Flatbreads

Regular readers will know that yeast and I don't get on together well, which makes it all the more surprising that I haven't come across this simple flatbread recipe before.

I guess it's popping up a lot online because strong bread flour and yeast are difficult to get hold of at the moment, although you're lucky if you can find any sort of flour in the supermarkets. Fortunately, I still have half a bag of SR flour, which is the type of flour needed for this recipe.

All you do is mix equal weights of SR flour and Greek-style yogurt (I always have full-fat yogurt in stock) and knead lightly; if the dough is too dry at this stage add more yogurt a teaspoon at a time, if it's too wet sprinkle over a little more flour and knead in.

Then divide into portions (I got 4 individual breads from 200g of flour and 200g yogurt), roll out as thin as you like, brush very lightly with oil (optional), then cook on a hot griddle pan (or in a heavy non-stick frying pan) until golden brown.

I added some flavourings, as I was serving the bread with a curry, and wanted it to taste like a Nan bread. The first time I made the bread, I added salt, pepper and a teaspoon of nigella seeds to 200g of flour. The second time, I added more nigella seeds (a teaspoon to 100g flour) and a 1/4 teaspoon of each of ground cumin and ground coriander, as well as the salt and pepper.

My first attempt tasted fine, but I didn't roll the breads thinly enough. The second attempt, rolling the dough out to around 0.5cm thickness, worked much better, both in terms of flavour and texture. I think it would be difficult to tell that you weren't eating a yeasted bread.

The great thing about this recipe is that it can be made in small quantities, which means I can make just enough for 1 meal, and not be tempted to eat too much. The dough can be mixed and cooked as quickly as you'd cook rice or potatoes, so doesn't mean extra time in the kitchen either.

The top photo shows the four flatbreads made  in the first batch, which were too thick. They were cooked on a cast-iron ridged griddle for about 3 minutes each side. The bottom photo shows the two I made on my second attempt, when the 100g portions of dough were rolled out to twice the size as the first time. These were cooked on a smooth griddle and took less than two minutes on each side.

Plum and Cinnamon Loaf

This cake was going to be a half-sized attempt at Dan Lepard's tried and tested Stone Fruit Yogurt Cake, until I realised that I was lacking the necessary semolina. Not one to be easily thwarted, I used polenta instead and carried on!

I wouldn't usually buy fresh plums at this time of year, as they have been trekked halfway round the world, but the checkout till at Waitrose kindly printed out a coupon for a pack of 6 'Perfectly Ripe' plums at half price. This recipe used three plums - they were quite large, weighing about 80g each, I seem to remember.

One of my baking books tells me that a 20cm round deep cake tin is equivalent to a 900g (2lb) loaf tin, so I hoped that half the quantities in Dan's recipe would be OK in a 450g(1lb) loaf tin. It was a near thing - the batter filled more of the tin than I was happy with, but fortunately the cake didn't rise too much. I made a couple of slight alterations to the recipe, but nothing that altered it substantially from the original.

Ingredients
90g caster sugar + 2 teaspoons extra
90g softened butter +15g extra
3 large ripe plums
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
80g full-fat Greek-style natural yogurt
40g polenta
85g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
1 teaspoon baking powder

Method
Line a 450g loaf tin with foil, pressing it well into the corners without tearing it, and grease with a little of the extra butter. Dot the remainder of the extra butter over the base, and sprinkle over 1 teaspoon of caster sugar.
Preheat the oven to 180C.
Halve and de-stone the plums, and cut each half into 4 slices. Arrange about 2/3 of the plum slices in the base of the loaf tin, and sprinkle over another teaspoon of sugar. Chop the remaining slices of fruit into small pieces.
Mix the flour, polenta, cinnamon and baking powder together in a small bowl.
Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla extract, adding a spoonful of the flour mix to prevent curdling.
With the mixer on it's slowest speed, stir in the yogurt, followed by the rest of the flour mix.
Fold in the remaining chopped plums with a spoon, then transfer the batter to the baking tin.
Bake for about 60 minutes, covering for the last 15-20 minutes if the cake seems to be browning too quickly. A test probe should come out clean of cake batter, although you might hit a piece of fruit which will make the probe look damp.
Leave for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a plate and carefully peel away the foil. If any of the fruit topping becomes dislodged, it can be gently put back into place. Cool before serving.

The slices of plums on top of the loaf were a really pretty pink colour - it was lovely to photograph something which wasn't brown! There was just enough cinnamon to taste, without it overwhelming the plums, which were both sweet and sharp and gave the cake a fresh taste which I've been missing all winter!

Incidentally, I was pleasantly surprised at how tasty the plums were, but I think I still prefer to buy fruit as locally and seasonally as possible.

Blueberry and Lemon Polenta Cake

gluten-free

We planted two blueberry bushes earlier this year, but we weren't sure whether or not they would bear fruit straight away. Fortunately they did, although the fruit doesn't all ripen at once, so I'm picking 100-150g every five days or so. I've also found out that I really prefer cooked blueberries to raw, so I've made blueberry sauce for some cheesecake pots, and added some to baked rhubarb.

I decided to put the latest pickings into a cake, but had to find a recipe using a small amount. I also had some lemons that needed using, so a blueberry and lemon cake seemed in order. I soon found this Sainsbury's recipe for a lemon and blueberry polenta cake, which only used 100g of fruit. I had to adapt the recipe a little, using vanilla yogurt instead of natural. As I was using a yogurt with a separate topping of toasted oat flakes (about a tablespoonful), I sprinkled them on top of the cake too.

This was a deliciously light cake, although I think it could have taken another 50g of fruit, as the blueberries were very thinly spread. The zest of another lemon would have improved the flavour from my point of view but I do like a tart lemon cake - others might appreciate the subtlety of a milder flavour.

It's also nice to add another gluten-free cake to my repertoire.

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!

Morning Glory Yogurt Loaf

an Anna Olson recipe

I'd never heard of Morning Glory Bread, until I started looking for a recipe for a loaf-shaped cake using yogurt in the batter. It seems that it's a quick breakfast 'bread', of the type popular in America and Canada - the sort of thing that's often called a tea-bread over here, as we haven't really embraced the habit of eating what seems like cake for breakfast, yet! It's raised with baking powder rather than yeast, and is packed full of whatever the cook has available in the way of fruit and nuts. This Anna Olson recipe adds tinned pineapple (or fresh peaches), raisins, coconut and orange zest, but on further investigation I found recipes adding things such as bananas, walnuts and even grated carrots too.

I had already decided to make a coconut flavoured loaf, as that was just about all I had in my store of cake 'add-ins', and had found a couple of possible recipes, but when I came across this recipe, with it's extra flavour elements, I knew I had to try it. Luckily I also had the remains of a bag of sultanas, that I could use instead of raisins, and there was a tin of pineapple rings in the larder, which I could blitz to turn into crushed pineapple. I used unsweetened desiccated coconut; I didn't think it would make too much difference as there was quite a lot of sugar in the loaf.

Most yogurt cakes use oil instead of butter, so are made by simply mixing wet ingredients in one bowl, dry in another and combining the two. Because this recipe used butter there was the added stage of creaming it with the sugar before adding the wet ingredients,  but it was still an easy recipe to follow.

The only problem I had was one of baking time - I've no idea how long the loaf spent in the oven, as I gave up keeping note after 90 minutes. I eventually took it out when my digital thermometer read 94C as I thought that was as near to 100C as the cake was going to get, and I needed the oven at a different temperature by then! The huge discrepancy between the recipe and my experience may have been down to a differently proportioned loaf tin (mine was short and deep), or the moisture in the tinned pineapple.

This was a very moist, close-textured loaf, because of the juicy pineapple. Although it was packed with fruit, and hadn't risen much it still seemed quite a light cake. The flavours of the pineapple and coconut were the most dominant, with the orange and touch of cinnamon providing subtle background notes. I treated this loaf as a cake, but it would also have made a good dessert, perhaps heating slices in a griddle pan and serving with poached fruit and yogurt.

The reason I wanted to bake a cake containing yogurt was that this month's AlphaBakes challenge is the letter Y. My imagination failed to come up with anything out of the ordinary for either an ingredient or a recipe name beginning with Y, so yogurt will have to do! AlphaBakes is hosted by Caroline, at Caroline Makes, and Ros, at The More Than Occasional Baker, and it is Caroline who is hosting this month's challenge.

Apricot and Pine Nut Muffins

Things are changing again! FB has got her feet on the bottom of the property ladder, at last, and will be moving out soon. In the meantime Hubs and I are busy helping her get the new house into good condition. She's lucky that there is time to clean properly and redecorate where necessary, before she moves in - whenever we've moved, that sort of thing has had to be left until we've settled in, or be done in a hurry while we are deciding where to store things, and how to arrange the furniture. Although she's lived away from home for many years, and has accumulated lots of books and kitchen equipment, she has always lived in furnished rented accommodation, so has no furniture of her own yet, so that's another task that she needs help with, as she doesn't drive. A trip to IKEA is next on the agenda!

All this is to explain why I've done little baking lately, and why there is likely to be even less in future. With just the two of us here, and both of us with weight problems to varying degrees, there will be less call for cakes and calorific desserts. Even now, when I bake, I often divide the batter to make two small cakes, and freeze one, so I've already cut down to some extent. I'm not sure yet how this will affect my blogging, although I'd like to carry on with the monthly baking challenges, so I don't expect be giving up altogether.

I made a Red Berry, Chocolate and Marzipan cake recently, much like this cake that I made last year. I used double the amount of dried fruit and dark chocolate instead of white, and it was just as delicious, but I only realised that I hadn't photographed it as the last piece was being eaten!

 

Muffins are also useful when you don't need much cake, as they usually freeze well. Four of these Apricot and Pine Nut Muffins went into the freezer, leaving a manageable amount for us to eat. I really like them, but Hubs didn't like their smell! I'm not sure what he could smell, as I didn't notice anything unpleasant; the only thing I could think of was that the smell of cooked pine nuts was unpleasant to him.

The original recipe, in the Muffin Bible, called these Pine Nut and Yogurt Muffins, but dried apricots are a major ingredient, so it seemed more fitting to call them Apricot and Pine Nut Muffins. I've found this recipe online, which looks identical; the only thing I did differently was not to chop the pine nuts - there didn't seem any point. You'll notice the recipe adds a small amount of honey; I used a wild thyme honey and the combination of thyme, apricots and pine nuts suggested Greek flavours to me. Although I liked these, I'm unlikely to make them again, so as not to offend his lordship's delicate nose!
 

Apricot Ginger Yogurt Cake

There's an obvious dilemma (dilemna?) when baking during hotter than usual weather at this time of year. The abundance of wonderful fresh fruit cries out to be used, but we know things won't keep well unless refrigerated, which often spoils the texture of cakes and pastries, even if they are brought back to room temperature before serving.

I decided to take my chances with this fresh apricot cake, to my cost. It was baked on Thursday afternoon, but was mouldy by Saturday evening - I had hoped it would last long enough, without refrigeration, to be finished as Saturday's dessert, but the last three portions had to be thrown away.

The recipe I used was the delightfully versatile Stone Fruit Yogurt Cake from Dan Lepard. I used about 450g fresh apricots - 175g chopped into the cake batter and the rest arranged carefully in the base of the cake tin before putting in the cake batter. I also reduced the lemon zest to that from one lemon and added 50g of chopped glacé ginger and a teaspoon of ground ginger to the cake batter to add a little zing, as fresh apricots are often a bit of a gamble in the flavour stakes. As it turned out these apricots were wonderfully tart with a good depth of flavour when cooked, but the ginger still added an extra dimension to the overall balance of the cake.

The texture of this cake is quite dense and moist, thanks to the semolina in the batter, which makes it a great dessert as well as a tasty cake. It would be good as a picnic dessert if left in the tin until ready to eat.

This month's Tea Time Treats challenge, hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage, is to use fresh fruit when creating something suitable for the tea-table, so I am submitting this cake. Karen shares hosting duties for this Tea Time Treats (full rules here) with Kate at What Kate Baked. This month Karen is using a linky for submission of entries but will still write a round-up post at the end of the month.