Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake

After the success of the brownies made with mayonnaise, I thought it was time to try one of the cake recipes which I've had in my folder for years. The copy of this recipe from Sue Lawrence, which I have, dates from 1997, when it appeared in Sainsbury's magazine. In that recipe there was no egg and 50ml more water, but I preferred the idea of adding an egg. This was a very simple recipe to follow and gave me no problems. The only change I needed to make was to use 160g white caster sugar and 40g light muscovado sugar, as I didn't have any golden caster sugar.

I didn't want to add the lemon topping used in the recipe, so used my old stand-by for a fudgy frosting - in a bowl over hot water, melt 175g plain chocolate (I used 60%) with 30g butter, stirring occasionally. When melted, remove from the heat and beat in 2 tablespoons of golden syrup and 3 tablespoons milk. Cool until just spreadable before using, although the original Mary Berry recipe says it can be used warm as a covering glaze, when it should cling to the sides of the cake. I've never been brave enough to try this, as I picture it all running offf, leaving the cake sitting in a puddle of chocolate.

This wasn't a very deep cake, and wasn't very strongly chocolate flavoured, but it was moist, dense and had a good close texture. With a cheaper buttercream frosting or a glacé icing, it would be a good everyday cake. As it's quite firm and not oversweet, I think it would also make a good cake for novelty cakes which need cutting to shape before covering with fondant or buttercream icing.

Mayonnaise is certainly a good way to reduce the saturated fat content of a cake!

Citrus Cornmeal Cake

This is another simple cake, along the lines of a pound cake, made with olive oil rather than butter. The cake batter is flavoured with orange zest and juice, and lemon zest. To increase the sunny yellow colour, which isn't as good in the photo as in real life, I replaced 1/3 of the flour in this recipe from Mark Hix with fine cornmeal. I also made a small amount of lemon syrup with the juice of the lemon and 2 tablespoons of sugar, to pour over the hot cake, which increased the lemony flavour.

I used an 8" round tin which was almost filled with the batter, giving some cause for concern. It did mean the finished cake was nice and deep though. Using the smallest suggested tin meant the cake took a few minutes longer to cook than suggested in the recipe - I think it was in the oven for nearer to 55 minutes, before I was satisfied that the centre was cooked, and I had to cover it with foil for the last 15 minutes. It sunk slightly in the centre, but not because of under-baking - there was no change in texture through the cake, which was very light. There were arguments here as to the stronger flavour - some thought it was a lemon cake, but the orange flavour was the stronger one for others.

I kept the cake plain, because I wanted to serve it as a dessert as well as a cake, but the lemon juice could have been used to make a glacé icing rather than a syrup. As a dessert, I served it with rhubarb and thick Greek yogurt again; I'm making the most of my home grown rhubarb!

Chocolate Almond Muffins with Marzipan Streusel Topping

I intended this to be my entry for this month's 'We Should Cocoa' challenge, but I'm not entirely happy with the results, so I'll hold it as a reserve for the moment. I was quite happy with the general idea, but the muffin wasn't chocolatey enough - it needed either some plain chocolate chips or some melted chocolate added to the muffin batter. A chopped up dark Toblerone bar might have added an extra nuance to the flavour, without overpowering the almond flavour. The streusel topping, containing grated marzipan, worked very well and gave a really crisp crumble topping to the muffins.

I used Nigella Lawson's recipe for chocolate chip muffins as a guideline, as it uses vegetable oil rather than butter. Here's one online version of the recipe. Foolishly, I left out the chocolate chips, and lived to regret it. I also used SR flour instead of plain flour + baking powder, and used 200g flour and 50g ground almonds. The only other change was to add a few drops of almond extract to the liquid ingredients.

For the streusel topping, I mixed 70g plain flour, 50g demerara sugar and 75g grated white marzipan, then stirred in 55g melted butter.

When cool this was crumbled evenly over the muffin batter before baking.

The recipe worked quite well, considering muffins aren't one of my strong points, although my efforts not to overmix left a few floury patches in the muffins. I just can't get it completely right!

Because of the butter in the streusel topping, I can't really claim these are low in saturated fat, but they're not as bad as if I'd used butter in the muffin batter too! The mildness of the chocolate flavour allowed the almond flavour to come through too.

Chocolate Ripple Pound Cake - made with olive oil

This is a beautiful cake when served - I don't think I could have made the ripples this way by planning! It was also far too big for my bundt tin; when I make it again I'm going to reduce it by 20% - use 4 eggs instead of 5 and reduce everything else accordingly.The flavours are also very subtle and need a bit more oomph - it needs more orange zest  in the plain cake and more black pepper (or maybe chilli instead) in the chocolate ripples - but the texture is very good, one of the best I've achieved with a cake made with oil.

Amazingly, I was about 20 pages into a Google search before I came across this recipe by Alice Medrich, which was developed for an Olive Oil producer in California. There are other recipes on the site which seem worth exploring too.

My cake didn't look much like the one in the photo accompanying the recipe, but it certainly made up for it's deceptively plain look when cut! Because the chocolate flavoured batter was thicker and denser than the plain batter, it didn't spread out evenly on top of the plain batter when poured into the bundt pan. Instead it sank into the previous layers without getting anywhere near the sides of the pan. I was a bit worried by this at the time, but it was too late to do anything about it - next time I may make the cocoa mix a little thinner.

However, as I've said, the end result were these amazing ripples through the cake! I relieved the plainess of the outside of the cake, and covered a few patches where the tin was over-floured, with an orange flavoured glacé icing, but I think a dusting of icing sugar would have been  just as good.

With a few tweaks to the size and the flavour, this will be a really good cake. I will certainly be using the recipe again, and perhaps experimenting with different flavours. 

I used a very mild olive oil, for reasons of economy, but it might be worth making the cake with a more strongly flavoured EVOO, to see if the stronger flavour of a better oil has much impact on the cake.

Chocolate and Cranberry Cookies

I'm finding it hard to get back into the routine of housework and cooking after my holiday, and don't yet seem to be in the mood for experimenting with new baking recipes. So for the moment I'm content to keep the 'cake tin' full with some old tried and tested favourites.

This was my second attempt at this recipe from Cookie Madness, for cookies made with oil. On my first attempt, the dough was a bit sloppy and the cookies spread too far, which I though might be down to using spelt flour and oatmeal instead of the correct ingredients. This time I used wholemeal flour and rolled oats, as stipulated in the recipe and it made a much firmer dough. I also used sunflower oil this time (75g - it's much easier to weigh it!), upped the chocolate content to 100g and used 45g dried cranberries instead of nuts.

The cookies were nice and chewy, but quite thick, so perhaps I should have flattened them a bit more. I think this is going to be a good basic dough for cookies made with oil; it will take any sort of additions in the form of dried fruit, nuts, seeds, spices and chocolate.

Orange Buttermilk Cake

The unfortunate thing about the lovely recipe for brownies made with mayonnaise is that it needs just two tablespoons of buttermilk  (or 4 if you make a double batch, as I did last week), leaving almost a whole carton to be used up elsewhere. As I also had several oranges reaching the point where they needed using, an orange and buttermilk cake seemed a good idea. It took a while to find a recipe which also used oil, but in the end, I settled for this recipe which was simple to make - the only changes I made was to use the zest of two oranges (but the juice from only one), and to use about 50ml of natural yogurt to make the buttermilk up to the correct volume.



The cake took a few minutes longer than specified to appear fully cooked, but unfortunately it still sank dramatically as it cooled. I'm not sure if it was underbaked or overmixed, but there was a dense layer where  the cake had collapsed and it had a rubbery texture which wasn't very pleasant for a cake.  However, it made a tasty dessert with the first of the rhubarb from the garden mixed with some sliced oranges, and a spoonful of Greek yogurt. Not a cake recipe to keep though!

Hello Again!

We're back from New Zealand -  more tired and heavier than when we went, which is odd because we sat on a coach most days, and some of the food provided was not the highlight of the trip, unfortunately. We also tried very hard not to over-eat, but the temptation of full breakfasts on most days was too much, even if we didn't eat lunch! Overall, it was a great trip, with some really breathtaking sights. Here's a photo of a bay on the east coast of South Island, just north of Dunedin.

As CT hasn't yet had his cholesterol levels checked, I'll be sticking with the low saturated fat baking for a while longer and my first choice, for speed and convenience, will be a double batch of these brownies made with mayonnaise.