Recipe time again: Minced Meat Loaf Cake

After a break whilst we were away, it's back to baking a cake for our local Pop-Up Café. This week I returned to one I'd made a while ago, a minced meat loaf cake, because I had a jar of minced meat left over from Xmas lurking at the back of a cupboard. Here's the line-up of ingredients in which the Tesco label features prominently - I should add that ingredients from other sources are perfectly acceptable, indeed are probably more acceptable to those who shop at Tesco holding their nose.

And the quantities a for 2lb tin?

150g softened unsalted butter
225g mincemeat
150g soft light brown sugar
225g self raising flour
2 eggs
100g currants
100g sultanas
100g dried cranberries
2 tsp cinnamon
Enough flaked almonds to give a good sprinkle on the top

It's easy-peasy to make. Simply mix all the ingredients, except for the flaked almonds, together until they are well incorporated. Spoon the mixture into the lined tin. Sprinkle with the flaked almonds. Bake for 1 hour (at 160C) or until well risen (but this is isn't a high rising mix) and golden and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

I use this oven but ovens from other sources would be perfectly acceptable.

And this is what they look like at the end (I always use double the quantities so that we've got one in freezer for future use). The taste test? Pretty good and one to add to the list to do again.

Lemon Curd and Blueberry Loaf Cake

"Given up baking then?" was the taunt from afar. Nah, still at it with a cake every week, more or less, for our local Pop-up Café. Here's my latest offering: Lemon Curd and Blueberry loaf cake. It meets all my baking criteria: a simple recipe to follow, easy-to-get ingredients and just a little bit different. Although the quantities listed are for a single 2 lb loaf tin, I always double up and put one in the freezer for later. Blog readers are always welcome to come around for a slice or two - provided you can answer this simple question: who links Piblokto, The Battered Ornaments and Cream? Clue: it's not Eric Clapton. Now, to the recipe.

Ingredients

• 175g softened butter
• 100 g Greek yogurt
• 3 tablespoons good quality lemon curd
• 3 eggs
• Zest and juice 1 1/2 lemons, plus extra zest for the topping
• 200g self-raising flour
• 175g golden caster sugar
• 100g blueberries
• 140g icing sugar

 

Method

• Heat oven to 160C fan.
• Line a 2lb loaf tin with greaseproof paper.
• Put yogurt, lemon curd, the softened butter, eggs, lemon zest, flour and caster sugar into a large mixing bowl. Quickly mix with an electric whisk until the batter just comes together. Scrape half into the prepared tin. Sprinkle half of the blueberries into the tin, scrape the rest of the batter on top, then scatter the other half of the berries on top. Bake for around an hour until golden and a skewer poked into the centre comes out clean.
• Cool in the tin, then carefully lift onto a serving plate to ice. Sift the icing sugar into a bowl and stir in enough lemon juice to make a thick, smooth icing. Dribble over the top and sides of the cake and sprinkle some lemon zest over the icing on top.

Taste Test

 

I enjoyed the half slice that came my way. Feedback from the Pop-up Punters says that it tasted very good and is definitely in the 'one to do again' category. If I do, I'll try replacing the yoghurt with buttermilk and perhaps stir in a couple of tablespoons of lemon curd into the top before the final sprinkling of blueberries.

Recipe Time Again: Raspberry Bakewell Loaf Cake

Everyone likes a recipe so here's this week's effort for our village Pop-up Cafe. I fancied something with almonds and came across a recipe for a Raspberry Bakewell Loaf Cake on the Something Sweet Something Savoury food blog. It was worth a try and the cakes seemed to have come out OK. As is my customary practice, I double-up on the quantities shown and put one in the freezer for future use. We've got eight lurking there now as the process is not at equilibrium: the rate in is greater than the rate out. With Xmas coming, maybe we'll be able to reduce our stockpile somewhat.

 

Ingredients:
150g soft unsalted butter
150g caster sugar
2 large eggs
150g ground almonds
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 right index finger for tasting at various stages 
1 left index finger (ditto above because I can multitask)
50ml milk (I used almond milk because I had some in the fridge)
150g self raising flour
150g fresh raspberries
About 3 tablespoons raspberry jam
75g icing sugar
25g flaked toasted almonds

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180C and line a loaf tin with, what else but, a loaf tin liner.
Cream the butter and sugar together until very light and fluffy. Whisk the eggs and almond extract in a jug and slowly add to the creamed mixture. Add the milk, still beating and then gently fold in the flour and ground almonds with a metal spoon. Finally stir in the raspberries very carefully so that they aren't crushed. Spoon half of the mixture into the prepared tin then spoon over the raspberry jam.

I couldn't be bothered to be neat so just dotted teaspoons of the jam on top of the mixture to get a reasonably even spread. And then the rest of the mixture is dumped on top and smoothed out with a fork.

Into the oven for around 45-50 minutes or until risen and golden and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool for 10-15 minutes before carefully turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

To ice the cake, place the icing sugar in a bowl and stir in a few drops of water until the icing coats the back of a spoon quite thickly. Spoon over the cold cake and sprinkle with flaked almonds. I think what I made was a little too runny as it set translucent rather than the opaquely white finish I was intending. Still, it will taste the same and the punters won't know the difference. Or maybe they will. They usually give me some honest feedback: one of my earlier cakes had a slight dip in the middle (actually it was quite a trench and I disguised it with a thick layer of mascarpone frosted topping) was described by Mrs H as the 'Titanic Cake'.

And the verdict after the event? Even if I do say so myself (corroborated by Mrs P), it looks and tastes pretty good. One to do again but with a more determined effort to make a better job at getting the jam layer more uniform. And the icing topping could be improved as well, with maybe the addition of a few drops of almond essence? And a few more raspberries wouldn't go amiss.

 

Quadruple Chocolate Cake

Knowing that I have one or two chocoholics amongst my regular readers (you know who you are), I thought I'd share this recipe from my latest baking session for the village 'pop-up' café. Just in case you are wondering this cake is not named for the bypass you might feel you'd need after eating it but because of the four choccy-factors that go into it: cocoa to make the cake; chocolate chips to fold into it; a chocolate syrup to drench it once it's out of the oven and dark chocolate shards to top it before serving. It's a Nigella Lawson creation with a few personal tweaks to give it a little more 'body'. It's easy peasy and looks good but I'll have to leave it to others to let me know how it tastes (see later for verdict).

Use the best quality chocolate possible and never never ever use milk chocolate

Ingredients  
                                       

For the cake

• 200 grams plain flour
• ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 50 grams cocoa powder
• 275 grams golden caster sugar
• 175 grams soft unsalted butter
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 80 ml sour cream
• 125 ml boiling water
• 175 grams dark chocolate chips 

For the syrup and topping

• 1 teaspoon cocoa powder
• 125 ml water 
• 50 grams golden caster sugar
• 50 grams dark muscovado sugar
• 25 grams dark chocolate (from a bar)                           

Method

1. Take whatever you need out of the fridge in good time for all ingredients to come to room temperature.
2. Preheat the oven 170°C/325ºF and line a 2lb loaf tin with greased paper (I always use a preformed liner as it's easier).
3. And now the incredibly difficult, but extremely skilful, job of assembling the ingredients. Put the flour, bicarb, cocoa, sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla and sour cream into your Kenwood bowl (other makes of food processor are available) and whisk to a smooth, satiny brown batter. Scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula and whisk again while pouring the boiling water into the mixture. Switch off and then fold in the chocolate chips.

   

   Ready for the oven

4. Scrape the sides again and pour this unctuous batter (it really is quite liquid) into the prepared loaf tin and slide into the oven on a baking tray. Cook for about 1 hour. When it's ready, the loaf will be risen and cracked down the middle. A skewer will come out pretty clean but this should be a moist cake so a bit of stickiness is OK. Indeed, a bit of stickiness should be the cause of unbounded glee.

   

   After baking and poking holes in it with a skewer. It sinks a little as it cools.

5. Not long before the cake is due out of the oven - say when it's had about 50 minutes - put the syrup ingredients of cocoa, water and sugar into a small saucepan and boil for around 5 minutes. What you are aiming for is something with a nice coating syrupy consistency.
6. Take the cake out of the oven and put it on a cooling rack and, still in its tin, pierce here and there with a skewer. Then pour the syrup as evenly as possible, which is not very, over the surface of the cake. It will run to the sides of the tin, but some will have been absorbed in the middle. I use a silicon pastry 'brush' to make certain of a good coverage.

   

   Smothered in the chocolate syrup which looks great but makes getting it out of the tin a nightmare. Note to self: if I make it again, put some longer strips of greaseproof paper under it to help lift it out

7. But it does come out eventually and this is best done after the cake has become completely cold. It's too fragile to handle safely when it's warm.

   

   All syrupped and waiting for the topping 

8. And now for the topping. My original aim was to have curls but it didn't work out like that, probably because I was using an 85% cocoa bar which is hard. A vegetable peeler is ideal for scraping and producing reasonable size crumbs for sprinkling on the top of the cake. To help adhesion, I brushed a little honey on the surface before the topping.

   

   Bedecked in chocolate scrapings and ready for munching

And the verdict of the punters? Nice but very rich. A real treat for the discerning chocolate lover but you don't need a big piece of it. It would make a great pudding with a chocolate sauce or sour cream, perhaps.

Lapsang Souchong Marzipan Fruit Cake

On a recent visit to Lostwithiel, as it was late in the day and most of our usual haunts were closed, we ventured into Sew and Sew Vintage Haberdashery for some afternoon refreshments. Not as strange as it may sound as there was a small tea shop nestling amongst the fabrics and the skeins of wool. I was tempted by a piece of marzipan fruit cake and I was glad I did. I'm a sucker for marzipan and the cake really hit the spot for me. So much so that I asked the lady serving us if she had the recipe. "No", she said, "but my friend here made it. She'll help". And indeed she did, by pointing me in the direction of Nigella Lawson's book, How to be a Domestic Goddess.

A quick Google when we got home and the recipe was located. It looked good but had a difficult to get ingredient, dried pears (soaked overnight in White Rum). Another Google and I came across a variant, using dried sour dried cherries soaked in Lapsang Souchong tea). I loved the sound of the smokiness of the tea combining with the almonds of the marzipan. But sour dried cherries proved to be as elusive to obtain locally as dried pears: however, I did have dried cranberries to hand. So, I gave it a go and here's the recipe for Lapsang Souchong Marzipan Fruit Cake, adapted by me from the adaption by maisoncupcake.com of the original Marzipan Fruit Cake recipe from Nigella Lawson. It's easy to make and tastes pretty good.
 

Ingredients

500ml Lapsang Souchong tea (strong)

250g Sultanas

125g Dried cranberries
65g Desiccated coconut (unsweetened)
400g Marzipan
65g Ground almonds
Zest of 1 large orange
220g Plain flour
125g Caster sugar
125g Butter (softened)
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons Orange Blossom water

Method
The quantities above were enough for a 2lb loaf tin and a little extra over for a 'taster' in a 1/2lb tin, both lined with grease proof paper.

 1. Cut the marzipan into small cubes and put in a freezer for at least 1 hour. This makes sure that the marzipan stays in chunks during the mixing process.
2. Make a strong brew of lapsang souchong (loose leaf not tea bag!)with boiling water in a jug. Mix the sultanas and cranberries in a large mixing bowl and pour the tea over. Leave to soak for 30-40 minutes (or until the cranberries are soft) and then drain the excess liquid away.

3. Preheat the oven to 140C. 

4. Beat together the almonds, orange zest, flour, butter, sugar and eggs. Add the drained fruit, orange blossom water and cubes of marzipan and mix well by hand, but not too vigorously.
5. Spoon the rather thick cake mix into the tin and spread to the edges. It doesn't rise that much so the tin can be filled pretty much to the top.
6. Bake in the middle of the oven for about 1 hour 45 minutes. I kept an eye on it after 90 minutes and kept checking it was cooked by the old 'cleaning knitting needle' test. I covered the top with foil to prevent burning for the last 10 minutes or so. The smaller 'taster' was done in around an hour.
7. Leave to cool in the tin and then wrap in cling-film until needed.

And here's what the inside of the 'taster' looked like. OK, not symmetrical but I just slapped the mix in the smaller tin when it became apparent that I had some left over. The 'real thing' was destined for a local community 'pop-up cafe'. so we'll be counting bodies tomorrow.