Cafe Beaujolais' Buttermilk-Cinnamon Coffeecake

I don't know where Café Beaujolais is, although I guess it's probably in Los Angeles as the original of this recipe, which I found on Food Librarian, is found in the LA Times.

The method for making this coffee cake is slightly unusual to me, as it mixes oil into the dry flour and sugar mix. I haven't seen this in a recipe before, but I've read that cakes made with oil are more tender because the oil coats the grains of flour, preventing gluten forming. This method of adding the oil to the flour certainly seems to bear this out, as the cake was very moist and tender, and very light too.

The only change I made to the recipe was to use chopped pecans in the topping, when I found that both packs of flaked almonds in the storecupboard were so far out of date that they smelled rancid! I liked the combination of pecans and cinnamon, and I'm not sure that almonds would have been better.

Also, I didn't have the right sized baking tin - I used my adjustable square cake tin, set to 11 x 10", which seemed to be the nearest equivalent. Perhaps because of this change, I found the cake took 45 minutes to cook - a little longer than suggested in the recipe.

The cake was a little too sweet for my taste, but that's about the only fault I can find with it, and I'm really pleased to have found a good coffeecake recipe made with oil.

Pretty New Things!

New is a relative term for some of these - the three small plates were picked up at a local Antiques Fair. I'm guessing that they are all pre-1950s.

 When we got home from the Antiques Fair - hot and tired after the hottest September day on record - a mysterious parcel was waiting for me. I wasn't expecting anything, and couldn't initially find any trace of the sender on the box. Inside, well padded with bubble wrap, was another box and still no sign of a sender. This box revealed the lovely cake stand in the photo - a limited edition for Waitrose in celebration of Summer 2011. I vaguely remember entering a few competitions on the Waitrose website - this must have been from one of them, although I would have expected an email to let me know it was on the way.

It will take a lot of baking to fill such a large cakestand, although it could be assembled with just two tiers if necessary.

Pear and Ginger Cake

So many British baking bloggers seem to prefer autumn to any other season, and I'm no exception! I love using the fresh autumn fruits and nuts, and being able to bake stodgier cakes meant to be eaten in front of a cosy fire after a long walk! It's also so satisfying to use homegrown products in my baking - we've been growing vegetables for many years, but have only just started branching out into fruit production, and our own  hazelnuts are an unforseen consequence of planting an ornamental twisted hazelnut!

This cake, from the BBC Good Food site, certainly fits that bill! It's dense and moist, and flavoured with the warming spices of ginger and mixed spice. It's an unusual recipe for a cake, as it uses softened dates to provide moistness and density and some of the sweetness comes from ginger preserves. The use of dates also means that less fat can be used, which fits into my current baking style.

I used two more of the large conference pears from my mother's tree, and some fresh hazelnuts from our own tree (instead of pecans). The only other change I made to the recipe was to leave out the brandy syrup - and I don't think it was greatly missed, the cake was certainly moist enough without it.

As the website suggests, this cake makes a great dessert while still warm, but is just as good eaten cold, with or without a drizzle of fresh cream!

Even though I didn't manage to photograph the inside of this cake, due to lack of light at this time of year and a busy schedule, I'm going to enter it into the Autumnal Baking Challenge at What Kate Baked, as it's one of the best seasonal cakes I've tasted so far this year!

The Little Book of Treats - Part 2

As part of the review of 'The Little Book of Treats', available exclusively from M&S Cafés and sold to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support, as part of The World's Biggest Coffee Morning,  I decided to try a couple of recipes straight away. I was a little constrained by what was already in the store cupboard, and by the fact that I'd already made a batch of our favourite low-fat brownies, for the weekend, so didn't want another chocolate bake.

My first choice was Fabulous Flapjacks, a recipe which contained a little less fat and sugar than I usually use. This used add-ins which I often use in my flapjacks - dried apricots, dried cranberries and pumpkin seeds - but added orange zest and juice and some mixed spice.

The flavours worked really well together but I found the flapjacks a little too crisp for my taste, although this could be due to the 5 minutes extra baking I gave them before I got a golden colour on top. The mixture didn't really hold together well either - the downside of trying to reduce the fat and sugar, I think - so the flapjacks crumbled when eaten. I used a tangerine instead of the orange stipulated, so may have been a little short of enough orange juice, which might have contributed to the crumbliness.

This is one of my quibbles with this particular recipe - the imprecise nature of the measurements and instruction! "Add orange juice to taste" said the recipe - well how am I to know how much it needs, and whether it's a vital part of holding the ingredients together, or just a flavour addition? An instruction which makes sense to the recipe owner, who may have developed the recipe over several years of changes, may not mean much to anyone else trying the recipe, without the experience with it. I'd also much rather have weights of syrups, rather than tablespoons. It's also difficult to measure dried apricots in tablespoons! OK, they need chopping, but if I chop them first and then measure out 3 tablespoons, then I may chop too many and end up with waste. In the end I decide two apricots would fill a tablespoon, so chopped 7 of them (one for luck!).

The recipe - melt 125g butter in a pan, adding 60g unrefined demerara sugar (I used light muscovado) 1 tablepoon of golden syrup and 1 1/2 tablepoons of honey. Stir in 250g porridge oats, 3 tablespoons chopped dried apricots, 3 tablespoons dried cranberries, 2 tablespoons pumpkin seeds, 1 teaspoon of mixed spice, 1 teaspoon salt (I left this out as I used salted butter) and the zest of an orange. Finally stir in the juice of the orange, to taste. Spoon the mixture into a shallow base-lined 20 x 18cm tin (I used a 20cm square tin, lined with baking parchment), press down firmly and bake at 180C for 20 minutes or until golden on top. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then turn out and cut into squares. (I marked the flapjack into squares while still warm, then cooled in the tin, as I usually do!)

The second recipe I chose was Butterscotch Apple Meringue, a dessert of apples cooked in a butterscotch sauce and topped with meringue before baking. This was pleasant enough to eat, but lacked any textural contrast. It would have been more than twice as good in a crisp pastry case! We ate it still slightly warm from the oven, but I thought it was better the next day, after a night in the fridge, when the apple flavour was more pronounced.

The recipe - Preheat the oven to 150C. Cook 450g (weight before peeling and chopping) of chopped cooking apples in a little water, until tender, then drain. Blend 40g cornflour with a little of the milk from 450mls. Bring the rest of the milk to the boil with 1 tablespoon golden syrup, 50g light muscovado sugar and 25g butter. Add to the cornflour mixture then return to the pan and bring back to the boil. Simmer for 3-4 minutes. Stir in 2 tablespoons single cream and two egg yolks, then remove from the heat before the mixture boils again. Fold in the cooked apples and pour into an oven proof serving dish (you need a pie or flan dish about 20cm in diameter). Whisk the 2 egg whites until stiff then whisk in most of 100g caster sugar (I whisked in about 2/3). Gently fold in the rest of the sugar, then spread the meringue over the apple mixture. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the meringue is crisp and golden. Serve hot or cold.

NB - I received a free copy of The Little Book of Treats, from Macmillan Cancer Support,  but have tried to give an impartial review of the book, and the recipes I've tried.

The Little Book of Treats - Part 1

The 'World's Biggest Coffee Morning' is an annual fundraising event run by Macmillan Cancer Support. This year the event is in it's 21st year, and will be held on Friday 30th September. For the second year running, Marks and Spencer is Macmillan's official partner and will be helping to raise money in several ways detailed below.

The aim of the coffee morning is to encourage people to take time out together with friends, relatives and colleagues over a coffee, and help raise £8.5 million to support much needed funds for Macmillan's vital work to help improve the lives of people affected by cancer.

As part of their support, Marks and Spencer are selling, in the M&S Café, the exclusive Macmillan's 'Little Book of Treats' (£3) which features recipes from supporters and celebrities, including celebrity cooks Gwyneth Paltrow, Sophie Dahl, Eric Lanlard, Lorraine Pascale and Antonio Carluccio, with all proceeds going directly to Macmillan. Until 4th October, they are also donating 10p of the sale price of a range of products to Macmillan, and for every coffee sold on 30th September, an additional 50p will be donated.

It's probably too late to organise your own coffee morning by now, but you can find one to attend locally on the Macmillan's website, or you can have a coffee break in an M&S Café, and/or buy The Little Book of Treats

I have been sent a free copy of the book to review by Michael at Macmillan Cancer Support, but I am giving an unbiased opinion:

This little book contains 31 recipes, covering a wide range of baking, most being suitable for beginners but some a little more challenging. Amongst the ubiquitous fairy cakes, victoria sponges and Lemon Drizzle Cakes there were a few recipes which caught my eye - Red Velvet Cupcakes from Eric Lanlard, where the rich colour comes from vinegar and bicarbonate of soda reacting together (no added colour), which are then decorated with a cooked buttercream based on a roux sauce, some crumbly piped Polenta Biscuits from Antonio Carluccio, plus several brownie recipes!

I'm not sure an experienced and dedicated baker will find much new here, but even one new recipe that you bake again and again is worth the price of a book, and in this case the profits are going to a very good cause!

Chocolate and Pear Upside Down Pudding

This was a quick mid-week dessert, to use up a couple of pears from my mother's tree. She picked them while they were still hard, and it's always risky leaving pears to ripen - so often they rot from the core outwards. I chose this recipe because it used oil in the cake batter, and a lot of chocolate! The cake batter was quick to mix together, as it was just a case of dissolving the sugar into the wet ingredients and mixing the liquid into the other dry ingredients.

This pudding was delicious, although it doesn't make a very pretty picture! I think it would have been better if the pears were riper - or cooked a little first, before using them in the cake. It seemed to me that the caramel sauce needed some juice from the pears for it to work properly. Either that, or the proportions of butter and brown sugar weren't quite right. As it was, the topping was still a little granular when the cake was un-moulded, although the excess sugar eventually dissolved in the molten chocolate.

The dessert was good served warm from the oven, but just as nice eaten cold the next day.

As my pears were unripe, and I only had two large fruit, I sliced them thinly and still had enough to cover the base of a 23cm pan. If making it again with ripe or tinned pears, I would use more and slice them more thickly, as in the recipe.

Happy 1st Birthday, We Should Cocoa!

This month's 'We Should Cocoa' challenge was to produce something suitable for a virtual 1st birthday party, as the challenge itself is now a year old. In the past, my novelty birthday cake making has been almost legendary (within the family!) - dinosaurs, volcanos, a TARDIS and daleks, ladybirds etc have all been produced at party times, but I think my family would have been a little shocked to find something like that in the cake tin, for no real reason! Happily, Dom at Belleau Kitchen has made a wonderful cake, which has taken the virtual pressure off the rest of us.

I still racked my brain for ages trying to think of something suitable for both adults and small children - my best idea was biscotti with just chocolate chips for the children and added nuts and dry fruit for the adults - but the thought of making them didn't really enthuse me. I don't know what flash of inspiration put Jaffa Cakes into my mind, but once it was there, it was stuck! As well as being loved by children and adults alike, these cakes (or biscuits, if you want an argument! LOL!) would also challenge my baking skills as I'm not very confident about adding chocolate coatings to things. Never mind how messy a small child would get eating one - it would be the same with anything covered in chocolate.

I can't imagine anyone not knowing what a Jaffa Cake is, but for the uninitiated, it's a small fat-free, fairly dry, sponge cake disc topped with a circle of orange flavoured jelly. The top is then coated with chocolate to enclose the jelly.

The best recipe I found, one on the BBC from Simon Rimmer, used jelly for the topping - many just put a blob of marmalade on top of the cake discs. Commercial jelly blocks are not suitable for vegetarians, so that might be one reason it's not used in recipes, but it does give the cakes a more authentic look and taste experience.

The recipe was fairly easy to follow, although I had a heart-stopping moment when it looked as if all the sponge discs were going to stick to the muffin pan. Each individual stage was quite quick too, with just the assembly taking time, as it was quite fiddly and needed a great amount of care.

I'm quite pleased with the results, although I think the chocolate coating was too thick, which unbalanced the flavour a little. The sponge cake part was quite bland and not as sweet as I remember the real thing. (The photo of the cut cake isn't very good, as the chocolate hadn't quite set, but it does show how thick the chocolate was in relation to the sponge and jelly layers!)

The cakes had a mixed reception from the others - Hubs didn't really like them, but CT did, and was quite disappointed when I said it was a one-off experiment not likely to be repeated. The main reason for saying that is that it took 4 passes through the washing-up bowl to clean off the stuck-on layer of cake crumbs from the muffin pan, which was supposed to be non-stick! If I make them again, I need a silicone baking mould, I think - a good excuse for buying one anyway.

If you'd like to join in with future We Should Cocoa challenges, the rules can be found on Choclette's Chocolate Log Blog. Choclette shares host duties for the challenge with Chele at Chocolate Teapot, and it is Chele who has set this month's challenge, which means she will be giving us the round-up of entries towards the end of the month - I guess she will have to clear up after the party too!