Apple, cranberry and cinnamon cake

Whenever I spot fresh cranberries for sale in the run up to Christmas I excitably buy a pack to make this cake and/or these muffins.

However whenever I look for the recipe in my recipe file I remember I haven't written it down so I have to check my blog archive. . . only to remember I've never given the cake its own blog post either. My only mention of it is in a 2015 festive bakes round up.

I baked this cake again recently and felt it was time to rectify the lack of dedicated blog post. It's only taken close to 10 years. My yellow-tinged, night time photography with zero styling does not do the cake justice but the recipe is documented and should be easier to find in the future.

A used teabag for classy background decor. 

The original recipe was from a lovely old blog called Honey and Dough but I've tweaked it to suit myself over the years. If you still have festive cranberries hiding in your fridge or freezer this is a lovely way to use them up. 

Christmas 2022/New Year when I baked both the cake and the muffins. These were my first bakes in our new home. I still can't quite believe we moved house 2 days before Christmas that year. Madness.

Apple, cranberry and cinnamon cake

Recipe adapted from Honey and Dough blog

125g softened butter/margarine

125g soft light brown sugar 

2 eggs (large)

125g self raising flour

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tblsp milk

1 cooking apple (peeled, cored and sliced)

Approx. 100g fresh cranberries (chopped in half if they're big)

1 tblsp Demerara sugar for sprinkling on top before baking.

Preheat the oven to 160C fan / 180C/ gas mark 4 and grease and line a 7" deep round cake tin.

Beat together the butter and brown sugar in a large bowl with a food mixer until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the flour, cinnamon, vanilla and milk and mix until everything is fully combined. Stir in around half of the cranberries.

Pour the cake batter into the tin and arrange the apple slices on top in a circular fan shape. Scatter the remaining cranberries on top along with a tbsp of demerara sugar.

Bake for approx. 1 hour until golden, well risen, firm to touch and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. I check on mine after 50 minutes and add a layer of greaseproof paper to the top if it looks well coloured but the inside isn't fully baked yet.

Serve with a dusting of icing sugar. Eat warm or cold, both ways are delicious.

festive bakes

It's that time of year again... when I become so disorganised that I lump all of my festive baking into one blog post on Christmas Eve. YAY!

Personally, I find it just isn't Christmas without gingerbread boobie angels and saucy santas. This year I made sure I scheduled in the time to make them as I didn't manage to make any last year and it just felt plain wrong. Their little faces fill me with so much joy! I baked a batch of these to take in to my local music group's Christmas party and they went down an absolute storm.

I also baked a batch of mankini-clad gingerbread men and some questionably styled Tory hipster gentlemen as part of an in joke for some friends. This is probably the height of my piping decoration skills.

The amount of sugar and butter I've gone through in the last couple of weeks is obscene! I can't remember how many bags of sugar were emptied for all the tablet I made but I definitely used up at least 6 packs of butter for shortbread. I have a large extended family so large quantities of foodie presents are needed to take around when visiting relatives over the festive period.

It's always worth the mammoth effort though as I love seeing everything all packaged up with my childish funky handmade labels.

As I had leftover cranberries from my cranberry orange muffins I decided to try the cranberry, apple and cinnamon cake from Hannah's blog, Honey & Dough. I more or less followed the recipe, substituting caster sugar for soft light brown sugar, a cooking apple instead of a granny smith, and added 1/2tsp of vanilla bean paste to the batter. I also mixed some whole cranberries into the batter as well as scattering on top. My cake took twice the length of time to bake, probably due to the amount of fruit I put in, about an hour.

I baked this as a pudding to take to a friend's house last weekend and it was so well received that my friend asked for the recipe and she bought the ingredients the following day so she could make one. Then I decided to bake another too! Needless to say, it's a very tasty cake.

And finally, I baked a couple of ginger syrup bundts. They're full of flavour, keep pretty well and the recipe is nice and simple... unless you're baking whilst really tired and forget to add an ingredient. Yup, I forgot to add baking powder to one of them. Oops! So I got to keep a flatter bundt for myself.

I've been meaning to make mincemeat pies as well but I think I've reached my limit. After baking most evenings for the last two weeks I must admit to feeling rather pooped. You never know though, I might muster up some energy to make some closer to new year.

But for now I'm probably going to put my feet up, drink a lot of tea and wish everybody a very merry Christmas!

Trying to photograph the tree? Ok, I'll sit here then.
Cheers, Bob.

cranberry and orange muffins/cupcakes

Festive baking is now in full swing around here. I think I've baked something every evening since last Friday! The Christmas tree was also put up this week and I decorated it today whilst half watching a fantastically awful Hulk Hogan Christmas film on tv. Can't get much better than that really!

First up with the festive baking are these cranberry and orange muffins which I decided to bake as cupcakes as I really wanted to use my festive cupcake cases from last year. They have really cute patterned bases.

I came across fresh cranberries in the supermarket last week and absolutely had to buy them. I've never seen fresh cranberries to buy before so was pretty excited and immediately started searching for festive cranberry based recipes online. There were a few serious contenders but after a quick family poll these cranberry orange muffins from Sally's Baking Addiction won.

Sally's opening description is spot on - "Buttery and moist, these cranberry orange muffins are heavy on the flavor and bursting with cranberries in each bite." I absolutely loved the tart bursts of cranberry. Despite me loving full on sweetness in bakes I actually really liked that these muffins weren't overly sweet other than the orange icing glaze. They're a good antidote to all the Christmas chocolates, fudge and shortbread and would also make a lovely present for folk who don't like cakes loaded with sugar or icing.

These cupcakes/muffins also smell absolutely amazing. When I opened my cake tin the following morning the most amazing waft of Christmas came out. A heady mix of orange and spice. Lovely!

apple and cinnamon cake

Spring has arrived! The sun has finally appeared, the daffodils are out.... so I've baked an Autumnal flavoured cake. I'm nothing if not contrary.

This is another one of my classic "use the almost out of date/leftover food" bakes. The fruit basket contained a large pile of wrinkled, questionable looking apples as I've been neglecting to snack on them lately, favouring mini KitKats instead. Oops. Nevermind, I made a cake from my sad fruit. Hurray for unhealthy eating habits. Although I could claim this is healthy as it contains apples, sultanas and dried cranberries. That's 3 of my 5 a day.

Speaking of eating sweet stuff and being healthy, last week the dentist told me that my teeth are in very good condition. YAY! Although she did say that my lower set of wisdom teeth have decided to grow in horizontally. It seems even my teeth are contrary buggers.

The only way to celebrate having healthy teeth is to eat more sweet stuff and this cake is a good way to start. I first baked this cake 3 years ago and I'm horrified that it has taken me so long to bake again.

It truly is a beauty of a cake. The squidgy, spiced apple filling is a real treat, as is the crisp, sugary crust. There's a really satisfying balance of textures and flavours so I definitely won't leave it 3 years before I bake it again.

Apple and Cinnamon cake

Recipe slightly adapted from Mary Berry's Baking Bible.

225g (8oz) margarine

225g (8oz) light muscovado sugar

3 large eggs

100g (4oz) chopped pecans

50g (2oz) sultanas

50g (2oz) dried cranberries

225g (8oz) self-raising flour

2 level teaspoons baking powder

400g (14oz) apples, peeled, cored and grated

1 level teaspoon ground cinnamon

To finish:

light muscovado sugar, for sprinkling

chopped walnuts, for sprinkling

icing sugar, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan 160/Gas 4. Grease and line a 23cm (9in) deep round cake tin with baking parchment. Measure the margarine, sugar, eggs, chopped pecans, sultanas, dried cranberries, flour and baking powder into a large bowl and beat for about 2 minutes until thoroughly blended. Spoon half the mixture into the prepared tin then spread the grated apple and ground cinnamon in an even layer on top. Spoon the remaining cake mixture on top, level the surface then sprinkle generously with light muscovado sugar and walnuts.

Bake in the oven for 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 hours until the cake is well risen, golden brown and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes then turn out, peel off the parchment and finish cooling on a wire rack. Dust with icing sugar to serve.

cranberry and orange cupcakes with white chocolate icing

January has been the "bake things I never got round to making in December" month. First the gingerbread biscuits and now these cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery Home Sweet Home book.

There are some gorgeous looking baked goods in this book. HOWEVER... is it just me or are a lot of the cupcake/cake recipes basically their chocolate or vanilla cake batter with slightly different presentation or an extra ingredient/flavour thrown in? I hadn't noticed this in their two previous books, so I felt a bit disappointed, although I will undoubtedly bake more from this book.

One more gripe regarding Hummingbird Bakery recipes... is it just me or is 1 tablespoon of baking powder for a cupcake batter excessive? For a recipe containing 200g-ish of plain flour I would normally think 1 teaspoon or maybe 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder is sufficient. I have had mixed results with Hummingbird Bakery cupcake recipes (something to do with their baking powder ratio perhaps?) and these cupcakes certainly turned out interesting looking. I've never had a mixture turn out like this before. Have you?

In the interest of comparison I baked another batch using a standard victoria sponge mixture, adding in the same amount of orange zest and dried cranberries. I photographed the two batches side by side for your amusement.

After sampling both batches, dare I say, the pimple-tastic volcano cupcakes possibly win in flavour! They have a creamy flavour and soft, close texture whereas the victoria sponge cupcakes are much fluffier. It's a tough contest to call as both are very edible, but I really enjoyed the creamy sponge against the creamy, sweet icing.

 creamy volcano

fluffy cupcake

It was really lovely to bake with orange for a change. So often I bake with lemons, forgetting there are other citrus fruits. It's less in your face than lemon but still really fresh. I always find orange pairs very well with dried fruit, whether it's cranberries or sultanas.

And not enough words can express my love for white chocolate icing. It's just the most delightfully creamy, sweet thing to grace the planet. I must refrain from eating spoonfuls of it like a bowl of ice-cream.

Cranberry and orange cupcakes with white chocolate icing
Recipe from Hummingbird Bakery "Home Sweet Home" book

70g (2 1/2oz) unsalted butter, softened

210g (7 1/2oz) plain flour

250g (9oz) caster sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

210ml (7 1/2fl oz) whole milk (I used semi skimmed)

2 large eggs

60g (2oz) dried cranberries

1 tsp grated orange zest

white chocolate butter icing:
I would suggest halving this as it easily covered both cupcake batches. Unless you're happy to eat a bowlful of it like myself.

60g (2oz) white chocolate, chopped

500g (1lb 2oz) icing sugar

160g (5 1/2oz) unsalted butter, softened (I used half unsalted half salted)

50ml (1 3/4fl oz) milk (semi skimmed)

Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/Gas 3 and line a muffin tray with paper cases. To make the sponge batter mix together the butter, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt until it resembles breadcrumbs. In a jug, whisk together the milk and eggs with a fork. Pour half the eggy milk mixture into the flour mixture and whisk on a slow speed until everything is combined. Turn up the mixer to a medium speed and beat until there are no more lumps. Once smooth, slowly pour in the rest of the eggy milk mixture and mix until the batter is fully combined. Fold in the orange zest and dried cranberries until even dispersed.

Spoon the batter into the cupcake cases filling them about 2/3 full. I think I got 15 or 16 cupcakes from this mixture. Bake for 20-25 minutes until well risen (hopefully not like oddly formed volcanoes) and springy to touch. Leave to cool in their trays for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.

For the icing, start by melting the chocolate in a heatproof bowl in short bursts in the microwave (or in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, whichever technique you prefer.) Set aside to cool. Mix the icing sugar, butter and milk in a large bowl. Start off mixing by hand to minimise the dreaded icing sugar dust cloud, then continue whisking with the mixer for 5 minutes until the icing is light, smooth and fluffy. Add the melted chocolate and whisk until fully incorporated.  Spoon the icing into a piping bag fitted with a nozzle (Wilton 1M tip) and pipe swirls on Mr Whippy style, working from the outside edge swirling in.

fruity apple and pecan... slice?

I'm finally back with a baking post! Look, I baked.... things.

It was meant to be an apple and date nutty slice, but I had no dates so I subbed them for a mixture of dried raisins and cranberries, and I cut the apples so chunky that it didn't particularly "slice". Perhaps not the finest way to return to cake blogging, but it used up some wrinkly apples and annoying leftovers.

I was aware that the amount of apples vastly outnumbered the other ingredients but decided not to change it. After all it's an *apple* slice. Perhaps I should have cut my apple chunks smaller, but I was worried I'd end up with a watery, cooked apple gloop if I chopped them too small. I also think it's more satisfying to come across decent sized chunks, it adds texture, and this traybake certainly has texture - fresh fruit, dried fruit *and* chopped nuts surrounded by a cinnamon-y, dark brown sugar sponge mixture. It's all going on.

Not my most beautiful bake, but it tasted really good. If you doubled up the cake mixture and baked it in a bigger tin you'd have a fantastic autumnal pudding. Mmmm, pass the custard.

Fruity apple and pecan slice

Adapted from Jane Pettigrew's "date and apple slice" in Traditional Teatime Recipes, a National Trust book.

4oz (100g) dark soft brown sugar 

1oz (25g) slightly salted butter, melted

1 large egg, beaten

1 tbsp runny honey

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

4oz (100g) self-raising flour, sifted
4oz (100g) mixed dried fruit - raisins, golden raisins, cranberries
3oz (75g) pecans, roughly chopped

1lb (450g) eating apples, cored and diced with the peel left on (I think I used 3 braeburns and 1 or 2 pink ladies)

Preheat the oven to 200C/Fan 180C/Gas 6. Grease and line a 7 x 11 inch (17.5 x 27.5cm) baking tray. Mix together the sugar, melted butter, egg, honey, cinnamon and flour until everything is fully combined. Stir in the dried fruit, pecans and apple chunks. Tip into the tray and press flat (don't worry about it completely filling your tray, it won't overspill.) Bake for 30-40 minutes until it is golden and firm to touch. Leave to cool in the tin and (attempt to) cut into slices once it's cold.

muesli cookies

There was a disaster yesterday.

The biscuit jar was EMPTY. Not even a rich tea biscuit.

Nothing.

Since nobody was going to venture out to restock our digestive/hobnob/custard cream supply any time soon, I took it upon myself to bake something that evening.

After a quick rummage around the baking cupboard I discovered some dried cranberries and apricots which needed using up, perfect for this muesli cookie recipe I found in my Lakeland book.

I took these out the oven a bit earlier than the recipe stated as they looked golden and I wasn't sure how much they would harden once cool. In hindsight I should have left them in the full allocated time as they're quite chewy, almost like a syrupy flapjack, which is incredibly tasty but I suppose not what they're intended to be.

I'll probably make more in the next couple of days to use up the rest of the cranberries and apricots as I don't think these are going to last long in the biscuit jar!

Crunchy (or not so crunchy in my case) muesli cookies

Recipe from Cupcakes and Cookies by Lakeland, slightly altered to suit what I had

90g rolled oats

150g plain flour

220g caster sugar

2 tsp ground cinnamon

50g flaked almonds

50g chopped dried apricots

50g dried cranberries

125g butter (I think I used 100g unsalted, 25g salted)

2 tbsp golden syrup (go on, lick the spoon, I did)

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tbsp boiling water

Preheat the oven to 150C/Gas 3 and grease and line oven sheets with baking parchment. Mix together the oats, flour, sugar, cinnamon, nuts and fruit. In a saucepan, melt the butter and syrup over a low heat, then add the combined bicarb. soda and boiled water. Mix then add to the dry ingredients. Combine everything together and roll pieces of the mixture into (roughly) tablespoon sized balls. I think the recipe was a bit optimistic claiming the dough makes 36 biscuits, I got around 20 and I personally wouldn't have wanted them any smaller. Space about 5cm apart on the baking trays and flatten slightly with your hand before baking in the oven for roughly 20 minutes.  Cool on trays.

Earl grey tea loaf

There's something a bit old fashioned about a tea loaf so it only seemed appropriate to photograph it with my 1940s Berylware crockery.

This loaf is a great way of using up questionable looking dried fruit as soaking them in the tea plumps them up beautifully. Nobody would know that they are quite possibly past their sell by date.

 

The fruit bursts with orange flavour in this very citrussy flavoured loaf although I think the star of this bake is the syrup topping. It's like a sticky, sweet marmalade. The zingy-ness of it contrasts well the heavier texture of the loaf.

I like to think that this is a healthy bake because of the amount of fruit it contains: dried cranberries, sultanas, raisins, orange and lemon. That's your 5-a-day covered! It's also dairy free.

My only slight niggle is the amount tea flavour. Although Earl Grey is a citrus tea (a black tea blended with the flavour of bergamot oranges) I felt its distinctive flavour didn't quite come through with this loaf (for me anyway) despite the overall flavour being very orangey. If I made this again I would perhaps brew the tea a little longer before adding to the dried fruit.

And that's the end of my mini tea series, hope you enjoyed it! A massive thank you to the folks at Whittards for giving me a lovely tea selection to bake with.

I'm also entering this bake into Kat's Sweet Leftovers Link Party as my dried fruit was on the brink of being thrown out.

Earl grey tea loaf

I came across multiple variations of this Jamie Oliver recipe online. I don't know what the exact recipe is, but this is what I did:

4 earl grey teabags (courtesy of Whittards)

100g dried cranberries

200g sultanas

100g raisins

1 orange, zest and juice

1 duck egg

200g golden caster sugar

400g self-raising flour

1 level tsp. mixed spice

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. ginger

1 lemon, zest and juice

100g caster sugar

200ml water

2 earl grey tea bags

Pour 300ml of boiling water over 4 teabags in a jug. Leave to brew for 5 minutes then remove the teabags. Put all your dried fruit and orange zest in a bowl and pour in the brewed tea. Stir, cover with clingfilm and leave overnight (or if you're a night time baker like me, leave them to soak all day.)

Preheat the oven to Gas 4 and line a 1l loaf tin. Beat the egg in a separate bowl before adding to the soaked fruit. Then add the sugar, flour, spices and orange juice. Mix well and put into the tin. Bake in the centre of the oven for 1hr 10 minutes or until golden on top and a skewer/knife is clean when inserted into the centre of the loaf. Mine actually took about 1hr 30 minutes to cook, covering the top with baking parchment for the last 15-20 minutes to prevent it from burning. Start making the syrup in the last 5-10 minutes of the loaf baking.

For the syrup topping, place 2 teabags in a saucepan with the water, lemon juice and zest. Gently bring to the boil, removing the teabags after a couple of minutes. Add the sugar and bring back to the boil without stirring. On a medium heat let it boil steadily for 5-10 minutes until the mixture has reduced by half and is syrupy. Prick the cake and pour/brush the syrup on top of the cake and leave the loaf to cool in the tin.

Disclaimer: I was sent tea products to bake with as Whittards recognised that I'm a cake/biscuit obsessed crazy tea lady. They're a brand I enjoy and have purchased from before. I was not paid for this post and all opinions expressed are my own.

Festive bakes: round 2

I think I may have finally met my match in terms of baking. I have baked so much in the last week or so that the thought of eating anything sweet almost makes me feel ill! As I am a disorganised blogger I thought I'd cram everything together in another big, festive food post. (My first festive post can be found here.)

First up are these cranberry and white chocolate cookies. I've made these cookies/biscuits before and had forgotten how good they are!

They're crunchy round the edges and slightly chewy in the middle. I love the contrast of tart cranberry and sweet white chocolate. It was difficult stopping everybody from eating these when I was trying to pack them up as gifts.

After the cookies I baked these snickerdoodles, also from the Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days book.

Unfortunately I was really disappointed with these so didn't give them away. I liked the idea of them, sweet and cinnamony, but they came out far too doughy/floury. They were baked as little balls and were meant to flatten during baking but mine stayed fairly ball shaped. Not sure what went wrong there.

After the disappointment of the snickerdoodles I made date and cinnamon shortbread, although I would say it's more of a bar than a shortbread.

I liked the technique of the rubbing together the flour and butter, stirring in the dates and sugar and then dumping the mixture into the tray and pressing it in! This bake scores highly in the no faff ratings. I also sprinkled some of the left over cinnamon sugar from the snickerdoodles on top when it was fresh from the oven which added a lovely touch. My mum and brother really liked these.

I was determined to bake some festive cupcakes this year as I've been dying to use my cute snowman cases. I made some chocolate orange cupcakes, which I have made before, but I decided to use the Hummingbird Bakery's basic chocolate cupcake batter instead with the addition of some grated orange zest.

I love the icing for these cupcakes. I could eat it all day (that could be why I've been feeling ill...) and they look extra pretty with terry's chocolate orange wedges.

I have also baked some basic vanilla cupcakes for the weirdos people who don't like chocolate orange, the sponges for the Christmas trifle and the date traybake for sticky toffee pudding! (We have two puddings for Christmas. Partly out of greediness but mostly because we can't agree on one dessert.)

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas! Hope Santa is good to everybody tomorrow x

White chocolate and cranberry biscuits

Biscuit or cookie, which do you say? I'm all about the biscuit. I can only assume it's the British in me.

I actually started my Wednesday evening baking maple and pecan cupcakes from a new book I received for Christmas, but they ended up a bit funny. I had a feeling this would happen as I didn't like the look of the batter. It contained so much syrup. The cakes are nice reheated though (and would be even better with hot custard!) but not particularly blogworthy, so I went with these biscuits instead which I originally planned to bake at Christmas.

I don't know why I don't bake biscuits more often as I absolutely love them. If I was ever to become morbidly obese, the humble biscuit would be my downfall. It is not safe to leave a biscuit barrel in my direction, I will eat them all, especially if they're of the Fox's variety. I pretty much survived my final year at university on biscuits as I lacked energy and time to cook. My dissertation was produced purely on a diet of chocolate digestives and tea.

Back to these biscuits, I really liked them. Notice the use of past tense, they disappeared very quickly. Before you quickly assume (cheeky!) I didn't eat all of them by myself, my family and my work colleagues got to enjoy them too. I would definitely make these again.

White chocolate and cranberry biscuits/cookies

Recipe from Cake Days, The Hummingbird Bakery.

135g (5oz) unsalted butter (I used mostly margarine and a little salter butter as that's what I had.)

80g (3oz) caster sugar

80g (3oz) soft light brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

190g (7oz) plain flour

1/2 tsp salt (I ignored this as I didn't used unsalted butter)

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

100g (3.5oz) dried cranberries

60g (2oz) white chocolate chips (I made little chunks from a block of chocolate)

Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/Gas 3 and line two baking sheets with baking parchment. Cream together the butter and both sugars, add the egg and vanilla essence and mix all together well. In a separate bowl sift together the flour, salt, cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda, then add to the creamed mixture in two batches. Mix thoroughly until a dough forms (I used a fork for this instead of my mixer). Lastly stir in the chocolate chunks and cranberries.

Break off pieces of the dough (about two tablespoons in size), roll them into balls and place on the prepared baking sheets. Allow five or six balls per tray, remembering to space them well as they will spread during cooking. The recipe says it makes 10-12 cookies although I'm sure I made at least 15. It depends how large you want them!

Place in the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the cookies/biscuits are a light golden on top. Leave on the sheets for about 10 minutes to cool and set before transferring to a wire rack.

I've just realised I forgot to say happy new year in my last post, so happy new year everybody! Let's hope there will be more excellent baking in 2012.

Also I want to say a massive thank you to Alex of Culinary Conquests for passing on a Liebster blog award to me. What a lovely way to start the new year, my first blog award!