baking

Little blackberry and ginger upside down cakes

~ Kate ~ Leave a comment

blackberry

Not very seasonal – but very nice. This is basically a pineapple upside down cake, purpled. I do this in ounces not metric, because it makes easy proportions with the egg (2 ounces of everything else for every egg).

Makes 6 muffin sized cakes

2 eggs

4 oz self raising flour

4 oz golden caster sugar

4 oz soft butter

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger

A few blackberries

Beat the egg, sugar, butter and flour together (in a food processor for laziness) till whippy. Butter the insides of a muffin tin, pop a layer of blackberries in the bottom of each and top with batter. Cook at 180 or on the grid shelf on the bottom of the Aga roasting oven for 15 minutes.

The creamy gingerness reminds me of the ginger-iced shortbread me and my sisters used to buy on the way home from school.

Lamb burgers, brioche rolls and apple slaw

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lambburger

I think I might stop admitting how many these recipes serve in our house, but this made 3 big burgers and 2 mini burgers, with rolls leftover for breakfast

For the brioche rolls

250g plain flour

100g butter

2 teaspoons sugar

7g yeast

3 eggs

Beaten egg yolk, to glaze

For the burgers

500g lamb mince

1 teaspoon chopped fresh or dried oregano

Black  pepper

1 egg

For the slaw

1 apple

2 carrots

1 onion

4 dessert spoons mayonnaise

1/2 teaspoon creamed horseradish

Yes, making your own brioche rolls when you’ve got a one year old may lead people around you to question your sanity, but there’s not much kneading and only one rise, so these are pretty easy. The recipe for the bread’s from the BBC Good Food website.

Cut the butter into small pieces and rub into the flour (easiest with a food processor), add the sugar, yeast and eggs and mix to a dough. Knead for a couple of minutes (it’s quite wet dough), then turn out onto a floured surface and bring it together into a ball. Divide it into rolls – we had 6 big and 4 little ones – put on a lined baking sheet, cover and leave for two hours to rise.

After they’ve doubled in size, brush the top with egg yolk and put in a hot oven (200 degrees or near the middle-top of the Aga roasting oven) for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix the lamb mince with the egg and seasoning and form into burgers. Get some olive oil hot in a pan and cook till done (about 10 minutes for big burgers). Pop some cheese on to melt during the last couple of minutes of cooking for cheese burgers.

Grate all the slaw veg and stir through the mayonnaise and horseradish.

We split our buns open and piled in the cheese burgers, sliced cherry tomatoes and baby leaf spinach, with the sweet apple slaw on the side.

Banana pancakes

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pancakebanana

Serves 4.5

This is a bastardisation and bananaisation of a Nigella recipe, with the salt and sugar removed and banana and cinnamon added.

2 tablespoons melted butter

225g self raising flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 eggs

300ml whole milk

3 crushed bananas

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Put the butter in a pan to melt, then combine the flour, baking powder, eggs and milk in a bowl. It doesn’t need to be a really smooth batter,  just make sure there are no pockets of flour. Stir in the banana, cinnamon and melted butter.

Use a piece of kitchen towel to rub any vestiges of melted butter onto a hot frying pan and put dessert spoons of the batter in. When they start to bubble turn them over. It’ll take a couple of minutes on each side to get them golden.

Yours are nice with maple syrup. Sorry Bert.

Raspberry brownies

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brownies

Yum.

Makes 8 square brownies

225g dark chocolate

225g butter

150g ground almonds

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

150-200g caster sugar, depending on how sweet your tooth

3 eggs

100g dried cranberries or fresh raspberries

Melt the chocolate and butter together then stir in the remaining ingredients before pouring into a medium sized rectangular tin or oven proof dish. Cook at 180 degrees or in the grid rack on the bottom of an Aga roasing oven for about 25-30 minutes.

I was planning to layer leftovers with cherries and whipped cream to make a deconstructed Black Forest gateau, but there weren’t any.

Little orange and almond cakes

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orangecake

This is a version of a Tom Kerridge recipe. I’ve reduced the sugar and fiddled around with the quantities to make little cakes and to avoid the scales, as cups and tablespoons are a bit less fiddly when a two foot tall person is tapping at your knee. I like a pudding that’s an excuse to get a bit of protein in Bert (egg and almond here), and a lot of the sweetness comes from the orange. In a baby free life, simmering an orange for two hours would be a bit limiting, but if you’re hanging around at home anyway while someone drops small plastic balls into holes, then why not?

Makes 4 small cakes

1 orange

1 cup ground almonds

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon soft brown sugar

2 eggs

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Cover the orange with cold water, bring to the boil and simmer for about one and a half hours till it’s soft. Blend it, skin and all, into a pulp then combine with all the other ingredients. Butter four holes of a muffin tin and fill each nearly to the top. Bake at 160 degrees (or on the grid shelf on the floor of the Aga roasting oven with the cold shelf three rows down from the top) for about 20 minutes, till golden and firm.

I had mine with Greek yoghurt with some honey stirred through. Bert had his naked.