Raymond Blanc's Lemon Cake

I'm off to Newcastle tomorrow! Well, today really. I'm looking forward to it a lot, and the weather forecast is good! There's also a cake festival while I'm up there, which makes me very happy!

This makes a good end to a week which has been fairly frustrating. I frequently wish that I could be in charge of my moods instead of capricious chemicals in my brain! My small group once again rescued me tonight. If I've baked a lot I've either had a bad couple of days, or I've turned slightly hyper... I turned up with strawberry and chocolate tarts, ginger cupcakes, lemon tarts, jam tarts, and lemon cake. At least my response to life is one that makes other people happy. So we ate a lot of cake and I got lots of hugs :)

Anyway, I felt I had to share this recipe as it is utterly divine. One would expect no less from Raymond Blanc! I decided to make it for the first time after I watched his Kitchen Secrets, so this was my second go. I took a few photos, but it's a pleasantly straightforward recipe.

You need a 26x9x8 (ish!) loaf tin

Ingredients:
5 eggs,
11 oz caster sugar
5 fluid oz double cream
3 lemons, zest only
1 1/2 tbsp dark rum (I don't have any so I just left it out)
1 pinch salt
3 oz unsalted butter, melted
8 1/2 oz plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

3 tbsp apricot jam, warmed (or lemon curd if you prefer, which I used this time)

Lemon glaze:
1 lemon, zest and juice
5 oz icing sugar

1. Preheat oven to 180C

2. Butter tin and line with greaseproof paper

3. Whisk together the eggs, lemon zest, sugar, cream, rum, salt and melted butter. It'll form a nice smooth mix.

4. Sift the four and baking powder into a separate bowl, then whisk into the egg mixture until it's a smooth batter.

5. Pour batter into tin and bake for 50-60 mins, turning halfway through cooking. 

Now, here's where it sounds more complicated, but it's not, and there's not really any hurrying involved, which is always nice.

Once it's cooked.....
6. Remove from oven but leave oven on.

7. Turn cake out onto cooling rack and leave for 10 mins.

8. Place cake onto a baking tray and brush with warm apricot jam, or lemon curd and then leave for 5 mins while you make the lemon glaze

9. Heat the lemon zest, juice and icing sugar in a pan or microwave until the sugar has dissolved and you have a syrup. (I thought I'd done that, but when I tasted the glaze after it was still grainy, so I think you need to heat it more. But on the other hand, mine tasted and look pretty darn good!)

10. Brush the lemon glaze all over the cake (mine was a bit more liquidy than his was in the episode and it dribbled everywhere)

11. Put cake back into the oven but TURN THE OVEN OFF! and leave for 3-5 mins to dry the glaze and turn it translucent

12. Remove cake from oven and leave to cool to room temperate before serving.

Best eaten with a cup of tea. Seriously. This is an awesome recipe. I bow to Raymond Blanc's sheer fabulousness.

Dairy-free lemon cupcakes with lemon curd

I should definitely be heading to bed, but seeing as I don't have to be in work until 7 tomorrow (I can't believed that 6.30am is now a bit of a lie in....) and I haven't updated this for over a week I thought I should . I've made a couple of things since my last post. I should really admit that I've made a set of mini apple pies, strawberry cupcakes, lemon cupcakes, dairy-free lemon cupcakes, and an 18th birthday cake.

I think I can safely say that I bake too much. I have, however, made a discovery. If you use butter instead of marg in a cake it doesn't curdle! Magic, I know! I haven't decided which taste I prefer though, as marg does give a lighter texture. I'm determined to do a proper test soon.

I only have photos of the finished product, but I wanted to share my dairy-free lemon cupcake recipe. It was a friend of mine's birthday a while ago, and I hadn't got her a birthday present (shame on me). So I decided to make her rose cupcakes as I recently saw a youtube video on how to pipe the icing into a rose - it's easy to do, you just need to right nozzle - a Wilton 2D, and then type into youtube 'pipe rose cupcake icing', and it'll show you how to do it :)

Now, I decided this time to put a spoonful of lemon curd in the bottom of each cupcake case, which worked nicely! So, for this recipe first you need to make lemon curd - which is happily a very easy process. I follow Delia Smith's recipe. Just substituting soya marg for butter for dairy-free goodness.

grated ring and juice of 1 large, juicy lemon
3 oz caster sugar (75g)
2 large eggs
2 oz unsalted butter (50g)

Place the grated lemon rind and sugar in a bowl.

In another bowl whisk the lemon juice together with the eggs, then pour this mix onto the sugar. Add the butter, cut up into little pieces, and place the bowl over a saucepan with barely simmering water.

This is what it looks like as it starts to melt

Once the butter melts you'll need to stir a little more frequently

It'll eventually start to thicken, just keep stirring until it's fairly thick - though remember it'll thicken up more later once it's been in the fridge for a bit

She says stir frequently for about 20 mins, but the first while (maybe 10) mins, you don't really need to. The key is to catch it just before it turns!! It gets quite thick, but not the thickness you expect, but once you've put it in the fridge for a bit, it'll spread nicely onto scones :) It'll keep for about a week in a sealed jar. It'll look funny for a while at the beginning (particularly when using soya marg) but just keep stirring and it'll take shape eventually, and it tastes gorgeous!

Then for the lemon cupcakes

125g self raising flour
125g soya marg
125g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 lemon, zest and a bit of juice

1. Beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy
2. Add eggs one at a time following each by a spoonful of flour. Beat until light and fluffy.
3. Add the lemon zest and a squeeze of the juice
4. Sieve in remaining flour and fold in.
5. Spoon into cake cases and cook for 12-15 mins at 180C
6. Leave in tin for a few mins after cooking, then remove and leave on cooling rack to cool completely

For the icing...
Soya marg/butter/normal marg
icing sugar
lemon juice
lemon zest or lemon essence

Beat the marg/butter. Add icing sugar until it tastes good. Then add a squeeze of lemon juice. I also add half a spoonful of lemon essence, as I didn't want to put any zest in which would block the nozzle that I used to pipe the icing. (Lemon essence is a brilliant thing and you can find it in the baking section of any supermarket - it's the zest flavour, rather than the juice flavour that you get from it, which is very handy if you like lemony things like I do)

This was the result of my first attempt at piping roses. I want to have a go again soon. Probably with ganache next time. I've seen some really beautiful ones that others have done, so I'll keep practising :)

Marmalade cupcakes

I'm back in England, and it has greeted me with lots and lots of rain. There was due to be a gathering of all the churches in Leamington today in the park, but it had to be moved indoors. It was fun to do church with about 1000 other people. 

I read a book while I was away called 'Meet Me At the Cupcake Cafe', about someone who, oddly enough, set up a cupcake cafe. This makes me want to set up a cupcake cafe!!! The storyline goes that she was brought up by her Grandfather, a baker, and loves making cakes. When she gets made redundant she decides to use the money to set up this shop. 

One of my favourite things about this book is that it is punctuated by recipes. I'd been away for 3 days and not baked anything, so I was well overdue a batch of cakes. I decided to try making the 'orange cupcakes with marmalade icing'. Unfortunately the Swiss aren't really into marmalade, but the cakes are surprisingly marmalade-y anyway, and are a really lovely orange colour too!

Here's her instructions - and then what I'd do next time ;) I will say, though, that I was using Swiss ingredients, which definitely aren't the same. Seriously, very confusing, there are about 4 different times of sugar!

2 whole oranges, 

8oz butter, (she says melted, but next time I'd do a diff method so wouldn't melt it)

3 eggs

8 oz sugar (soft brown or golden caster gives this a good flavour)

8 oz self-raising flour

3 tbsp marmalade

3 tbsp orange zest

Preheat oven to gas mark 4/170C

1. Chop one orange - skin and all (try to make sure you get all the pips out!) into chunks and place in the mixer with the melted butter, eggs and sugar. Mix on high until well combined. (Next time I make these I think I will beat together the butter and sugar, beat in the orange (previously blended) and then fold in the flour.) 

 - I tried using my mum's kenwood mixer at this point as it said 'mixer'. However, this had no effect on the orange chunks, as you can see below. So I decided to try my mum's hand held blender-thing which produced this lovely effect! 

After the Kenwood

After the blender...

2. Add flour and mix together. You get a fairly thin batter.

3. She says bake in the oven for 50 minutes, but that wouldn't work unless it was one big cake, and the title says cupcakes…. so, I baked them for 12-15 mins!

4. Wait until they're cool and spread with marmalade. (As mentioned before I had no marmalade, so I made butter icing and added orange zest and orange juice to it :))

For orange butter icing:

I used 125g of butter for 24 cupcakes and have loads left over

Some icing sugar (usually at least twice the weight of butter you've used

A splash of orange juice

A splash of milk

1. Use real butter, it tastes so much better! 

2. Beat it with the orange zest until it's smooth and creamy, 

3. Gradually add the icing sugar (especially if you're using a mixer so you don't make everything white!)

4. Add a bit of orange juice, and milk to get the correct consistency.

5. Keep adding everything of the above until it tastes how you want. 

Again let me know if you ever make anything on the blog and let me know how it turns out! :)

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today is a day for having plaited pig tails, I already only look about 14 today, so I figure I may as well add to the effect. I've been being good though, and have been making smoothies in an attempt to increase my fruit and veg intake. I think I'll just eat lots of fruit and then peas. But it's ok my mum will be cooking for me for a week! 

Still watching Ella Enchanted. Such a fun film. Utterly tongue in cheek and Westley from The Princess Bride is in it as a maniacally evil uncle. 

This recipe is from a lovely website, with no changes. These are just brilliant. All the things that a cookie should be (in my humble opinion), they're just crunchy and chewy and soft and they don't fall apart (frequently an issue with my own personal recipes as I go for too much squidge and not enough structure)

Ingredients

9 oz/250 g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarb of soda
1/2 tsp salt
6 oz/170g butter, melted
7 oz/200g brown sugar (I use 5oz of soft brown or muscavado, 2oz of demerara)
3.5 oz/100g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg and 1 egg yolk
10 oz/300g chocolate chips (milk, white, dark, a mix of all three, whatever you're in the mood for :))

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 325F/165C/Gas Mark 3.
2. Grease baking tray or line with greaseproof paper.
3. In a bowl sieve the flour, baking soda and salt together.
4. In another bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and caster sugar until light and fluffy.

5. Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until light and creamy.

6. Mix in the dry ingredients until just blended.

7. Stir in the chocolate chips.

8. Place dessert spoons full of cookie dough onto the baking tray, spacing them about 6cm apart.

9. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly browned.

10. Cool on the baking sheets for a few minutes then transfer to wire racks to finish cooling.

I just realised I hadn't put in the most important instruction.... Cookies carry on cooking after you get them out of the oven - those ones are just slightly over! So, take them out as soon as they're slightly brown around the edges and don't leave them on the baking tray more than 3-5 mins or they'll stop being chewy and turn into (still tasty) but crunchy cookies.

I put a second egg yolk in because it was lying around, so my mixture was slightly stickier, but it should look pretty much like the photos. The reason for the egg yolk is that it makes the cookies squidgier. Egg whites make them drier, but add structure, hence why many recipes call for 1 egg and 1 egg yolk. Make a little bit of meringue or something with the egg white ;) 

If you want to branch out, reduce the choc chips to 200g and add 100g frozen raspberries (I usually use white chocolate with rasps) broken up a little bit, but not too much. If you add them defrosted they just fall apart and you end up with green cookies, which is fun, but mildly disturbing. 

Equally, change the type of chocolate, add nuts, dried cranberries, raisins, sultanas. The world is your oyster when you have a good basic cookie recipe :) Unfortunately it doesn't translate particularly well to triple choc chip, I'm still working on that one, I'll let you know when I get anywhere!

Thanks to anyone who reads this, and do let me know if you make any of the recipes!

Candied Fruit Biscuits

It's been this sort of a day…..

So I'm finding solace in baking. I'm properly tired, but can't really sit still. I am seemingly incapable of doing nothing, so baking and then sitting watching Ella Enchanted interspersed with bits of tidying and washing up, seems to be all I can handle. But, in exciting news, I'm on holiday next week! I'm going to Switzerland on Monday for a week. Happy days! It's sunny at the moment and hopefully it'll hold. Either way, it'll be 7 mornings of getting up significantly after 5 or 6 am!

I went to my friend's house to watch Dr Who on Thurday (I'm so excited about tonight's episode!!!!!!!) and got to peruse her DVD and cookbook collection. I therefore pinched one of her baking books and was intrigued by one recipe that was mostly egg white and almond, somewhat macaroon-ish. 

I just tried to make it, and it didn't work anything like the recipe! My eggs are all mixed sizes (it's so much cheaper that way ;)) and the picture showed a runny mixture, whereas mine was very stiff. I suspect that if I make them I shall use 3 egg whites. I now have two egg yolks left though, so I shall also make my favourite choc chip cookie recipe :) I shall share them all with you, because I'm such a generous soul. 

I also made fudge yesterday, as I'd promised some to a friend to help her through finals. However, I dropped my sugar thermometer the other day and it died :( I assumed I'd just be able to work out my fudge using my cunning sense of smell, sight, and a glass of water to do the soft ball stage test. The first batch went to crumbs and refused to behave, which I put down to having worked out the ingredients wrong,

so I tried again, and got the same result. I'm definitely nicking my old sugar thermometer off my mum - she decided it was hers and took it to Switzerland, whereas I am convinced that it's actually mine. Not sure whether or not a thermometer would be allowed in hand luggage? Or indeed in hold luggage? Would it die and spill mercury everywhere?!

So, here's the first recipe…. choc chip cookies to follow later. I will remember to take many photos as well this time! The recipe is from 'home baking cookbook'

2 egg whites
225g/8oz ground almonds
140g/5oz caster sugar
1 tsp finely grated orange rind (with my brilliant zester and my chopping board this worked out at about half an orange)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp candied fruit, plus extra to decorate
demerara sugar, for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas mark 4. Line 2 large baking sheets with non stick baking paper

1. Beat the egg whites in a large bowl until stiff.

2. Using a knife, gently fold in the ground almonds, caster sugar, orange rind, cinnamon and fruit until smooth

3. Transfer the mixture to a piping bag fitted with a large nozzle (at least 1cm/1/2 inch in diameter) Pipe 20 biscuits about 3 inches in diameter. Space well apart to allow for spreading. Sprinkle with demerara sugar

4. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 mins or until light brown.

Transfer to a wire rack. Decorate with candied fruit and leave to cool completely before serving.
This is what mine looked like - they taste ok, but they're not great. I'm definitely going to try it again with 3 egg whites as the picture shows a very thin mixture that pipes easily. I'll post the results when I do!