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. 

Lemon and raspberry Madeira cake

I’m not a huge fan of Madeira cake – I’ve always found it to be rather dry and bland. However, when my friend asked for help in making a fondant-covered Mr Bump cake for her son’s first birthday cake, I knew that it had to be Madeira cake. We needed to make the cake on the Thursday for the party on the Saturday, which meant that the cake needed to last well and the cake needed to be covered in a decent layer of fondant icing. Sponge is too light and can collapse under heavy icing, and Madeira cake tends to last better as well.

Having never made Madeira cake, I decided that I needed to test some recipes in advance. This first recipe is adapted from the BBC Good Food’s Madeira Loaf Cake. When I baked it, I increased the quantities to a 5 egg recipe, however this was huge! Therefore, I have reduced the quantities below to make a 4 egg recipe, which should fit perfectly in a deep 20cm cake tin. I have also added the glycerine to this recipe as it was something suggested in the second Madeira cake recipe that I tried and I think it does help to maintain moisture in the cake.

In order to get a beautifully flat and evenly baked cake, I use my magi-cake strips: these are an investment but they make a huge difference! You soak them in water and then wrap them around the cake tin: this adds an extra layer therefore prevents the edge of the cake from cooking more quickly and drying out. It also prevents the cake from doming and so ensures a nice even top to your cake.

Unfortunately, I underestimated the length of time needed to bake my cake and opened the oven too many times! This meant that the cake ended up sunken in the middle. I managed to hide this under a thick layer of buttercream – as you can see from the picture, you would never know!

To cut cakes in half, I would hugely recommend a cake-cutting wire: this is a lot easier than trying to use a knife!

Overall, I wasn’t sure about this cake – EHH and I both felt that it was still a little dry. However, EHH took it into work and they loved it! Several of his colleagues claimed that it was the best cake that I have ever made!

Lemon and raspberry Madeira cake

Ingredients

1. 235g butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
2. 235g golden caster sugar
3. 4 large eggs
4. Grated zest 2 lemons
5. Few drops vanilla extract
6. 1 tsp glycerine
7. 265g self-raising flour
8. 65g ground almonds

Buttercream icing:

1. 110g butter, at room temperature
2. 500g icing sugar, sifted
3. 3 tblsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

To fill and decorate:

1. 6 tablespoons raspberry jam
2. Raspberries
3. Mint leaves

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 170C.
2. Grease and base-line a 20cm deep round cake tin with baking parchment.
3. Using an electric whisk or stand mixer, beat together the butter and sugar until light and creamy (about 5 minutes of beating).
4. Beat the eggs together in a separate bowl.
5. Beat the eggs into the butter/sugar mix, a little at a time, beating well between each addition.
6. Mix in the lemon zest and vanilla.
7. Fold in the flour and almonds until you have a thick batter. The batter should be loose enough that it falls off a wooden spoon, if it’s too thick mix in a splash of milk.
8. Tip the batter into the tin and smooth over the top.
9. Bake for 75 – 100 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cover with foil after about 60 minutes to stop the top from burning.
10. Remove from the oven then leave to cool for 15 mins then remove from the tin, peel away the paper and leave on a wire rack to cool completely before slicing.
11. While the cake is cooling, beat the butter, juice and half of the icing sugar in a large mixing bowl until smooth.
12. Add the rest of the icing sugar and beat until smooth and creamy.
13. Once the cake is completely cool, cut in half.
14. Cover one half with raspberry jam.
15. Cover with the other half and then top with buttercream.
16. Decorate with the raspberries and mint leaves. 

Lemon Tart

Lemon Tart is one of my all-time favourite desserts but something that I have never attempted to bake before. With friends coming round for dinner and an afternoon to bake, I searched through lots of my cookery books for inspiration and, as I flicked through my ever-reliable Mary Berry’s Complete Cookbook, I came across this recipe for lemon tart – perfect!

Well, almost perfect … Having decided to follow this recipe and having made a start on the pastry, I realised that I didn’t have a big enough flan tin (this recipe required a 28cm tin) and, anyway, I really didn’t need to make a tart big enough for 10-12 people! The only flan tin that I own is 23cm and, after some rough calculations with the help of my ever-hungry husband (EHH), I decided to reduce the ingredients for the filling by one-third – fortunately, these quantities worked perfectly! As the pastry is made using one egg, it is difficult to reduce the quantities, so I have retained the pastry quantities: you can freeze the remainder or make some little jam tarts!!

I often avoid making desserts with pastry, or cheat and buy ready-made pastry, but actually, the pastry was easy to make and worked out fairly well. When making pastry, I follow the Biscuiteers’ tip for biscuits and I roll the pastry between two sheets of baking parchment – which prevents me from needing to add lots of additional flour as I roll and this helps to keep the pastry light and crisp. It also makes it much easier to lift the pastry into the flan tin!

Unlike some of my prior attempts at pastry, this pastry did not shrink away from the edges of the tin whilst at the blind-baking stage – which I think was due to very careful placing of the pastry in the tin, pushing it into the side of the tin (taking care not to stretch the pastry and then trimming the majority of the excess pastry, but leaving a 2-3cm overhang.

However, I didn’t roll the pastry dough thin enough and so it was a little thick (although EHH quite likes this!) and, despite following the blind baking rules, the bottom was not as crisp as Paul and Mary would like! Having done a bit more research on “soggy bottoms”, one of the recommendations is that, having completed the first stage of blind baking (with the baking beans), you then remove the baking beans and brush the pastry with whisked egg (or egg whites / yolk) before returning the pastry case to the oven to continue baking. This egg-wash helps to seal the pastry and therefore prevent the filling from seeping into the pastry and making it soggy. I’ve included this instruction in the recipe below and will give this a go next time that I make a tart.

The filling for the tart was quick and easy to make. However, the end result was a little curdled and not perfectly smooth. Some research suggests that this could be a result of the acid in the lemon juice curdling the protein in the egg – the webpages I have read suggest that you mix all the ingredients for the filling and add the lemon juice / zest last – so I have proposed this in my method below.

Overall, despite all my criticisms above, the lemon tart did generally taste good and my dinner guests really enjoyed it. Hopefully, with the improvements discussed above and included in the method below, it will be perfect – I’ll have to make another to test it out! I served it with a very simple summer berry sauce, which would be great with lots of other desserts, and double cream.  However it would also work brilliantly for afternoon tea!

Lemon tart

Ingredients

For the pastry

1. 250g plain flour
2. 125g cold butter, cut into small cubes
3. 60g caster sugar
4. 2 free-range eggs, beaten

For the lemon filling

1. 6 free-range eggs
2. 200ml double cream
3. 250g caster sugar
4. 4 large lemons, finely grated zest and juice

23cm flan tin

Baking beans

Method

1. For the pastry, place the flour in a large bowl; add the butter and rub in with your fingertips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.
2. Stir in the castor sugar then bind together with one beaten egg to make a soft, pliable dough.
3. Wrap in cling film and chill for 30 minutes.
4. Preheat the oven to 200C and place a baking tray in the oven to heat up.
5. Roll out the pastry very thinly between two lightly floured pieces of baking parchment.
6. Use the pastry to line the flan tin, trim away any surplus pastry, leaving a 2-3cm overhang.
7. Prick the pastry all over with a fork.
8. Line the pastry-filled tin with baking parchment or foil, allowing it to come up high above the rim to make it easy to lift out.
9. Fill the lined tin with baking beans.
10. Place on the pre-heated baking tray and bake for 10 minutes in the preheated oven until pale golden-brown.
11. Remove from the oven and remove the baking beans and paper.
12. Brush the pastry with the remaining beaten egg.
13. Return the empty pastry shell to the oven for another 5-10 minutes or until it is completely dry. Set aside to cool.
14. Reduce the temperature of the oven to 180C.
15. Measure the eggs, sugar and cream into a bowl and whisk together until smooth.
16. Whisk in the lemon juice and zest.
17. Carefully pour the filling mixture into the cooled baked pastry case.
18. Carefully transfer to the oven and bake for about 40 minutes. Check after about 25 minutes and cover the tart loosely with foil if the pastry starts to brown too much.
19. When ready, the filling will be just set but with a slight wobble in the middle. It will be soufflé like when it comes out of the oven, but will sink down when it has cooled down.
20. Leave to cool a little or completely then remove from the tin, transfer to a serving plate and dust with icing sugar to serve.

Rainbow cupcakes

Birthday time again – and my turn to make cakes for the Friday cake meeting at work. I decided to use up one of the small Christmas cakes that I had left over from Christmas (still well preserved in a mixture of sloe gin / cherry brandy / plum liqueur!) and make a couple of complementary cakes. As there is a coeliac amongst my colleagues, I made the very delicious gluten-free carrot, coconut and pistachio cake that I last made in October again.

Cupcakes are generally seen as one of my specialities and I hadn’t made any for a while, so I decided that I would make some lemon cupcakes, filled with passion fruit curd (as I had some in the fridge!) and topped with lemon buttercream.

Given the never-ending rain that we have all had recently, I was inspired by some rainbow-themed cupcakes that I had seen on Pinterest. When it came to decorating the cakes, I tried just smoothing the buttercream on with a pallet knife but my pallet knife skills are not the best and it looked a bit scruffy to me. I decided to go with my ever-reliable  Wilton 2D nozzle and pipe roses. The clouds were piped with a small round nozzle. The rainbows themselves were fizzy multi-coloured belt sweets – cut in half and then stuck down into the clouds.

These cupcakes always taste fantastic – I just love the tangy passion fruit curd combined with the zingy lemon cake and buttercream. When they were first complete, I wasn’t that happy with the finished look but the next morning, I did feel a bit more confident about them – and everyone at work loved them!  If I were to do them again (maybe with a bit more time), I’d love to add little pots of gold to these! 

Mini lemon loaf cakes

I can’t believe it is nearly the end of February already! January whizzed by and I actually didn’t bake all month! February has been more productive but it has taken me until now to get around to writing things up! At the start of February, I decided it was about time to try out one of my Christmas presents – the Lakeland mini loaf baking tin. I’m a bit obsessed with little things generally and love my mini sandwich cake tin (but actually don’t use it nearly enough!), so this baking tin was near the top of my wish list this year! After a scour of Pinterest and the internet generally, I realised that there aren’t many recipes out there for mini loaf cakes. I was going to go with a general loaf cake recipe and adapt the baking times, but I found that Lakeland had a few recipes specifically for this tin, so decided to give the lemon loaf cake recipe a go!

The recipe is fairly easy to follow and quick to make. The only slightly frustrating thing is that it uses medium, rather than large, eggs. I only ever have large eggs and so had to lightly whisk three large eggs, weigh the mix and then spoon out the right amount (medium eggs are defined as those that weigh (still in their shells) between 53g and 63g and large are those that weigh between 63g and 73g; egg shells tend to weigh about 6-8g, so I aim for about 160g of whisked egg for this recipe).

If you don’t have ground almonds, you can replace with the same amount of flour, but be aware that the cakes will probably rise more. If you do this, I would suggest not using all of the mix in the cake tin.

When it comes to greasing the mini loaf tin, I find the easiest way by far is to spray it liberally with cake release spray and then just use your fingers to ensure that all sides are coated. This means that the cakes come out smoothly and perfectly!

The mini lemon loaf cakes are very cute! I topped mine with a piped zig-zag drizzle of the lemon icing but you could simply spoon the icing on, or water the icing down a little more and use it as a glaze rather than an icing. The cakes were moist and zesty and kept really well (in a cake tin) for about 5 days. They would be fab for an afternoon tea party, with lots of other mini cakes and treats! Definitely a recipe that I’ll be using again!

Mini lemon loaf cakes

Ingredients

1. 200g unsalted butter, softened, plus extra to grease
2. 175g golden caster sugar
3. 2 unwaxed lemons
4. 3 medium eggs, beaten
5. 200g plain flour
6. 2 level tsps baking powder
7. Pinch of salt
8. 50g ground almonds
9. 2 tbsp milk
10. 150g icing sugar, sifted

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F.
2. Lightly grease the loaf tin (ideally, spray with cake release spray).
3. Cream together the butter and caster sugar until pale, light and fluffy.
4. Grate the zest from the lemons, reserve 2 tsp zest to decorate, and add the rest to the mixture. Gradually add the beaten eggs, mixing well between each addition.
5. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.
6. Fold these dry ingredients into the cake mixture.
7. Fold in the ground almonds.
8. Add the milk and the juice from one lemon and mix until smooth.
9. Divide the mixture between the Mini Rectangular Loaf Tin and level with a teaspoon.
10. Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown and springy, turning the tin after about 18 minutes to ensure that the cakes bake evenly.  
11. Leave the cakes to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then ease out onto a wire rack and leave until completely cool.
12. Meanwhile, squeeze the juice from the remaining lemon.
13. Mix the lemon juice into the icing sugar a little at a time, until the icing is smooth and runny and will coat the back of a spoon (it will need to be thicker – about the consistency of toothpaste – if you want to pipe the icing).
14. Drizzle the icing sugar over the cakes and sprinkle with the reserved zest.

Condensed milk cookies

Stem ginger cookies with lemon icing

Having spent all morning lazing in bed and reading, I decided that I should do something a bit more productive with my Sunday afternoon. Unusually, I didn’t feel like faffing around with fancy decorative icing, so I decided to make some simple biscuits for EHH to take into his work. I had a flick through my recipe files and cook books, but wasn’t feeling particularly inspired so I decided to go with one of my tried-and-tested recipes.

I call these “condensed milk cookies” – they came from Sainsbury’s magazine ages ago, which called them “soft, American-style cookies”. They are amazing – a bit like “Millie’s Cookies” – with a crisp outside and soft, chewy centre. The magazine gave 6 variations – I made three types this weekend: lemon and ginger, oats and honey, and cherry and almond, with slight variations on the magazine’s recipes. I always feel the need to make more than one batch of these – once you’ve opened the tin of condensed milk, it seems a waste not to! However, I have got about half a tin left, so I may need to make some more later in the week!

Cherry and almond cookies

Makes 12
Ingredients

1. 125g soft unsalted butter
2. 125g caster sugar
3. 2 tblsp condensed milk
4. 175g self-raising flour
   Pinch of salt
5. 75g glace cherries, chopped finely
6. 2 tblsp flaked almonds
7. 1 tsp almond essence
8. 75g icing sugar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 150C.
2. Using an electric/stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
3. Beat in the condensed milk and the almond essence.
4. Add the flour and a pinch of salt and mix.
5. Stir in the cherries.
6. Roll into 12 walnut sized balls and space at least 5cm apart on 2 baking trays.
7. Flatten them slightly with the back of a spoon.
8. Scatter each cookie with flaked almonds.
9. Bake for about 25 minutes or until firm at the edges but still soft in the middle.
10. Leave to cool for a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.
11. Once cool, drizzle with icing made up from the icing sugar and 1 tblsp water (optional).

Alternatives:
Ginger and Lemon

• For Step 3: Omit almond essence.
• For Step 5: Omit cherries. Instead, add 2 tsp ground ginger, zest of one lemon and 75g of finely chopped crystallised or stem ginger.
• Omit Step 8.
• For Step 11, drizzle with icing made from 75g icing sugar with 1 tblsp lemon juice. 

 


Oats and honey

• For Step 3: Use 1 tblsp of honey and 1 tblsp condensed milk. Omit almond essence.
• For Step 5: Omit cherries. Instead, add 75g oats.
• For Step 8: Drizzle each cookie with honey and scatter with oats.
• Omit Step 11.

Hot Cross Buns

I love hot cross buns! I eat shop-bought ones all year round but, at Easter, there is something very special about home-made ones. My mum makes home-made hot cross buns every Easter and it is something that I have really missed for the last couple of years, so this year, I decided it was time to learn to make my own.

I started practising a couple of weeks ago when I attempted a “quick and easy” recipe that I found – which involved no kneading. Unfortunately, it turns out that “quick and easy” doesn’t really work! Or not when I tried anyway! Although the resulting buns had a nice flavour, they didn’t really rise at were very stodgy! Next attempt was in the bread-maker, which is really EHH’s realm! He followed the recipe in the book which came with the bread-maker. These buns were ok, but were fairly bland and missing the nice spicy hit that I like in hot cross buns. They also didn’t have quite the right home-made feel to them.

So Good Friday arrived and I decided that there really isn’t a shortcut to proper tasty home-made hot cross buns. I went with the recipe in last month’s Good Food magazine – the recipe was actually for a bun ring but worked fine just as normal buns. I added extra spice and lemon zest as I like my hot cross buns with lots of flavour! I actually enjoyed working the dough and the satisfaction of these rising beautifully and tasting fab definitely made all the work worthwhile.  My buns were not beautifully round – I think I need to work on my shaping, but they were light and fluffy and tasted great! If I were to make them  again, I think I would try brushing them with a spicy sugar syrup straight after baking – this was suggested in the quick and  easy version that I tried, and would be great on these buns!

Hot Cross Buns

Ingredients

1. 300ml whole milk
2. Zest of one orange
3. Zest of one lemon
4. 50g butter
5. 500g strong white bread flour, plus 140g for the crosses, plus extra for dusting
6. 1.5 tsp cinnamon
7. 1.5 tsp mixed spice
8. 1 tsp salt
9. 85g golden caster sugar
10. 7g sachet fast-action yeast
11. 1 large egg, beaten, plus 1 egg to blaze
12. Oil / cake-release spray, for greasing
13. 100g mixed fruit

Method

1. Warm the milk and zests in a small saucepan until steaming.
2. Remove from the heat and add the butter, gently stirring until the butter has melted and the milk has cooled to hand temperature.
3. Mix the flour, spices, sugar, yeast and salt in a large bowl (make sure that you don’t put the salt directly on top of the yeast).
4. Pour in the milk mixture and the beaten egg, and mix together with a wooden spoon until the mixture clumps together.
5. Tip onto a floured work surface and knead until smooth and elastic – the dough should bounce back when pressed with your finger.
6. Transfer to a clean oiled bowl (I use a quick spray of cake release spray to coat the bowl) and cover with cling film or a tea towel. Leave somewhere warm for about 2 hours or until doubled in size (If your house is cool, place in an oven at about 30C).
7. Line two baking trays with baking parchment and dust with flour.
8. Tip the dough out of the bowl onto a work surface dusted with flour and knead to knock out any air bubbles.
9. Add the dried fruit and knead to incorporate.
10. Divide the dough into 12 pieces, roll each piece into a ball and place 6 on each baking tray, spacing evenly.
11. Cover loosely with oiled clingfilm (again, cake release spray makes this easy!) and leave somewhere warm for about an hour, or until doubled in size.
12. Heat the oven to 180C.
13. Brush the buns with a little beaten egg.
14. Mix the remaining flour with enough water to make a thick paste and then transfer to a piping bag.
15. Use the paste to pipe a cross on each bun.
16. Place the trays in the oven and bake for about 25 minutes, until golden and cooked through.

Lemon and passion fruit cupcakes

As I was headed back home to Guernsey (affectionately known as the Rock) for the week and it was one of my oldest friend’s birthdays, I felt that I should make some cupcakes to take with me.  During a visit to our local garden centre (I know, I’m sooo middle-aged!), I found a delicious-sounding jar of passion fruit curd. I absolutely love passion fruit and so decided to give it a try.  I wasn’t sure about adding curd into a standard cupcake recipe and so decided to use it as a filling in lemon cupcakes. I followed my standard lemon cupcake recipe, simply replacing the lemon curd with the passion fruit curd.  If I had also found some fresh passion fruit, I’d have strained the juice to make passion fruit buttercream, but, as I didn’t, I stuck with lemon buttercream.

This curd is delicious and worked brilliantly with the lemon cupcakes – they even got my dad’s seal of approval!

 

I wanted to create some fairly bright and modern cupcakes and so decided on a fairly bright pink, blue and white colour scheme.  I also wanted to use my “Live, Laugh, Love” embosser (from this set) and so started with these. The flower-covered cakes were a nice, simple design to do and I decided to do the last two cupcakes with a patchwork covering (for instructions on how to do the patchwork decoration – see this blogpost).   

The photos aren’t that good this time as they were taken rather hurriedly while waiting for the taxi to arrive to take me to the airport! But overall, I was fairly pleased with how these cakes turned out. They did get a little squashed on the plane journey over to Guernsey but they just about survived in a respectable condition!