baking

Chocolate orange marble cake

23 Comments / cake, chocolate, The Ordinary Cook /

I have been craving something chocolatey and orangey for a few days now.  I can’t explain this craving beyond I often crave something choc orangey, or indeed choc coffee-y or choc cherry-y.  You get the picture.

Anyway, we have been invited to the neighbours for a curry night tonight so I thought I should take something sweet along with us. I thought about choc orange cupcakes or choc orange biscuits, but then thought about marble cake and decided that this was the way to go.

Marble cake holds good memories for me.  My mum often made it when we were children, especially for birthdays.  She would colour it like a rainbow using red, green and blue food colouring. That’s a tough birthday cake to beat in my view.

To make it extra special I have covered it with ganache, as this makes it more suitable for dessert it seems to me, but this cake is good just plain and unadorned.

200g softened butter
250g caster sugar
4 eggs
100ml milk
the zest and juice of 1 orange
300g plain white flour
3 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp cocoa powder mixed with 1½ tbsp warm water

For the ganache:
80g good quality chocolate
80ml double cream

Method
Grease and line a loaf tin that measures 21cm x 11cm x 6cm.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until light and fluffy.  Add the zest and juice of the orange and beat again to combine.  Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.  Add the milk and beat again.

Sift the flour and baking powder into the bowl and fold in gently until well combined.

Spoon half of the mixture into another bowl and then add the cocoa and water mixture  to this half and fold well.

Then spoon blobs of each mixture alternately into the loaf tin and carefully level the top.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180°c, gas mark 4 or on the middle shelf of the baking oven of the Four-Oven Aga for 45-50 minutes until firm on top and a skewer comes out clean.  Place the tin onto a wire rack and leave the cake in the tin for ten minutes and then turn out of the tin and onto the wire rack until completely cool.

To make the ganache, break the chocolate into a bowl and pour the cream into a small saucepan.  Heat the cream to just under boiling point and then pour onto the chocolate and stir until the chocolate is melted and the ganache is smooth.  Spoon over the top of the cake.

I hope the neighbours like it.  Fingers crossed. I liked that piece I sliced off for the picture, I hope they don’t mind the missing slice.

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Spelt, almond and chocolate biscuits

16 Comments / biscuits, chocolate, spelt flour /

These little beauties are not radically different from my Chunky Chocolate Biscuits that I posted about last July.  This, I think, goes to show that whilst some say baking is an exact science, you can play around with the ingredients and still produce something good.  The important thing is to get the balance of wet ingredients to dry ingredients right.  It also has to be said that biscuits are more forgiving than cake.  Take the basic recipe and play around with it. If you don’t have spelt flour, use wholemeal flour, or oatmeal, or plain flour.  You can replace the almonds with oats.  The texture will be different but the biscuits will still be good.

This time instead of adding chopped chocolate to the biscuit mixture I decided to coat the biscuits with melted chocolate as soon as they were cool and it turns out this is a good plan because every bite is guaranteed to have some chocolate in it – always a bonus.

Some more advice is that if you are on a New Year’s diet (although why would you be?) try not to eat three with your coffee like I just have.

100g (4oz) softened butter
100g (4oz) light brown soft sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g (4oz) spelt flour
100g (4oz)  ground almonds
25g (1oz) cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder

100g (4oz) good quality chocolate, melted

Method

Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy.  Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until well combined.   Add the spelt, almonds, cocoa and baking powder and fold in until the mixture forms a stiff dough.

Shape dessertspoonfuls into walnut-sized balls and place onto a baking tray.  Leave plenty of room for each biscuit to spread.  Flatten each biscuit slightly with the tines of a fork.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180°c, gas mark 4 or the middle shelf of the baking oven of the four-oven Aga for 12-15 minutes until firm to the touch.  Leave to cool on the trays for five minutes and then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Melt the chocolate and spoon on top of each biscuit.

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Breakfast rolls

4 Comments / bread, breakfast, The Ordinary Cook, yeast cookery /

We have been lucky this year and had a whole two weeks together as a family over Christmas.  It has gone really quick though and we haven’t done as much as we would have liked with our time together.  My cold knocked me out of action for the first week, so a lot of film watching tucked up on the sofa went on and then this week the weather has been fairly miserable. We have managed a few days out.  But I have tried to make a few special breakfasts, we have had pancakes, waffles, oatcakes and yesterday I filled these breakfast rolls with sausages and fried onions.  Is there a better breakfast than that?

These rolls are easy to make and beat supermarket bread hands down.

500g strong white bread flour
2 tsp fine sea salt
7g fast action yeast
1 tsp sugar
150ml warm milk
150ml warm water

Method

Place flour, yeast and sugar in a large bowl mix well, then add salt.  Mix again.  Add warm milk and water (I add just boiled water to the cold milk and this makes it hand hot, which is just about right).  Using a claw action with one hand bring the dough together.  It should be slightly sticky. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for ten minutes until soft and elastic.  Alternatively if you have a free-standing mixer with a dough hook you can put all of the ingredients in and mix on a slow speed for about seven minutes.

Form the dough into a ball and place in a clean bowl.  Cover with a large plastic bag (I use a bin bag) and leave to rise for about 1 ½ hours.  It should double in size.  Using your fingertips gently prod the air out of the dough, turn it onto the work surface and cut into six equal pieces.  Shape each piece into a sausage shape and place onto a well floured baking tray, leaving plenty of room for it double in size again.  Sprinkle each roll lightly with flour.  Cover again with the plastic bag, making a tent shape to leave room for the rolls to rise and leave for about twenty minutes.  After this time they should have risen to just under double their size.

Place the rolls onto a preheated baking sheet into a preheated oven at 200°c, gas mark 6, or directly onto the floor of the roasting oven of the Aga and bake for twenty minutes until golden brown (check after fifteen minutes and if necessary turn the oven down to 180°c, gas mark 4, or move them to the baking oven of the Aga to cook for the last five minutes).  The rolls will sound hollow when tapped.  Leave to cool on a wire rack.

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Chocolate Chestnut Cake

24 Comments / cake, chestnuts, chocolate, vegetarian /

This is a good chocolate cake!  I have been meaning to make it since Rachel made it and that was a whole year ago. It had been on my to make list before that as I had looked at it longingly in Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s The River Cottage Year, which believe it or not I have had in my possession for seven years.  How time flies, and what a long to make list I must have.

It’s a great cake for this time of year, when chestnuts feature heavily on market shelves and in Christmas cooking.  But to be honest it’s a great cake for any time of the year.

It’s easy to make too and can be enjoyed warm for dessert or cold with a cup of tea (or coffee, or a mulled wine).

250g good quality dark chocolate
250g butter
250g peeled and cooked chestnuts (I use vacuum packed as life is too short)
250ml milk
4 eggs, separated
125g caster sugar

Method
Grease and  line a 25cm round cake tin.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a pan over a gentle heat. In another pan heat the chestnuts and milk together until it just comes to the boil.  Remove from the heat and mash the chestnuts into the milk until smooth.

Whisk the egg yolks and caster sugar together until combined.  Pour in the chocolate mixture and the chestnut mixture and whisk together well. I used a balloon whisk to do this.

In a very clean bowl whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks  and then carefully fold into the chocolate and chestnut mixture.  Pour the mixture into the tin and place in a preheated oven at 170°c, gas mark 3, or the baking oven of the Aga for 25-30 minutes, until it is set, but it will still have a little wobble in the centre.

Leave in the tin to cool a little if you are serving warm or leave to cool completely.  Sift cocoa powder over the top.

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Stollen

11 Comments / bread, cake, marzipan, vegetarian, yeast cookery /

Update 8th December 2020: If you would like to learn to make stollen (an updated recipe to this one) and other delicious Christmas breads you can join me on my online Christmas Breads course.

Well, this is the scene outside:

Poor little birds.  The last two days we have had a lot of snow (well, to clarify I am talking about the Midlands region of the UK and we don’t get that much snow normally. So when it snows all day non-stop we like to talk about it.  It’s weather and we are English!).  This has meant that the roads are a no-go area so it was deemed a baking day.  I have had a lump of marzipan (or almond paste) in the fridge since I made the youngest’s birthday cake at the beginning of December and have been meaning to make stollen ever since.

It takes a while to make, and you probably do need to be having a baking day to make this.

100g sultanas
100g raisins
100g currants
100g candied peel, chopped finely
100g ground almonds
50ml rum
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 x 7g sachets of fast acting yeast
225ml warm milk
500g  strong white bread flour
pinch of salt and pepper
1 tsp coriander seeds, ground finely
6 cardamom pods, husks removed and the seeds ground finely to make ½ tsp
¼ tsp grated nutmeg
finely grated zest of 2 lemons
150g butter cubed
100g caster sugar
225g marzipan
icing sugar to dust

Method

Place the fruit and the almonds in a bowl and pour over the rum and the vanilla extract.  Mix well and then cover the bowl with clingfilm and put to one side whilst you make the dough.

Place the flour, salt, pepper, spices, lemon zest and yeast in a bowl  and pour over the warm milk. Mix to form a dough.  I found that it made a stiff dough with some of the flour not mixed in but figured that this was ok as you will be adding butter to the dough. Leave the dough to rest for ten minutes.  If you have a mixer with a dough hook use this to beat in the butter and the sugar.  Then knead the dough for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.  Make it into a ball shape, place back in the bowl and cover with a large plastic bag for about 2 hours until the dough has doubled in size.  It was a cold day when I was making mine so it took a bit longer than this to rise to double its size.

Using your fingertips, gently prod the air out of the dough. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured worktop and prod gently into a square.  Then roll with a rolling pin until it is about 2.5cm thick.  Pour the fruit and almond mixture over the top and then knead the dough until all the fruit is evenly distributed.

Cut the dough in half. Cut the marzipan in half.

Prod one piece of the dough into a square and then use the rolling pin until it measures about 15cm x 20cm.  Roll one piece of the marzipan into a sausage that is slightly shorter than the dough and place this in the middle.  Roll the dough around the marzipan and press it well to seal the seam.  Shape into a log shape and place onto a greased baking sheet.  Repeat the same with the other dough and marzipan.  Make sure you leave plenty of room between the two loaves on the baking sheet so that they can rise without growing into one another.

Cover the baking tray with the large plastic bag, making a tent shape so that the loaves won’t stick to the plastic as they rise and leave to rise again until they have almost doubled in size.

Remove from their plastic tent and cook in a preheated oven at 200°c or gas mark 6, or the bottom of the roasting oven of the Aga for about 40-45 minutes.  If you are cooking in the Aga, check at 25 minutes and if brown, transfer to the baking oven for the rest of the cooking time.

Dust well with icing sugar. Rachel Allen recommends doing this when cool, but I did it as soon as they came out of the oven so some of it glazed a little.

Allow to cool before enjoying and if you can manage it leave it to mature, and then tell me how it tasted.

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Mocha Brownies – inspired by Choclette

12 Comments / cake, chocolate, eggs, pudding, The Ordinary Cook, vegetarian /

I have said before how much I love Choclette’s blog about all things chocolate. Well the other week she posted a recipe for Almond Toffee Brownies and they sounded like they may well be the pinnacle of brownies. Today, I felt like making brownies and so I thought I would try her recipe.  Except that I can never really follow a recipe without feeling the need to mess about with it a bit.  So I haven’t yet discovered whether Choc’s recipe is the pinnacle of brownies, but I am sure it is.

My variation is pretty good, with a sugary crust and very moist brownie underneath.  Choclette normally uses duck eggs in her cooking and as my hens lay quite small eggs instead of 3 egg yolks I used 2 egg yolks and 1 whole egg.  I cooked my brownies for longer too, I don’t know why this was necessary, maybe it’s my Aga or the different size tin – a mystery to me.

120g butter
50g plain chocolate
2 tsp Camp chicory and coffee essence
225g caster sugar
2 egg yolks and 1 whole egg
110g ground almonds

Method

Melt the butter and chocolate together in a bowl suspended over simmering water (make sure the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water). Add the coffee essence.

Whisk together the egg yolk and whole egg with the sugar until fluffy. Fold in the almonds and the chocolate mixture.  Pour into a greased 8 inch square tin and bake in a preheated oven at 180°c, gas mark 4 or in the baking oven of the Aga for 20-25 minutes.  You want it nicely browned on top but still moist in the centre. Leave to cool in the tin and then cut into squares and enjoy with a cup of tea.

Thank you Choclette for yet more inspiration.

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Waffles

20 Comments / breakfast, pudding /

A while back I was reading Nancy’s wonderful blog Good Food Matters and she was saying about the memories created by a waffle maker (check out the post, it really is lovely), now my own daughter had asked me about waffles that very week, asking me what they tasted like and whether  I could make her one.  I don’t own a waffle maker, and it is nigh on impossible to make a waffle without an iron.  My parents asked me what I would like for Christmas, so I asked for a waffle maker.  It was delivered to my door in October – a lovely early Christmas present.

Since then I have been experimenting with different recipes.  Some with whipped egg white, some without, some with buttermilk, some with plain milk. Anyway, I have found that whipping the egg whites does make the waffle a bit lighter, but it also requires another bowl and a bit more work. Buttermilk does add a lovely back note, but it means you have to make sure you have buttermilk in the house.  For these reasons here is the recipe I now use most often.

I haven’t stopped experimenting though and I intend to try yeast waffles soon, and chocolate waffles and buckwheat waffles (like Nancy’s).  I made potato waffles the other week, which were good but not perfect and so require a bit more experimentation before they appear here.

The waffle maker will not be a gadget that sits at the back of our cupboard any time soon and hopefully one day I will be able to write a post like Nancy’s.

200g plain flour
3 tbsp granulated sugar
½ tbsp baking powder
200ml milk
squeeze of lemon juice
60g melted butter
½ tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs

Method

Put the flour, sugar and baking powder in a bowl.  Measure the milk and add the squeeze of lemon juice. Pour the milk, melted butter, vanilla extract and eggs into the flour mixture and whisk well until combined.

Heat the waffle maker or iron according to the manufacturer’s instructions and pour in the mixture and cook until well browned.

Eat warm with butter and maple syrup, or chocolate spread, or jam, or marmalade or anything else that you fancy.

They can also be frozen and warmed through by placing in a toaster or back into the waffle iron.

PS I forgot to say, but if you are looking for further waffle inspiration then check out Mangocheek’s wonderful suggestions for something a bit beyond the basic waffle.

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Plenty of baking going on

12 Comments / The Ordinary Cook /

It has been a busy week.  My youngest daughter turned 4, much to her chagrin, as she would like to stay 3 if that’s alright with everyone else. I have been baking away getting ready for her family party.  The lucky thing had two parties, one at the soft play centre with her friends and one at home for grandparents, aunts and cousins.

I made a cake, a train covered with pink marzipan, but my novelty cake making skills aren’t up to much so I won’t embarrass myself by putting up a picture of it.   Suffice it to say it wouldn’t have got far down the track had it needed to! My first attempt at a novelty cake was a number 1 for my eldest’s first birthday, I was asked if it was a truck or a hammer.  How badly can you do a number 1?  Well, pretty badly it seems.

I made lots of things for the party, most of which have been posted before  such as Aga baked ham, sausage and sage pie and crispie cakes.

I fetched the medlars out of the garage yesterday and most have now bletted so I hope to make jelly and fudge in the next day or so. Wish me luck.  I will report back with the results.

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Ginger cake

25 Comments / cake /

“But baby it’s cold outside” – indulge me for a moment and imagine that I am actually Cerys Matthews and I have the rather lovely Tom Jones serenading me.  Oh well, maybe not.  Still it is cold outside.

On a day like this the only decent place to be is in front of a fire, wrapped in a blanket eating something comforting.  What could be more comforting than a sticky piece of ginger cake?  Well, very little actually.

This cake is good on the day it is baked but it is even better wrapped in foil and left for a couple of days until it reaches its sticky peak.

I am submitting this entry to A Slice of Cherry Pie’s Snowy Day Bake Off because we could all do with a little comfort when the weather is so bitingly cold. If you are reading this on the other side of the hemisphere – you lucky, lucky folk!

This time I have added pieces of stem ginger into the mix, which gives a lovely zingy bite to the cake, but if you don’t happen to have any in the cupboard, feel free to leave it out.  You can also use all plain flour if you don’t have any spelt flour, or use wholemeal flour in the place of the spelt.

This recipe is adapted from Mary Berry’s Gingerbread in The Aga Book, So I always use my small Aga roasting tin which measure 30cm x 20cm.  I line it with foil and grease the foil lightly.

100g (4oz) butter
100g (4oz) soft brown sugar
100g (4oz) golden syrup
100g (4oz) treacle
100g (4oz) plain flour
100g (4oz) spelt flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 ½ tsp ground ginger
½ tsp mixed spice
150ml milk
1 egg
50g stem ginger, diced

Method

Place the butter, sugar, syrup and treacle into a pan and heat gently until the butter is melted and the sugar is dissolved.  Take the pan off the heat. Sift in the flours, baking powder and spices.  Measure the milk in a jug and break in the egg and whisk lightly to combine and pour this over the treacly mixture and flour and stir to combine well.  Add the stem ginger if you are using it and mix in well. Pour into the prepared tin and tip gently to level the mixture.

Place in a preheated oven at 170°c, gas mark 3, or the fourth set of runners of the baking oven of the Aga for 25-30 minutes until springy to the touch.  Place the tin on a wire rack and leave the cake to cool completely.

Sit yourself down with a cup of tea and enjoy a large square and think yourself very lucky that you aren’t a chicken. BBRRRRR!

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Pikelets

65 Comments / yeast cookery /

We always used to have a pikelet when I was a child, it seems though from the Wikipedia entry that pikelet is a term specific to the West Midlands.  Well, this makes me very proud.

A pikelet is a flatter crumpet, or a crumpet made without a crumpet ring. Those of us from the West Midlands know not to mess about when messing about is not needed.

The important thing is not to let your pan get too hot.  You want it just on a medium heat and keep it that way, turning down the heat when necessary. That way the bottom won’t get burned whilst the middle gets cooked.  Don’t turn it until is pretty much cooked and that way you get the maximum burst air bubbles which means maximum butter absorption. I helped the bubble bursting with the tines of a fork, gently probing the top of the bubbles.

This mixture makes about 26 pikelets.  You can eat some straight from the pan, the rest can be frozen for a speedy breakfast later in the week.  Just place back on a hot pan or in the toaster until warmed through.

500g strong bread flour
5g dried fast action yeast (aka easy bake or instant)
2 tsp salt
350ml warm milk
350ml warm water

Method

Put the flour, yeast and salt into a bowl and mix well.  Add the warm water and milk and whisk until well combined.  Cover the bowl with cling film and set aside for about an hour until bubbling (it may take longer if the kitchen is cool).

Spoon ladlefuls onto a pan that is medium-hot.  Leave until the mixture is cooked all the way through.  You will see when this happens that the tops become a little drier than before.  Whilst they are cooking you can help burst the bubbles gently with a fork for maximum holes.  Turn the pikelet over and cook for a minute or so more.

Spread generously with butter and eat warm from the pan.


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