Torta Caprese (chocolate hazelnut cake)

I have been a fan of Sophie Grigson's recipes since I stole ("borrowed") a copy of Feasts for a Fiver from my mum when I was a postgrad student (rationalised as my need was greater since I had less money...). 

So when I came across Organic in one of those cheap bookshop so snapped it up. It has a cloudless chocolate cake in it which is dense with ground nuts and small bits of chocolate, the Torta Caprese. I've made it a few times, but not in a few years, but a recent restaurant meal that offered a chocolate hazelnut torte reminded me of it. I made a couple of changes to the recipe - I used ground hazelnuts rather than almonds because I'm rather fond of hazelnuts and I used half dark (70%) and half milk (30%) chocolate ( both Lindt) - I often do this in recipes to avoid it being over rich.

You whisk egg yolks with sugar and vanilla, then fold in cooled melted butter, ground nuts and finely chopped chocolate (which the recipe recommends you do in a food processor). Then you fold in whisked egg whites and bake. 

The cake is good served with Creme Fraiche or Greek yoghurt or just alone.it's rich, damp (because of the nuts) and has a great chocolate hazelnut flavour, so hopefully I'll be making it more often in future! 

Dulce de leche cake

Another post, another lemon cake. This is one I haven't made in years, but one that was well worth remembering because it's tasty. I had a jar of dulce de leche in the cupboard that I needed to use before it's best before date, so I googled to find this half remembered recipe. 

It's a slightly unusual cake. You hear butter, water, lemon juice and golden syrup together and then add lemon zest. You let this cool and then add it to flour and sugar with an egg and mix together and pour into the tin. Finally you heat some dulce de leche until it loosens and then pour it over the cake in thin stripes. 

The resulting cake is lovely and light and nice with Greek yoghurt, although I've never tried it with the apricots and dulce de leche laced yoghurt. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/3304378/The-recipes.html

Drenched Lemon and Ginger Cake

I have a small repertoire of great lemon cakes: the lemon curd cake I've written about before, Nigella's lemon and almond cake, Baker & Spice's lemon sponge with lemon icing. All nice, all different. Then there's this lemon and ginger cake which is a lovely twist on a lemon drizzle cake.

It is a recipe by Tamasin Day Lewis. There's a cake with light muscavado sugar, lemon zest and chopped stem ginger. Then you make a syrup from ginger syrup, Demerara sugar and lemon juice. You put holes over the cake and slowly pour over the syrup and let it soak in. This particular cake is lovely, but sensational warm - do try it. I like it with Creme

Fraiche.  Admittedly it isn't a good looking cake, but it tastes amazing. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/3299086/Part-one-good-tempered-food.html

My favourite banana bread

I think I've been making this banana bread since I was a teenager and it's the banana bread I measure all others by. To be honest, they usually don't measure up. They're nice, but just not this recipe. 

This banana bread is relatively low in sugar (2 oz / 56g in the whole thing) and the same in butter. Although the recipe does suggest you serve it with butter! Particularly if, like me, you'd struggle to let it cool before cutting in... 

The recipe is from Mary Norwak's Bread and Breadmaking, the book that first taught me to bake bread as a teenager and which I shamelessly took with me when I left home, reasoning that I made more bread than my mum (sorry, Mum!). 

This banana bread is pretty easy. Mix flour raising agents and sugar together than add mashed ripe bananas, eggs and melted butter and mix, before putting into a 2lb loaf tin (the recipe says 1lb but that results in an overflowing tin in my experience) and baking. Then it's just a matter of waiting until you can tuck in. 

Summer Berry Pie

Fantastic Mr Fox and I went to America (New York and Washington) on honeymoon in 2010 and then to Chicago, New England and Boston the following year. One side effect of this (and my love for the TV series Pushing Daisies) was that I developed a minor obsession with pies, fruit pies in particular. Unfortunately, pastry is not my strong point.

In a branch of Barnes & Noble (what's a holiday without a visit to a book shop?) I found a Williams-Sonoma Pie and Tart book by Carolyn Beth Weil. Now, I LOVED Williams-Sonoma kitchen store when I visited it (and I'm trying to forget that they now deliver outside USA...), so this seemed liked a perfect way to develop my pie repertoire. 

Last summer I tried a couple Georgia peach and strawberry-rhubarb, which were very good. I've also made the caramel cranberry almond tart (not a frangipane) that tasted brilliant even though I burnt it slightly (and it's on my remake list).  

Anyway, a flick through the book and I narrowed it down to blueberry pie or summery berry pie and Fantastic Mr Fox voted for the latter. 

The pastry for the pie is straightforward to make - but slightly odd because you don't chill it before rolling it out. It rolls out just fine. And also whereas most recipes tell you to rub the butter in until it looks like breadcrumbs,  this recipe suggests lumps of butter no bigger than small peas. 

So with the pastry made and rolled out you mix the fruit (I used radpberries, blackberries and blueberries) with sugar, cornflour (I used almost 4 tablespoons, substituting additional cornflour for instant tapioca), cinnamon and salt and then make the pie. Chill the pie and then bake it (to try and avoid a soggy bottom, I put a baking tray to pre-heat - but I was also using a ceramic dish). Then leave the pie to cool completely before serving to let it set (you can reheat). 

I made it on Sunday evening and it wasn't quite cold when I went to bed. This resulted in a major dilemma this morning: is pie a breakfast food? 

I think I slightly overbaked the pie and the filling was perhaps a little wet, but it was delicious - i really liked the cinnamon in it. I definitely want to make it again!

Happy baking! 

Raspberry buttermilk cake

It's been hot here recently - not as hot as  England has been, but enough to make our flat a little warmer than entirely comfortable, particularly with regards to sleeping. So, I've been a bit  reluctant to turn the oven on and further add to the heat. So about ten days ago I was debating whether to make this raspberry buttermilk cake from Smitten Kitchen or not - heat vs raspberry season. cake won. Let me tell you: it was well worth turning on the oven. 

The cake was straightforward to make using my Kitchenaid. It was a bit like the triple berry bundt cake. Mine took slightly longer to bake - I made it in a 8 inch tin, not a 9 inch one. The cake was delicious - it is also great warm. Mmm...

Happy baking! 

PS the recipe is here: 

http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2009/05/raspberry-buttermilk-cake/

Not baking: Peach iced tea

With the weather continuing to be hot over the weekend, I was craving some nice peach iced tea. On Friday I searched for something at lunchtime and slightly to my surprise came up with some Lipton iced lemon tea in the wee tesco opposite  work, but that only made me long for some peach stuff. That was when I decided to make some. 

About four years ago, I went on holiday with a couple of friends (aka The Grand Tour) and we stayed a few nights with one of my friends' friend in Paris. He'd made us some iced peach tea which I duly refused because I don't like tea, but fortunately everyone insisted I tried this. I was an instant convert and swore I'd make my own. He used some peach tea and had fruit and mint in the brew, so I looked online for something similar and then tried to find peach tea in Sainsbury's. I hit the jackpot with peach and cherry blossom tea. 

I adapted the recipe at the end of the post.

I used two bags, a sliced almost ripe peach and 2 cups of boiling water. I let it brew for 5 minutes and then added 1/2 cup of sugar, but I'd reduce that 1/3 cup sugar in future, I think. I'd also be tempted to try Demerara or other brown sugar sine I like the taste. Anyway, I digress. Take the tea bags out and add 2 cups cold water. Let it cool then chill in the fridge and serve with or without out, with or without the peach slices. 

Original recipe here:

http://howto.yellow.co.nz/food-drink/non-alcoholic-drinks-and-beverages/how-to-make-iced-tea/