Three Chimneys: Whisky Fruit Loaf

I'm always a bit worried when I attempt loaf cakes and fruit cakes. There's always that slight worry over whether or not they're fully cooked. Every year, when I make my Christmas cake, there's that worry - worse, because I try to do a different recipe each year - over whether I got the timing right, whether that tester really was clean when it came out of the cake, did I just miss the massive uncooked section in the middle? The fear that, on Christmas day, when Dad and I both cut into our cakes (to swap bits of it), mine will collapse into a gooey mass of uncooked batter.
Still, that hasn't happened to me yet, and this isn't a Christmas cake. It has most of the same ingredients as one - dried fruit, chopped peel, glace cherries, a bit of spice, and some alcohol. It almost tastes like one. I suppose, cooked in a round tin instead of two loaf tins, fed with more whisky, then marzipanned and iced, it could be one. I'm not sure how well it would keep - but it tastes so good, I'm not sure how long it would need to keep.

Chocolate Gingerbread

No entries for a couple of weeks. Well, I did make some biscotti a few weeks ago, but I've been on holiday, so no baking got done since then. I was in Orkney, where I picked up some interesting flour, bere meal. There was a recipe leaflet to go with it, but I plan on using it a bit differently to the usual savoury scones and bannocks; hopefully I'll talk about that in a week or so.
Anyway, this week I was in the mood for cake. Thinking of Nigella's chocolate gingerbread, I thought I'd try a chocolate variation of the buttermilk gingerbread in my last post. Very simply, it's the same recipe, with the addition of some melted good quality dark chocolate. The method's also a bit different, more akin to a brownie. How did it turn out? Well, I think I had my oven a bit hot or left in it a little too long because the crumb's a little bit loose, but it tastes delicious.

Recipe:
150 grams plain flour
60 grams wholemeal flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
50 grams unsalted butter
75 grams dark chocolate (Green & Black's, 70%)
80 grams sugar
1 egg
100 grams molasses
110 millilitres skim milk

Preheat oven to 325F/170C. Line an 8 inch square cake pan with non stick baking parchment.
Mix together the flours, spices and bicarbonate of soda in a medium bowl
In a large bowl, melt together the butter and chocolate.
In a bowl or jug, beat together the sugar and egg.
Once the butter and chocolate are melted, allow to cool slightly then beat in the egg and sugar.
Add the molasses and milk. Mix well.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet. Mix until smooth.
Pour into the batter into the pan.
Bake for about 20 minutes.

Buttermilk Gingerbread

Another recipe from a blog Baking Bites this time. It sounded delicious, and I haven't made gingerbread for a while, so I thought I'd give it a try. It does call for one ingredient I don't normally have in my cupboard: molasses. I suppose I could have substituted black treacle, but I decided it would probably be better to just hunt some down. I think it was probably worth it. I did make one main change to the recipe, substituting some of the plain flour with wholemeal. I'm going to make this again, but I want to try a chocolate version.

Recipe:
150 grams plain flour
60 grams plain wholemeal flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
50 grams unsalted butter
80 grams sugar
1 egg
100 grams molasses
110 millilitres skim milk

Preheat oven to 325F/170C. Line an 8 inch square cake pan with non stick baking parchment.
Mix together the flours, spices and bicarbonate of soda in a medium bowl
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
Beat in the egg.
Add the molasses and milk. Mix well.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet. Mix until smooth.
Pour into the batter into the pan.
Bake for about 25 minutes.

Carrot Cake Cookies

Bit of an upside-down day today. We went out for lunch to a very nice place just down the road, from us Windlestraw Lodge. The occasion was Dunk celebrating the 'end' of his diet, and the food there was certainly a fit way to mark it. I'm not going to attempt to review it, but if you are in the area and get the chance to eat there, take it.
Since I knew we'd be eating a richer than usual meal, and as we're still eating through the three Easter eggs (and will be for a few weeks yet), I fancied making more healthy-feeling 'hidden fruit or veg' baking. So this week, it's something picked up from Julie van Rosendaal's blog. It's a recipe for Carrot Cake Cookies, for the new edition of One Smart Cookie - which yes, I'll probably be buying, and donating my current copy to someone else (no idea who yet).
Anyway, as usual I made one or two minor changes. First thing, I've started converting recipes to metric measurements. I brought down the amount of sugar slightly, and used hazelnuts instead of walnuts, because I had them in the cupboard and wanted to use them up. The result? Little drops of carrot cake. These are not firm like you'd expect a cookie to be, but more cakey in texture. The nuts I used give just a hint of nuttiness - using more, or using different nuts would still be fine. The overall verdict? Definitely a recipe to keep.

Recipe:
50 grams unsalted butter
75 grams caster sugar
75 grams dark muscovado sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
100 grams plain flour
100 grams plain wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
150 grams grated carrot
75 grams raisins
25 grams chopped hazelnuts

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Line two baking sheets with non-stick baking parchment.
In a medium bowl, combine the flours, bicarbonate of soda, salt and cinnamon.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugars together. Once combined, beat in the egg and vanilla extract.
Add the flour, carrots, raisins and hazelnuts a bit at a time to the wet ingredients, mixing between each addition until just combined.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto the baking sheets, flattening each cookie slightly.
Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, until golden on the edges and just cooked in the middle.

Chocolate Cake

I was in the mood for chocolate this week, so chocolate cake of some description had to be made. These started out with a recipe for low-fat brownies that I got off the SparkRecipes website. I made quite a few changes to the recipe, either because I wasn't quite sure what was meant, or just because it felt right. I mean, when a recipe of American origination calls for apple sauce, what exactly do they mean? I'm not sure - will things turn out OK if I use that jar of stuff I normally eat with my roast pork? I decided not to risk it, and instead of using the applesauce, I used mashed banana instead. I'm fairly certain that in most baking cases the two things can be interchanged; in a low-fat recipe like this, hey are both intended to do the same job - act as a replacemet for some of the fat. It certainly didn't seem to cause any harm here.
The next substitution I made was the use of self-raising flour instead of the plain plus raising agent. Why? Well, I wasn't sure exactly which agent the original writer meant - does baking soda equal bicarbonate of soda, or baking powder? Normally I'd use bicarbinate of soda. However, with the use of banana instead of apple I also wasn't sure about how dense the mixture would be, so decided to skip the whole problem and just use the self-raising flour.
The result? Not quite a classic brownie, which is supposed to be very dense. This is more of a cake, but a very moist one. Completely delicious.

Recipe:
75 grams self-raising flour,
2 tablespoons cocoa powder (I used Green & Blacks)
1/4 teaspoon salt
50 grams dark chocolate (again, Green & Black's, 70%)
20 grams unsalted butter
145 grams light brown sugar
1 egg
1 egg white
6 tablespoons mashed banana
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Line an 8 inch square baking tin with non-stick baking parchment.
In a small bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.
In a large bowl over a pan of simmering water, melt together the chocolate and butter.
In another small bowl, whisk together the egg, egg white, brown sugar and vanilla extract.
When the butter and chocolate have melted, remove from the heat and leave for a minute or so to cool slightly.
Pour the egg and sugar mixture into the melted chocolate, stirring constantly. Add the banana, and mix until well combined.
Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, a couple of tablespoons at a time, mixing each addition until combined.
Pour into the baking tin and bake for 20 minutes.

Greek Honey & Lemon Cake

After last week's experiment with complete unfamiliarity, I wanted to retreat to safer ground this week. Browsing through one of my books, I came across a cake described as 'moist and tangy, a delicious afternoon snack'. Well, how can you resist an attempt at something like that? Although it does share one similarity with last week's - the use of beaten egg whites.
The first thing to try to trip me up was the listing of semolina in the ingredients. I'm thinking the dry semolina flour you can buy, and I'm going to substitute polenta. OK, not quite the same thing, but I figure close enough in texture, and might give it a nice colour. So I start getting all my ingredients prepared, and then I'm reading through the recipe more closely. The instructions for the semolina? Beat it in to the dry ingredients. Oops, so it's obviously not a dry ingredient then. OK, a quick trip round to the local shop is called for, and just hope they have a can of the stuff. They do, so that's alright.
The next stumbling point is that the recipe tells you to mix some of the wet ingredients together, but then fails to mention them again. What am I supposed to do with them? They obviously belong in the mix, but when and how? I figure I'll add them when the semolina goes in.
Anyway, in the end it seems to have turned out just fine. Maybe not quite honey and lemon-y enough, but there's certainly a distinct hint of both. A nice soft texture, actually almost like a cross between bread and cake. Definitely one to be made again.

Recipe:
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons honey
1 lemon, juice and finely grated zest
2/3 cup skim milk
1/4 cup semolina
2 egg whites
1 tablespoon sesame seeds

Preheat the oven to 400F/200C. Line an 8 inch square cake tin with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and nutmeg.
Place the butter and honey in a pan and heat gently until melted. Meanwhile, beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks.
When the butter and honey have melted, remove from the heat. Stir in the lemon zest ad juice, and the semolina. Add the milk.
Gradually beat the liquid into the flour mixture, until fully combined.
Fold the beaten egg whites into the mixture, until fully combined.
Pour the mixture into the prepared tin. Sprinkle the top with the sesame seeds.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes until golden brown.