Rhubarb and custard cake

I’m not much of a gardener, in fact that’s not true – I’m really not a gardener at all. I’m good at wandering around a garden centre and picking out what to grow and pretty pots to grow it in – then it is over to EHH (Ever Hungry Husband – for those who haven’t been following from the start!), who is in charge of planting and general care! Our garden is very much a work in progress so, at the moment, we are mostly sticking to things that can be grown in pots – ideally edible things! Last year’s effort was a bit of a spectacular failure – the never ending rain and general miserable-ness meant that pretty much everything refused to grow – except the rhubarb! Rhubarb seems to love damp and miserable conditions and grew like crazy!

This year, we haven’t even touched the rhubarb – it had just been left from last year, and again, it has sprung up and produced beautiful long red stalks and huge leaves. So, time to start digging out the rhubarb recipes! I absolutely love rhubarb and you really can’t go far wrong with a traditional rhubarb crumble with custard, or simple stewed rhubarb on porridge in the mornings. Looking back, my first blog post was about rhubarb crumble muffins! However, this time, I decided to have a go at a new recipe that I found on the internet: rhubarb and custard cake.

The recipe itself is very simple and (other than the rhubarb) the ingredients are fairly standard stock cupboard ingredients. You can get on with making the cake whilst the rhubarb is cooking.

Unfortunately, there is something about this recipe that just didn’t quite work. It cooked perfectly in the given time – the texture was soft and moist and the general flavour great. However, the custard powder could still be tasted and left a very dry taste and texture in the mouth, which ruined the overall taste of the cake. This won’t be a recipe that I will try again – there are lots more rhubarb (and custard) cake recipes out there to try (including this crumble cake recipe that I made a few weeks ago and I'm sure would adapt well to rhubarb - possibly with strawberries) – and from the way that my rhubarb is growing, I’ll have lots of opportunities to try them out!

Rhubarb and custard cake

Ingredients

1. 200g rhubarb, trimmed and cut into small pieces
2. 50g demerera sugar
3. 150g caster sugar
4. 150g sunflower spread
5. 3 eggs
6. 100g SR flour
7. 100g ground almonds
8. 1/2 tsp almond essence
9. 60g custard powder
10. 25g flaked almonds
11. 1 tbs icing sugar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C.
2. Line the bottom of 20cm loose bottomed baking tin with baking parchment (or use a liner if you have one).
   Place the rhubarb and Demerara sugar in a pan with a tight fitting lid, cover and cook on a med/low heat for 7 mins or until just cooked, stirring occasionally.
3. Cream the spread and caster sugar until pale and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time with 1 tbsp flour with each egg. Beat well after adding each egg.
5. Fold in the flour, ground almonds, almond essence and custard powder.
6. Loosely fold in cooked rhubarb.
7. Spoon into the prepared tin.
8. Scatter over flaked almonds and bake for 45-50 mins.
   Allow to cool in tin.
9. Once cool, remove from tin and dust with icing sugar.

Chocolate and raspberry gateau

As part of a friend’s vintage/retro themed hen party, we had all been asked to bring a contribution to an afternoon tea party. In order to avoid hundreds of cupcakes / bottles of sparkly, we’d been allocated an item to bring. I mentioned that I was happy to bake and so was allocated chocolate cake. Except, I’ve never really made chocolate cake! As I think I’ve mentioned before, I’m not really a fan of chocolate or of chocolate cake and so I just don’t tend to make it!

Having scanned through my ever-reliable source of inspiration – Flickr – I’d been inspired by impressive looking Kitkat-surrounded gateaux and made the decision to have a go at one of these. Next decision – which of the many thousand chocolate cake recipes to follow? A few friends recommended Nigella’s Chocolate Fudge Cake and so I decided to go with my own amended version of that. As I’m not really into rich chocolate cake, I decided to add raspberries, strawberries and fresh cream to add a bit of tartness and lightness. If you wanted to stick with the very traditional chocolate fudge cake, you could fill the cake with a caramel-fudge sauce and top with a mixture of fudges and chocolate truffles – which could look equally impressive.  

Finding a bottle of raspberry liqueur in the cupboard, I decided to use that in the recipe in place of some of the water, and to omit the vanilla essence suggested. To keep the cake slightly lighter and more of a gateau than a rich chocolate fudge cake, I filled the cake with jam and fresh cream, rather than more of the (very rich) topping. For a bit of an indulgent twist, I watered the jam down with more of the raspberry liqueur, which also helped the filling soak into the sponge to keep it moist and full of flavour.

The great thing about adding the Kitkats to the edge of this cake is that you don’t need to worry about making the icing that neat – the Kitkats hide any imperfections brilliantly. You don’t have to dip the strawberries in chocolate to go on top, but I do think it adds a lovely touch!

I was feeling rather impressed with myself once the cake was complete – it looked fairly spectacular! Impressed, that is, until I arrived at my friend’s house only to find that I was a week early – the party isn’t until next week! Gutted. Anyone want a slice of chocolate cake …?

Edit - 2 June 2013

So - what happened to the cake? I was a bit worried as I made the cake on the Friday and neither of us were at work until Tuesday, and most of the local friends I would usually give cake to, were away for the long weekend! I checked the cream and its use-by was Wednesday - so figured the cake would be ok until Tuesday as long as it was kept in the fridge. I did take all the fruit off (as it would have gone off slightly by the Tuesday) and we ate this for dessert over the weekend. 

EHH and I cracked into the cake on the Sunday and it was actually really tasty! The texture was great - really moist and delicious and the raspberry filling really complemented the chocolate cake: the liqueur added a nice kick of flavour without overpowering. The only thing I wasn't that keen on was the chocolate icing - I found it a little over-sweet and actually not that chocolatey! EHH took the rest of the cake into his work on the Tuesday and was demolished fairly quickly! (Although there were a few complaints from my work that I hadn't taken it there!)

Chocolate and raspberry gateau

Ingredients

For the cake

1. 400 grams plain flour
2. 250 grams golden caster sugar
3. 100 grams light brown muscovado sugar
4. 50 grams best-quality cocoa powder
5. 2 teaspoons baking powder
6. 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
7. ½ teaspoon salt
8. 3 large eggs
9. 142 ml sour cream (1 small tub)
10. 175 grams unsalted butter
11. 125 ml corn oil
12. 200 ml chilled water
13. 100ml raspberry liqueur

For the icing

1. 175 grams dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids)
2. 250 grams unsalted butter (softened)
3. 275 grams icing sugar (sifted)
4. 1 tblsp raspberry liqueur

To fill

1. 300ml double cream, whisked until spreadable
2. 200g raspberry jam
3. 4 tblsp raspberry liqueur

To decorate

1. 21 double Kitkat chocolate bars
2. 200g raspberries
3. 400g strawberries
4. 100g dark chocolate
5. 100g white chocolate

Method

1. Place butter in a microwaveable bowl and microwave until melted (alternatively, melt in a saucepan over the hob). Set aside to cool.
2. Put the water and raspberry liqueur in a jug and place in the fridge to cool.
3. Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4.
4. Butter and line the bottom of two 20cm sandwich tins.
5. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugars, cocoa, baking powder, bicarb and salt.
6. In another bowl or wide-necked measuring jug whisk together the eggs and sour cream until blended.
7. Beat together the melted butter and corn oil until just blended, then beat in the water mixture.
8. Add the dry ingredients all at once and mix together on a slow speed.
9. Add the egg mixture, and mix again until everything is blended and then pour into the prepared tins.
10. Bake the cakes for 50-55 minutes, or until a cake-tester comes out clean.
11. Cool the cakes in their tins on a wire rack for 15 minutes, and then turn the cakes out onto the rack to cool completely.

 Preparing the chocolate dipped strawberries

1. While the cakes are baking, melt the dark chocolate in a glass bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.
2. Melt the white chocolate in the same way.
3. Dip some of the strawberries in the chocolate and set aside on a sheet of baking parchment.
4. Place the remaining chocolate in a disposable piping bag and snip off the end of the bag.
5. Pipe drizzles of chocolate onto some of the remaining strawberries and add these to the sheet of baking parchment.
6. Leave some strawberries plain.
7. Allow the chocolate to set and then pipe drizzles of the alternative chocolate onto both the dipped and the drizzled strawberries.
8. Use any remaining chocolate to pipe chocolate shapes onto parchment paper

Assembling, icing and decorating the cake

1. Place the jam in a bowl and mix with the liqueur.
2. Cut each of the cooled cakes in half (easiest done with a cake levelling tool).
3. Cover three of the cake halves with cream and then with jam.
4. Place each cake half carefully on top of the others, finishing with the plain cake.
5. Place the cake in the fridge to cool and set for at least 30 minutes.  
6. While the cake is in  the fridge, make up the icing.
7. Melt the chocolate in a glass bowl sitting over a pan of simmering water, and let cool slightly.
8. In another bowl, beat the butter until it's soft and creamy.
9. Add the sieved icing sugar and beat again until light and fluffy.
10. Add the raspberry liqueur and chocolate and mix together until everything is glossy and smooth. 
11. When the cake is set and fairly firm, ice the top and sides, spreading and smoothing with a rubber spatula or palette knife.
12. Separate the Kitkats into single bars and press firmly around the edge of the iced cake.
13. Place in fridge again to set for at least 30 minutes.
14. Once set, top with the raspberries, chocolate dipped strawberries, remaining strawberries and chocolate shapes.

Chocolate and raspberry brownies

Wow! It’s been ages since I last wrote a blog post! Don’t worry – I’ve been making and eating lot of cake in this time, just haven’t gotten around to writing it up!

So, going back a couple of weeks, a very good friend had just given birth to her first baby and so, of course, I wanted to make cake for her and her husband. They don’t live nearby and so I had to post the cake – so no cupcakes, or anything else delicate! I’d recently been given a chocolate and raspberry brownie recipe from a friend (strangely, I had cut out the exact same recipe from Good Food recently!) and so decided that this was the perfect opportunity to give it a go! The only thing that I changed to this recipe was the addition of 100g of white chocolate chunks - just to add an extra dimension!

I’m not much of a chocolate cake fan and I generally find brownies too rich, however, raspberries are just the perfect addition to brownies – they really cut through the richness. These brownies are definitely a treat – just try not to think about the amount of sugar, butter and chocolate in the recipe! They are very simple to make but do be careful of adding the eggs too early – you need to allow the melted chocolate mix to cool, otherwise the eggs will cook in the heat of the chocolate!

In the past, I have found brownies tricky – getting the outside crisp and the inside set but gooey! This gave me the perfect opportunity to dig out a baking tray that I hadn’t yet used (bought on impulse when Lakeland had a 3 for 2 offer on their baking tins!) – a Lakeland individual tray bake tin. A quick spray of cake release spray over the tin and it was ready to go. There was a reasonable amount of mixture that wouldn’t fit into the tray, and so I used this to fill some mini loaf cake cases and just popped these into the oven at the same time.     

As the brownies were in the individual traybake tin, I decided to reduce the baking time by 5 minutes and this turned out to be perfect – the brownies came out crisp on the outside and gooey inside – perfect! I left them to cool for a while in the tin and then eased them out and onto a cooling rack.

I wrapped these in clingfilm and popped them in a box and into the post for my friends. Annoyingly, despite paying first class postage, they didn’t arrive until 6 days later. She claimed that they were still delicious, however, whether they truly were, whether she was being kind, or whether she was in that early motherhood, sleep deprived state that meant that any cake was good cake, I’m not sure!  The one that I had, a couple of days after baking, was really tasty and a really good texture! I’ll definitely be making these again!   

Chocolate and raspberry brownies

Ingredients

1. 200g dark chocolate, broken into chunks
2. 100g milk chocolate, broken into chunks
3. 100g white chocolate, broken into chunks
4. 250g pack salted butter
5. 400g soft light brown sugar
6. 4 large eggs
7. 140g plain flour
8. 50g cocoa powder
9. 200g raspberries

Method

1. Heat oven to 170C.
2. Line a 20 x 30cm baking tray tin with baking parchment OR spray an individual traybake tin with cake release spray.
3. Put the dark and milk chocolate, butter and sugar in a pan and gently melt, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.
4. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.
5. Stir the eggs, one by one, into the melted chocolate mixture.
6. Sieve over the flour and cocoa, and stir in.
7. Stir in half the raspberries and half of the white chocolate chunks, scrape into the tray, then scatter over the remaining raspberries and white chocolate.
8. Bake on the middle shelf for 30 mins (25 if you are using the individual traybake tin) or, if you prefer a firmer texture, for 5 mins more.
9. Leave in tin to cool before slicing into squares.
10. Store in an airtight container.

Lemon layer cake with lemon buttercream roses

Birthday cake time! Not for me but for a very good friend. As I know she loves lemon cake, I decided to stick with a safe and well-trusted recipe that I have done before – Primrose Bakery’s Lemon Layer Cake. I won’t type out the recipe again, as it is the one I wrote a blog on in November for my Halloween Lemon Layer Cake.  We were going out for dinner on Friday so the cake had to be made on Thursday after work. Thankfully, it’s a fairly simple cake to make and bake – as long as you get the timings right.

This time, rather than buttering the sandwich tins and lining the bases, I used my trusty Dr Oetker Cake Release spray – it is so easy to use and does the job really well.  I think I mentioned it last time, but do make sure you keep an eye on these cakes – you do not want them to over-bake. This time, the cakes still looked slightly anaemic, but were bouncy when touched – this is what you are looking for.

As I was baking this after work, it was quite late by the time the cakes had baked and cooled, therefore, I decided to just do a crumb layer of buttercream icing on the Thursday night. A crumb layer is basically just a simple thin covering of icing all over the cake. This seals the cake and creates a good base for then icing the roses.  Leaving it overnight meant that this layer of buttercream had firmed really well and made it much easier to pipe the roses.

The buttercream is best left in the fridge overnight but needs to be taken out of the fridge for at least an hour before using, and then given a really good beat!  People are always amazed by rose swirls on cakes and cupcakes but they are really not that difficult to do. This is a good photo tutorial and there are lots of film clips on YouTube. To be honest, the main things are getting the consistency of the buttercream right, a Wilton 2D piping nozzle, steady pressure on the icing bag and lots of practice! I do them quite a bit and I still have days when they just don’t seem to go right!   

I’ve attempted this design of icing before and found the sides to be very tricky. This time, I used my tilting turntable (placed on top of a cake tin to bring it up to a good height) and this made piping the swirls onto the cake much easier!  

For full cake recipe, visit this blog post.

Filling and decorating the cake

Ingredients

1. 6 tblsp lemon curd
2. 220g butter, at room temperature
3. 1kg icing sugar
4. Juice of 2-3 lemons

To make the buttercream icing:

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter, juice of 2 lemons and half of the icing sugar until smooth.
2. Add the rest of the icing sugar and beat until smooth and creamy.
3. Add extra juice, if required to get the correct consistency. Beat until smooth.

To assemble

1. Place the first cake onto your plate / stand.
2. Spread 3 tablespoons of lemon curd on top of the first cake and another 3 on a second cake.
3. Carefully place the second cake on top of the first cake.
4. Place the third cake on top of the others.
5. Use a palette knife to spread a thin layer of buttercream icing evenly all over the cake. Leave to firm.
6. Fill a piping bag (topped with a suitable nozzle) with the remaining buttercream.  
7. Start by piping a rose swirl in the centre of the cake, then work outwards and down the sides of the cake.
8. Fill any gaps with swirls of icing.

Raspberry and Apple Crumble Squares

Another new bake for the weekend!  After a lovely sunny Saturday afternoon wandering around Tyntesfield gardens (accompanied, of course by a trip to the café and a lovely cream tea!), I realised that I was meeting friends for lunch the next day and should rustle up a cake to take along.  Again, I didn’t feel like making anything too time-consuming so I had a rustle through my recipes and found this recipe for Raspberry and Apple Crumble Squares from BBC Good Food Magazine.

I decided to add a bit of cinnamon to the crumble topping for flavour, and added some chopped hazelnuts for extra crunch. I’ve reduced the amount of raspberries slightly – partly because most punnets of raspberries are 150g and also because this amount spread across the top of the cake perfectly.

To ensure an even bake, I wrapped my magi-cake strips around the baking tin before placing it in the oven. As a warning, the crumble layer on top means that it is difficult to tell when this cake is cooked. I baked the cake for just over an hour (my oven always takes longer to bake than recipes say) – the crumble was lovely and golden, but it turned out that the cake wasn’t quite cooked.  Next time, I’ll bake for even longer, covering the top with a layer of foil to prevent the crumble burning.

Even though the cake was slightly undercooked, overall the cake tasted great: the hazelnuts in the crumble added a lovely crunchy texture and an extra flavour dimension and the fruit in the cake was delicious. It’s great on its own with a cup of tea, but would also be fantastic with a nice dollop of custard for dessert. I'm sure that this cake would taste fantastic with other fruits as well: blackberry and apple, peach and raspberry, strawberry and rhubarb, etc.  

Raspberry and Apple Crumble Squares

Ingredients

1. 1 large, or two small Bramley apples, peeled and diced
2. 100g butter, softened
3. 175g golden caster sugar
4. 1 egg, whisked
5. 280g self-raising flour
6. 125ml milk
7. 150g raspberries

For the crumble topping

1. 50g butter , diced
2. 85g self-raising flour
3. 100g golden caster sugar
4. 60g chopped hazelnuts
5. 1 tsp cinnamon
6. Zest of 1 lemon

Method

1. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4 and line a 20 x 30cm cake tin with baking parchment.
2. Put the apple in a small pan with 2 tblsp water.
3. Cook over a low heat, stirring regularly, until the apple starts to soften.
4. Meanwhile, make the crumble topping: rub the butter into the flour, sugar, cinnamon and lemon zest until it resembles breadcrumbs.
5. Stir in the hazelnuts and then set the crumble mixture to one side.
6. Use a hand/stand mixer to beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl until fluffy – this will take about 5 minutes.
7. Gradually add the egg, beating to incorporate.
8. Gently stir in half of the flour and then half of the milk.
9. Stir in the remaining flour and then the remaining milk.
10. Stir in the apples.
11. Spoon the mixture into the tin, smooth the surface, then dot with the raspberries.
12. Sprinkle over the crumble topping.
13. Bake for 45-60 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean and the crumble is golden. You may need to cover the top with foil after about 45 minutes, so that it does not burn while the rest of the cake is still baking. 
14. Once baked, remove from the oven and leave in the tin to cool. 
15. Once cool, remove from tin and cut into 16 pieces.