Caramel apple upside down cake

As you may have guessed from the content of the blog, I'm a bit of a sucker for the sweet things in life. I'm also completely unable to resist a novelty when it comes to sweet foods. A while ago I spotted Confiture de Caramel in one of the supermarkets - essentially dulche de leche, or the equivalent of Nestle's Carnation Caramel but in a smart Bonne Maman jar.

I think I have a particular soft spot for Bonne Maman conserves and confitures; they remind me of childhood holidays spent in France. We used to drive down through England and arrive at the south coast to catch an early ferry across the channel and then drive to our campsite. We went Eurocamping (that is to say in large, static tents that were already erected, complete with sleeping compartments containing bedstands and matresses, and a fridge, gas hob and various cutlery and crockery). We obviously needed to buy food and I used to love the trips to the supermarket to get in supplies. We enjoyed baguettes or croissants with butter and jam for breakfast, and Bonne Maman was always the jam we bought. My mum always had apricot, my dad invariably chose something dark red; Myrtilles Sauvages was a favourite and my brother and I either ate one of those or had strawberry. Happy, happy (sticky) memories.

The confiture de caramel comes in one of the lovely smart jars, but instead of having a red or blue gingham top it has a lovely caramelly coloured top! I'm so in love! Sweet and rich and sticky, I wanted to bake with it. On a recent trip to Lakeland I saw a new range of tins they had - PushPans. The idea is that they are loose bottomed but there is a silicon seal around the base to prevent any leakage out of the tin. Sceptical is not the word. I found myself leaving the shop clutching my new purchase and wondering how best to test their no-leak claim. And then it occured to me that sticky upside down cake was the perfect test. I have made a number of upside down cakes, only for most of the sticky topping to leak out into the oven, caught in foil if I were suspicious of my tin, or onto the bottom of the oven if I wasn't really paying attention. 

I was brave (or stupid...) enough to trust Lakeland's claim about the leak resistance of these tins and just put it straight into the oven. And beheld that it did indeed live up to its claim of no leaking! Very happy! The downside to the lack of leaking (if there is one) is that the caramel from the bottom of the cake seems to have forced the apples upwards into the cake (the opposite of sinking fruit!) and the caramel itself bubbled up the sides of the tin, forming baked on sticky caramel. Well, the cook has to have some treats!

Sounding good? Want to make it now? Here's how...

 
Caramel Apple Upside Down Cake
Ingredients
1 jar Bonne Maman Confiture de Caramel (I used 120g)
2 apples (I used Coxes)
125g soft butter
125g caster sugar
2 eggs
120g self raising flour
milk - a splash (1-2tbsp)

Method

- Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C. Grease a 7"/18cm tin with loose base. I lined the base with parchment paper too.

- Spread the caramel over the base of the tin. Peel, core and slice the apples - you may not need two whole ones, I used 1 1/2. Arrange them on the caramel.

- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

- Add the flour and eggs and beat to a smooth mixture. Add a little milk to slacken the mixture.

- Spoon carefully over the caramel apple mixture.

- Bake for 35-45 minutes until the cake is well risen and golden brown. There will be caramel all around the sides of the tin - yum!

- Allow to cool a little then invert onto the plate you're going to serve on. This will avoid a messy transfer later.

Serve warm with icecream, cream or custard for dessert, or leave to cool completely as I did and serve as an afternoon cake. If you go for this option remember to tell your happy eaters that they are going to get very sticky.

Great cake - the stickiness of the caramel was lovely, really sweet and moreish and then the apple provided a little juice and a slight crunch to the combination of textures. Because I had cut the apple relatively thickly, it had retained a little bite during the cooking of the cake, and had not all fallen to mush. I thought it was better this way and would definitely do the same again.

So, two new things that I'm very pleased with - Bonne Maman Confiture de Caramel and Lakeland's new Pushpans. Hmm, still some of that caramel left. I think maybe a caramel and apple crumble might appear soon...

From the enthusiasm displayed here you may be tempted to assume that I have received some sort of bribe from one of these companies in order to push their products - this is not the case - I'm a sticky, sweet loving impulse buying sort of person!

Sour Cream Vanilla Cake

A good storecupboard standby (if you can classify sourcream as storecupboard I suppose). This is one of Dan Lepard's recipes, minimally adapted to suit my fridge.

I remember making this in an adapted form a very long time ago, and not really being very enamoured of it (you can see my original post here) but circumstances dictated that I needed to use up the sour cream, wanted a cake at the end of the day and the two collided in this recipe.

You can find the version published in the Guardian here (I used the version in Short and Sweet) but there are changes in the quantities of butter, sugar and eggs, so although similar it's not exactly the same cake. As I mentioned I made a couple of change of my own. I only had a small (150ml) tub of soured cream, but did have some full-fat Greek yogurt too, so I used all the soured cream and made up the difference with yogurt. I also added 2tsp vanilla extract to the mixture too. I found my cake took about 70 minutes to bake, but it is a deep cake so this is to be expected. I think I recall covering it with foil after about 45 minutes.

I recently bought some parchment cake tin liners from Lakeland, having resisted for a long time. I'm not sure why I waited so long (well, I guess cash is part of the answer - they aren't cheap!) Well, they won't be suitable in all circumstances - they do give a pleated edge to your cakes, which is quite attractive in homely style cakes such as this, but wouldn't be any good if you want a smooth finish, but I'm very impressed! No bother of lining the tin, and saved a little on washing up too - always a bonus! In addition, once I had cut the cake, I simply lifted the liner with the cake contained inside into my cake tin for easy transport to work. 

Noted by Dan as a very buttery cake, best eaten cold I thought this was an absolute dream to cut - you can see how neatly the slices cut - no crumbling in the centre here, with beautiful sharp edges. I decided to make this cake more of a dessert for myself by serving it with stewed raspberries and blackcurrants, with just a little sugar. The contrast of the buttery cake and the sharp berries was lovely. I couldn't really taste the vanilla, perhaps it's such a large cake that it needed more than I used. I was definitely keener on this cake now than when I first made it. The texture seems finer than in my previous photos, and perhaps my tastes have changed too. One of my colleagues commented that it had a subtle flavour - I'd agree with this, but it provides the perfect foil for the berries.  

Butterfly kisses

This is my entry to Tea Time Treats, the blogging challenge run by Karen of Lavender and Lovage and Kate of What Kate Baked. This month Kate is hosting and the theme is Romance. So how are the butterfly cakes you see here romantic then? Well, I suppose in a strict sense of the word romance they might not be, but for me these little buns represent love.

Why? Well, when I was little, my mum occasionally used to hold her face very close to my cheek and flutter her eyelashes. I loved the tiny little movements I could feel on my cheek, barely there and so delicate. These were my butterfly kisses and although she probably doesn't know it, I used to love it when my mum did this. It was special, being so close to someone that loves you so much, and for them to demonstrate that. I think that because they only happened occasionally, they never lost their special quality for me, and I loved them all the more. So love, rather than an adult understanding of romance is where these little buns come from. I made them and I thought of my mum and all the love she gives me.

Even though this challenge was set with Valentine's Day in mind, I think we should share love all the time. So, to make your own butterfly kisses to share with someone you love I'll share my recipe here. It's easy, which is sometimes just what you need...

Butterfly kisses (chocolate butterfly cakes with vanilla buttercream)
Ingredients
120g softened butter
120g caster sugar
2 large eggs
120g self raising flour
20g cocoa powder
scant 1/2tsp baking powder

Method

- Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C. Line 11-12 holes of a muffin tray with cases.

- Cream the butter and sugar until soft and well combined.

- Add the eggs, flour, cocoa powder and baking powder and continue to mix until a smooth batter forms.

- Divide between your cases. I got 11 this time, but they were pretty generous - you could get 12.

- Bake for 20-25 minutes until springy.

- Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Vanilla buttercream

Beat 80g butter (I used unsalted) with 160g icing sugar and a tsp vanilla extract until very light and fluffy. Needless to say, I used an electric mixer for this.

To assemble, cut a cone of cake out of the top of each bun, and cut it in half. Spoon or pipe (I piped this time, but without a nozzle, so I just got a thick blob) the buttercream into the hole in your cupcake. Replace the wings of the butterfly and dust with icing sugar.

Share them with the one, or ones, you love. Sweet, light, gently chocolate-y and with a little vanilla, and just like a butterfly kiss.

Overnight wholemeal sourdough, quick and easy

A colleague was kind enough to share his rye sourdough starter with me recently. I accepted gratefully (and with some embarrassment that I couldn't get my own going - he had no trouble whatsoever!) and started thinking of all the different kinds of sourdough I could make.

It is the most active sourdough starter I've ever seen - tonnes of bubbles and probably takes about six hours to double in volume. It smells pretty good too - when it's just been refreshed I reckon it smells more like apples, but when it's due for feeding and refreshment again there's a much stronger smell of acetone. Not so nice!

My colleague used the instructions in Andrew Whitley's Bread Matters book and it reminded me that I haven't really opened this book for ages. It's the first bread book I bought, a number of years ago now (in fact, I think I had it around the time I left home!). The only bread I remember making from it was the sundried tomato, which I was a little disappointed with for all the faff it took. However this is an old memory, and perhaps with the bread and yeast experience I have gained over the intervening years I would find it less hassle. (But if you're looking for a fine tomato bread I can thoroughly recommend this one). Time to revisit this book.

As we were talking at work I decided to have a quick search on the internet (in a break I hasten to add!) and see if there were any Andrew Whitley recipes out there before getting home and looking in my book. I struck lucky and came across this recipe in Country Life. Elisabeth Luard has apparently chosen it as one of her greatest recipes ever. It's certainly one of the simplest bread recipes I have ever come across. There is not much kneading to speak of (well, not in my world anyway, because I don't tend to knead very much, and this dough was pretty soft and didn't seem to want me to knead it much) then a quick shape and into the tin, to be left alone overnight to rise..

I used a 1lb loaf tin, and fully lined it with baking parchment, without using any fat to make the parchment stick - I didn't want to risk my loaf sticking, and I didn't want to grease the tin so that the crust became oily. I covered with clingfilm and left it overnight (about nine hours) expecting to have to leave it a little longer in the morning. The next morning it was fully risen, sticking to the clingfilm (which I hadn't expected - next time it will be going into a plastic bag, puffed up to keep the dough moist but away from plastic) and asking to be baked. I quickly preheated the oven, and then gingerly peeled off the clingfilm, expecting collapse. I certainly didn't expect (or get!) any oven spring, but since I thought it had already been left too long I didn't hold out much hope.

Thankfully I was wrong. It rose a little, didn't brown too much, didn't stick to the tin, and although I didn't slash it (too soft) it hasn't torn either. And what's more, it's delicious. Only a little loaf, but that suits me perfectly and I think it would lend itself to some experimentation with different flours and perhaps added flavours. I made a couple of other things and in comparison to rye, this wheat based sourdough seems sweeter. I'm happy - I have sourdough, and am very grateful to my colleague who can manage a sourdough starter when I can't!

Super fudgy brownies

I think that these are the best brownies I have made yet - the name says it all really, fudgy, chocolatey and delicious. I can see lots of tweaks being made to these - imagining peanut butter brownies and mint chocolate brownies - yum!

I came across these brownies on the rather delicious looking blog Maple Spice, and Deb in turn got them from the (now gone) blog Not a Rabbit, but they have been reposted at Cooking Vegan Food Up North too. As the recipe has already been converted into grams and mls for those of us who prefer metric, it was an absolute doddle to make them.

This is the recipe, reproduced with permission from Deb at Maple Spice. The only alteration I made is to substitute light olive oil for the specified veg oil.

Super fudgy brownies

Ingredients

150g granulated sugar - must be this type, not caster

60ml light olive oil

125ml chocolate soya milk

160g dark chocolate -I used a 150g bar of Green and Black's Cooking Chocolate

80g plain flour

2 Tbsp cocoa powder

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Method

-Line a 7 or 8 inch square baking tin with baking paper (I used a 7" tin) and preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4.

- Place the sugar in a blender and whizz until it's a fine powder and tip into a large bowl (I did this in a small handheld whizzer in two batches). As the original poster states, do not omit this part, it's what gives the brownies their crackly topping. Having read Deb's comments on Maple Spice I knew this step, although sounding odd, was important. Granulated sugar blended comes out somewhat in between caster and icing sugar - wierd!

- Mix together the flour and sifted cocoa powder and set aside.

- Pour the oil, chocolate soya milk and vanilla into the sugar and mix well.

- Melt the chocolate in the microwave and quickly whisk into the oil/sugar mixture.

- Quickly stir in the flour/cocoa mixture and mix well with a wooden spoon until it all comes together.

- Pour/scrape into the prepared tin and bake for 15 - 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Mine took much longer than I was expecting. At 20 minutes the centre was still liquid and in total I ended up giving it 40 minutes, although it was probably done a bit sooner. I will try and take it out earlier next time.

- Leave to fully cool then refrigerate for a couple of hours before cutting. It wasn't explained why this is. I followed the example of Maple Spice and refrigerated before cutting and they were great. I also stored mine at room temperature.

Oh yum. Fudgy deliciousness! And just look at that crackly top too... mmmm! I will make these again (and again, and again) and I will try taking them out of the oven a little sooner too for even more fudgy goodness. I cut them into 12 pieces, which I thought was a good size. My only note would be that these are best eaten on the day of making - after that the cut edges go a little drier (but I think this is true of many brownies) but they are still utterly, utterly delicious!