Tag Archives: cake

Lemon curd and blueberry sanga – a take on the Victoria Sponge

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Once upon a time, I feared sponge cakes.  I had a few bad experiences with sponges of a temperamental nature.  They were teases really.  You know the kind.  The kind which get all worked up after you’ve fluffed their egg whites, aerated their flour and handled them with delicate fingers, before they deflate into a sunken frown.  Somehow, by looking at the recipe, I just knew that Victoria was going to be different.  Victoria was going to be no fuss. Victoria was going to be sweet and gentle, but confident in herself.  Victoria wasn’t going to collapse in fear of her début… she was going to shine.  And shine, she did.

Recipe from the trusty Australian Women’s Weekly’s Bake cookbook.  This recipe works best when all ingredients are at room temperature.

Ingredients
250g softened butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
4 eggs
1/3 cup (80ml) milk
2 cups (300g) self-raising flour (sifted)
1 punnet blueberries
lemon curd

Preheat the oven to 180°C (or 160° fan-forced).  Grease and line two deep 20cm round cake pans with baking paper.

Beat butter, vanilla and sugar in an electric mixer until light and fluffy.  Beat in eggs, one at a time before beating in milk.  My mixture curdled at this point because my milk was straight from the fridge.  But, once I started adding flour it was all fine again.

Stir sifted flour into mixture in two batches.  Don’t overwork the batter at this point.  But, thankfully, you also don’t need to be as gentle as some sponges require here either.

Divide the mixture evenly between the two pans.  I weigh what goes in each pan to make sure it turns out even, because I use to always think they were about the same and then end up with one skinny cake and one fatter cake, which took a different duration to cook.

Gently smooth out the cake batter.  I usually lightly oil the back of a spoon and use that to edge the batter about evenly until the batter is flat, or slightly raised around the edges (to accommodate the fact that the middle of the cake will rise).  This stops the batter sticking to the spoon and makes it easier to work with.

Bake for 30 minutes.

Turn sponges out, top side up, onto a baking paper lined cake rack.  Lining the rack helps to stop the sponge sticking, or getting cake rack lines on the cake.

Once completely cool, sandwich the cake bottoms together with curd and berries and dust the top with icing sugar.

If I had my time over, I would have spooned curd on both layers, so that they stuck better together.  My top cake sat on top of the blueberries and wasn’t firmly stuck to the bottom layer, making it difficult to cut and serve.  I think a bit more curd would had done the trick.

I’d recommend using a large serrated knife to cut this cake in a light sawing manner, as it helps to keep the layers together.  I cut the whole cake in half to begin with, as that made it easier to then cut neat and even slices.

 

Middle Eastern Dinner Party – Part 3 – Almond Honey Spiced Syrup Cake with Fig, Date and Apricot Compote

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middle eastern cake

This recipe is a real treat to finish off our Middle Eastern Dinner Party trilogy.  This cake is moist and moreish, and sweet and spicy.

I can’t tell you how much I love syrup cakes.  I would pick a syrup cake over an iced cake any day of the week.  I have previously shared with you my Seedy Citrus Cake and I am becoming known among friends as a syrup cake guru addict.

Recipe adapted from The Australian Women’s Weekly Bake cookbook.

Ingredients
125g softened butter
1/3 cup (75g) caster sugar
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground allspice
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups (180g) almond meal
1/2 cup (80g) semolina
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup (60ml) milk

For the spiced syrup:
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
1 cup (250ml) water
8 cardamom pods, bruised
2 cinnamon sticks
2 star anise
shaved orange rind, from 1 orange

For the honey orange cream:
3/4 cup (180ml) thickened cream
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons finely grated orange rind

For the Fig, Date and Apricot Compote:
handful each of dried figs, dried apricots and dates, halved
1 cup orange juice
1 cinnamon sticks
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

Preheat oven to 180°C (or 160°C fan-forced).  Grease and line a deep 20cm round cake pan (a non-stick one is best and I wouldn’t recommend using a spring form tin for syrup cakes as it can get a bit messy).

Beat butter, sugar, honey and spices together in a mixer until light and fluffly.  Beat in eggs, one at a time.  Fold in almond meal, semolina, sifted baking powder and milk.  Spread into the pan. Bake cake for 40 minutes.  Stand cake on a rack for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, while cake is baking, make the spiced syrup by stirring all the ingredients in a small saucepan without boiling, until the sugar dissolves.  Then bring to the boil and boil, uncovered, without stirring for about 5 minutes or until it becomes thickened slightly.

Pour the strained hot syrup over the hot cake in its pan and let it cool until it’s room temperature (reserve the bits from the syrup for garnish).

Turn the cake out onto the serving plate and refrigerate for 3 hours (or overnight) so that all the flavours infuse.  Decorate the top of the cake with the spice and orange rind garnish.  I found this cake tasted best at room temperature, so pull it out of the oven at the beginning of the dinner party.

When it’s time to serve, put all your ingredients for the compote in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for 2-3 minutes until softened and steamy.

Beat the ingredients for the honey orange cream together until soft peaks form.

Serve and enjoy!

Birthday cakes – Buttermilk Chocolate Cake

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This week, I had a little birthday and a lot of cake.  Somehow, I ended up with 5 birthday cakes.  I’ve never had 5 cakes to mark one birthday… and maybe it was a bit excessive… but it tasted good!

I must say that this extreme burst of sugar following my sugar free diet has not made me feel particularly well.  But, I’m sure I will be back to an equilibrium next week.  

I can admit to having made 2 of the 5 birthday cakes (yes, it has been described as pathetic), both of which were new recipes for me, and both of which were amazingly easy to make and delicious to eat.  Firstly, I made a Buttermilk Chocolate Cake to have on my actual birthday, and secondly I made an Almond and Honey Spiced Syrup Cake for a little dinner party we had to celebrate last night.  I’ll share those recipes with you shortly.  The other cakes, were made or bought by dear friends (who double as work colleagues).

I already knew that I worked with amazing people.  But still, I was totally blown away at how thoughtful and generous my colleagues were on my birthday.  One brought in the most delicious Almond, Chocolate and Cherry Tart.  Three of my favorite flavours of all time.  It was like a Frangipane Tart had been given German Steroids.  It was divine – and certainly something I’m going to try to recreate in the future.  I do believe it came from the fabulously renowned Silo Bakery here in Canberra.  Extremely luscious.  Another made an amazing Apple Cake.  Apples are so delicious at the moment, and this cake made great use of them.  I’m hoping to snaffle that recipe for future use because it was so light and flavourful!  And finally, my supervisor made me an epic Five Layered Rainbow Cake with a Maple Meringue Frosting.  Unfortunately, the photos from the morning tea didn’t work out so well, but this one gives you an idea of how deliciously fluorescent the rainbow cake was.  The Maple Meringue Frosting had a most hypnotic sheen about it too.

The sugar over load was definitely worth it.  I’ve never felt so spoilt for cake choice in my life!

I’ll share with you the recipe for the Buttermilk Chocolate Cake now, and post again soon with the Almond and Honey Spiced Syrup Cake, which was part of a middle-eastern themed dinner party.  I’ll share the full menu to recipes from that occasion soon!

This Buttermilk Chocolate Cake has the most delectable texture and taste.  It almost feels like you’re eating a mud cake cloud.  It’s not at all heavy like a mud cake, but it does have the rich, feel-good chocolate characteristics of a mud cake.

I had some issues with temperature and my ganache icing, which caused it to go a touch marbled looking.  I made this quite late at night and left the ganache on the bench to come to room temperature over night so I could beat it to a spreadable consistency in the morning.  But, it’s a Canberra winter, and when I woke on my birthday morning, my kitchen was about 2°C.  Needless to say, I had to remelt the ganache and let it cool again.  By which stage, I was running late for work and didn’t have time to beat it, which is why I went with the drippy look.  The ganache then cooled a little too quickly again, as I walked with my cake box in the 1°C weather to work.  So it didn’t look the best… but it tasted good!

I don’t blame the ganache recipe.  It’s not a volatile recipe.  I’m on the ganache’s side.  It’s perfectly reasonable to seize up which such dramatic temperature change.  I feel empathy for the ganache because I feel a bit marbled every morning when I get out of the warm bed and into the freezing world.

I found this cake recipe on The Paper Seed.  You’ll need two 9 inch, or 23 cm, cake tins for this recipe.  I think I actually used two 20 cm pans by accident, but I just left the tins in for longer (about 10-20 mins longer) and it wasn’t a worry.

You can either make this recipe to have 2 cakes on hand.  I’m certain they would freeze well (before icing), but haven’t tried that yet.  Or you can do what I did and layer chocolate ganache in between to make a giant cake!  It was so tall that I had to trim the tops off the cakes so that the tower would fit in my Tupperware for transport to work.

Ingredients
3 cups plain flour
2 1/2 cups caster sugar
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon baking soda (bicarb soda)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/3 cups canola oil (I used olive oil and it was fine)
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups freshly brewed, extra-strong coffee
1 vanilla bean’s worth of seeds

For the ganache
400g dark chocolate
250g unsalted butter
4 tablespoons icing sugar
1 vanilla bean’s worth of seeds

Preheat the oven to 160°C Fan Forced (approx 175°C if you’re not using a fan forced oven). Oil and line two 9 inch cake tins (or 8 inch if you prefer, as I did, which will make an even taller cake).

Place flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder in a large mixing bowl. Using an electric mixer, mix on low to combine. Keeping the mixer on low, add oil, buttermilk, then eggs one at a time.

Then, add the coffee in a thin stream, pouring it down the side of the bowl. Add vanilla and mix until batter is smooth.  It is a very runny batter – so don’t be put off by that.

Divide into pans and bake until a toothpick comes out with moist crumbs, about 30-35 minutes in a 9 inch pan, or 45-55 minutes in an 8 inch pan.  I opened the oven door a few times to check if they had set yet and it was a very resilient batter.  The cakes rose like troopers despite my constant checking to see if they were still wobbly.

Let cool in tins for at least 20 minutes before turning out onto a rack for final cooling.  I left these out overnight to cool as it was getting late and they didn’t dry out at all.

For the ganache, melt butter and chocolate together gently.  Add the vanilla and sifted icing sugar and stir until well combined.  Don’t let the mixture get too hot, it just needs to come together.  Once melted together, pull off the stove to come to room temperature.  By room temperature, I mean the type of temperature a room should be (i.e. not 2°C).  You’ll see it thicken and get to a stage when you can beat it with a wooden spoon so it becomes luscious and spreadable.

When the cakes are completely cool, trim if required to fit under your cake dome, or in your Tupperware, and then sandwich together with ganache in-between (whipped cream would also be lovely as an alternative).  Then with a palette knife spread the ganache all over the cake.  Or you can impatiently pour it on and let it drip down before it gets too stiff, like I did.

This recipe is so easy to put together and has so much wow factor, that I think it will become one of my regular go to recipes.

Apple Sour Cream Cake with Crumble Topping

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Last Saturday we went to the Loriendale Orchard for Apple Day.  I came home with a beautiful bag of Bramley Apples and put the call out for people to inspire me to bake something.

Apples in a paper bag, green apples

Bramley Apples

Shivaun was first in suggesting an Apple Sour Cream Cake, via facebook.  Thanks Shivaun!  I was quite taken with the idea, having never made or eaten one before.

After much searching, I settled on the Australian Women’s Weekly recipe, because it starts with 250g butter and 1 cup of sugar.  Any recipe which starts this way seems eminently practical and I love it.  I know it’s probably not good to use the entire stick of butter in a cake recipe, but it tasted good!  and 250g is far quicker to handle than working out 180g of butter.

Ingredients
250g butter, softened
220g (1 cup) caster sugar
4 eggs
200g (11/3 cups) plain flour
110g (¾ cup) self-raising flour
300g sour cream
3 medium apples, finely chopped (I used Bramleys, but any good cooking apple such as Granny Smiths would be great)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Ingredients for the Topping
40g (¼) cup plain flour
1 1/3 cup coconut
50g (¼ cup) brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
60g butter 

Preheat your oven to 180°C (160°C fan forced).  Grease base of 23cm round spring-form tin, line base with greaseproof paper.
Make topping by rubbing together the ingredients for the topping in your fingers: the flour, coconut, brown sugar, cinnamon and butter.  You could also add nuts at this stage (such as slithered almonds or chopped walnuts).  Refrigerate topping to firm while you prepare the cake.
Cream butter and sugar in an electric mixer.  Once this mixture has become more pale (like the colour of cream) and the grit of the sugar has dissolved, add eggs one at a time, until combined.
cream butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time

cream butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time

Stir in half the sifted flours with half the sour cream, then stir in remaining flours and sour cream and lightly mix until smooth.
  1. Spread 1/3 of the cake mixture into the prepared tin
  2. Top with 1/2 the apples and sprinkle with cinnamon
  3. Spread carefully with another 1/3 of the cake mixture
  4. Top with the other 1/2 of the apples and sprinkle with cinnamon again
  5. Top with the last 1/3 of the cake mixture
  6. Grate the now firm topping evenly over the cake
layers of apple sour cream cake

layers of apple sour cream cake

The cake batter is quite stiff, so it isn’t easy to spread the cake mixture over the apples.  It requires patience to carefully coax the batter over the apples without upsetting the apple cart (so to speak).  To be honest, if you’re not particular enough to want 2 layers of apple in your cake, I think it would still work wonderfully if you just stirred your apples into the cake mixture and baked it all together.
Pop it in the oven to bake for 1 hour and 45 minutes to 2 hours.  Cover the cake with foil half way through the cooking process so the crumble topping doesn’t brown too much.

Apple Sour Cream Cake with Crumble Topping

yum!

 

A Seedy Citrus Cake

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When I discovered syrup cakes, I fell in love.  I use to always think the icing was the best part of any cake, until the revelation of syrup cakes hit me.  The syrup is quick and easy to pull together and ensures the cake stays deliciously sticky and moist.  Citrus syrups are great for cutting through the sweetness of the cake too.

Limes

But don’t be restrained by citrus syrups.  I love vanilla syrups, orange blossom syrups, lavender syrups, (all of which go fabulously with berry laden cakes) and spirits based syrups which are fab on any kind of fruit laden cake.  Your imagination is the only boundary.

In the past I’ve struggled to get the right consistency consistently with icing.  But syrups have unshackled me from that concern.

The only bad thing I can say about a syrup cake: is that you have to own cake cracks.  There is no hiding your oven’s inconsistencies.  But, I like to think that the cake just has more character this way.  It’s a rustic and inviting cake, which says “Yes, I’m sticky.. and homemade…and I’m proud of it!”

This recipe makes a large (exceptionally tall) cake.  It can easily serve 16 generous squares of cake, which makes it a great recipe to keep up your sleeve when the workplace morning tea roster hits you up.

Poppy Seed and Lime Syrup Cake

Adapted from The Australian Women’s Weekly recipe.

Ingredients
¼ cup (40g) poppy seeds
½ cup (125ml) milk
250g butter, softened
finely grated lime rind from 3-4 limes
1¼ cups (275g) caster sugar
4 eggs (room temperature is best)
2¼ cups (335g) self-raising flour
¾ cup (110g) plain flour
1 cup (240g) sour cream or natural yoghurt

For the Lime Syrup
juice from 3-4 limes
1 cup (250ml) water
1 cup (220g) caster sugar

Preheat oven to moderate (180°C/160°C fan-forced). Grease base and sides of (or cut baking paper to fit) a deep 20cm or 23cm square cake pan (a loose bottom pan is easiest).  If you don’t have a loose bottom pan of the correct size, make sure you leave enough baking paper handing over the sides to help you get the cake out.

Combine poppy seeds and milk in small jug to soak for 10 minutes.

poppy seeds

Beat butter, rind and sugar in a large bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy.  Then, add eggs, one at a time, beating until combined between additions.  Carefully stir in the sour cream (or yoghurt), and poppy seed mixture (try not to thump the air out of the mixture).

the mixture...

And finally, fold in the sifted flours.

the mixture ready for the tin

Spread this mixture into your prepared pan and bake for 60-70 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine ingredients for lime syrup in small saucepan. Stir over heat, without boiling, until sugar dissolves. Simmer, uncovered, without stirring, for 5 minutes.

Stand cake 5 minutes, turn onto wire rack over a tray to catch the extra syrup.  Pour hot lime syrup slowly over the hot cake, letting the cake slurp up the flavour.  Allow this to cool for a few minutes before serving.  It’s great warm, and great room temperature.  This cake will keep for at least 2 days (or not, depending on how many people know you’ve made it!).

poppy seed and lime syrup cake - a seedy citrus cake

It may be a bit of a sugar overload…but it tasted good!

NOTE: Before grating the lime, sit out at room temperature and roll it, pressing down hard with your hand, on the kitchen bench.  This bursts the inner juice beads and will help extract as much juice as possible from the fruit.  You can substitute the same weight of other citrus fruit — lemons, mandarins, blood oranges, oranges, etc — for the limes if you wish.

NOTE 2:  having your ingredients all at room temperature before starting (esp. the butter and eggs), makes all the ingredients much more agreeable with one another.