Cakes

When my best friend C and two other of my good friends were visiting a few weeks ago, C asked (demanded ;) me to make apple cake. Of course I complied ;) Very simple vanilla cakelets filled with chopped apple and decorated with sliced apple. Very simple but very good :)

For those of you who are curious how big I look 8 months pregnant (I look bigger in real life btw, my dad took a flattering picture ;)



Vanilla apple cakelets

makes 4 mini loafs

75 g (2 ¾ oz) butter
90 g (3 ¼ oz) light brown sugar
1 egg
½ ts vanilla paste
100 g (3 ½ oz) self raising flour
3 tbs (45 ml) creme fraiche or sour cream
1 ½ apple, half chopped and half sliced

Preheat the oven to 160°C. Butter 4 small loaf pans.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla paste and continue to mix for a couple of minutes. Mix on lowest speed while you add half the flour. Mix until combined. Add the creme fraiche or sour cream. Mix until combined. Add the other half of the flour. Mix until combined. Add the chopped apples. Mix until combined.
Divide the mixture over the 4 mini loaf pans. Arrange the sliced apples on top of the mixture. Bake for about 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

I’m sorry about the lack of posting but I just don’t have the energy, neither for baking nor for writing nor for consistly reading all of the lovely blogs that are out there :( My youngest son is a fussy sleeper during the night and tends to wake up a few times. Of course this has its effect on mommy ;) I just hope no. 3 will be more like no. 1 in terms of sleeping. He seems to be relaxed enough, kicking but not kicking too hard.. Let’s just hope that’s a good sign :) A little less than 3 ½ month’s till D-day (or should I say B-day) so we’ll find out soon enough ;)
Even though I don’t have a lot of energy to bake and write blog entries I am pretty proud of myself that I’m studying a lot more actively the past few weeks :) Trying to get as much things done before no. 3 arrives because after that I won’t be able to do a lot for a while. Hope I can keep it up till B-day…
I have several nice recipes that I want to try out (a few even yeast-based) I haven’t gotten round to doing them. But my brother’s birthday is coming up and I promised to make at least one cake. It won’t be anything fancy but just something tasty and something he loves.
During our little trip to London I bought some baking ingredients, stuff that’s either hard to find in the Netherlands or a lot more expensive. The Netherlands is not very forward if it comes to baking ingredients. Things like vanilla paste are very hard if not impossible to find (I told you: not very forward). Vanilla sugar with fake vanilla is the norm over here. You can find vanilla beans but the ones you would find in the supermarket are of poor quality. I have to go to an organic shop to buy organic vanilla beans because at least those are moist and bendable (contrary to most I’ve bought in the supermarket). So when I found vanilla paste in a supermarket in Bromley I was thrilled :) Besides the vanilla paste I also bought rennet, golden syrup and black treacle. And with the black treacle I’m planning to try out Vera’s springerle recipe and see if I can finally use a cookie mold I bought over 4 years ago in Jordan. I’ve tried using short bread dough but I wasn’t able to get the dough out, well not complete and with the impression of the mold ;) Vera’s recipe sounded like it could work for my mold so wish me luck :)
Trying not to let you down too much here’s a recipe of a cake with honey I made a couple of weeks ago. According to my book it is an Ukrainian recipe. It’s a spice and honey cake without a lot of butter and has strong coffee in it as one of the liquids. Seemed good enough to try out. I loved the texture of the cake, airy, moist but not too, and light because it only contains a little bit of butter. Even though they call it a spice cake in the book, the amount of cinnamon is minimal, and I even doubled it. Don’t know if something went wrong when they translated the book in Dutch but ⅛ ts seemed very little. And even the ¼ ts I added didn’t add much of a spicy taste (like I expected). But the cake was delicious despite it. Delicious with or without a spreading of butter with your tea or coffee.
If you like to actually taste spices I would recommend adding (a lot) more cinnamon and/or other spices.

Ukrainian honey cake (adapted from the Dutch translation of Home Baking: The Artful Mix of Flour and Tradition Around the World by Jeffrey Alford and Noami Duguid)

makes 1 loaf cake

2 large eggs, separated and at room temperature
100 g (3 ½ oz) sugar
170 g (6 oz) honey
4 tbs butter, melted and cooled
240 g (8 ½ oz) flour
1 ts baking powder
¼ ts cinnamon
pinch of salt
120 ml (½ cup) strong coffee, luke warm

Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F). Butter and flour a loaf pan.


Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar until they are pale and thick. Add the honey and butter and stir until blended.
Sift the dry ingredients. Add half the dry ingredients to the egg mixture and stir until blended. Add the coffee and stir until blended. Add other half of the dry ingredients and stir until blended.
Whisk the egg whites until stiff. Carefully fold the egg whites into the batter.
Pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool down for 10 minutes before inverting it onto a wire rack. Allow to cool completely.

I have to say that I wasn't really thrilled when I saw this month's Daring Bakers recipe even though I love caramel. It seemed a bit too much to have a caramel cake and caramel frosting. But I decided to keep true to the recipe and see if maybe the combination worked. The only thing I did differently was cover the cake with caramelized chopped hazelnuts (store bought).
All components of the cake were easy to make. The only thing that went wrong was that my caramel sauce crystalized when it cooled. But it was just a matter of reheating to solve that.
The cake is sweeter than your average cake and I didn't really tasted caramel. This type of buttercream, mixing icing sugar with butter is not really my favourite buttercream. It's just not as smooth as your meringue based buttercream. I did like the fact that it used browned butter instead of regular. This in combination with the caramel sauce made it tasting good. Of course it was sweet but that's because it's buttercream ;)
Up till 5 minutes before baking the cake I didn't know if I was making a bigger (but still small) cake or some cupcakes (I made half a batch of everything). I only had mini panettone paper cups and decided to use those. They are quite a bit bigger than regular muffin cups so I ended up filling only 3. I filled them pretty full because I've been reading on the DB forum that the cake didn't rise too much. Also I didn't have enough for 4 cups. End result: they rose quite a bit and were too high to apply icing in a pretty way. So I went for plan B and took the cakelets out of the paper cup and cut off their tops and ended up with mini cakes. Filled them with one layer of buttercream and covered the outside with buttercream. I thought the buttercream was not very cooperative and it took me some time to get a smooth enough layer. Covered the cakes with caramelized chopped hazelnuts which turned out to be tricky because they didn't stick to the buttercream by themselves. Had to stick them to the buttercream one piece at a time...just kidding ;)
Decoration is hazelnuts dipped in caramel.
After tasting the end result I wasn't convinced. Not that it tasted bad, not at all but like A said, something is missing. I think the thing that was missing was another taste to complement the caramel. Obvious choices are dark chocolate and coffee.

Recipe by Shuna Fish Lydon

Hosted by Alex of Blondie and Brownie
Jenny of Foray into Food
Dolores of Chronicles of Culinary Curiosity

You will find the recipe on the sites of the hosts.
Check out this link for all the other Daring Bakers

After my not so positive encounter with ricotta in the form of honey cheesecake I took the bull by its horns again and made another recipe with ricotta right after it. I found an easy recipe on allrecipes.com and decided to try it out.
The bottom part is a cake layer and the upper part is ricotta cheesecake. This time no honey and no cornflour. Instead of using fresh blueberries the original recipe called for I used apples from my best friend's garden and added some homemade blueberry jam (also from her garden). And what do ya know, it was delicious! Ricotta is my friend ;)

This was one from the archives again but I hope that soon I can start baking again. The nausea is very slowly getting better but the smell of cookies is still a bit too much though. I did try baking a cobbler the other day and I could stand the smell :) I plan on making a spinach quiche this weekend. I think we're getting somewhere ;)

This is my contribution to Maninas Eating with the Seasons November edition.

Ricotta cheesecake squares with apples & blueberries (adapted from this recipe on allrecipes.com)

makes a 9 in (23 cm) square

1 cup flour
¾ cup sugar
1 ¼ ts baking powder
⅓ cup milk
¼ cup butter, softened
1 egg
½ ts almond extract
1 ½ cups diced apples
about 5 tbs blueberry jam
2 eggs, beaten
1 ¼ cups ricotta cheese
⅓ cup sugar
½ vanilla bean, seeds only

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Grease a 9 in (23 cm) square baking dish.
In a large bowl, stir together the flour, ¾ cup of sugar, and baking powder. Add the milk, butter, 1 egg, and almond extract. Use an electric mixer to mix on low speed for 1 minute, then on medium speed for 1 minute. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and spread evenly. Sprinkle the diced apples over the batter. Drop small teaspoons of blueberry jam over the batter.
In a medium bowl, stir together 2 beaten eggs, ricotta cheese, ⅓ cup of sugar, and vanilla bean seeds. Spoon this mixture over the blueberries, and spread evenly.
Bake for 55 to 60 minutes until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean (it won't brown very much). Cool completely before cutting into squares.

Before I went to Croatia I promised you the recipe of this cake. Sorry it took so long to finally post about it. Anyways...I kept on seeing this ricotta honey cake in this fun little baking book called Bake It. It looked so delicious that I had to try it out. Also a great way to use up the kg of ricotta that was left over from my birthday party. I was planning to make cheese filled kadaif but the kadaif dough I bought was off even though the use by date was ok. I guess it's wasn't properly stored at the store. Luckily the ricotta's use by date was somewhere in September so I wasn't pressed to use it immediately.
So I finally make this cake and I don't like it :( It's probably just me being difficult so I'm going to give you the recipe regardless.
It was both the taste and the texture I didn't like. I guess the texture had a lot to do with ricotta being the main ingredient. It was the first time I baked with ricotta, even had ricotta. I think the only ricotta I've eaten was inside tortellini. And maybe the fact that I made the recipe gluten-free by using cornflour instead of regular flour had a little bit to do with it too....I don't know.
The honey I used was too heavy, I'm not much of a honey connaisseur so when I read thyme honey in the supermarket it sounded delicious. I did have a little taste and thought it was good but quite heavy but thought it would be ok in the cake...it was not :( The cake was totally edible but just not my cup of tea. Can't win them all ;)
ps I made half the recipe but I thought the nectarines we're a bit too big for the slices of cake. The recipe below is the original size.

Honey ricotta cake with sauteed nectarines (adapted from the Dutch version of Bake It by Murdoch Books)

makes a 18 cm (7 in) cake

1 kg (2 lb 7 oz) ricotta
175 g (6 oz) mild honey
seeds of 1 vanilla bean
60 ml (¼ cup) lemon juice
2 lemons, finely zested
4 eggs, lightly beaten
35 g (1 ¼ oz) flour ( I used cornflour)
2-3 nectarines, in 8 slices each
1 tbs butter

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease a 18 cm (7 in) springform and dust with flour.
Puree the ricotta in a food processor. Add the honey, vanilla bean seeds, lemon juice and zest, and eggs. Mix until well blended. Add the flourand pulse until just blended.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared springform and bake for 1 hour or until lightly golden brown and somewhat soft in the middle. Turn off the oven, open the oven a tiny bit and allow the cake to cool in the oven. Chill the cake in the fridge before taking it out of the springform.
Sautee the nectarines in the butter for 1-2 minutes.
Serve at room temperature with the nectarines.