Butterscotch Cake

There’s been a serious lack of cake around here recently. Although, if I’m being perfectly honest, there’s been a serious lack of anything around here recently. Despite a New Year’s Resolution I made to myself to post here once a week, I’ve been suffering a serious bout of ‘cooking block’ recently (it’s a bit like writer’s block, only with more washing up at the end of it.) While I’ve attempted to alleviate this by baking cake-after-cake-after-cake, none of them have been right. A Blood Orange and Lemon cake which involved simmering the fruits whole before blending them into a pulp resulted in a concoction which was lip puckeringly bitter. (It ended up being dumped in the bin while myself and Mr. McMc attempted to whistle the last post.) A Red Wine and Chocolate cake was OK, but slightly too chalky and dry to share with the class, while the hastily snapped pictures I took of it made it look like a gigantic disintegrating doorstop covered in splooge.

Finally, in a last ditch attempt to create something anything which was vaguely dessert-based for Easter dinner, I hit upon the idea of a Butterscotch Cake comprising of an ethereally light vanilla sponge coated in a layer of thick butterscotch.  It was simple, it was delicious and it didn’t require me to grate, boil or pulp anything that could fly out of my mixer and hit me right between the eyes (you may laugh at this, but – real talk – the other day an uncrushed lump of muscovado sugar flew out of the bowl of my KitchenAid and whacked me right in the forehead. I would have found it hilarious if I hadn’t been so shocked.) It was perfect – an addictive slice of buttery, caramelised sweetness which might just be one of the best things to ever come out of my kitchen.

I’d suggest serving it for afternoon tea accompanied by genteel finger sandwiches and tea served out of china cups, but I found that it was best eaten messily with my fingers while watching episode after episode of Community in my pyjamas. And while I’m not entirely sure my blogging mojo has fully returned, it was certainly nice to welcome its brief return with a saucepan full of butterscotch.

BUTTERSCOTCH CAKE (Makes 8 generous slices and 16 slim ones)

For the sponge, I used a mixture of demerara and golden caster sugar which added a nice caramel note. If you don’t have any demerara sugar, just use 150g golden caster sugar. The butterscotch recipe is adapted from Smitten Kitchen (have you bought her recipe book yet? You really should you know.)

You will need:

For the cake

• 150g unsalted butter
• 75g demerara sugar
• 75g golden caster sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 2 tbsp milk
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 150g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt

For the butterscotch sauce

• 125g unsalted butter
• 109g muscovado sugar
• 1118ml double cream
• 1/2 tsp sea salt, plus more to taste
• 1 1/2 tsps vanilla extract, plus more to taste

Make It!

1. Bake your cake: Heat your oven to Gas Mark 4/150°c. Grease a medium sized springform cake tin and line it with baking paper.
2. Beat the softened butter and sugars together until they look light and fluffy. (You can do this with a wooden spoon if you have super-strong arms, but you might prefer to use an electric mixer for this bit.) Add the eggs, milk and vanilla essence and whisk again. The mixture should be thick enough to drip off a spoon and leave a trail in the bowl.
3. Sift the dry ingredients together. (I always use a trick I learned from Delia for this which involves holding the sieve at chest height to ensure that the flour gets a good airing as it falls down into the bowl.) Add the flours to the wet ingredients and gently fold the mixture together until everything is just combined. You don’t want to do this too roughly as then the sponge will lose some of its light airiness.
4. Pour the batter into the prepared tin, and smooth out with a spatula. Bake for 25 – 30 minutes until golden and a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on the side while you get on with the important business of making the butterscotch sauce.
5. Make the butterscotch sauce: Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over a gentle heat. Add the sugar, double cream and salt and whisk together until well blended. Bring to a very gentle boil and cook for about five minutes, whisking occasionally.
6. Remove from heat and add one teaspoon of the vanilla extract, stirring to combine. Dip a spoon in the sauce and carefully taste the sauce to see if you want to add additional pinches or salt or splashes of vanilla. Tweak it to your taste, whisking well after each addition.  Leave the sauce to cool for a minute until it has thickened slightly.
7. Remove the cake from the tin and place on a (large) plate. Pour the butterscotch sauce generously over the cake until it is fully covered. If you have any sauce left over, I highly suggest eating it straight from the pan with a large spoon until you feel a bit sick.
8. Once the cake is cool and the butterscotch sauce has hardened, slice the cake and serve with coffee. Leftovers can be kept in an airtight tin for up to five days (but trust me, it probably won’t last that long.)

Toffee Apple Cake

No one likes it when people moan about how busy they are (because hey, isn’t everyone incredibly busy? It feels like half of the people I know are currently ill from stress induced lurgy) but – real talk – life feels ever so slightly chaotic at the moment. I feel as though I live in a world of deadlines, stress and poor sleep patterns occasionally disrupted by the occasional visit to the pub. I’ve found myself desperately inhaling gigantic portions of spinach in an attempt to keep my iron levels up so I don’t fall asleep underneath my desk. It’s come to the point where I’m actually looking forward to my eight hour flight to New York (#humblebrag) next Tuesday as it will be eight hours where I can read, watch crap TV and drink cheap wine without worrying that I should be somewhere doing something.

I’ve mentioned before that when life gets too much for me to handle, I head to my kitchen to indulge in a bit of displacement-therapy baking. Baking-hell-hath-no-fury like a woman who’s on a deadline and is procrastinating by making a gigantic cake. This was the case in my kitchen last Saturday where I was putting real life at bay by closing the door and attempting to cook with every perishable ingredient I could find. The nice people at Fruitdrop, an office fruit delivery service, had recently sent me a box stuffed full of apples, plums, oranges and bananas. After eating a fair amount of the fruit (and forcing giant carrier bags full of bananas onto my colleagues), I decided to make a Bonfire night inspired Toffee Apple Cake.

I’ve adapted this recipe from one I saw on the Great British Bake Off. While the cake on there is an exotic creature full of caramel crowns and orange zest, this is a slightly more homely offering. However, looks aren’t everything, and this is full of squidgy toffee flavour (helped in no small part by the demerera sugar used in the sponge), warm, sweet wintry spices and a good whack of booze (I used Courvoisier, but any brandy will do. If you’ve got any Calvados hanging around, I’d suggest throwing that in there.) The proof of any pudding is in the eating, and when I took this cake to a party on Saturday night, it was quite gratifying to see it all gobbled up. If you want to get fancy, you could always smother it in custard, or a butterscotch sauce, but I preferred to just eat chunks of it whole while standing by my stove and basking in the radiance of a bit of much-needed-me-time.

TOFFEE APPLE CAKE

Adapted from a recipe originally seen on the Great British Bake Off

You will need:

For the toffee apple topping

• 200g caster sugar
• 3 large Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced into medium-sized wedges (they should be roughly the thickness of a pound coin)

For the cake

• 225g unsalted butter, softened
• 125g demerera sugar
• 100g soft brown sugar
• 225g self-raising flour
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 4 medium free-range eggs, at room temperature
• 60ml tbsp whole milk
• 2 shots of brandy (I used Courvoisier)
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg

Make It!

1. Thoroughly grease a medium sized springform cake tin (I like to spray the tin with spray oil for this – it works a treat.) Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4.
2. For the topping, put a small saucepan over a high heat. Add the sugar and three tablespoons of water and cook until it the sugar melts and turns amber – do not stir at any point, although you may want to give it a quick swirl towards the end to ensure that all the sugar is browned. Remove the pan from the heat and carefully pour the toffee into the lined baking tin, taking care to cover the base completely. BE CAREFUL – hot molten sugar can burn you quite badly, and it’s also a bugger to get off surfaces once it’s cooled. Place the apple wedges in three rows on top of the toffee.
3. For the cake, beat the butter, demerera sugar and soft brown sugar until pale and fluffy. Sift together the flour and bicarbonate of soda and add a tablespoon of this to the butter mix along with one egg. Mix until combined and repeat the process until all the flour and eggs have been used. Stir in the milk, brandy, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg. Pour into the cake tin and gently smooth with a spatula.
4. Bake the cake for 40-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. Using oven gloves, place a cooling rack over the tin and flip the cake over, making sure that you take care not to burn yourself on any hot caramel that may leak from the tin. Leave to cool for five – ten minutes, then remove from the tin and set aside to cool completely.
5. Cut yourself a big slice of this bad boy and enjoy.

Mushroom & (Smoked) Garlic Quiche

I’ve been taking packed lunches to work with me recently. Ostensibly, this is because I am trying to save money (and the amount of money I’ve been spending on disappointing sandwiches recently is frankly ludicrous). However, it’s also because I am a giant glutton. If I had my way, I’d be gorging myself on huge slabs of brownies and bowls of pork-laden ramen noodles each day. While these are always wonderful, woman cannot live on bowls of soup which contain deep fried eggs alone. Especially when said woman is attempting to train for a 10k. Ever tried to do a five mile run after eating your own bodyweight in Mexican food? I really don’t recommend it. Turns out that gyms aren’t fond of you threatening to do sneaky voms behind the rowing machine.

However, as anyone who has ever worked in an office will know, microwave space is at a premium at lunchtimes. By the time you’ve waited for a giant queue of your colleagues to heat up their Super Noodles at 12.30 each day, you’ve only got ten minutes to gulp your food down before you have to head back to your desk. So, I’ve taken to bringing my own pre-made lunches to work, much like the ones my Mum used to lovingly pack for me when I was a kid. However, instead of ham sandwiches and mini rolls, I’m feasting on giant tubs of salads and baked products like this Mushroom and (Smoked) Garlic Quiche.

Making quiche always fills me with a sense of pride, like I’m Bootle’s answer to Delia Smith.  It’s the kind of baking endeavour that you do on a rainy Sunday afternoon while listening to a crap play on Radio 4, just losing yourself in an orgy of chopping, and sweating and pre-baking. I used smoked garlic for my quiche, mainly because I’d recently bought a bulb of it from the Manchester Food and Drink festival and was looking for a use for it which didn’t just involve sticking it up a chicken’s rear end. However, if you can’t find smoked garlic, ordinary garlic will do just as well. As always when you’re making anything involving pastry, the key is to keep everything REALLY REALLY cold. Use cold butter and ice water, and if it starts getting a bit messy, just bung it back in the fridge. Yes, it means the whole process takes that little bit longer, but at least you’ll be left with a pastry case that actually looks and tastes good, rather than one made out of tears and fail.

To make this into a lunch to remember, serve with a bowl of hot soup, or a nice salad. Do pair it with something substantial though. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself scoffing a giant slab of it for elevenses at work and be left wondering what you’re going to have for lunch now. Much like me. Oh well, at least my intentions were good anyway.

P.S. I’m off to the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards tonight to represent ‘Little Red Courgette’. I have nails the colour of a Disney villain and I’m wearing a dress which makes me look like a sexy witch with a fox on her crotch. Wish me luck!

P.P.S. I’ve also been nominated for a Blog North award which is doubly exciting. I find out the results on the 17th October, and will keep you posted. Wish me double luck!

MUSHROOM AND (SMOKED) GARLIC QUICHE   (Serves Four)

You will need:

For the pastry

• 50g cold butter, cut into cubes
• 120g plain flour
• 25g parmesan cheese, grated
• A pinch of salt

For the filling

• 1 punnet of mushrooms, chopped into slices
• 1 onion, sliced
• 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 3 large eggs, beaten
• 100g crème fraiche (the full fat stuff please – go hard or go home)
• 1 tsp of thyme
• 25g cheddar, grated
• 25g parmesan, grated

Make It!

1. Rub the butter into the flour, then add the parmesan and salt. Add a tablespoon of ice cold water and combine until it forms a dough. (Alternatively, if you have a food processor, pulse all of the ingredients together with some water until it forms a slightly sticky dough). Cover with cling film and chill in the fridge for half an hour.
2. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface, and then line a tart tin with it. Make sure that you press the dough firmly into the tin – you can use a small ball of spare dough to press it into all the nooks and crannies. If the dough starts getting a bit sweaty and floppy, just pop it back in the fridge for a few minutes to set. Line the dough with some baking parchment and baking beads, and then pre-bake in the oven at Gas Mark 4/200 degrees C for 20 minutes. To get a nice golden crust, paint the inside with a little beaten egg (you can use this from the filling ingredients) and bake for another five minutes.
3. While the pastry case is baking, sweat the mushrooms in some butter until they turn brown. Remove from the pan and place to one side. Then, sweat the onion in some more butter and oil for 15-20 minutes until it has caramelised (it should have taken on a golden brown colour). Add the garlic, and cook for another five minutes or so.
4. Mix the beaten eggs and crème fraiche together until fully combined. Add the grated cheddar to the tart case, then the mushrooms, then the onions and garlic. Pour the egg-crème-fraiche mixture over the vegetables, then top with the grated parmesan. Bake the tart at 200 degrees C/Gas Mark 4 for 30-40 minutes until the golden and fluffy, and the centre feels firm.
5. Serve with a crisp salad, and a large glass of something equally crisp and alcoholic.

Momofuku Milk Bar’s Cornflake-Chocolate Chip-Marshmallow Cookies

Ah the joy of Bank Holidays. There’s something unequivocally British about them; with their awful weather, terrible TV and pathetic excuses for public transport. In true ‘English-person-with-their-head-in-the-sand’ style, Mr. Cay and I had planned to go to Southport for a day trip on Monday. My only prior experience of Southport has been an ill-advised family trip to a Pontins Holiday camp there when I was seven. I got into a fight with a bloke dressed as a giant crocodile and my brother got very bad stomach flu. To be honest, it was a miserable experience for everyone involved. But, I was prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt this time, mainly because I’d been led to believe that it was a place which served up excellent donuts and fish & chips, and also because it was only a 30 minute train journey from our house. Then the trains decided to go kaput. I’m not good with rail replacement services at the best of times, but especially not when I could be at home drinking wine and watching Dexter.

When life hands you a cancelled adventure, the only right and proper course of action is to make cookies. I’d been meaning to make Christina Tosi’s (of Momofuku Milk Bar fame) Cornflake-Chocolate Chip-Marshmallow cookies for a while, but had never gotten the chance. Despite my ridiculous girl-crush on her (hey, we bakers-called-Christina have to stick together) it seemed like a lot of faffing for a plateful of biscuits; all that cornflake-crunching, butter-creaming and dough resting, and going to the shops to buy skimmed milk powder. But with a spare day on my hands, and some serious book-writing-displacement-activity to indulge in, it seemed churlish not to at least give them a try.

And man, I’m glad I did. These cookies may just be the best cookies I’ve ever tasted in my life – a riot of tastes and textures. First, there’s the wonderful toffee notes of the (seriously addictive) cornflake crunch, followed by a hit of chocolate and wonderfully gooey melted marshmallows. Yes, it’s a sugar bomb, but it’s a sugar bomb which packs one hell of a punch. I took a batch of these into my office yesterday and couldn’t help feeling a note of pride when they were devoured in record time.

There are a few things to consider when you’re baking these though. First, mixing and resting the dough is vital. My trusty hand mixer actually conked out on me halfway through making these, causing me to curse £6 ASDA home baking equipment and pray for God to deliver me a KitchenAid for a wedding present. Secondly, don’t skimp on the dough when you’re portioning these out for baking. They spread out quite a bit when they’re baking, so if the balls of cookie dough aren’t large enough, they’ll be too thin and burn before you know it.

Other than that, I can’t think of a better way to waste an afternoon in a kitchen. Sorry Southport, nothing personal. But I think that this time, I got the better end of the deal.

CORNFLAKE CRUNCH

You will need:

• 120g cornflakes (I used Crunchy Nut cornflakes)
• 40g skimmed milk powder
• 40g white sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 130g unsalted butter, melted

Make It!

1. Heat the oven to 200 degrees C/Gas Mark 4.
2. Pour the cornflakes in a medium bowl and crush them with your hands to 1/4 of their original size. Add the milk powder, sguar, and salt and toss to mix. Add the butter and toss to coat. As you toss, the butter will act like a glue, binding the dry ingredients to the cereal and creating small clusters.
3.  Spread the clusters onto a baking parchment lined baking sheet, and bake for 20 minutes, at which point they should look toasted, smell buttery and crunch gently when cooled slightly and chewed.
4. Cool the cornflake crunch completely before storing or using in a recipe. Stored in an airtight container at room temperature, the crunch will keep fresh for 1 week; in the fridge or freezer, it will keep for one month.

CORNFLAKE-CHOCOLATE CHIP-MARSHMALLOW COOKIES (Makes 15-20 cookies)

Adapted from the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook

You will need:

• 225g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 250g granulated sugar
• 150g light brown sugar
• 1 medium sized egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 240g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/4 tsp salt
• 270g Cornflake crunch
• 125g chocolate chips
• 65g mini marshmallows

Make It:

1. Combine the butter and sugars in a bowl. Cream the two together with a hand mixer for 2-3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the egg and vanilla and beat again for 7-8 minutes. Do not skip this part. This is a very important step to achieving the right consistency for Milkbar Cookies (If you’re lucky enough to own a KitchenAid, this is where it will come in handy. If you don’t, be prepared to develop some serious upper-arm muscles).
2. Turn your hand mixer/stand mixer to low and add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix just until the dough comes together, no longer than 1 minute (Don’t do it for any longer, or you  risk overmixing the dough). Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula.
   Add the cornflake crunch and mini chocolate chips to the dough and mix for 30-45 seconds, until they are just incorporated. Add the mini marshmallows, and mix for another 30 seconds.
3. Portion out your dough into balls which are (roughly) the size of your fist onto a parchment lined sheet pan.  Don’t make them any smaller than this – if you do, they’ll be too thin, and won’t obtain that lovely chewy effect. Pat the tops of the cookie dough domes flat, wrap the sheet tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to 1 week. Do not bake your cookies from room temperature- they will not hold their shape.
4. Heat your oven to 2oo degrees C/Gas Mark 4. Arrange the chlled dough a minimum of 4 inches apart on a parchment-lined sheet pans. Bake for 12 minutes. The cookies will puff, crackle and spread. At the 12 minute mark, the cookies should be browned on the edges and just beginning to brown toward the center. Leave them in the oven for an additional minute or so if they aren’t and they still seem pale and doughy on the surface.
5. Cool the cookies completely before transferring to a plate or an airtight container for storage. At room temperature the cookies will keep fresh for 5 days; in the freezer, they will keep for 1 month.

Honey Spice Cake

I didn’t get Easter eggs this year. Don’t worry, I wasn’t too miffed about the situation – I’m more a savoury than sweet kind of girl, and Easter eggs just don’t taste the same if they’ve not been shattered by my younger brother headbutting them into little chocolatey shards. Instead, I spent my Easter doing what I do best. Baking. I’d like to think that if Jesus was around nowadays, he’d be less interested in people gorging themselves on chocolate, and more interested in people gnawing on delicious looking cakes and gigantic legs of lamb. Then again, if Jesus was around now, I’m sure he’d be a massive hit at cocktail parties with that whole ‘turning water into wine’ trick of his.

And so, on Sunday, I rolled my sleeves up and pootled off to ASDA on my bike for baking supplies. I originally intended for this to be a spiced stout cake, if only to attone for the Humingbird Bakery Chocolate Stout cake which I attempted to make (with a cracking hangover) for Mother’s Day, and which resulted in an overly sweet pile of crumbs which was only held together by a heart-attack-inducing amount of cream cheese. But alas, it wasn’t to be. Mainly because ASDA was closed, so I had to turn to the heathen cornershops of Bootle for salvation.

When life gives you a major supermarket-unfriendly-bank holiday that you’ve forgotten about because you have your head in the clouds, you have to improvise. So, I decided to replace the stout with some Hobgoblin ale, the black treacle with some honey, and glazed the bugger with a combination of icing sugar, and my old friend Mr. Ginger Cordial. What resulted was a beautiful, golden coloured cake, full of toffee flavours and a good whack of warming, zingy spice – like a giant toffee mince pie. It’s also wonderfully moist, a huge squidgey slice of comfort.

OK, so it may not have been particularly seasonal, but (if my poor recollection of my R.E. lessons from school serves me well), Jesus was more likely to relax with a delicious snack of honey when he wasn’t hanging out with his disciples than he was a giant chocolate egg…

HONEY SPICE CAKE (Makes one medium sized cake, containing 10-12 slices)

You will need:

• 360g self raising flour
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 5 pods cardamom – seeds ground in a pestle and mortar
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon allspice
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 200g unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
• 150g firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 350ml ruby ale (I used Hobgoblin)
• 2 large eggs, beaten lightly

For the glaze

• 3 tablespons milk
• 100g icing sugar
• 3 tablespoons ginger cordial

Make It!

1. Preheat the oven to 200°c/gas mark 4. and butter a medium sized springform cake tin.
2. Into a large bowl sift together the self raising flour,  salt,  and the spices.
3. Combine the ruby ale, butter and honey in a medium sized pan, and heat gently until the butter has melted and is foaming slightly. Take off the heat, add the brown sugar and leave to cool.
4. Whisk the eggs in a small bowl, and add to the cooled honey-butter-beer mixture. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and whisk until a firm, gloppy batter has been formed. Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Leave it to cool completely before turning the cake out onto a cooling rack.
5. In a small bowl whisk together the icing sugar, milk and ginger cordial. Pour the glaze carefully over the cake, letting it drip down the sides. Brush the glaze over the the surface area with a small pastry brush until the entire cake is covered. Allow to stand for 30 minutes, or until the glaze is set.

Cardamom-Cinnamon Crumb Loaf

For various reasons (ostensibly because of “book research” but also because of “boredom”, “procrastination techniques” and “hangovers”) I’ve been watching a lot of food programmes recently which have been fronted by women.  These all tend to follow a bit of a pattern – a model-pretty female cook (usually in her mid 20s – early 30s), dressed immaculately in a vintage gown, floats around an urban landscape picking up artisan goodies for a little soirée she is holding for some friends that evening. After a few token shots of her chuckling with a homely shopkeeper and squeezing some ripe fruit with her perfectly manicured fingers, she wafts home to her giant, beautifully attired kitchen where she coos over some cake batter that she’s just whipped up in her hot pink KitchenAid. A few minutes later, and she’s constructed a beautiful multi-layed confection, swathed in picture perfect icing which she will then slice, take a dainty bite of and declare to be “divine!” or “swoonsome!” before she shoves it to one side, lest she be tempted to scoff the whole thing and ruin her perfect figure.

Of course, it’s churlish of me to be annoyed by these kinds of programmes. After all, they’re designed for the sole purpose of escapism – for people like me to lose themselves daydreaming about how they could attain that perfect lifestyle, where the biggest worry a girl can have in a day is whether her local deli is stocking her favourite brand of  icing sugar. “But these women are charming!” people tell me. “They’re sweet as buttons and wouldn’t hurt a fly! How could you possibly take offence to them? What’s so wrong about a beautiful woman making cake?”

Well, as a decidedly unbeautiful woman who is quite fond of making cakes, I think I’d quite like to see a bit more realism in my female-orientated food programming. Perhaps, just for once, I’d like to see a show which involves a  harassed looking woman (preferably with a face like a frying pan, but it’s TV and I know they can be funny about these kinds of things) running around a Sainsbury’s Local after work desperately wondering how the shitting hell she is going to fit in going for a run, making her tea and getting her Google Reader down to zero before she passes out on the sofa whilst watching Seinfeld. I’d like to see a woman show us how to cook a Sunday Lunch for her extended family whilst wrestling  with a force 10 port-acquired hangover and trying not to throw up in the gravy jug. I’d like to see a working woman with kids attempting to figure out how she’s going to cook a decent meal for them on a limited budget after finishing an eight hour shift.

Women aren’t stupid. And whilst there are many of us who enjoy baking, it’s a litle bit patronising to presume that we’ll fall over with joy every time we see a female chef whipping up some “naughty little treats” on TV. So come on production companies, cut us a little slack. Stop treating us like twee little imbeciles. Give us some blood and spice with our sugar.

And on that note, here’s some cake.

CARDAMOM-CINNAMON CRUMB LOAF (Makes one medium sized loaf)

For the loaf cake

• 300g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp vanilla essence
• 200g unsalted butter
• 150g soft brown sugar
• 2 medium eggs
• 200ml single cream

For the cardamom-cinnamon crumb

• 75g butter
• 75g soft brown sugar
• 75g plain flour
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• The seeds from 6 cardamom pods, ground in a pestle and mortar

Make It!

1. First, grease a medium sized loaf tin well, and heat your oven up to Gas Mark 4/200 degrees c.
2. Sift your plain flour and baking powder together in a medium sized bowl. Add the brown sugar and combine well with a wooden spoon.
3. Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Leave to cool for around five minutes, then add the eggs, vanilla essence and cream.
4. Combine the wet ingredients with the flour and sugar mixture until a firm, sticky batter has been formed. If you find the batter to be a bit dry, add a touch more cream. Pour the batter into your loaf tin.
5. Now, make your crumb topping. Place the buter, flour, sugar, cinnamon and cardamom in a bowl and combine well with your fingers until rough sticky ‘crumbs’ have been formed. Layer these on top of the loaf cake batter.
6. Bake the loaf cake at Gas Mark 4/200 degrees C for around 45 minutes-1 hour. The cake is done when the crumb has become browned and firm, and when a toothpick comes out clear when inserted into the cake.
7. Serve with coffee and a side order of misanthropy.

Earl Grey Cake with Lemon Glaze

 ”Talk and tea is his speciality,’ said Giles. ‘Come along inside… We’ll see if tea and buns can make the world a better place.”

There may be something quite twee about starting a post with a quote from Wind in the Willows, but I firmly subscribe to the idea that tea and cake does make the world a better place. Saying that, I also believe that having a slice of cake for breakfast, dinner and tea constitutes a balanced diet. It’s a balm for the soul – guaranteed to make even the worst of situations seem that little bit better.

I woke up on Sunday after a riotous few days of eating, drinking and dancing, and realised I hadn’t made a cake in ages. The past few weeks have been ridiculously busy with work, wedding planning and other life admin, and I wanted to calm my mood by losing myself in a frenzy of whisking, bowl licking and icing.  So, I set about rummaging through my cupboards to see what ingredients I could combine to turn into something tasty.

Spring is in the air in Bootle at the moment, and, despite all the diurnal temper tantrums that March inevitably brings, there’s a real feeling of freshness, of the world reawakening after the long dark Winter months. I’d recently seen a recipe for Earl Grey Cake on the lovely baking blog Raspberri Cupcakes, and immediately knew that it was just the thing I was looking for.

The idea of putting bitter tea leaves into a sweet cake may seem like an odd one. But Earl Grey tea actually adds a lovely dimension to baked products, providing them with a lovely pop of citrus and bergamot without being overwhelming. A lemon glaze just gilds the lily slightly, adding a nice bit of zing. The overall effect is comforting and curiously addictive – both myself and Mr. Cay have kept creeping back to the kitchen over the past few days to sneak surreptitious slices. It may not look like much, but this cake might just be one of the best things I’ve baked this year.

EARL GREY CAKE WITH LEMON GLAZE

Earl Grey Cake recipe adapted from Raspberri Cupcakes

You will need:

For the cake

• 2 Earl Grey tea bags (about 3 tsp leaves)
• 60ml boiling water
• 80ml milk
• 100g butter, at room temperature
• 2 medium sized eggs
• 160g caster sugar
• 190g self-raising flour

For the lemon glaze

• 3 tbsp icing sugar
• 3 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp grated lemon zest
• 1 tbsp milk

Make It!

1. Preheat oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4. Grease and line a medium sized cake tin. Empty the tea leaves from the tea bags into a cup and add the boiling water. Steep for 3 minutes then add milk to cup.
2. Place butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and beat until light and fluffy. Then, add the eggs one at a time, beating until smooth. Next gradually add the flour and tea mixture, alternating between wet and dry ingredients. Beat gently until just combined.
3. Pour mixture into prepared tin and bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden and a skewer inserted in the cake comes out clean. Remove from the oven and allow to cool. After around five minutes, turn it out onto a wire rack or a large plate.
4. Whilst the cake is cooling, make the glaze. Sift the icing sugar into a bowl and add the lemon juice, lemon zest and the milk. Beat until smooth and glossy (feel free to add more icing sugar to the glaze if you feel it looks a bit thin)
5. Once the cake is sufficiently cool (this should take around twenty minutes or so), pour the glaze over it. I like to take a small pastry brush and brush the glaze over the sides so that it’s almost entirely covered with zesty sugary goodness.
6. Serve immediately. This cake tastes good when freshly made, and even better when refridgerated overnight.

Apple and Sultana Spice Loaf

I’ve just spent a very pleasant few days at Supersonic Festival in Birmingham, where I listened to a lot of very eclectic, VERY NOISY music (personal highlights being Cloaks, Scorn, Teeth of the Sea, Klaus Kinski (a group of boys who played guitars and screamed at lot whilst jumping off masonry and wearing short-shorts), Zombi, Cut Hands and Silver Apples), drank a lot of booze and ate a lot of cake.

I’m pretty much convinced that as well as putting on some of the most interesting bands of any music festival currently taking place in the U.K, Supersonic also serves up the best cake. Myself, Mr. Cay and a few other miscreants all spent a lovely hour on Sunday afternoon munching on sweet treats and cooing over our friends John and Maria’s adorable baby son. I indulged in a slice of Apple and Sultana Loaf, which was heady with cinnamon, and just the thing to recharge my batteries after two days of having my eardrums beaten to a bloody pulp with ‘power electronics’.

I’ve thought about that cake a lot since returning to Liverpool, so, I decided to head to my kitchen and attempt to recreate it for myself. Whereas the version I ate seemed to only use cinnamon, I decided to make mine slightly punchier (and a bit more Autumnal) by adding allspice, ginger and nutmeg. I also layered the top with some apple slices which were then sprinkled with a bit more cinnamon (you can never have enough cinnamon in my opinion) and some demerara sugar.

The finished product reminded me less of a cake, and more of a tea loaf – the kind of thing which is ideal when toasted and served up with plenty of butter. It was just the thing to munch on last night whilst Mr. Cay and I sat around our house listening to Whitehouse and planning world domination. It also made a pretty decent breakfast this morning too, even if the noisiest thing I was listening to was politicians arguing on Radio Four.

Seasonal, spicy and sumptuous, this Apple and Sultana Spice Loaf is a doddle to make and a dream to eat. Why not bake some tonight? Listening to extreme noise music whilst you’re making it is optional though.

APPLE AND SULTANA SPICE LOAF

You will need:

• 300g self raising flour
• 150g muscovado sugar
• 100g sultanas
• 270g bramley apple sauce
• 2 medium eggs
• 1 medium sized Granny Smith apple
• 1 level teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 level teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon dried ginger
• 3/4 teaspoon allspice
• 5 tablespoons milk
• Pinch of salt

Make It!

1. Heat your oven to 200 degrees C/Gas Mark 6, and grease up a loaf tin. If you’re lazy, or just have a pound shop conveniently near your office (I LOVE YOU HOME BARGAINS), nab yourself a sillicon loaf dish for some loose change (you can thank me for this later).
2. Sift the flour into a large bowl, then add the raisins, muscovado sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, dried ginger and salt. Take a wooden spoon and mash the whole lot together until well combined.
3. Add the apple sauce, eggs and milk to the dry ingredients and stir until a thick gloopy batter has been formed. Spoon the mixture into your loaf tin and level out the surface with a spatula.
4. Chop your apple into thin slices, and layer these over the top of the batter. Sprinkle with cinnamon and some demerara sugar if you have any handy (if you don’t, ordinary sugar will work just fine).
5. Bake the loaf in the centre of the oven for around an hour, or until it feels firm to the touch, and a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the middle. Turn out onto a wire rack, and leave to cool for half an hour.
6. This loaf is great both on its own, or served toasted and slathered in butter. It also goes very well with a large mug of Earl Grey.

Chai Snickerdoodles

Weekends are for cooking. At least they are in my house anyway. As soon as Friday rolls around, I inwardly start planning what I intend to create in my kitchen inbetween hardcore bouts of sitting on my arse, reading blogs, drinking wine and watching crap TV. In my opinion, if Mr. Cay hasn’t shouted at me at least once because he’s found some cake batter stuck to a wall, then it isn’t a proper weekend.

The past two days have been no exception. Yesterday I made Felicity Cloake’s epic bolognese sauce, which led to me cycling to every butchers shop in the L20 area looking for chicken livers. This morning I made a batch of brown bread that Mr. Warbuton would have been proud of. And this afternoon – looking for something sweet to snack on whilst I cracked on with reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods in the bath – I decided to whip up a batch of these Chai Snickerdoodles.

Snickerdoodle. It is, when you think about it, rather a silly name for a simple sugar cookie. It sounds more like the type of treat that would be served up in an Enid Blyton story, eaten off tiny golden plates by fairy folk. As it is, these are one of the great standards of American baking – a crunchy yet soft biscuit, punchy with cinnamon.They are the kind of things that you can easily inhale ten of in one sitting, as I have found out to my cost on many an occasion.

Here, these seemingly simple cookies have been jazzed up a bit with chai spices – ginger, cardamom, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, and a few cloves for good measure. They may not look like anything special when they come out of the oven, but as with so many things in life, looks can be deceptive. The end product is warm, sweet and spicy, just the thing to munch after you’ve braved the late September chill.

Chai Snickerdoodles are easy to make, and even easier to eat. They’re perfect for teatime, coffee time, or just anytime you feel like eating something coated in sugar. Which, come to think of it it, in my house, is most of the time.

CHAI SNICKERDOODLES (Makes around 20 snickerdoodles)

Recipe adapted from The Novice Chef

You will need:

For the Snickerdoodles

• 300g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar (I didn’t have any cream of tartar, so replaced this with 1 teaspoon lemon juice & 1 teaspoon vinegar)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 230g unsalted butter
• 300g white sugar
• 2 medium eggs

For the Chai Sugar

• 5 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• The seeds from 3 cardamom pods
• 4 cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Make It!

1. First, make the chai sugar mix. Start by putting the seeds from the cardamom pods and the cloves in a pestle and mortar, and grinding them into a powder. Then add the cinnamon, ginger, allspice, nutmeg & sugar, and combine well.
2. Mix together the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar (or lemon juice & vinegar if you don’t have any cream of tartar in your cupboards), and salt in a medium sized bowl. Set aside.
3. Cream together the butter and sugar in a bowl until it turns pale and fluffy. (I used my trusty hand mixer to do this, but if you’re lucky enough to own a stand mixer, pop it in there). Now, add your eggs – one at a time.
4. Combine the wet ingredients and the dry ingredients into one big bowl. Once you’ve done this, it’s time to roll out some snickerdoodles. Take tablespoons of the mix, and roll them into balls with your hands, then dunk them thoroughly into the sugar. Don’t worry if the batter seems a bit sloppy and goes everywhere, it’s supposed to be like that and the sugar will firm them up a bit. Place the balls of dough onto a well greased baking sheet until the mix is all used up.
5. Bake the snickerdoodles on Gas Mark 4/200 degrees centigrade for around 15 minutes, or until they turn brown and crackly on top. Once done, take them out of the oven and leave them to rest until cooled.  If you try to eat them when they’re warm, they’ll be too soft and cakey.
6. Serve with coffee and a good book. Or, alternatively, you can just inhale them in your pants whilst watching Match for the Day. Whatever’s good for you.  Apparently these keep for around five days, but I defy anyone not to eat an entire batch of these in the space of 24 hours.

Zesty Lime Bars

For me, a bank holiday just isn’t a bank holiday unless I have managed to cover every surface of my kitchen in sugar and butter (which inevitably leads to Mr. Cay tutting and informing me that I am reducing the value of our house). Unfortunately for me however, I don’t get paid until Wednesday, and currently have the grand sum of £2.35 in my bank account. Time to get my thinking cap on.

I’ve had a bottle of concentrated Key Lime juice sitting at the back of my fridge since I returned from a holiday to the USA late last year. Whilst I was visiting my family in Florida, they took me to an absolutely brilliant farm store-slash-fruit-stand-slash-pet’s corner called Robert is Here where I spent a rather blissful afternoon petting goats, slurping down Key Lime pie flavoured milkshakes, and attempting to buy as many non-perishable-key-lime themed goods as I could get my hands on. (Can you see a theme developing here?) I adore Key Limes – those small, super tart little citrus fruits that are native to the Florida Keys – however, bringing back a bag of fresh ones would probably have gotten me into big trouble with the USA Transportation Safety Administration (who, when I was travelling back to the UK, were kind enough to go through my suitcase and leave me a handy little note telling me that they’d not found any contraband underneath my dirty knickers. How very considerate of them).

So, because I dislike seeing good ingredients go to waste, I decided that this weekend would be the weekend I finally put that bottle of Key Lime juice to good use. Hence these Zesty Lime Bars. I used (the brilliant) David Lebovitz’s recipe for Whole Lemon Bars as my inspiration here, as I loved the idea of biting into a zingy sweet treat with a firm, snappy crust. However, whilst his recipe suggests blending an entire citrus fruit into the filling, when I first tried this I found that it resulted in too bitter an aftertaste. Replacing that with plenty of lime juice and lots of zest left me with a pretty sensational sweet treat that went perfectly with my afternoon coffee and left me licking my fingers clean. We may have (yet again) had a pretty crappy Summer, but these bars are a taste of pure sunshine.

ZESTY LIME BARS (Makes roughly nine squares)

Adapted from a recipe by David Lebovitz

You will need:

Crust

• 140g plain white flour
• 50g white sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 115g melted unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Lime Topping

• 2 large juicy limes
• 200g sugar
• 3 large eggs, room temperature
• 4 teaspoons cornflour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 45g melted unsalted butter

Optional: powdered sugar, for serving

Make It!

1. Preheat the oven to 200ºC/Gas Mark 6.
2. Wrap a square baking tray with foil, fitting it snugly into each corner. Then smooth it as best you can.
3. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, 50g sugar, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 115g melted butter, and 1 tsp of vanilla extract, stirring it altogether until it forms a smooth dough.
4. Smooth the dough into the bottom of the pan, using your hands or a small palette knife to get it as level as possible.
5. Bake the crust for 20-25 minutes, or until it’s turned a deep-golden brown.
6. While the crust is cooking, zest the limes with a microplaner before juicing them. To get the most juice out of each of the limes, roll them gently on your worktop first.
7. Put the sugar, lime juice and lime zest into a medium sized bowl, and blend together until combined. Once this is done, add the eggs, cornflour, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and 45g melted butter, and blend again until smooth.
8. When the crust comes out of the oven, reduce the heat of the oven to 150ºC/Gas Mark 3. Pour the lime filling over the hot crust and bake for 25 minutes or just until the filling stops jiggling and is barely set.
9. Remove the bars from the oven and allow them to cool completely (this is really important – if you try cutting the bars whilst they’re still warm, the crust will collapse). Once cool, carefully lift out the bars grasping the foil. Cut the bars into squares or rectangles. Sift powdered sugar over the top just before serving, if desired, and serve with tea or coffee.