Plum gorgeous

Apricot and plum cake.... well, I suppose that unless you're greedy enough to eat two pieces at once, that should really be 'apricot OR plum cake'. I had a few apricots left over and one of J's friends had given me some plums from the tree in her garden. She grows so much fruit it's unbelievable - gooseberries, plums, apricots (though mine were supermarket ones), apples and whenever we visit, we leave loaded with fruit from the garden, which is really lovely!

So I decided a fitting end to these lovely plums was to be baked and found a recipe in one of my old Delicious magazines. It's a really lovely way to eat more fruit, the cake itself is utterly gorgeous, soft and moist and sweet and perfectly offsets the slightly tart plums (and apricots). Good with a breaktime cuppa (as my colleagues found) or drizzled with a little cream as a lovely pudding. Yum, and I'll be making this again.

Apricot/Plum cake
Makes 12 squares (though if you have smaller fruit, you could easily make 15 squares, as they were generous squares)
180g unsalted butter, softened plus extra for greasing
160g golden caster sugar
4 medium eggs
225g plain flour, sifted
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
6 small, ripe apricots, halved and stoned (or a mixture of apricots, plums, small nectarines, peach slices - you'll need 8 pieces of fruit to make 15 squares.....obviously!)
Icing sugar, for dusting

Method

-Preheat oven to 180C/gas 4. Grease and line a 28x20cm rectangular cake tin (a fairly deep one, not a swiss roll tin).

-In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar with an electric hand whisk until light and creamy.

-Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after you add each one and adding in a tbsp of the measured flour to prevent curdling. Stir in the vanilla extract.

-Fold in the remaining flour, baking powder and a pinch of salt (not if using salted butter) until combined.

-Spoon into tin and level off - more important than usual because you want each piece of fruit to have an even layer of cake under it. Place the fruit halves onto the mixture pushing down slightly, guesstimating where you'll be cutting later, so there's a piece of fruit in the middle of each piece of cake.

-Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Cool in the tin for a few minutes, then carefully remove and transfer to a wire rack.

-Allow to cool completely, cut into squares and dust with icing sugar. (Will keep for up to 3 days in an airtight container, but be careful in hot weather as the fruit will start to go mouldy)

-Enjoy!!!

Naked apricot and plum after the cake is baked - this one really benefits from having a little dusting of icing sugar on it.

Mmmmmm, gorgeous buttery dense yet light texture.

Things I learnt while making this cake:

Well, not really while I was making it, but after it was done and taken into work there was one piece left and I decided to refrigerate it. This was a BAD move - the cake went really firm and lost all the pleasing softness. It did eventually go soft again when I left it out, but I definitely don't recommend refrigerating it!

Easy chocolate brownie cookies

I've been baking a fair bit recently, but haven't got round to blogging most of it, so hopefully there'll be a little rash of posts soonish! So here we go with the first (and quickest) one:

Yum! Sticky, chewy brownie-ish cookies. These were really quick and easy to make and got rave reviews at work (well, lots of people liked them and one comment was 'They're just like something you'd buy at Millies Cookies' - this was meant as a compliment so I'm taking it as one!). I spotted the recipe over at Apple and Spice, so thank you very much Katie, these were a hit and so much easier and quicker than making brownies. I made a couple of changes to Katie's recipe - I only had 40g white chocolate, so that's all I put in, and I cooked them for a little longer, probably about 13 or 14 minutes as they looked very squishy and wobbly at 9 minutes.

Chocolate Brownie Cookies
Ingredients
60g butter
50g dark chocolate
70g caster sugar
70g light muscovado sugar
1 egg
125g plain flour
15g cocoa powder
¼ tsp baking powder
40g white chocolate, chopped

Method

Preheat the oven to 175C/Gas 5 and line a baking tray with parchment paper - these are very sticky cookies as you can see from the picture below. Melt the butter and dark chocolate together in a saucepan until smooth and then remove from the heat. Stir in the caster sugar and brown sugar and beat until the crystals have dissolved (except my crystals didn't dissolve - don't make my mistake and overheat the whole mixture - it turned a bit grainy and separated, but I don't think the end result was affected). Then beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Sift in the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder and beat until all combined. The mixture will turn very stiff at this stage but this is what you want. Finally chop the white chocolate into chunks and stir through the chocolate batter.

Drop rounded tablespoons of the chocolate mixture onto the baking tray as best you can, it's very sticky, leaving a gap between each one (mine didn't spread too much as they cooked). Flatten slightly. Bake in the oven for 9 minutes only (but mine took 13-14 as mentioned above) before removing and leaving for 2 minutes to firm up before transferring to a wire rack to cool. Do not over bake or they will become crispy when cool.

Makes around 14 cookies

Sticky baking parchment after the cookies were cooked.

Yummy cookies - J also added her seal of approval to these!

Plain white rolls

Sometimes I just want a plain ordinary (though delicious all the same) white roll to use for making sandwiches to take into work. This is just such a roll. I'd like to say that I bake all my own bread, but sadly I'm just a little too disorganised to make that claim. I tend to run out and need some sooner than I can make it. I have thus far resisted (and this is difficult for a gadget loving girl) buying a breadmaker on the grounds that I won't use it enough - although I have sandwiches pretty much every day, there's still just the one of me eating the bread, so the machine would get used once a week max. Anyway, I digress. So, back to the bread.

One of my favourite bakers is Dan Lepard. I'm not sure where I was introduced to his recipes, but I guess it was probably via the 'How to Bake' column that he writes each Saturday in the Guardian Weekend magazine section. From there I followed his recipes onto the internet, to his extremely helpful forum and discovered that not only does he make (excellent) cakes, he actually specialises in bread and yeast bakery. I've learnt (and am still learning) lots from reading the forums, especially as he often replies personally to people's problems and will explain recipes and techniques in detail, and the forum also inspired me to buy his book, The Handmade Loaf. More to come on that hopefully, but I need to get a sourdough starter going yet......

He has lots of different bread recipes, some of them using different techniques, like this one. I adapted this recipe from one he originally published for red onion and green olive rolls. I made them once in the original format, and they were really good, but this time I wanted something plain for lunches.

Dan's kneading techinque is different from the 'old school' mix ingredients together and knead for ten minutes way. He advocates three short kneads (and they really are short - about 30 seconds each) with 10 minutes resting time inbetween each knead. This initially sounds like a complete faff, with all that hanging around, but I tend to be making something else at the same time, and so the time passes quickly enough, in fact I often stretch ten minutes to fifteen or even twenty on occasion. The idea of kneading on an oiled surface is a revelation as well - no more throwing flour all over everything to stop the dough sticking and ending up in a sticky floury mess. I take this a step further and knead on a wooden chopping board, which means that if anything does happen to stick I can just pick up the board and easily wash/scrape it off.

The difference in this roll is that it incorporates cooked flour. Dan says that this helps to keep the roll moister for longer. (I haven't done any experiments on this, but see no reason to disbelieve him, and it is a lovely, close textured yet light roll).

Plain white rolls (makes 9)

Ingredients

400ml water

2 tsp easy-blend yeast

500g strong white flour

2 level tsp salt

Polenta or cornmeal for dusting

Method
Weigh 50g flour into a saucepan then add 400ml cold water and whisk. Bring to the boil, whisking furiously then spoon the mixture into a large mixing bowl and leave until warm. Beat in the yeast, add the remaining flour and salt, and work to a smooth dough. Cover and leave 10 minutes, then knead on a lightly oiled worktop for about 10 seconds then cover and leave 10 minutes. Repeat this knead-and-rest sequence twice more at 10 minute intervals then leave covered for 30 min. Roll the dough on a floured surface to about 20cm by 25cm, brush with water and sprinkle with polenta. Cut into 9 pieces, lay these spaced apart on 1 or 2 trays (lined with paper if you want although I didn't bother), cover and leave 1 1/2 hours. Heat the oven to 220C (220C fan-assisted) and bake for 20-25 minutes.

The cooked flour and water mixture. It looks like wallpaper paste, but have faith!!!

The brand of yeast I used. I used a scant two teaspoons of yeast and a scant two teaspoons of salt. It was quite warm the day I made them so I could possibly have used less yeast.

Come on, hurry up and cool down!!! I think I waited until it was about 40C before adding the yeast etc.

Mixing the rest of the ingredients in. It looks far too dry, but don't give up, just keep going.

Magic - after the first kneading the dough somehow miraculously comes together!

After the third kneading and ready to be shaped.

To show the fermentation and crumb structure.

Risen and ready for the oven. I dusted mine with flour, perhaps a little too generously.

Delicious crumb structure of the inside of one of the bread rolls. And below, the final product. Really tasty bread, very much recommended.

On holiday

Just look at the colour of that sky. J and I went on holiday recently to Italy, to escape the grey dullness which appears to be passing for the great british summertime (well, at least here in the northwest!). The weather was gloriously hot and dry - perfect for doing nothing and just relaxing. We visited a few cities, travelling by train between them.

Unfortunately the Euro is really strong at the moment, and it almost seemed as though we were getting euros for pounds, which was quite dispiriting and made everything rather expensive. We didn't go out for any smart meals, preferring instead to stick to local pizzerias - inexpensive but extremely tasty. No pictures of pizza though because I still feel odd taking pictures in restaurants. I guess that'll pass though, as I decide I want pictures to share on here!!!

Our first port of call was Bologna, and we stayed in a really lovely hotel, the Albergo Centrale. (Thoroughly recommended - the hotel was in a very central location (the clue is in the name!), friendly staff and a great room!) They had a lovely breakfast spread, as seen in the photo below:

and they included some lovely little pastries too - J informs me that they were very tasty, but I prefer to stick to bread and jam for breakfast, no hardship at all as the bread is so delicious and fresh.
We moved on to Bolzano (Bozen) in the mountains in the far north of Italy. We had been there before (and stayed in Hotel Feichter last time and this) and loved it so much that we wanted to go back. I feel I ought to mention the breakfast provided by Hotel Feichter too - it was one of the reasons we both enjoyed staying there so much - there is a lovely spread with fresh rolls, alpine butter, homemade jam and what looked like rhubarb compote (as well as the more ubiquitous industrially made jams in little containers), crossaint type pastries (but sweeter than French croissants), cereals, milk, yogurt, sliced cheeses and cold sliced meats, fruit juices and your choice of coffee/cappuccino/hot chocolate etc made freshly and brought to your breakfast table and probably more that I'm forgetting - we only needed a light snack for lunch!!! Bolzano is very much more Germanic than Italian, in fact the principal language seems to be German (which suits me as my German is rather better than my non-existant Italian!) which is unsurprising as the area used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until relatively recently. It is slightly odd to be greeted in two languages when entering shops, museums and restaurants though! Below is a gorgeous display of bread in a shop window in Bolzano - there are so many yummy bakeries that it's hard to resist diving into all of them, and J let me peer into windows to indulge my fascination with all things bread. Yum! (If you look closely you'll be able to find the bread mouse in the basket - it's in the top right of the display!)
The rather sticky hazelnutty cakey slice above was also from one of the Bolzano bakeries.

Cantucci from a pasticceria in Florence, another brief stop on our tour of Italy - we certainly managed to cover a large area! I must find a recipe and try and make these myself, so that I can leave the nuts out (sometimes it's really irritating being allergic to stuff!) and see what they taste like for myself.

Anyway..... onto the important subject of Gelato. When in Italy, it is imperative to eat a lot of icecream. It's delicious and perfect for cooling down during the day, or eaten whilst walking back to the hotel in the evening as a way of rounding off a meal. On our last visit to Italy, we found a fabulous gelateria in Florence, which made the most delicious chocolate gelato, but sadly, when we went back this year it just didn't seem to live up to my excellent memories. I seemed to think that they included chocolate pieces in their chocolate gelato (always a bonus) but not this time. (Apologies for the shocking photo but there wasn't quite enough light and working with icecream is difficult since it has a tendency to drip and melt onto you if you take too long getting the picture!)

Perhaps the problem was that we'd been spoilt by the absolutely amazing (and I really, really mean that!) gelato that we'd had in Bologna.

This gelateria was recommended to us by a fellow traveller and was a bit of a walk (15 minutes from the city centre in 30+C heat!) but so, so worth it. Hidden away in a more residential part of the city this is an absolute gem. When you walk into the shop you can see through to the immaculate kitchens in the back where they make all of their own gelati, and the small crowd of Italians both in and outside the shop lets you know you're onto something very special.



The gelati below are chocolate and espresso, no prizes for guessing which is which! This is far and away the most intense and delicious chocolate gelato I have ever tasted and so with this final picture of seductively melting and dripping gelato I will leave you to drool.......

Banana chocolate muffins - sweet and simple bakes

I made these banana chocolate muffins for the monthly baking event run by Rosie and Maria at sweet and simple bakes. They have set up a blog for new bakers in particular, but anyone who enjoys baking. You can read more about why they set up the blog here. I wouldn't say that I'm a new baker particularly, but I tend to stick to relatively simple recipes - anything calling for millions of steps involving separating eggs, repeatedly rolling, folding and chilling etc etc doesn't get a second look. Well, not until I see the usually fabulous picture, at which point the recipe gets a second look and a big sigh as I realise that I cannot hope to recreate something so fantastic! So sweet and simple is just up my street!

Ripe bananas are essential here, and the riper the better (well, until the fruit flies start circling I suppose). You can see in the top picture that my bananas were just starting to go speckled, and could have done with a few more days (which I unfortunately didn't have) so that they started looking more like the picture below.

Anyway, onto the recipe: (original here)

Banana chocolate chip muffins

Ingredients
3 very ripe bananas

125ml sunflower oil

2 eggs

250g plain flour

100g caster sugar

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

150g dark chocolate chopped into chunks

Preheat the oven to 200ºC/180ºC fan oven/gas mark 6 and line a 12-hole muffin tin with muffin papers.
Mash the bananas and set aside for a moment.Pour the oil into a jug and beat in the eggs.
Put the flour, sugar, bicarbonate of soda and baking powder into a large bowl and mix in the beaten-egg-and-oil mixture, followed by the mashed bananas.
Fold in the chocolate chunks, then place equal quantities in the prepared muffin tin and bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

The recipe was very easy to follow and worked very well. I thought that the muffins might not rise very well, but they were fine, and the texture was light and moist. I used 72% chocolate because I prefer dark chocolate, but on reflection perhaps it was a little too powerful for these muffins. I have to admit that I've made banana breads to use up overripe bananas that I've enjoyed more than these muffins, but don't let my prejudice put you off making them, because they were perfectly nice and went down very well with colleagues at work.

One where the chocolate chunks started to get away.......