use it. I followed the recipe exactly, and needed 450g of flour to make a soft but not sticky dough. The recipe wasn't exact on the amount of flour as it's the feel of the dough that's important.  I was a little worried that my orange flower water had lost it's potency, so I added a few drops of lemon oil extract as well.

After glazing and baking, I wasn't entirely happy with the appearance of the biscuits, as I realised I should have glazed the whole biscuit, not just the flat tops. To rectify this, I dusted them with icing sugar before serving.

These were strange little biscuits - quite hard and dry, but richly flavoured due to the butter and eggs. The texture reminded me of biscotti after the first baking, and they were good as a dunking biscuit! I tried them with my evening coffee rather than wine! The flavour was very delicate - I think I was right about my orange flower water, and I should have added more lemon oil to compensate.

Tea Time Treats (rules here) is a monthly baking challenge co-hosted by Karen, of Lavender and Lovage, and Kate, of What Kate Baked. Each month a theme is chosen on which to base our production of food fit for a tea-table. Karen is this month's host, and all the delicious French baking submitted to the challenge will be posted in a round-up on her blog, at the end of the month.