Everyone loves cupcakes. I hope! When bakeries established solely for the production of cupcakes broke on to the commercial cooking scene a few years ago I could hardly contain my delight. Although the naysayers are spelling the end of the boutique cupcake trend I fervently hope they stick around for many years to come (Cupcakes on Pitt im looking at you!!).
Cupcakes have got to be one of the most diverse and magic member of the cake family. Diverse because they can come in all shapes, sizes, flavours and colours, and magic because no matter how badly you stuff them up, they still look and taste pretty damn good. Unless you forget to put the eggs and milk in them… Anyway, I felt that I had become a bit too pedestrian with my cupcake flavours lately so I decided to branch out. Im not the most adventurous of people so my branching out only extended as far as experimenting with the icing. Baby steps!
I have been very remiss with my blog this month. This year seems to be a very complicated year with each resolution being followed swiftly by a new problem that needs solving asap. This month has been a massive learning curve with mountains of marking, gale force winds, important birthdays and general stress! I think the most shocking lesson to learn was that somehow when I was sleeping words such as LOL, TTYL, TTYL and TTIF have entered the adolescent vernacular. I know that these are abbreviations, but apparently they can be pronounced as actual words. After spending five days in the wilderness with fifteen teenage girls, I feel well versed in the art of teenage conversation! So after being immersed in a culture that has changed dramatically since I was a part of it, I felt I needed to cook something buttery, sweet and slightly squidgy to make up for my general sense of confusion! Thank you Donna Hay for providing a beacon of light to guide and sooth me as I attempt to navigate the confouding morass of teenage popular culture.
Hail Donna Hay, creator of the
Cinnamon Sugar-Coated Maple Apple Cake
I had a bunch of pink lady apples that were on the verge of turning and were lightly too squishy to be eaten by themselves. This recipe made short but tasty work of them! The batter was very wet and sloppy but this made for light but moist cakes. Due to my extreme laziness the amount of butter in the recipe I didn’t even grease the pan and they mostly came out well. If you want the presentation to be perfect though, I would consider greasing the pan thoroughly or even using patty pans as I did have some breakages.
mmmmmm… cinnamony sugary appley goodness!
These are best eaten warm from the oven, so that a little puff of steam escapes when you break them open. You could serve these with cream or ice cream but in my opinion they stand alone and work well as a tasty snack. You can use any kind of muffin pan to cook them in, I cooked them in a large 6 hole texas muffin pan to begin with. Then I decided that Cinnamon Sugar-Coated Maple Apple Bars would be a good idea, so I made them in a mini loaf tin!
Yes, I didn’t grease the pan again. Yes, they broke. Badly. But on the upside, it meant that there were little crispy pieces of yummy buttery cake left in the pan for me to nibble on. And what could be wrong with that?
You could omit the final dousing in sugar and cinnamon and still have a delicious cake. But in my opinion, that would be like having a hot chocolate with skim milk. Why would you do that to yourself? If you’re going to eat a cake, it may as well be the tastiest cake you can lay your hands on. At least thats my argument and im sticking to it!
So, my lovelies, what is the strangest word you have heard recently being used in common conversation? Is it as strange as when one of my students told me that something was so funny that it was a “LOL-cano”? A volcano of LOL.
Cinnamon Sugar-Coated Maple Apple Cakes – From Donna Hays’ Seasons cookbook
Ingredients
2 1/2 (375g) self-raising flour, sifted
1 tsp ground cinnamon
250g butter
1 cup (175g) brown sugar
1/2 cup (125ml) maple syrup
4 eggs
6 red apples, peeled and grated (I had 7 or 8 but they were quite small, I dont think it really matters how many apples you use it will just be more or less appley according to the amount)
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
Method
1. Place the flour and cinnamon in a bowl and mix to combine
2. add the butter, brown sugar, maple syrup, eggs and apple and mix well to combine
3. spoon into twelve well greased 1 cup capacity tins (Donna Hay uses bundt tins but you could do anything) and bake for 20 mins at 180 degrees celsius. If you are using a different type of tin keep checking your cakes as they might take more or less time
4. Turn out of the tins immediately and coat the cakes in extra cinnamon and sugar
5. let cool for a little bit but eat while still warm!
Hooray for Winter! Before I started a concerted effort to use seasonal fruit ad veg, I never realised how many wonderful fruits are in season in Winter. I guess there are some good things about Winter after all… apart from flannel sheets, wood fires, hot dinners, hot lunches, hot chocolates, baked goods, pies, hot desserts, snuggles, cuddles… ok… there are LOTS of good things about Winter. This post has a point, I promise!
Corella Pears!
Im a big fan of the green Packham Pears (spelling?) but I have never been bothered to try any of the other types. So when I saw the recipe for Brown Sugar Sponge with Caramel Pears on the cover of this months Gourmet Traveller that was celebrating the season of the Corella Pear, I thought it was as good an excuse as any to try a different type of pear. Who could resist the serene blush of the Corella Pear? The firm flesh and sweet juice is definitely swoon worthy.
The cake turned out beautifully, and tasted delicious. However, if you have seen the cover of the magazine, you will notice that I made mine half as big. When I was first looking at the recipe, I thought that the four layers were made by making two cakes and cutting them in half. I couldn’t believe it when I realised that this recipe requires you to make FOUR whole cakes that are stacked on top of each other. To appease my ever expanding waistline (sigh.) I decided to halve the recipe and make only two layers.
It turned out quite prettily, it tasted wonderful, so how did this cake nearly spell the end of my kitchen exploits forever?
Firstly, I must say that there was nothing wrong with the cake. In fact, it was one of the most delicious sponges I’ve ever tasted. It was light and fluffy but with a nice depth of flavour that I did not expect. It did fall a little after I took it out of the oven which was a bit disappointing. The top became all wrinkly which wasn’t particularly appealing. But I still had a few tricks up my sleeve and wasn’t going to let a few wrinkles get in my way!
It was the syrup for the Caramelised Pears that almost did me in. It was a beautiful, fragrant syrup with the juice of lemons and blood oranges as well as star anise and cinnamon sticks. I poached the pears in the syrup and then it was time to reduce the liquid for the carmel to be drizzled over the top of the cake. This caramel, was my Waterloo.
I’ve never been great with numbers. The other day, while trying to illustrate a point to one of my classes, I told them that 2+2 didn’t equal 4. And didn’t realise my mistake until one of them told me. So I was all set to halve the ingredients for this liquid as I had halved everything else for this cake. Then I got cocky. I had bought 6 large pears because I couldn’t be bothered to buy 12 small ones and I thought, well, even though I have bought half as many pears, they are twice as big and I should therefore make the full amount of syrup.
I followed the recipe to the letter and transferred the liquid to a high sided frying pan to reduce on a medium high heat for half an hour. Forty five minutes later I was still staring at the syrup that was stubbornly refusing to reduce. I turned the heat up, and began pottering around the kitchen. The logic I was using was that whenever a pot boils over on the stove, I hear it in time due to the sizzling of the water on the hot plate, so therefore if the syrup began to boil over I would hear the rolling boil and the sizzling of the syrup right? Wrong.
Drip, drip, drip, went the boiling syrup over the laminate bench tops onto the polished floorboards. I rushed over to lift the frying pan up off the electric stove and a column of flame shot up from beneath it! I had the sense of mind not to throw the nearest tea towel onto the fire, but I had NO idea what else I should do. In an increasing state of panic as the flames rose higher I started yelling and my amazing sister ran and got a heavy bath towel to smother the flames.
The bench tops were saved, the floor was saved but my poor stove top is still covered with blistered, charred, sugary residue. And the caramel wasn’t all that nice when I finished it the next day.
The caramel ended up being more of a syrup but at least it still looked good!
As I had a few slices of pear left over, I layered them between the two cakes along with a layer of vanilla whipped cream
My oh my, this cake was worth the effort!
So, my lovelies, what have been your kitchen disasters? Have you set anything on fire? And do you have any suggestions for how to save my poor hot plate?!
Brown Sugar Sponge with Caramel Pears – Adapted from the August edition of Gourmet Traveller
Brown Sugar Sponge – Ingredients
6 eggs
80g brown sugar
80g caster sugar
1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped
1/8 tsp baking powder
150g plain flour, triple sieved
60g melted butter – cooled slightly
Brown Sugar Sponge – Method
1. Whisk eggs, sugars and vanilla seeds on a high speed until the mixture is tripled in volume and holds a trail (if you find that your mixture is not thickening, try whisking it over a double boiler, this always works for me!)
2. Transfer to a large bowl and sift flour and baking powder in two batches and fold in gently
3. Fold in butter
4. Divide among two greased 20cm cake tins lined with baking paper
5. Bake at 180 degrees celsius for 15-20 mins or until the cakes are dark golden and the centres spring back from pressed
Caramel Pears – Ingredients (This is for the whole amount of syrup, halve or leave as you desire)
750g caster sugar
Juice and rind of 1 1/2 lemon and 1 1/2 oranges (I used a blood orange and it was BEAUTIFUL!)
2 Cinnamon quills
2 Star anise
1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped
10 small or 5-6 large Corella Pears, peeled, halved, cored (can cut them into smaller slices)
90ml pouring cream
30g butter
Caramel Pears – Method
1. Combine sugar, rinds, juices, spices, vanilla bean and seeds and 1 litre of water in a large saucepan and stir over a medium high heat until sugar dissolves
2. Add pears a cover closely with a round of baking paper and weight with a plate. Bring to a simmer
3. Reduce heat to medium and cook until the pears are tender (20-25 mins)
4. Remove pears from the liquid and set aside
5. Strain the liquid into a large deep sided frying pan and simmer over a medium high heat until the mixture reduces to your liking (If you are looking at the picture on the front cover of the magazine, that must have taken them HOURS of reducing to get that consistency, just giving you the heads up)
6. At this point you can add 120ml of dessert wine, I didnt and my syrup still tasted pretty damn good
7. Ad cream and butter and stir until combined
8. Add pears to pan and cook, spooning caramel over the pears until they are glazed, set aside
Assembly
I made a vanilla bean whipped cream by scraping the seeds of one vanilla bean into some cream them whipping to a light consistency. I layered half the pear slices over the top of one cake then spread the cream over the top. On top of that I placed the second cake then arranged slices of pears over the top. I poured syrup (it didn’t really turn into a caramel) over the top and let it drizzle down the side. If you made the full batch of syrup you will have a lot left over and you can serve this with slices of the cake. Enjoy!
So my resolution to cook more things without chocolate was short lived. Inspired by this thread I thought that the best way to celebrate the end of my (brief) Chocolate Drought was with dense, fudgey brownies. Yummo! I hear you say, and right you are. The title is no overstatement, these babies are BRILLIANT! Just the thing for a chilly Winter’s day.
Be warned, there is a lot of butter in this recipe. But if my scale says ‘0’ then… it cant be that much can it?
True to form, I doubled slightly upped the chocolate dose
Then licked the bowl. Did you expect any less?
I added 5 mins to the cooking time because I used a smaller tin so I was very worried when I took my brownies out and they were quite firm. The last few batches of brownies I had cooked were too dry and I thought I had overcooked these too
Then the top sank and I knew I was in the clear!
mmmmmmmm fudgey…
Now I felt a bit like Nigella when I was eating these. They were so gooey and fudgey that I wanted to roll around on the floor in ecstacy. I always thought her moaning was a little over the top, but if she enjoys eating all her food as much as I enjoyed eating these, I absolutely understand!
The recipe I used was Jamie Oliver’s Bloomin’ Brilliant Brownies found HERE
I did change the nuts and cherries for milk and white chocolate chips and used a 20cm tin because I was lacking a larger tin but they were the only changes I made.
So, my lovelies, what is your favourite chocolate recipe?
