I had the day off work today so decided to try a recipe I had had bookmarked since I saw it on the Guardian website. Its a recipe from Nigel Slater, whose book Real Cooking i’ve just purchased (savory meal recipe coming later this week). I haven’t made bread since i was little and I used to make bread rolls with my Grandma. I was surprised how easy this was and how little time it took. I would urge you to try this if you have never made bread before, it’s simple, delicious and definitely worth the small amount of effort.
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This is a recipe that has been in my family for at least 50 years, yet I have never made, nor even tasted, the cake. The reason for this is because it was my Nana’s recipe and she passed away when I was just three. My Mum is an excellent cook but she says she has never been able to get it quite right. As it was Mothers day in the UK this past weekend I thought it would be nice to make as a treat for my Mum. This is a nice moist cake with a great ginger taste and its actually very easy to make. This was made last minute so there were a couple of extras I didnt have for the original recipe but it was still great without them.
Ingredients
170g Plain Flour
170g Wholemeal Flour
3 Generous Tsp Ground Ginger
1 Tsp Mixed Spice
1 Tsp Cinnamon
1 Tsp Bicarbonate Soda
Pinch of Salt
Pinch Cayenne Pepper (I didnt have any)
170g Butter
113g Caster Sugar
2 Generous Tablespoons Orange Marmalade
340g Golden Syrup
(plus an extra spoonful and some chopped stem ginger if you have it)
2 Eggs
1 1/2 Gills Milk (210 ml Milk)
1. Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix well with a whisk.
2. Melt the Sugar, Syrup, Marmalade, and Stem Ginger
3. In a separate bowl beat the eggs and add the milk
4. Once melted add the syrup mixture to the dry and mix well, then slowly add the milk and eggs. The mixture will be very thin but thats fine.
5. Bake at 150c in and 8 inch square pan for 1hr until a toothpick comes out the middle clean.
We found the taste and texture of this cake only gets better over the days after its baked.
Originally this was going to be a blueberry yogurt cake as I had seen in made on Smittenkitchen.com recently. When I saw the price at the supermarket for the berries I decided to replace them with the frozen raspberries I already had. As this was only meant as a bit of an experiment with oil based cakes I didn’t really feel like spending £4 on the berries alone. I had only made an oil based cake once before (carrot) and I was not overly pleased with it. I found the taste lacking and frankly the texture was weird, spongey but not in a good way. This however was more successful, the taste was very fresh and fragrant and the texture didn’t seem so much of an issue this time round. Im leaning towards thinking that all oil cakes share a similar texture and that there is nothing wrong with it per se but its just something in not accustomed to.
Lemon Yogurt Anything Cake
Adapted from an Ina Garten Recipe found on Smittenkitchen.com
1 1/2 cups + 1 tblsp Plain Flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Salt
1 Cup Plain Whole-Milk Yogurt
1 Cup plus 1 tblsp Sugar
3 Extra-large Eggs
2 tsp Grated Lemon Zest (aprox 2 lemons)
1/2 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
1/2 Cup Vegetable Oil
1 1/2 Cups Raspberries, fresh (I would avoid frozen in the case of Raspberries)
1/3 Cup Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice
1. Preheat the oven to 175c 350f. Grease a 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 x 2 1/2 Loaf pan and line the base with parchment paper and flour the pan.
2. Sift 1 1/2 cups flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl and in another bowl whisk together the yogurt, 1 cup sugar, eggs, lemon zest, vanilla and oil.
3. Gently whisk the wet ingredients into the dry. Sprinkle the remaining flour over the berries and gently mix to coat the fruit (this is supposed to help the fruit from sinking but mine still did a bit) Fold the fruit carefully into the batter and then pour into prepared pan and bake for 50 + plus minutes until a cake tester comes out clean
4. Whilst the cake bakes put the remaining sugar and the lemon juice in a saucepan and cook until the sugar dissolves, then set aside.
5. Once the cake is done allow it to cool in the pan for 10 mintues before letting cool completely on a wire rack. Whilst cooling on the rack use a toothpick to make holes over the sides and top of the cake and then brush with syrup. Cool fully before eating.
In the ingredients list I suggest not to use frozen raspberries and the reason for this is that when you thaw the fruit it tends to not be in perfect form and is normally in quite a wet state, having been bashed around a bit. I think that because the fruit released more juice than it would have done had it been fresh the texture of the cake would be improved with fresh, although this is a complete hunch as I have only made this the once.
