Black Bread - Short and Tweet

This week's selection included suggestions for a number of different breads from @EvidenceMatters - you can find the Short and Tweet schedule for April here. You can find out more about the challenge and how to participate here. So this week's selection included Spelt and Ale loaf (I've just finished my spelt flour!), Walnut loaf (out for obvious reasons round this way), Soya and Linseed Loaf (I have recently baked, but not blogged about a soya containing loaf so didn't want to duplicate the bread in my freezer), Multigrain and Honey loaf and Black Bread. Both of these remaining breads included ingredients I'm really not sure that I'm keen on. I don't really do seeds very much and the Black Bread is full of slightly weird and wonderful ingredients.

Having recently aquired some caraway seeds I decided that it would be the Black Bread for me. Helpfully it didn't require the sponge stage that the multigrain and honey loaf needs. Helpful because I am not organised and have only just finished baking this loaf!

The loaf derives the intense black colour from a mixture of rye flour (although you can choose rye, spelt or wholemeal), black treacle, cocoa powder and instant coffee powder, plus there are additional flavours from the seeds - caraway, fennel and cumin are the suggestions so I decided on caraway. There is also an option on the starchy root vegetable too - carrot is suggested and is what I used, but I'm sure that parsnip, swede, turnip or even potato would work equally well. I guess that with all of these variations each loaf of black bread will be fairly unique to the baker making this particular recipe.

I halved the recipe - partly due to storage issues (again) and partly because I'm not sure that I'll like the end result! Having said that, when I halved the ingredients I was mean with the seeds, using just a scant tsp, mean with the coffee, using just over a half a tsp instant espresso powder (I really don't like coffee at all, even as a flavouring in cakes, but having successfully made Dan's Black Pepper Rye Bread that has coffee as the liquid component, I suspect that the coffee will add to the complexity of flavours rather than overwhelm the loaf), and used about 20g butter.

Cooked rye, muscovado sugar and yeast.

Leaving the yeast to sponge briefly with a portion of the rye that is cooked.

The same mixture after being left for almost an hour.

Lots of random ingredients, ready to be heated.

All in, now to mix...

Mixed up dough, rough and ready before kneading.

Just before shaping. I chose a baton shape rather than the specified round.

After prooving.

Dusted and slashed. I didn't coat mine with the specified sesame seeds, because as I mentioned above, I don't really do seeds.

Just out of the oven.

The crumb is so, so soft. I'm really pleased with the way this has turned out - I chose the right time to bake and was rewarded with oven spring and my slash opening out well, and the crumb is moist and even.

I baked for 10 minutes at Gas 7/220C, then 30 minutes at Gas 6/200C, followed by a further 10 minutes at Gas 6/200C upside down to crisp the base of the loaf.

Amazing looking bread - I haven't had any of it yet, but will update with tasting notes as soon as I can.

Edited 02/04 It's a stunning bread to eat - soft and moist but not pappy soft. The flavour is certainly unusual. The combination of rye, coffee, cocoa and treacle all sort of magically meld into one seamless complex whole - of those flavours I could probably have identified treacle as one but the others were mingled. I'm sure this is just how it is meant to be - after all, the coffee in the Black Pepper Rye bread isn't noticeable as coffee either. I'm glad about this as a non-coffee lover. The next thing I say may sound obvious to many of you, but bear with me, because I've only ever used caraway seeds once before in my life! The choice of seeds in the recipe is caraway, fennel or cumin and I chose caraway, simply because I had them available. The caraway flavour is still very prominent after baking. I thought that this may be the case, because it is a strong flavour, but wondered if it would be tempered by all of the other flavours in the loaf - not so much is the answer! This is fine and great if you love caraway, but I'm still not so sure. I guess this means I'm perching on the fence with this loaf. So it's a stunning loaf - visually, texturally and flavourwise, but use seeds that you know you like the flavour of. Next time I'll make it without seeds I think! I had mine with hard cheese, but think it would actually be much better with a cream cheese.

I'm also entering this into Alphabakes, hosted by Caroline at Caroline Makes and the host this month, Ros at The More than Occasional Baker. The Letter this month is B. So I think my Black Bread qualifies there! 

Rudolph's flapjacks

Well, it seems that I am finally feeling more festive (not that I've got things sorted or organised - far from it but hey!) and anyway how could you resist such a name for this lovely treat? Why are they Rudolph's flapjacks? Well, because the contain carrot of course! Don't worry, this isn't an unwelcome intrusion - just think of carrot cake (and we all know how delicious that is!) and you'll be working on the right lines.

I came across the recipe when I was browsing on the BBC Good Food website, you can find it here. I would never have spotted it in the actual magazine - it's hidden away as a tiny little list of instructions on a page containing five other ideas for quick bakes for the holiday season. It really caught my attention though, because I had all the ingredients in and haven't made flapjack for a while now. I'm a big fan of carrot cake and these are all the flavours of carrot cake in an easy-to-make flapjack form. Sometimes you just see a recipe and know it's going to be right - this was one of those times. 

I made only minor changes - the zest of two clementines instead of one orange, a tsp of mixed spice instesad of the specified cinnamon, because I prefer the more rounded flavour of mixed spice over cinnamon, and I left out the seeds because I'm not keen on them. I also soaked my apricots (which were very dry) in the juice of one of the clementines, about 40ml, for about 20 minutes whilst I did other things. I grated my carrots finely as I didn't want them to be too prominent. I also wanted flapjacks that weren't as deep, so I decided to use an 8"/20cm tin, rather than the specified 18cm tin.

Edited to add: as Suelle points out in her comment, 2 carrots is a bit vague. I forgot to weigh the ones I actually used, but finding two similar ones, they weighed 100g before peeling. I hope that's more helpful if you're planning on making these (and do, it's really worth it!).

I baked mine for at least 45 minutes in spite of using a larger tin. I just kept checking them until they were a light brown on the top. Even so, they're very fragile so be careful turning them out - I wasn't careful enough and my flapjack broke in half.

Oh so delicious - so moist in a really good way and the combination of flavours from the dried apricot, orange zest, spice and oats is just divine. You can't taste the carrot, but I'm certain it adds to the moistness of the flapjack. As I suspected, these fell apart a little on eating, but actually, this is no bad thing. I will definitely be making these again, they were so easy to put together, feel so festive and are the perfect sustaining snack for the busy times leading up to Christmas but when you don't want yet another mince pie or chocolate from the tin (yes, I believe it actually is possible to have too many mince pies and chocolates!!!) I think my colleagues must have agreed because these disappeared with record speed!

I'm submitting these for the December Teatime Treats challenge, hosted by Karen of Lavender and Lovage and Kate of What Kate Baked, two lovely ladies with lovely blogs! This month's host is Kate and she has rather appropriately chosen Christmas as the theme.

I think this is a great bake for Christmas, and perfect for the children to leave out either for Father Christmas or Rudolph - after all they both have a busy night on the 24th December, delivering all those presents (and I'll be tracking Santa here), so a good sustaining piece of flapjack would be very welcome and make a change from all the mince pies and carrots they usually get :-)

Carrot cake with orange icing

A good moist lightly spicy carrot cake seems just the thing to make to brighten up a dull winter's afternoon. I have made Delia Smith's Low fat carrot cake before, here, and this one is acually very similar, just using slightly different proportions.

I made it a while ago, and from memory I followed the recipe (which can be found here) pretty closely. I recall substituting mixed spice for the cinnamon - I feel that cinnamon is sometimes overused - it has its place, but mixed spice gives a more complex flavour that I enjoy more in this type of cake. And looking at my photographs I'm not sure that I made it in a 7" square tin, I might have used an 8" square and reduced the cooking time a bit - my cake looks much flatter than the one pictured. I don't think you need as much icing sugar as listed if you only want to make a drizzle type topping - mine covered the cake easily, which didn't really matter - I suppose I could have made it thicker if I'd only wanted a drizzle effect.

I really enjoyed this one - I can almost kid myself that it's healthy with oil rather than butter and all that veg.... Anyway, colleagues enjoyed it and one of them remarked on the use of mixed spice rather than cinnamon, which pleased me greatly! I think that on balance I prefer this cake to Delia's version. Although Delia's is lovely, a couple of times I've made it, it has been bordering on wet rather than just moist, which I found unpleasant. This one is lighter but still moist whilst still containing plenty of carrot and raisins. Yum, perfect with a cup of coffee.

Carrot cake with orange icing

There are lots of carrot cake recipes available, but this one from Delia Smith is a definite winner for me. The recipe comes from her more recent 'How to Cook' series (before she lost face by doing the 'How to Cheat' series which I personally felt was a mistake!) and is in book one, in the Cakes and Biscuits for beginners chapter. I think it's appropriate that of all the things people can learn to cook, cakes come in book one!!! Delia is obviously a woman after my own heart!

This is called 'Low-Fat Moist Carrot Cake' in the book, but I first made it because it was the first recipe I found containing no nuts. I don't quite believe it's one of the quickest and easiest recipes ever, as Delia claims, but it's not too onerous either! I give you my slightly adapted recipe. The original can be found here.

Carrot cake
Ingredients
3oz (85g) dark brown soft sugar
3oz (85g) light brown soft sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
4 fl oz (120ml) sunflower oil
7oz (200g) self raising flour
1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3 rounded tsp mixed spice
grated zest 1 orange
7oz (200g) carrots (weight before prep) peeled and coarsely grated
6oz (175g) raisins

For the topping
Juice of one orange
Icing sugar (probably about 150-200g)

Method
-Preheat oven to 170C/Gas 3. Grease and line an 8" square tin.
- Whisk the sugar, eggs and oil together in a bowl using an electric whisk. If your dark sugar is quite lumpy, it's best to squash all the lumps out first (otherwise you'll end up with pockets of sugar in the final cake).
- Sift the flour, bicarb and mixed spice into the bowl.
- Fold in the carrots, orange zest and raisins.
- Pour into the prepared tin and place in the oven. Bake for 35-40 minutes (although mine always takes longer - around 50-55minutes) until it is well risen and feels firm and springy to the touch when pressed lightly in the centre.
- Remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool in the tin. When the cake is nearly cool, make the icing. Mix the icing sugar and orange juice together to a pouring consistency. (Sorry this isn't more precise, but it depends how thick you want your icing, how juicy the orange you use is etc etc.)
- When completely cool, cut into pieces (12) and drizzle over the icing.

The syrup glaze that Delia specifies is really nice, but sadly I forgot all about it this time! Her quark cheese topping is absolutely gorgeous too, but I needed something more practical (i.e. could be stored outside a fridge) so an orange icing was better for me.

This was also part of the Comic Relief fund raising effort on my part. My work colleagues enjoyed this greatly. It's a really moist and juicy carrot cake, and is nice and spicy too, with lots of flavour from the dark sugar.

Carrot cupcakes

I love carrot cake, but it's something I tend to have to make for myself, as bought carrot cakes tend to have out-of-bounds nuts (particularly walnuts) in them. I therefore didn't know that I liked carrot cake until I first decided to make it. I originally used Delia Smith's Low Fat Carrot Cake, not for being low fat per se, but because one of the ways in which she makes it low fat is to miss out the nuts. Result! It is a gorgeous, squidgy, moist cake, and with the inclusion of carrots, raisins, wholemeal flour and sunflower oil rather than butter, could almost be said to be good for you. Well, as far as cake can possibly be good for you. And if you're wanting to make Delia's version and are worried about the topping, don't be, it's divine and really complements the cake perfectly. I tried eating the Quark on it's own once, yuk! That bit of icing sugar and the spice transform the topping into a perfect frosting to complement the carrot cake.

Anyway, this post isn't actually about Delia's carrot cake, I just got carried away with the memory of eating it.....mmmmm. I wanted to make individual carrot cakes to take into work and because they wouldn't be refrigerated, decided to opt for buttercream rather than cream cheese topping as the former is ok out of the fridge. I thought Delia's recipe might be a little too moist for this purpose though and decided to try this one, from BBC Good Food magazine a number of years ago. It's very easy to make (especially if you're lazy like me and don't bother with the orange zest - in fairness I didn't have any oranges in) but is not a particularly attractive batter as you'll see later. I scaled the recipe to 2/3 of the original and made a couple of other minor modifications as you'll see.

Low fat moist carrot cake

Ingredients
115g light muscovado sugar

115ml sunflower oil

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

66g raisins

115g self-raising flour

scant tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp mixed spice

For the buttercream frosting

100g very soft butter

200g icing sugar, sifted

1tsp vanilla extract

Method

-Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with 9-10 paper cases

-Put the sugar and oil in a large mixing bowl and mix with a wooden spoon. Stir in the grated carrots and raisins.

-Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spice, then sift into the liquid mixture, mixing to combine. The mixture will be fairly runny.

-Tricky bit now - attempt to pour/spoon mixture into the cases any way you can without spilling too much. I think I used a large metal spoon. Place in the oven and bake for around 30 minutes, although check around 25. They are ready when the feel firm to touch and a cake tester comes out clean.

-Remove to a wire rack to cool while you make the buttercream.

-Beat butter and icing sugar together, add vanilla extract and continue beating until very light and fluffy.

-Frost your cupcakes when cool.

-Enjoy!!!

The egg/sugar/raisin/carrot mixture - not a pretty picture and you can't imagine that such a lovely cake could possibly come out of it!

Doesn't look much better when the flour and spices have been added, very runny and yuk!

But magically, all will come right and you will have glorious cupcakes. I made 9 out of this amount of mixture, but you could probably get 10, they were quite large. The mixture does rise quite a lot during baking - I think I only filled them about 2/3 of the way.

Frosted cupcakes ready to be transported to work. I probably didn't use as much buttercream as I've specified in the recipe, as I made it for both these and the coffee walnut cupcakes at the same time and didn't want to use too much. I think they could have done with a little more icing, but they were very well received at work - they are moist and delicious.