Blackberry and yoghurt mini loaf cakes

I love blackberry-picking! We used to spend hours picking them as a family on the cliffs of Guernsey and then eating home-made blackberry and apple jam throughout the winter months.

This year’s blackberries seem to be particularly early – I picture blackberry picking as a September, even October activity, but the bushes were heavy with ripe and juicy berries when we went out last Sunday. In a short time, we filled our tub and managed to come home with 2.4kg of blackberries! Now what to do with them?!!

I froze a good pile of them (lay them out in a single layer on a baking tray and freeze them flat before then pouring the individually frozen berries into freezer bags) for future use. A scour of the internet then came up with this delicious sounding blackberry and yoghurt loaf cake on the Pudding Lane blog. I’m rather distrustful of loaf cakes – I haven’t had much luck with them in the past (they tend to end up burnt on the outside and sunken in the middle!) – and so I decided to make use of my favourite Lakeland mini loaf cake tin instead.

These cakes are quick and easy to make. The only slight change I made was dusting the blackberries with cornflour – this tends to prevent them from sinking.  The recipe is designed for a 1 kg loaf tin and so made slightly too much for my mini loaf tin: I popped the extra into 6 fairy cake cases and baked these at the same time as the loaf cakes.

I was really impressed with this recipe – it is very moist and the lemon and blackberry flavours come through strongly and work really well together! Will definitely be making these again!   

Blackberry and yoghurt mini loaf cakes

Ingredients

1. 2 eggs
2. 225g yoghurt
3. 225g caster sugar
4. 150g ground almonds
5. 100g self-raising flour
6. 1 tsp baking powder
7. 20g cornflour
8. 1 lemon
9. 150g blackberries
10. 150g icing sugar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 170C.
2. Spray a mini loaf cake with cake-release spray.
3. Place sugar and eggs into a mixing bowl, then whisk for 4-5 minutes (less in a stand mixer) until the mixture is pale, airy and forms ribbons when you drag the whisk across the surface.
4. Add the yoghurt, the zest of the lemon and a pinch of salt, and fold together to mix.
5. Sieve in the almonds, flour and baking powder, and fold until the mixture is combined.
6. Sprinkle the blackberries with cornflour and then add two thirds of them to the cake mix.
7. Pour the cake mix into your prepared tin and sprinkle over the remaining blackberries (reserving 12 for decoration), pushing slightly into the top of the cakes.
8. Place the cakes in the centre of the oven. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the cakes are golden and springy.
9. Cool the cakes in the tin for about 15 minutes and then remove from the tin and place on a wire rack.
10. While it's cooling, mix the icing sugar with enough juice from the lemon to make a thick pouring consistency.
11. Pour over the cake once cool and top with a blackberry.

To make one large loaf cake: place the mixture in a 1 kg loaf tin and bake for 45 minutes – 1 hour. 

Easy Berry Sauce

I found this quick and easy recipe for a berry sauce whilst flicking through my many and varied cookery books for dinner party dessert inspiration. The sauce was an accompaniment to a blackberry buttermilk sponge and I did consider making this for my dessert (with raspberries rather than blackberries, given the season). However, I then came across Mary Berry's lemon tart and decided to make that instead. However, I love berries with lemon tart and so decided to adapt the recipe to make this sauce to complement my tart. 

The original sauce was made with 150g each of blackberries and raspberries but I had blueberries and strawberries in the fridge and some frozen raspberries, so I decided to use these instead. 

This sauce is incredibly simple to make and tastes fantastic! It went brilliantly with the lemon tart, but would also be fantastic with ice cream, meringues, pancakes and lots of other desserts! I used the leftover sauce on my yoghurt and granola for breakfast!

Easy berry sauce
Ingredients

1. 300g berries (I used 100g each of blueberries, raspberries and strawberries)
2. 2 tsp cornflour
3. 2 tblsp caster sugar

Method

1. Put all of the ingredients in a medium-sized pan and mix gently with a wooden spoon so that all of the berries are coated with sugar and cornflour.
2. Set the pan on a low heat and stir frequently until the juices start to run.
3. Increase the heat slightly and simmer gently, stirring regularly, until the fruit has softened and the juices have thickened to make a sauce.
4. Taste the sauce and add more sugar if required.
5. Add a splash of water if the sauce is too thick. 
6. Serve hot, warm or cold. 

Blackberry and almond crumble squares

Much as I love summer, autumn can also be a fantastic season: beautiful colours and lots of fantastic autumnal fruit ready to be harvested. For me, one of autumn’s greatest pleasures is blackberrying: it’s something that we did as a family, scrambling around the cliffs of Guernsey, eating more blackberries than actually made it into the tubs!  This year seems to have been a bumper year for blackberries and so EHH and I spent a fab afternoon on the outskirts of Bath, clambering into the middle of bramble bushes in search of big juicy berries.

We returned home with a good haul of blackberries and so the next decision was what to make with them! Blackberry and apple crumble was an absolute must but I also fancied making a cake. I’ve made a few crumble cakes recently (rhubarb and marzipan crumble cake; raspberry and apple crumble squares) but wanted to make something new. I was planning to visit a friend who has just had a baby so the oats in this Good Food recipe seemed like a good idea.

The original recipe was blackberry and coconut but I’m generally not sure about dessicated coconut in a cake as it can be rather dry, so I decided to substitute the coconut with ground almonds. I also upped the quantity of oats (and lowered the flour accordingly) and added the additional grated marzipan (this gives fantastic crunch and sweetness to the crumble topping) and chopped hazelnuts (just because I love the nutty flavour and crunchy texture that these add).

This cake was simple to make but I was a little worried that the mix that went in the oven was rather dry and not at all like a typical cake! Don’t be concerned by this – it works out just fine! Judging when the cake is cooked is probably the trickiest part: the crumble topping means that you can’t test the springy-ness of the cake. You will need to test the cake with a metal skewer: the cake will be cooked when the skewer comes out clean, with no sticky cake mixture attached. Make sure that you test in several parts of the cake. On this occasion, I forgot to use my magi-cake strips, which meant that the cake was slightly over-baked at the edge – must remember these next time!

This isn’t a light and fluffy cake: the texture is something between a cake and a flapjack; it's possible that this is due to the addition of ground almonds rather than coconut. The blackberries add a nice sharp flavour contract to the oatiness of the cake. These cakes aren’t particularly sweet – they’d actually work quite well as a tasty and filling oaty breakfast snack. It would work well as a dessert with custard and some more berries, or if I were to serve for afternoon tea, it would be nice served with clotted cream and berries. On the day of baking, the crumble topping was fantastic – crunchy and crumbly with lots of flavour. Unfortunately, after a day, it lost most of its crunch as the moisture from the blackberries seeped up into the topping. However, although they weren’t as good as they were on the day due to the loss of the contrast in textures, these cakes did last well for over a week. 

I think if I were to make these again, I’d consider adding more fruit – possibly a couple of sliced Granny Smith apples. Having recently made a fantastic carrot, pistachio and coconut cake, I’ve been swayed in my opinion about dessicated coconut and would like to give it a go in this cake.

Blackberry and almond crumble cake

Ingredients

Cooling on the rack

1. 200g self-raising flour
2. 75g oats
3. 280g soft brown sugar
4. 200g cold butter, cut into pieces
5. 75g ground almonds / desiccated coconut
6. 75g grated marzipan (optional)
7. 30g chopped hazelnuts
8. 2 medium eggs, beaten
9. 350g frozen or fresh blackberries

Method

1. Heat oven to 180C.
2. Line a rectangular brownie tin (31 x 17cm), or a 21cm square tin.
3. Tip the flour, oats and sugar into a large bowl. Rub the butter into the flour mixture using your fingertips until only small pea-size pieces remain.
4. Stir through the coconut/almonds.
5. Fill a teacup with this mixture and set this aside.
6. Stir the eggs into the remaining bowl of mixture and mix until evenly combined.
7. Spread over the bottom of the lined baking tin, smoothing the surface with the back of a spoon
8. Scatter over the blackberries.
9. Scatter over the reserved teacup mixture of crumble.
10. Scatter over the grated marzipan and chopped hazelnuts.
11. Place in oven and bake for 1 hr-1 hr 15 mins until golden and cooked through (if you poke a skewer in, it should come out with moist crumbs but no wet mixture). 
12. Leave to cool, then remove from the tin and cut into squares.