Covid Cake - Or Make Do And Mend Cake

I was tempted to call this post Old Jam Cake, which is what's in my head when I make it, but then I thought that no one would read it, let alone bake it, so I thought I would call it  Covid Cake, in the spirit of my theme of using whatever you have to hand in these unusual times. Mr Wilkinson thinks that sounds even less attractive. But in my defence, let me say that this is a really good family recipe for normal times, but for these times it seems even more relevant, - It's easy, quick, versatile, and yes frugal.
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Like many people at the moment I'm restricted in what shopping I can do, and have to manage with 

a) what I've already got in and 

b) stuff that has been delivered to me as "substitutes" for what I ordered, and that I don't really want. 

So if you're clearing your cupboards out don't throw away the jam and marmalade that's half used. and the fruit you don't fancy.  You really can make something quite delicious with it.

Make some Covid Cake.

 In principle this is really a kind of ginger cake as it contains no sugar, but uses  instead melted preserves/honey or syrup instead. So you can name it for whatever surplus preserves and leftover fruit you have around Marmalade and Ginger say, or Plum and Apple.  I used some plum jam that was fine but  a bit dull, and as I have lots of other lovely preserves it wasn't going to get used any time soon, so that with half a jar of marmalade that had been open a while, and the remains of some golden syrup to empty the tin. Topping was a couple of Granny Smith apples sent to me in a delivery which I didn't order and which were horrible to eat raw but lovely sliced onto the top of this cake. 


You could use pears, plums, cherries  or nothing at all. I'm sure you get the idea.  


 You end up with a lovely tea time cake, which also doubles as pudding served hot with a drizzle of syrup or honey, and cream or custard.

Not to mention the warm glow of smug satisfaction at your amazing ability to conjure something out of nothing.




















Covid Cake

Stand a saucepan on your digital scales and weigh in
700grams/1 lb 8 ounces of jam, golden syrup, honey and/or marmalade in whatever proportions you like or have available.
Add 300 grams/10 ounces of butter
and warm over gentle heat until just melted.

Put the pan back on the scales and add
500 grams  of plain flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
4 teaspoons ground ginger
good pinch salt
4  eggs
about a half pint/300 ml milk


and beat briefly with a hand mixer till smooth.


Pour into a lined tin, mine was 11" x8"/ 27cm x 20cm

Thinly slice Two apples/pears/plums and place gently on the top of the mixture.


Bake at 160C  for about 45 mins or until risen and firm.









NB If you save a spoonful of the melted jam from the recipe you can brush it over the cake when you take it out of the oven, to give a nice shine and then sprinkle generously with demerara sugar.

Ginger and Marmalade Cake

The thing about having a good supply of home made marmalade, or indeed any other preserve, is what to do with it once you've made it. I do give quite a bit of it away, and it's quite handy for guests in our holiday cottage, but that still leaves a good supply to use ourselves. So this is an easy mix cake that keeps moist in the cake tin, and has a good flavour without the need for icings, fillings and all the attendant sugar calories and effort. It's a versatile recipe, you don't have to be too exact with it, and it's useful for using up odds and ends of things in the cupboard, the last of the golden syrup,

 remains of a jar of crystallized honey, and so on. You can use all syrup if you like, and grated citrus makes a good addition if you have the inclination.

 

Marmalade and Ginger Cake

Stand a saucepan on your digital scales and weigh in
350grams/12 ounces of golden syrup, honey and marmalade in whatever proportions you like
150 grams/6ounces of butter
and warm over gentle heat until just  melted





Put the pan back on the scales and add
9ounces/250grams  of plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons ground ginger
good pinch salt
2 medium eggs
about a quarter pint/150 ml milk

and beat briefly with a hand mixer till smooth. Or a wooden spoon if you are from Yorkshire (ie strong in  th' arm and weak in th' 'ead, Yorkshire born and Yorkshire bred)

Pour into a lined tin, mine was 11" x8"/ 27cm x 20cm

Bake in a moderate oven for about 30 mins till risen and firm.  Try to avoid getting the top too dark.

 

Galette des Rois/ Twelfth Night Cake

 This is the frangipan pastry cake I mentioned yesterday, wherein a bean lies hidden, to be discovered by one lucky person who received it in their slice, and then gets to be king for the day, and can boss everyone about rather tiresomely for the rest of the day.

I haven't made this cake before, although I've always known about it, because frankly I thought it looked a bit dull and boring. Compared with a spectacular chocolate fudge cake, or mountainous pavlova it would certainly seem a bit of an also ran, but do not be deceived by appearances (as I was). This really is a very good result from a small amount of effort.
Ingredients
Because its ungilded beauty relies entirely on the quality of the ingredients, I would suggest you use the best you can find. And if you're a regular reader you may have noticed  that I'm not one to splash out on unnecessary luxury ingredients where they aren't really warranted. I put it down to my Yorkshire upbringing. But in dishes like this you'll really notice the difference. This is my slightly tweaked version of Mary Cadogan's recipe

You will need
1 400 gr pack of all butter puff pastry
2 good tablespoons of your best homemade raspberry jam
100 gr/4oz butter at room temperature

100gr/4oz caster sugar

100gr/4oz ground almonds
1 egg
2 tablespoons vanilla infused rum, or just rum

1 large dried bean such as a butter bean

Roll out the puff pastry and cut out two 9inch, 23 cm circles.Cut a narrow strip from the leftover pastry to fit all around the pastry circle which will give you a lip so that you can get more filling in. Stick it on with water. This is optional if you're in a rush.

Cream the butter and sugar til light, beat in the egg, then stir in the ground almonds and rum.

Spread the jam on  the pastry circle. Top the jam with the almond mixture. Remember to hide your bean in the mixture.**

Brush the border with water, top with the second circle and seal. You can decorate the top with a knife blade -spokes like a pinwheel are traditional, if you wish.

Brush with beaten egg and bake in moderate oven for 25 -30 minutes until golden brown.

Like most puff pastry items, at it's best served slightly warm.

**There are many ancient traditions connected with Twelfth Night, some of recent christian origin and some of older Pagan and Roman and Viking origin, and are often connected with riotous behavior and the idea of turning things upside down. The idea with the bean is the person who gets it in their slice becomes the King of Misrule, whereby peasants become rulers and rulers become slaves, (just for the day of course, it's not the Peasants' Revolt) so an excellent cake for socialists who will enjoy for once, both having their cake and eating it. Not many cakes have a political stance. There are many versions of the cake, some entailing a small ceramic figure being hidden, but a bean sounds less dangerous and the price of dentistry being what it is.....

And finally, as to the date, we have always insisted on regarding tomorrow, January 6th as Twelfth Night, despite the Church of England's pronouncement that it's the 5th.  There are good ancient traditions supporting the 6th, and anyway it's my daughter's birthday, so we always kept the decorations up for her, and had the riotous children's party in appropriate surroundings, and then swept up the whole shebang in one massive clear up!

Happy Birthday for tomorrow Sarah. And play nicely.

Cupcakes, Fairy Cakes, or Buns?

I've recently bought one of these

the stand that is, not the cakes, - these were made by Claire for little Brown's 2nd birthday last weekend. And very delicious they were, obviously I had to try a couple in the interests of research....

 In fact, I've bought three of them, one each for my daughter and step-daughter, and one for me. We all like cooking, and I think they're quite a nice way of showing your little cakes off to advantage. There's a bit of a trend for having individual cupcakes instead of one large cake as a celebration cake at weddings and birthdays, and this would be ideal for such an occasion. They come in various sizes, this one is a 23er, but you can leave off the lower tier if you want to.

One of the first things I learned to cook as a young girl were Butterfly Cakes, little fairy cakes topped with butter cream and with the halved lids perched on top at a jaunty wing-like angle. I say fairy cakes, but I notice a current trend to refer to these little cakes as Cupcakes, I'm thinking that must be the American equivalent, and I also notice that they're tending to be a lot bigger than the ones I made as a child, another not altogether unwelcome trend if you're a fan of cake. And who isn't.  I can't help thinking though that some of the "cupcakes" I've seen illustrated would have served as dessert for a family of four in the old days. Just goes to show that not everything gets worse.

If you look on Amazon you will find literally dozens of books of recipes for cupcakes, which is quite amazing really, since, give or take a few additions, the basic idea is sponge cake baked in individual cases and decorated however you like. So call them Cupcakes if you're modern, or Fairy Cakes if you're posh, or, if you're from Yorkshire, more prosaically Buns, it all comes down to a fairly basic recipe and the rest is up to your imagination and patience. I fall back on my usual all in one sponge cake recipe, which I rehearse below -

All in one Sponge

4 eggs
1 pack 8oz/250g of butter at room temperature
8 ounces/250g of self raising flour
1 rounded teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon of cornflour
8 ounces/250g of caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
about 2 tablespoons milk

Put everything in food processor and switch on till blended. That's it. You might want to mix it without the milk first and then add as much milk as you think you need to get a soft, smooth, but not too runny mixture. Depends on the size of your eggs really.

Spoon into little cake cases or larger muffin cases or mini muffin cases, about 2/3rds full, and bake until golden.And when cold decorate with fondant, butter icing, glace icing, or whatever you like.

Sweet Treats for Christmas

Apologies for the lack of postings this week, I've been occupied, like almost everyone else, with Christmassy things entailing much baking of these,

and some of these

and also some of these

I realize these last ones are indistinguishable from a heap of rubbish from my terrible photograph, but they are in fact Christmas Wreaths, adapted from a recipe of Nigella's. If you want to see a picture of what they really look like, have a look at Nigella's Christmas, where you will find a sensible photo. I was making treats to eat at our village Christmas tree lights switching on ceremony last night, and although I made a good stack of mince pies, I know from past experience that small children often don't care for dried fruit generally and mince pies in particular, so I made these treats as an alternative. And very succesful they were too, allowing adults to consume generous amounts of Mulled Wine and mince pies, while they, the children got stuck into the Christmas Cupcakes, Gingerbread Christmas biscuits, and the aforementioned Christmas Wreaths, extracting extravagant sugar fuelled promises along the way from Santa who made his welcome appearance to switch on the lights. Fortunately for the health of the residents, other more sensible people brought some lovely savoury items to counteract the sugary overload of my offerings.

Christmas Cupcakes

I used an 8:8:4 recipe for all in one sponge for these. By which I mean 8 oz SR flour,butter and sugar and 4 eggs ( you see how simple this old imperial measurement is - far easier to remember than metric where the number of eggs, ie 4 bears no relation to the amount of other ingredients ie 250 grams, stop me before I start ranting again....).

Anyway, this amount made around fifty odd cupcakes, so you may like to halve the amounts unless you are considering entertaining the whole neghbourhood's offspring, or you could make larger ones using American style muffin cases instead of little bun cases. You can do the maths. You will need a spot of milk to make the mixture soft enough,and a teaspoon of vanilla essence and be sure to make them small enough to allow for the topping to cover them completely after they have risen.

The topping is royal icing, very easy to make if you have an electric mixer. Just beat 3 egg whites with a 500g packet of icing sugar for about five minutes until the mixture holds soft peaks. I use fresh egg whites because I have an abundance of eggs available to me, but I have used a packet of instant royal icing in the past and it works just as well. I always add a teaspoon of glycerin to the icing to stop it going rock hard, although you should not attempt to keep these little cakes more than a day anyway as they dry out too much. I'm amazed that Christmas Sprinkles for cakes are not available everywhere, at least not in the seasonal red and green colours I like - Tesco's missing an opportunity here - so you have to send off for them, either from Wilton, the US baking supplies people, or sometimes on Ebay. I've also made a lovely discovery that you can buy edible glitter for sprinkling on your cakes to give them that special magical touch - I got mine from the cake decorating department at Hobbycraft. It comes in a tiny pot that will probably last me forever, it looks just like ordinary glitter, but you can eat it without poisoning yourself. Lovely!

As for the little Christmas Wreaths, they are again based again on Nigella's idea

 ( strikes me this picture is almost as bad as mine!)

but I've messed about with the recipe a bit while still keeping to her lovely idea.

6 oz 150g butter

1 200g bag of marshmallows

1 200g bag of caramel toffees

half a teaspoon almond essence

half a teaspoon vanilla essence

 200g cornflakes

Melt the first three ingredients gently together, then bring to a full boil for a minute, then remove from the heat and stir in the essences and the cornflakes crunching them up quite a bit as you go with your wooden spoon. Leave until cool enough to handle and then form into balls, squash down and make a hole in the middle to form a wreath shape decorate with christmas sprinkles and leave to cool. Add little ribbon bows when cool if you like.

Make sure Santa gets some Mulled Wine, recipe tomorrow.

Brazilian Christmas Cake

 I wanted to try something a bit different from the usual rich dark fruit cake this year, so if you fancy a change, try this boozy version of a carrot cake, inspired by my trip to Brazil. Many people find a traditional christmas cake a bit too much on top of all the seasonal excess anyway. Not that you could describe this cake as abstemious or frugal in any way, but a nice change of flavour.

If you don't have any Cachaca (and why would you really?) you can use rum instead.

For an 8" round cake tin you will need -

4 oz raisins

4oz sultanas

2oz chopped ready to eat prunes

4 oz natural colour glace cherries

2oz mixed peel

soaked in -

2 fl oz brandy

2fl oz sherry or port

2 fl oz Cachaca (or rum)

1 teasp Angostura bitters

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

zest and juice of 3 limes and 1 lemon

either in the fridge for a few days, or overnight in the kitchen for the flavours to be absorbed.

When you're ready to make the cake, measure out -

12 oz plain flour

2 teasp ground cinnamon

1 teasp freshly grated nutmeg

2 teasp bicarbonate of soda

into a bowl and set aside.

In your Kitchenaid/Kenwood or with your very strong arm, beat together -

half a pint of sunflower oil

6 oz caster sugar

6oz soft brown sugar

4 eggs

until smooth and creamy

Sieve your flour mix in gently.

Then add

12 oz peeled and finely grated carrot

4 oz dessicated coconut

4 oz chopped walnuts or pecans

all the contents of the pre soaking bowl

It's a bit of a squash in my mixer but mix on a slow speed to incorporate everything.

Then turn into a lined 8" tin and bake in a slow oven about gas 2 until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.  Should be around the hour and a half mark. It's a bit less in my Aga, maybe more in some ovens. If it looks to be browning too much cover it with a piece of foil towards the end.

While it's baking make up a syrup by warming gently together until melted -

4 oz chopped Rapadura Caipira (this is a Brazilian sweet basically just a solid block of cane sugar but you could easily substitute light brown sugar)

zest and juice of 4 limes

zest and juice of 2 oranges

Cool and stir in

2 or 3 fl oz Cachaca (or rum)

When the cake is cooked, stab it with a skewer and pour the syrup over while the cake is still hot.

Leave it in the tin to cool and absorb the syrup.

I would normally store a christmas cake in the larder, but I think I will keep this one in the freezer until I'm ready to decorate it just before Christmas, just to be on the safe side. It will easily keep for a couple of weeks though, in an airtight tin if you want to make it anytime before Christmas. I will give it a coat of good quality marzipan and fondant icing in the week before Christmas.

Party Party

As I said, I dropped and broke our camera, so I have been experimenting with my phone camera, and it seems to be reasonably good, so here is a picture of a cake I made for a family party the other day. In case it's not obvious, it's a drum kit, the birthday boy in question being a drummer of great distinction and promise, (good luck at Uni, Lee). I was quite pleased with how it turned out, though there is a degree of "sag" that I did not forsee. I used an ordinary victoria sponge cake and vanilla buttercream for the cake and fondant for the icing. The "sag" effect could have been avoided by the use of rich fruit cake, but most people seem to prefer sponge these days, except for Christmas. Black fondant isn't all that easy to come by in darkest Wiltshire, so I had to send away for a supply of that, - special stuff like that is much easier to find these days, God Bless the Internet. I used the Blue Ribbons Sugarcraft Centre and would highly recommend them for quick and helpful service http://www.blueribbons.co.uk/

And if you live in London there's a great shop called Party Party near Dalston market that my daughter took me to, that sells everything you could need for parties and has a whole floor dedicated to cake decorating. It's just past the Multi-Coloured Wig shop, and the stall selling Giant African snails (alive!!) but not as far as the trendy cafe full of media types with laptops and capuccinos. London is such a treat for country bumpkins like me!

I must have made millions (well not millions, but quite a lot) of cakes over the years, and I always come back to the good old all in one victoria sponge cake, made in a food processor. It really does make the best sponge cake in my opinion. It's couldn't be easier to make, is quick, and endlessly versatile. My recipe is pretty much the standard one (though I have adopted Nigella's suggestion of an ounce of cornflour in the mix) and I do tend to have a bit of stock syrup* around the place these days, (being a beekeeper) which is useful for all sorts of things including brushing over the cake as it comes out of the oven, and ensuring a soft moist cake, even on those occasions when you know you've left it in the oven five minutes too long, and have aquired HCS (Hard Crust Syndrome)

4 eggs
1 pack of butter at room temperature

8 ounces of self raising flour

1 rounded teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon of cornflour

8 ounces of caster sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

about 2 tablespoons milk

Put everything in food processor and switch on till blended. That's it. You might want to mix it without the milk first and then add as much milk as you think you need to get a soft, smooth, but not too runny mixture. Depends on the size of your eggs really.

Cook in two 8 inch sandwich tins, a large loaf tin, lots of little bun cases for butterfly cakes, a roasting tin for cutting into initials or numbers, or whatever you fancy. I cook the 2 sandwich tins on the bottom shelf of the roasting oven of the Aga with the cold shelf on top for about 30 minutes, which is probably about a Gas 4 but only you know your oven. The cake should be a pale golden brown, and springy to the touch, and slightly shrinking away from the sides of the tin when it's done. What you really want to avoid is cooking too fast and over-browning, leading to the dreaded HCS, and dryness. Now, where is that jar of syrup....

*Stock syrup - Dissolve a pound of sugar in a pint of water, or a kilo in a litre, gives you a medium syrup useful as an emergency feed for bees, or cakes.