Raymond Blanc's Lemon Cake

Well, almost. I remember watching this cake being made, and shortly after saw that Suelle had baked it and made a note of her observations on the recipe. For some reason this recipe popped rather randomly into my mind a few days ago. The combination of a couple of lemons, a pot of double cream and rather a lot of eggs to use meant that this recipe was the perfect solution.

You can find the recipe here on the BBC Food website. I made some small changes to the recipe to reflect my ingredient availability and Suelle's comments about the recipe.

I only used two lemons (that's all I had) and added the zest of both to the cake mixture, along with the juice of one of them. I missed out the rum (sorry Raymond, I don't have rum kicking around my house) and used salted butter (thereby missing out the pinch of salt). Actually, given how much I usually change recipes that's pretty good going for me! After reading Suelle's comments I decided to put the whole lot into the tin (which is very counterintuitive given how much batter there is) and all was well.

I also wanted to try a little trick I'd heard (not sure whether I heard it via twitter/in one of his books/on his blog) from Edd Kimber about getting the crack on a loaf cake. You put a little line of butter down the centre of the cake before putting it in the oven and then it melts and forms a weak point in the batter where a crack will form (my understanding of it). I wasn't sure if it'd work but thought it worth a go and I did indeed get a very attractive crack along the length of my loaf. A good tip, and one I'll be using again. Thanks Edd. I found my cake too longer to bake than the 50-60 minutes specified. Mine was more like 1hr 15-20 (I sort of lost track). I covered it up after about 55 minutes to stop it over-browning.

For the icing I decided not to go the apricot jam and glaze route, but just to revert to the kind of drizzle I know I like - I dissolved the 150g icing sugar in the juice of the remaining lemon, allowed it to boil over, creating sticky chaos on my hob (yeah, I don't really recommend that step) and then when the cake was baked, stabbed it all over with a long cake tester (the cake is too deep for a wooden cocktail stick, which is my usual cake-testing-implement-of-choice) and poured the syrup over. I left it until cold in the tin to absorb the syrup. Yum, sticky (actually - very, very sticky....)

This was such a good cake. I don't quite know how to describe it, because if I say it was dense, that doesn't sound complimentary and it's actually meant to. It was the perfect balance of denseness and solidity yet when eaten it was delicate and soft. My method of soaking the syrup into the cake worked as well as I had hoped and created delicious moist, lemony edges to the cake, and at the base of the cake there was a lovely moist bit too. I will certainly make this again the next time the correct ingredients align in my baking life.... I can't say that it was a cheap cake due to the number of eggs and the cream, but oh boy was it ever worth making. Next time I think I'll try and ramp up the lemon flavour by adding more zest, or perhaps a teaspoon of lemon extract (oil) and using more lemon juice in the glaze, to get that real lemon zing that was perhaps missing (as also noted by Suelle).

As I have been meaning to make this for ages and ages (and have merely been waiting for the correct constellation of ingredients-needing-to-be-used-up to occur) I am going to submit it to Bookmarked Recipes, hosted by Jac of Tinned Tomatoes. (Or I will if I can find the linky, I don't think it's up yet... Edited to add link 14/11/12)

Blueberry, Raspberry and Lemon Butter Cake

Even though summer hasn't arrived here yet (I am obviously being optimistic here, that summer will eventually arrive and the sun currently hiding behind the omnipresent grey clouds will once again show its face) the summer fruit is making its way into the supermarkets and I am once again tempted to buy it to bake with. I love baking cakes with fresh fruit in them - it's such a lovely combination of soft sweet cake punctuated by zesty fruity bites.

For this cake I decided to use a recipe I have used before and found to be an excellent partner for juicy fruits. You can find the original Apricot Butter Cake on the BBC Good Food website. I didn't want to make a 9" round cake and having done the calculations reckoned that 2/3 of the mixture would be right for an 8"(20cm) round cake. I followed the instructions as given on the website, but used the ingredients listed below.

Blueberry, Raspberry and Lemon Butter Cake
Ingredients
100ml milk
zest 1 lemon
200g caster sugar
2 eggs
235g self raising flour
135g butter, melted
approximately 60-70g each blueberries and raspberries

Method

I used the method as given in the original recipe but folded through lemon zest instead of adding vanilla and then at the end I folded through my washed and dried soft fruit. I think I would add a little more fruit next time though, just because it was so lovely to bite into fruit!

I decided, having prepared my 8" tin (which was admittedly only shallow rather than deep) that all of the mixture wouldn't fit and at the last minute, used some of the mixture to make 4 cupcakes too. This is where having a half size (i.e. only 6 holes rather than 12) muffin tin comes in very useful, as it will sit alongside an 8" round tin in my oven quite happily.

I can't quite remember how long the cake took to bake, but probably around 45 minutes, with the cupcakes taking about 30 I guess.

I decided to leave the cake undecorated, but cupcakes always look so sad when undecorated so I quickly made up some glace icing (icing sugar plus water or lemon juice) and poured it over and then added a decorative blueberry to finish them off!

I loved this cake - the moist buttery sponge is set off perfectly by the juicy bursting blueberries and raspberries and the lemon zest adds interest to the body of the cake itself. You could easily use vanilla if you're not keen on lemon though. Both the cupcakes with their icing and the cake alone worked well.

I am entering this into this month's Teatime Treats challenge, where Karen of Lavender and Lovage has set the challenge as berries. Her cohost is Kate of What Kate Baked.

No-Knead Mini Hot Cross Buns

Can I confess to a little secret? My favourite hot cross buns are were from Marks and Spencer. I predominantly love the softness of them. I think this is mostly confined to hot cross buns, because I'm more than happy with my delicious homemade crusty bread, sometimes with a soft crumb, and sometimes a sourdough with a sturdier crumb. But when it comes to hot cross buns all I really want is a soft bun, and sometimes that's hard to achieve at home.

I think it's years since I actually bought hot cross buns, so at least I am trying to make my own! My hot cross buns from 2010 and 2009 were really excellent, and whilst they tasted lovely, they didn't quite achieve the desired softness that I'm seeking.

I decided to take the recipe from 2010 and tweak it a little more to try and achieve that elusive combination of utterly soft crumb with the excellent taste that comes from homemade breads. This is what I've come up with. I think it helps that this must be pretty much the easiest sweet dough I've ever made. These really are pretty much effortless - no kneading at the beginning and just the tiniest amount to gently remove some of the air before shaping the buns.

I think that in the past my efforts towards the perfect hot cross bun have been hampered by baking for too long, and at too high a temperature, worrying the crumb would be undercooked. This time I decided to cook lower and shorter. I also decided that whilst making this a milk based dough to add richness I would also add a little cornflour - a technique that contributes to the supersoft texture of these soft white baps.

Crossed and ready to bake

No-Knead Hot Cross Buns
Ingredients
150g extra strong flour (Canadian)
175g plain soft flour
25g cornflour
1tsp salt
2tsp mixed spice
generous tsp fast yeast
25g caster sugar
zest of one lemon
180ml milk (I used semi-skimmed)
100ml water (see method below)
30g butter
85g raisins
40g dried cranberries

Method

- Soak the raisins and cranberries in some boiling water (just to cover) for about an hour. You can skip this step if you want, but it just makes the fruit soft and juicy in the final buns.

- Scald the milk (i.e. bring almost up to boiling point), add the butter, allow it to melt and the milk to cool until it is just warm (so as to not kill the yeast).

- Mix all flours, sugar, salt, yeast, mixed spice and lemon zest together in a large bowl.

- Add the milk/butter mixture, 100ml of water (I used the water that had had the raisins and cranberries soaking in it) and mix to a soft dough. The dough will be very sticky - don't worry, you don't need to knead it!

After mixing, before rising

- Cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave the dough for 1 1/2 to 2 hours (I left mine about 2 hours while I went out to do some shopping).

- The dough will have grown significantly.

After rising, before shaping

- Tip onto an oiled surface and knead very briefly and gently to remove the air.

- Divide the dough into buns of your chosen size. I made 10 buns of 40g and 8 of 50g, but you could obviously make them bigger if you want.

- Space them on a baking tray - close together to maximise the soft edges (batch effect) or further apart for separate buns. A no-brainer for me - close together for maximum softness!

Before proofing

- Allow to proof for around 45-60 minutes until they have grown together. During this time preheat the oven to Gas 6/200C.

- Make a paste from a little flour and water, transfer to a plastic food bag and snip off a tiny (and it really does need to be tiny, especially for mini hot cross buns such as these) corner to form a piping bag. Pipe crosses over your buns.

Half way

Piped and ready to go into the oven

- Bake in the preheated oven for 18-20 minutes. I used steam in the oven for these. Remove to a wire rack and allow to cool.

- To glaze, warm the golden syrup in a small pan and brush over the buns.

- Split, butter and enjoy! Or toast if you prefer.

Before glazing

Fabulous hot cross buns. I'm so,so happy with this dough and the way they turned out. I think this will definitely be my go-to recipe now. I can see it being very happy to accept all sorts of variations - different spices, different dried fruits (apple, pineapple, cherry, whatever you care to use) and perhaps even fresh apple too. I meant to add candied peel this time round and forgot - I'm not usually much of a candied peel lover (in fact the pre-cut stuff is revolting, only the stuff you chop yourself is nice) but I think it'd definitely be a good addition here, and if you like another tsp of spice these buns would take it.

Soft, spiced buns spread generously with butter, with a sticky glazed top - an utterly amazing way to start the day! I don't think I can sufficiently express how good, and easy these are. Give them a go, it doesn't really matter that Good Friday has been and gone, you won't regret making these.

Hit or miss? Madeira Cake

I wonder if I'm the only one with this problem? I sometimes think that there are little kitchen fairies that you have to please in order for your baking to work out. I must be on and off the 'in favour' list because sometimes a recipe will work really well for me, and on other occasions the same recipe will be a bit of a failure. Not catastrophic, just a bit disappointing in small ways.

The example that springs to mind for me is Nigella's Madeira cake. I first made this recipe many, many years ago in a dodgy oven when I was at university. I was using the correct tin, but something went wrong and a large lump of my cake had overflowed and ended up on the base of the oven floor. I avoided the recipe for a long time after that incident.

Then a colleague asked for a Madeira cake just before Christmas and I thought it would be good to oblige. I thought of the Nigella recipe and having successfully made her rosemary madiera recipe which is almost identical I decided to give this one another chance. Complete success. Rose beautifully, gorgeous crack along the length, crusty with caster sugar. (No picture, sorry).

Decided to make the cake again, emboldened by the memory of the pre-Christmas success. Slightly disappointing. The cake did rise, but not very well, and the lovely crack of the previous cake wasn't evident. This loaf rose a little, but spread a little too, along the sides of the tin. As I said, just a little disappointing. It still tastes just as good, but I wonder why these things happen. Is it just me, or are there recipes that you use and just accept that the results are variable compared to your expectations. As for me and Madeira, I'll be trying this BBC Good Food version next time (substituting plain flour for the almonds) to see how it compares.

Apologies for the naff photos - I wasn't going to blog this so I didn't make any effort when recording how this cake turned out.

Lemon Buttermilk Cake

There seems to be an abundance of beautiful, perky fresh lemons at the moment, just bursting with zingy flavour and juice and asking to be made into something delicious. I couldn't resist picking some up and then wondered how to make the most of their fresh flavour.

Inspired by a tub of buttermilk in the fridge I decided to visit my bookshelf and pull out one of my purchased-long-ago much-neglected books as I recalled seeing a recipe for a buttermilk cake in it. The book in question is Bill Granger's 'bill's food' and is such a beautiful book. The layout is clean and simple and the photography is gorgeous, making you want to eat all of the dishes in the book, even the ones containing ingredients you detest! I think the only other recipe I've made from the book is the buttermilk pancakes (buttermilk obviously being a theme here!) many years ago, for breakfast once. I seem to remember they went down well!

The picture for this particular recipe is lovely - a gorgeous wedge of pale cake with raspberry syrup running over it, served with extra raspberries and a blob of whipped cream - divine!

Because I wanted to use lemons rather than the specified vanilla and raspberry combo, I have adapted the recipe slightly and give it here:

Lemon Buttermilk Cake
Ingredients
125g butter, softened
250g caster sugar
2 eggs
250g buttermilk
250g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
grated zest 2 large, juicy lemons

Method
- Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C. Grease and line an 8"/20cm square shallow tin.
- Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. It will seem that the mixture is not changing, but it does after a while.
- Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- Add the buttermilk, continuing to beat slowly. Here my mixture curdled in a most disgusting way, I think probably because my buttermilk was fridge cold.
- Add the lemon zest and stir to distribute it.
- Sift in the flour and baking powder, and fold in. At this point my mixture didn't look too bad again!
- Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for around 50 minutes until risen and golden. I think I may have left mine a few minutes longer.
- Allow to cool for a while in the tin, and then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

When cool ice with a simple lemon glace icing. I used about 250g icing sugar and the juice of one large, juicy lemon to do this. Simply spread over the cake, trying not to allow too much to run off the edges!

This was a gorgeous cake. The crumb was so soft and tender and gently flavoured with lemon, which was accentuated beautifully by the sharp sweet lemon icing. I was very pleased that the curdling that happened when I mixed the cake didn't seem to affect it adversely after baking. It certainly satisfied my lemon craving in the most satisfying way, and my colleagues seemed equally taken with it as a rapid disappearance will testify!

I will definitely bear this cake in mind again when I next have buttermilk to use, and think it would make a beautiful birthday cake if decorated with fondant etc. But on the other hand, the recipe is too good to save for special occasions - it deserves to be enjoyed everyday.

I am sending this Lemon buttermilk cake to Ros at The More Than Occasional Baker. She is co-hosting a new event - 'Alphabakes' with Caroline of Caroline Makes. The idea is that a random letter will be generated each month and we must bake something involving that letter. The first letter to be generated is 'L' hence my submission!

I am also submitting this recipe to Jac's (from Tinned Tomatoes) Bookmarked recipes linky. This month's linky can be found here. This recipe is one of those that has languished in a cookery book that has been on my shelf and at the back of my mind for years and years now!

Chelsea Buns - Fail

Edited 30/01/12 in response to an anonymous comment. Please see end of post.

I guess there isn't really much to say about these, but I'm going to anyway. I wanted to make a sweet yeasted dough to enter into the Teatime Treats challenge that is run each month by either Kate of What Kate Baked or Karen of Lavender and Lovage. This month's theme was sweet doughs or pastries and I fancied trying my hand at Chelsea Buns. I have in fact made Chelsea buns before to a different recipe, but haven't yet blogged them. In the interests of this blog being a record of the recipes I attempt and how they turn out (good or bad, but happily rather more of the former than the latter) I am including this recipe.

It is from a trusted source, and so I can only imagine that it was a combination of errors on my part and perhaps the recipe that caused the result to be so disappointing. The recipe can be found here, and I think is also available in a published recipe book.

I did follow the recipe, but not to the letter. My dough had rather more time to rise at all stages as I was distracted by various other things and at the final stage the oven was occupied by something else when I needed to bake these. However, I reduced the temperature given in the recipe slightly, and baked for less than the initial time stated. When I tentatively opened the oven door (my oven has a solid, not a glass door, which is a pain in these cases) the buns were already over-browned.

I wish I could say that these were only cosmetic problems. When the buns were baked it was too late to try one, so they had to be left until the next day. By the time I started to split them it was immediately apparent that they were almost stale, and once split into separate buns they staled very, very quickly indeed. Perhaps this is a characteristic of this recipe, but if so, it is not a desirable one to me. I have to confess that I was so disappointed with the appearance of them and the rate at which they staled that I didn't even bother to eat one. So I suppose they may taste fantastic, but this is not a recipe I shall ever repeat.

Just typing this up is making me feel sad and disappointed, disillusioned with baking. They looked so promising before baking. I hate it when things go wrong at the last stage. So much time and effort wasted. But I have other, more successful recipes to share soon, and will move on from this disaster. I would love to know whether simply leaving the dough to proove for too long caused all my problems... any thoughts?

Edited 30/01/12 in response to an anonymous comment.
Anonymous said...

You imply that you didn't in fact follow the recipe, that in fact you left the dough for too long at every stage. Given that it's a yeasted dough, this would mean that the dough was exhausted by the time that it got into the oven, and so the failure, I'm afraid, is yours... the buns were not stale, you'd simply let the dough "die" before it got to the oven. Always unfair when someone does this, then tries to blame the recipe.

I'm glad that you felt able to comment on my blog, I like reading all of the comments I receive and try to respond to them all. I felt that this comment warranted a fuller reply than I could give in the comments section.

Firstly, I do not imply that I have not followed the recipe - I am clear that the dough had too long at all stages, an outright statement is not an implication. Secondly, I understand that over-proofed dough would have no oven spring, this was not a complaint I made of the recipe. I was unaware that overproofed sweet dough, or any dough for that matter, goes stale quickly. I have not experimented and have no evidence to suggest this is either true or false. Having read other people's comments it does in fact seem to be a characteristic of these sweeter doughs to stale more quickly. Finally, I have not blamed the recipe in the slightest. I have been careful to present a balanced view, that it is likely to be a combination of factors that have led to my failure with this recipe. I think you have misunderstood me. Just because I have failed with this recipe does not mean that it is the recipe's fault, and I have accepted that as the baker, I am partly to blame. However, my blog is a record of the things I have baked, successful and not - I like to remember what I don't want to repeat and it makes a change from always successful. My gripe with this recipe is that the temperatures and times given are too hot and too long for a sweet dough baked in my oven. Perhaps a misjudgement on my part to not reduce the temperature further, but if I had I would have strayed even further from the recipe - it seems I cannot win.

I would be happy to correspond with my anonymous commenter if they care to get in touch - my email details are in the side bar.

And a final thought - wouldn't life be boring if everything were to be perfect the first time round!

Bread - less successful

Maize bread

One of the points of keeping this blog is to record the things I make and bake - wonderful, and not so wonderful. Periodically I have a complete fail and occasionally just can't bring myself to blog about it, but mostly you get the good, the bad and the indifferent (in my opinion - you might try these and love them). Blogging the indifferent reminds me that I've made it, why I wasn't that keen and reminds me not to bother trying again! Not everything can be fantastic and, in my opinion, the two breads that follow fall in the indifferent, not really worth trying again category.

Both are from Dan Lepard's book The Handmade Loaf. I feel bad saying that I didn't like these, but it's true. There are lots of recipes in there and it's down to personal taste that I don't like these rather than bad recipes so don't let this put you off the book.

Lemon Barley Loaf

Up first: Lemon Barley Cob. This is a hybrid sourdough/yeasted loaf and for some reason the flavour combination just didn't do it for me. I don't know whether I let the bread overproof (I seem to remember that I did) but the texture was quite odd too - sort of crumbly, so I'm not quite sure where/if I went wrong here. In any event I wasn't all that keen on the lemon. Dan says this is a savoury bread, and I would totally agree that it wasn't sweet at all, but I couldn't find a good partner for it, so I'm unlikely to make it again with lemon. I might try the base recipe with the barley flour and sourdough/yeast hybrid again at some point, but I might not.

Lemon Barley loaf

Secondly: Maize Bread. This is a straight yeasted dough using white bread flour and maize flour plus buttermilk as part of the wet ingredients, and has cooked polenta broken up into it. The recipe worked fine, I didn't allow it to overproof and it was straightforward to make. My antipathy towards this one is based mostly on texture - again it seems slightly crumbly to me, which I'm putting down to lack of gluten in the maize flour (which is 30% of the flour in the recipe) and my taste buds can't really detect any specific flavour in there, it seems insipid which I wasn't expecting. I wonder if I forgot the salt? Anyway, I probably won't make this one again. The day I made it, J dropped in on her way home from holiday. I was planning to give her half of this so she probably feels glad that it wasn't made in time!!! I'm eating it, I'm just not over the moon about it.

Maize bread

So there you go, two that I just didn't enjoy that much. Live and learn!

MM8 - Crunchy crusted citrus scones - International scone week

What, you mean you hadn't heard about this?!? It's international scone week!!! (Check out Celia's blog for links to some of last year's participants) And I couldn't be happier because I love scones. I'm sure I've said this before, but never mind, now I've said it again. They're just such a good portable snack - not too sweet, not too rich (well, until you slather with butter/clotted cream/jam), they're quick and easy to make and bake and they're all round fantastic. I've tried out a few recipes for scones, but tend to stick to my old tried and true recipe (1lb self raising flour, 4oz butter, 2oz sugar, 3.5oz raisins) which I know by heart, in pounds and ounces because I've been making them since I can remember and I started to cook in pounds and ounces! I've been known to go to the freezer after dinner, realise that I'm all out of scones and turn the oven back on to knock out a quick batch to satisfy my craving...

So it takes some recipe to trump my T&T. Well, I think this one has done it and done it with style. And what's most annoying is that I've known of the recipe for years. I remember reading the recipe in the April 2002 edition of BBC Good Food and wondering when I could make them. I was at uni, without a reliable oven and then by the time I arrived home I'd forgotten about them. Over the years they've popped in and out of my memory, always being pushed down by something else that looked more exciting, but I have finally, finally managed to get round to making them. I'm so cross - nine years of missing out on these delicious treats. If you're a fan of scones make sure to make these soon, don't make my mistake and wait for years before trying them.

As you can see, I've already made them three times! The recipe is here, and I followed it exactly, well almost. I subbed lemon for orange. The first time I made them I decided to make a large round, as instructed in the recipe. Mine caught a little because I was unsure as to whether it was cooked through and left it in a little too long. It didn't taste burnt though, contrary to appearance. I did divide it into eight rather than six though, which was a good decision as the eight were still quite large! The next time I decided to use a cutter and got 12 rounds. There is a lot to be said for making one large round though - it's much quicker to shape the dough, and the end result seemed to be moister than the smaller ones. Don't forget to sprinkle with sugar - that crunch is one of the lovely things about them!

Having made this discovery, when I made the third batch I switched back to one large round. For the third making, I chose fresh cherries and vanilla although I can't quite remember how much of either I added, I'd guess about 100g fresh cherries, stoned and halved and a tsp of vanilla. Wow were they delicious - the vanilla and cherry combo was just gorgeous - the dough being vanilla flavoured and punctuated by juicy bursts of cherry. Can you tell I'm in love?

This is such a good recipe - these are the moistest scones I've ever had, and the lemon flavour permeates them so well. I can imagine that they'd be great served as suggested with clotted cream and lemon curd, but actually, they're moist enough to be utterly delicious on their own - no added butter or other embellishment needed. And I still have some in my freezer ..... yum!!!

This is the next in my series of 'Marked and Made' recipes - those that have been languishing too long in the 'to make' pile. Jac, over at Tinned Tomatoes has recently revived the Bookmarked Recipes (founded by Ruth at Ruth's Kitchen Experiments) event and so I'm submitting it to that too. Have you finally got round to making something that's been in the pile for far too long?  (And don't pretend you don't have a pile, you know exactly what I'm talking about!!!) Check out the round up too!

Lemon cupcakes with lemon curd filling and icing

I've seen a couple of recipes around recently using cream as an ingredient, not surprisingly, Dan Lepard is behind a couple of them, but Suelle started a discussion on Dan's forums about using cream as an ingredient in baking which was very interesting. I decided that I really ought to do some investigating into this..... well, seemed only right to have to try out a recipe and see what the texture was like for myself.

Baked and ready to be filled

I decided to make Dan's Orange custard cream cupcakes, fairly recently published in the Guardian How to Bake column. Except that I was planning to be lazy and not make the orange cream filling - I wanted to fill them with curd. I meant to go to Waitrose because they do a Jaffa orange curd, but I didn't make it so decided to switch all the flavours to lemon, lemon curd being much easier to get hold of (yes, my lemon curd is from Waitrose, I'd already bought it on a previous occasion!) The only other change I made was to use self raising flour instead of plain plus baking powder, which is just my personal preference.

I don't have posh lemon oil, mine is from Sainsbury's and the label tells me that it's only 12% lemon oil, not pure lemon oil, so I decided to use 2tsp rather the specified 1tsp. I'd love to try the real deal here though!

It was rather therapeutic, digging out a little mound of cake, and lopping most of it off (mmm, baker's treat!) before filling the hole with lemon curd and replacing the lid.

Lids all replaced, ready for the final icing.

You can see that some of them showed their secret a little more than others... over-generous hand with the lemon curd, or insufficiently deep hole!

Anyway, nearly enough photos now, what did they taste like? Very good! The texture (see picture below) was extremely fine grained, they were very delicate cupcakes. The lemon flavour was good, but I bet it would be stunning if I'd used the extract Dan recommended. I really must repeat the recipe with that extract! The lemon curd filling worked well with the cake - it contrasted nicely as a rich, smooth texture against the slightly drier, yet still moist cake crumb. The sweet lemon icing on the top was good too - another contrast. Next time I'll use a finer grater than my coarse microplane, and I might add a little of the lemon extract/oil to the icing too, just for a further flavour boost!

We Should Cocoa - White chocolate and strawberry muffins

June seems to be whizzing by rapidly and I haven't made much of a start on all of the challenges I want to participate in, but it always seems to happen that way - I'm very much a last-minute type person. Anyway, I have at least managed to get this month's We Should Cocoa entry made. This month Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog is hosting the challenge and she felt that after some pretty difficult ingredients and last month's roulade challenge that we all deserved something easier and picked strawberries.

I think strawberries and chocolate do go well together, but of the summer berries strawberries are not my favourite - I much prefer raspberries (guess how excited I was that raspberries were the first pick for We Should Cocoa way back last September!). But not everything can be my favourite and strawberries are lovely too so I set about looking for a recipe that combined cooked strawberries and chocolate. I'm not a massive fan of cooked strawberries, but I needed a cake that would keep for a day or two, and while there are millions of recipes where strawberries are incorporated as a decoration I wasn't sure how well my strawberries would keep out of the fridge, so I decided to go the cooked route. After much searching I ended up adapting a recipe designed for raspberries.

These are based on Nigella Lawson's Lemon Raspberry Muffins in 'How to be a Domestic Goddess'.

White chocolate and strawberry muffins

Ingredients

60g butter

200g plain flour

2tsp baking powder

1/2tsp bicarbonate of soda

150g caster sugar

juice and grated zest of one lemon

approx 120ml milk

1 large egg

175g strawberries, washed, dried, hulled and chopped

100g good quality white chocolate, chopped

Method

- Preheat the oven to gas 6/200C. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with paper cases.

- Melt the butter and set aside to cool.

- Stir together the flour, baking powder, bicarb, sugar and zest in a large bowl.

- Pour the lemon juice into a measuring jug and make up to 200ml with milk. This will curdle which is fine.

- Beat the egg and melted butter into the curdled milk mixture.

- Combine the wet and dry ingredients gently but thoroughly to ensure no flour pockets remain but don't overmix.

- Briefly mix in the strawberries and white chocolate.

- Spoon into prepared cases and bake for 25 minutes.

- Allow to cool in the tin and then after 10 minutes move to a wire rack.

It may not come as a surprise to you that I was really disappointed with the way these looked. I was envisaging beautiful peaked muffins and what I got was a flat top that had barely risen at all. I don't really know why this is - the cases were nearly that full when I put them into the oven. My tsps of baking powder were scant as I was running out, perhaps that made all the difference? Perhaps substituting strawberries for raspberries was a mistake - strawberries are 'wetter' than raspberries. Maybe the mixture couldn't hold the extra chocolate? Who knows! I do know that all of the strawberries and chocolate chunks sank to the bottom during baking, which again, I wouldn't have expected of a recipe labelling itself 'muffin' - muffin recipes are generally quite good at holding 'add-ins' in suspension in the batter. I feel betrayed.

On the plus side, they smelled fantastic while they were baking, and in spite of appearances they tasted pretty good too. They were a little too sweet for me - probably should have reduced the sugar a little, given that I was using strawberries and masses of sweet white chocolate, but adding the lemon was a revelation - it really lifted the flavour of the muffin/cake without being too lemon-y. That's definitely something I'll do again. The flavour combo was good, but the recipe just didn't work for me. A pity, but I still enjoyed my muffin!

You can see how all the strawberries and white chocolate have sunk to the bottom.