Orange and Ginger Brownies

an extra post for Chocolate Week

I wasn't going to post this recipe, as it was a hurriedly made treat for my son to take home with him after having dinner with us, and I wasn't sure I'd get time for any photographs, but I've been reminded several times on Facebook that it's Chocolate Week this week. Nearly every week is chocolate week here, but I hadn't planned a post based on baking with chocolate.

This was my basic brownie recipe, which is dense and fudgy, with the zest of an orange and some  crystallised ginger added. Delicious!

Melt together 140g butter and 140g plain chocolate. Add 300g light muscovado sugar and the finely grated zest of an orange, and stir until the sugar has dissolved. If necessary, cool this mixture a little before the next stage, so that the mixture isn't too hot to take the eggs. Add three eggs, one at a time and beat in. Sieve in 160g plain flour and 3 tablespoons of cocoa and fold in. Lastly fold in 50g (or more if you have it, I was using the last of a pack!) of crystallised ginger, chopped as coarsely or finely as you like. Transfer the batter to a 20cm (8") square tin, lined with baking parchment, and bake at 180C for about 30 minutes until just set. Cool in the tin.

Apple and Orange Fruit Loaf

When I'm short of inspiration, I sometimes look back over my blog posts to find cakes I thought were worth making again. I first tried this recipe back in October 2012, so it's taken me a while to get back to it, but it was worth making again!

When I originally made this Orange Frosted Apple Cake, I left out the nuts and just used an orange glacé icing on top. This time I made a few more changes: I used spelt flour instead of wholemeal, sunflower oil rather than rapeseed, walnuts instead of pecans, and a mix of dried vine fruits, berries and cherries. Instead of frosting the cooked cake, I sprinkled some crushed raw sugar cubes over the batter before baking to give a crunchy topping - I find the extra fat and sugar in frostings unnecessary in many cases, unless the cake is for a special occasion.

The grated apple and yogurt used in the cake add moistness, and mean that less fat - in this case, sunflower oil - can be used. Adding the apple also cuts down on the sugar needed, so this is a relatively healthy cake, especially without the frosting! The apple doesn't add much to the flavour of the cake, so in this case the walnuts and spices were the predominant flavours, with a subtle orange background note.

I really don't know why I waited so long to make this cake again, as it's a really good light fruit cake and can be varied according to which dried fruits and nuts are available.

Fudgy Chocolate and Pistachio Slice

I intended to bake this recipe, for mocha brownies on a shortbread base, but when I found myself with half a packet of digestive biscuits which needed to be used up, I decided to put the fudgy topping from the recipe onto a biscuit crumb base instead.

I think I used about 150g of biscuits and 75g melted butter to make the crumb base, which I pressed into the base of a 20cm ( 8") square baking tin, and chilled while I made the topping. The mixture for the topping was very easy to put together, as it is based on a can of condensed milk.

To a 400g can of condensed milk add: 30g plain flour, 1 large egg, 65g cocoa, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder and 2 teaspoons of instant coffee dissolved in 1 tablespoon of hot water. When this is evenly combined, fold in 75g of chopped nuts - in this case I used pistachios. Spread the mixture over the crumb base and bake at 180C for about 25 minutes until the centre is set. Cool in the tin and cut into squares or fingers when cold.

These little treats were delicious. The topping is like a really fudgy sweet brownie, as you'd expect from using a can of condensed milk. My only criticism was that the amount of crumb base wasn't enough. I used the amount of biscuits I had available, but if I made these again I would use more biscuits and butter to make a thicker base.

I'm sending this to October's We Should Cocoa link-up, hosted by Choclette at Tin and Thyme. Any recipe containing some form of chocolate is welcome to be added.

Courgette and Apricot Cake

This was a last ditch attempt to make a light and sponge-like courgette cake. After the numerous attempts I've made, I've always said that I wanted a cake which was as light as the 'Yummy Scrummy Carrot Cake' (I can't bear that name!) on the Good Food site, and that each particular version I tried wasn't quite right!

Finally the light dawned - why not use that recipe, with courgettes instead of carrots?

As I've often thought that the problems with courgette cakes are down to courgettes being a much more watery vegetable than carrots, I grated about 30% more courgettes than the recipe required and squeezed out as much excess water as possible, using a clean tea-towel, before weighing the 140g needed. I replaced the raisins with chopped dried apricots and used 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg as the only spice, leaving out the cinnamon. Everything else followed the recipe!

Surprise, surprise - it worked! I'm sure that part of the reason this recipe was more technically successful was that it used a smaller proportion of courgettes than other recipes I've tried, and the other part was probably down to squeezing out excess water. The flavour of the cake was less successful -  I didn't feel that the dried apricots and nutmeg worked well together - but that's easily remedied in the future.

I'm happy to find a courgette cake recipe which gives me what I've been looking for, although it isn't one that will make a huge dent in the usual summer glut!

Spiced Chocolate Gingerbread

This Spiced Chocolate Gingerbread made a welcome change from the delicate summer cakes made with seasonal fresh fruit. I always look forward to the more robust flavours of Autumn baking - apples, blackberries, pears and even quince if I'm lucky enough to find any - and the feeling that dried fruit and spices are seasonal ingredients once again.

This gingerbread, an adaptation of this Green and Black's recipe, contains spices and chopped prunes as well as chocolate. I didn't have any Maya Gold chocolate, so used plain dark chocolate and added orange zest and mixed spice, instead of cinnamon to try to replicate the flavour as near as possible.

Although the method followed that of a classic recipe for gingerbread, the flavour of the chocolate was strong, and the use of black treacle gave a good bitter edge to the cake. It made me wonder why the  melting method and similar ingredients (without the spices) is never used to make a plain chocolate cake - it's something I'm going to try soon!

Chocolate Chip and Peanut Butter Blondies

The classic combination of peanut butter and chocolate, and a recipe from Green and Black's website. I have one of their chocolate recipe books (Unwrapped), but this recipe isn't in it. I found this while checking whether another of the recipes from the book was online, and decided it looked worth trying

I made these blondies primarily for my son, who doesn't get home-baking very often now that he's away from home. Of course, I had to make sure they were OK before passing them on to him, so after dividing the tray into 16 pieces, he got 12 and we had two each! I liked them a lot, although it looked, in the couple of pieces I tried, that some of the white chocolate had melted into the batter, rather than staying in lumps. He liked them enough to email me to say how good they were!

I only made one change to the recipe - I didn't have crunchy peanut butter, but wanted to add the crunch of nuts, so I used 125g of smooth peanut butter and 30g of finely chopped  roasted (but unsalted) peanuts.

Blondies nearly always turn out more cakey than brownies, because you don't have melted chocolate to give a fudgy texture, but this recipe was on the dense end of the spectrum, rather than the light and sponge-y end. This is definitely a recipe to make again!


Because these were so good, I'm adding them to September's We Should Cocoa link-up. After 6 years, Choclette at Tin and Thyme has changed the format of WSC; instead of setting a theme each month, anything containing some form of chocolate can be added. I'm a little sad to lose the challenge that WSC gave me - I baked many things, and used many odd combinations of ingredients, that I wouldn't have thought of trying without needing to bake for WSC.

Lemon Cake

made with whole lemons

This recipe, from Martha Stewart,  for a lemon cake, starts by slicing two lemons thinly and cooking them in boiling water for 15 minutes. This is certainly speedier than cooking them whole - that can take up to an hour!

Cooking the lemons like this cuts out a lot of the sourness of the fruit and gives the cake a very delicate lemon flavour. For me, this was the sort of lemon flavour that is best in a dessert cake, served with fresh fruit and cream, where you don't want the lemon to overwhelm the flavours of the fruit. Eaten as a cake, the taste was decidedly underwhelming, although it had a good light texture and I liked the little pieces of lemon zest spread through the crumb (my mini-food processor didn't reduce the cooked lemons to a smooth purée).

If I made this again, I would use the zest from the third lemon in the cake too - I thought at the time that it was a shame not to use it. This might boost the lemon flavour to something more in line with my tastes, although if you like a more subtle lemon flavour this recipe is well worth trying as written.