a fruity carrot cake

A few months ago I had a craving for carrot cake and wanted to celebrate having survived my first block of beginner adult ballet classes. Instead of defaulting to my usual favourite recipes I flicked through my baking books to find something slightly different.

Perhaps a controversial statement but I enjoy dried fruit in carrot cakes so this fruitier carrot cake recipe from the Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook appealed to me. I've always meant to try adding raisins or sultanas to my carrot cakes yet somehow this is the first time I've done it.

The resulting cake was well spiced, dark and had satisfying bursts of orange juice-soaked raisins and chunks of walnuts. My only gripe was that it took an eternity to bake in the oven. There's no way the recommended temperature and timing in the book are correct. My gut instinct thought the temperature looked too high and it was right. When I opened the oven door after the recommended 45 minutes the top was borderline burnt yet the inside of the cake was still raw so I turned the temperature down and laid a folded sheet of greaseproof paper on top of the tin to stop the top from burning further.

As I made this a couple of months ago I can't remember how much longer it took, I'm guessing an extra 20-30 minutes. I know that when I baked this cake again a week later I baked it at a lower temperature for at least an hour and it turned out much better.

I also found the cream cheese icing from the recipe slightly too sweet so I added more cream cheese. There's no point in cream cheese icing if you can't taste the tang of the cream cheese! It's almost the best thing about carrot cake, surely?

I think this recipe has the potential to become a favourite with a little bit of tinkering. I just need to write down my changes next time since I have the memory of a goldfish. If/when I do make this cake again I'll update my recipe at the bottom of the post.

As mentioned at the beginning of the post, I baked this cake to celebrate having survived my first block of adult ballet classes without my dodgy back or leg going into sciatic spasm. Yay! Progress, people! I've now finished my second block of classes and making small steps of progress. I can see a difference in my flexibility and I'm feeling slightly less uncoordinated. My core strength is still pants though and I really struggle with stability in pirouttes and turns. I just wobble and fall to the side EVERY DAMN TIME.

I'm also the proud owner of a pair of ballet slippers. My first pair! I was so happy when I put these on my feet for the first time. Childhood dream fulfilled! Darcey Bussel better watch her back. HA!

Carrot cake

Recipe adapted from Clandestine Cake Club Cookbook (Published 2013)

cake:

100g raisins (or sultanas, whichever you prefer)

juice from 1 large orange

175g self-raising flour

1 tsp mixed spice

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 tsp salt

175g soft light brown sugar

2 large eggs

125ml sunflower oil

175g grated carrots

50g chopped walnuts

cream cheese icing:

100g cream cheese (possibly more, sorry I can't remember. Add to taste!)

50g softened butter

225g icing sugar 

1 tsp vanilla extract

First, soak the sultanas in orange juice in a bowl. You can either leave them to soak overnight, or if like me you forget to do that, set the sultanas and juice in a pan and place on the hob over a low heat for about 5 minutes or until the sultanas have soaked up some of the juice.

Grease and line a 20cm round, springform cake tin and preheat the oven. The original recipe says to preheat to 200C/Fan 180C/Gas 6 however I think this is way too high. I would recommend 180C/Fan 160C/Gas 4. I think that's what I went with the second time I made this cake and it turned out better.

Sift together the flour, spices, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a large bowl. Add the sugar and mix. Whisk the eggs in a separate small bowl and add them to the sunflower oil. Pour the egg mix into the flour mixture and mix well. Add the grated carrot, chopped walnuts and soaked sultanas and fold the mixture until fully combined.

Pour the cake batter into the tin and spread it out evenly. The original recipe says to bake for 40-45 minutes but as mentioned earlier I found that to be way off the mark. Baked at the lower temperature I recommend, it should take about an hour. Keep an eye on it after about 50 minutes and if it looks cooked on top but is still raw in the middle when you stick a knife/skewer into the centre of the cake, then put a greaseproof paper hat on it until the cake is fully baked. Once baked, turn the cake out onto a wire rack to cool.

For the icing, beat together the icing sugar and butter then add the cream cheese and vanilla extract. Whisk for a few minutes until very smooth. Spread the icing on top of the cake once the cake is completely cool and decorate with more chopped walnuts and a dusting of cinnamon.

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.

oat and raisin cookies

I was actually looking for a different recipe when I came across these from the first Hummingbird Bakery book and changed my mind. Everything about them appealed to me.

They were crisp around the edges with a thick, slightly chewy centre which is exactly what I want in a cookie, not to mention packed with juicy raisins and warming spices. 

The recipe didn't exactly specify how big to make the cookies or how to measure them out, so I just rolled smallish balls of the mixture and flattened them slightly on the tray. I think I got 36 or 38 in total so you could easily half the batch if you find that an excessive amount, although excessive is never a word I would associate with cookies/biscuits/cakes/cupcakes. I'm unashamedly greedy when it comes to baked goods.

The only other thing I noticed was that mine took an extra 5 minutes in the oven, but most things do as my oven is on the slow side, so just keep an eye on them. You'll know when they're ready when they start to colour slightly round the edges. Remember they'll firm up properly once they cool.

After a quick online search I noticed that Ros has made these before so if you fancy making them too (and you should!) you can find the recipe on her blog The More Than Occasional Baker.

sticky date cake

With snow forecast this week I felt the only way to ease myself into the cold, winter weather was with a slab of cake packed with juicy sultanas, raisins and sticky dates.

This is basically a boiled tea loaf recipe (or Smiddy cake if you're Scottish), but condensed milk is used in place of sugar to add a lovely caramel flavour to the cake. I'm one of those people who enjoys drinking condensed milk straight from the tin so it saddened me that the recipe used a whole tin. There wasn't much left for my sweet tooth to scrape!

Interestingly there are no eggs in this recipe, so there wasn't much rise, but the cake has plenty of moisture and a very soft texture.

My Dad in particular absolutely loved this cake. I think we all liked how deep each slice was, a bit like scaling a cliff face! Stupidly I thought this cake would last us a while due to its size, but it barely lasted three days.

As it's such an old fashioned, homely cake I thought I'd photograph it with Mum's 1970s Denby which we picked up from a charity shop for a couple of pounds last month. I suppose like a boiled fruit cake it's something you'll either love or loathe. Personally I rather like the brown, retro charm.

Sticky date cake

Recipe found on pg26 of "Vintage Cakes" by Jane Brocket. Published 2012 Jacqui Small

275g medjool dates, halved and chopped into sixths
175g raisins
225g sultanas
250g butter
275ml water
1 x 397g tin condensed milk
300g plain flour
1 level tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tbsp orange marmalade

Gently heat the dried fruit, butter, water and condensed milk in a large heavy based saucepan until the butter has melted. Do not over stir as you don't want to break up the dates. Bring the pan to the boil and continue to boil over a medium heat for 3 minutes until the mixture has turned a darker colour and smells of caramel. Stir the mixture occasionally to stop it from sticking. Leave the mixture to cool.

Preheat the oven to gas mark 3/160C and grease and line a 20cm round tin with baking parchment. Once the mixture is cool/lukewarm, sift in the flour and bicarbonate of soda and stir on the marmalade. Mix everything together until well combined and spoon into the prepared tin, levelling the surface. This mixture almost fills the tin but don't worry as it doesn't rise much.

Bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 2- 2 1/2 hours (mine took 2hrs 5 mins, and my oven is usually on the slow side). Check the cake after 1 hour to check the top isn't browning too quickly. If it is (mine was) lay a double thickness of tinfoil over the top of the tin and continue baking. Your cake will be fully baked when a metal skewer/knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave your cake to cool in the tin.

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.