Banana, chocolate and lemon cake

Now does that picture look strangely familiar? Well, I enjoyed the chocolate orange version of the cake so much that I wanted to try a chocolate lemon variation as soon as possible. Having over-bought on the bananas a couple of weeks ago, I had some beautifully fragrant bananas sitting in the fruit bowl, and still had enough left after making these chocolate banana cookies to allow me to try out a lemon incarnation of this recipe, originally made for the Sweet and Simple bakes blog event.

I won't say too much more, I followed the recipe in exactly the same way as last time simply substituting the grated zest of a lemon for that of the orange, and upping the chocolate content to 50g rather than 40g (fewer people on diets!), and the cake turned out just as well. Quick and easy and used up my banana mountain.

It went down extremely well at work and disappeared very quickly! The lemon flavour was more subtle than the orange in the previous version, and although chocolate and lemon perhaps don't sound as though they'll work well together, they do in this case because neither flavour is dominant. The cake is light and goes down a treat mid-afternoon as a quick pick-me-up!

Chocolate orange and vanilla marble cake

May I introduce a little adaptation (I was going to say invention, but that's taking it a little far) all of my own? As you've probably realised if you're a regular reader, I tend to like my cakes to have strict recipes, which I tend to largely observe. However, I had a combination of ingredients to use up this past weekend that required a little creativity on my part.

Having enjoyed the chocolate orange combo in this cake recently, I wanted to repeat it, but wanted to make a much larger cake, and I also needed to use some buttermilk I'd bought with nothing particular in mind (again). It's surprising how many cakes there are which require buttermilk or soured cream when you have none in the fridge, but then they all disappear and hide when you have a pot of the aforementioned dairy products staring forlornly at you from the fridge, begging to be used up. Hence the creativity requirement.

I started out with the buttermilk birthday cake from How to be a Domestic Goddess (Nigella Lawson, obviously) and the baking tray I wanted to use required a four egg mix so I adapted. I wanted the chocolate portion to be orange flavoured, but the vanilla portion to remain plain. Here's what I came up with (please excuse the exact measurements, as I say, I scaled up a recipe, giving some bizarre amounts!):

Chocolate orange and vanilla marble cake
Ingredients
333g plain flour (or 300g plain + 33g self raising, if you run out of plain like me.....)
2 tsp baking powder
2/3tsp bicarbonate of soda
260ml buttermilk
2 tsp vanilla extract
166g softened butter
266g caster sugar
4 large eggs
30g cocoa powder
grated zest of 1 large orange

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and line an 8 x 12" cake tin.

- Sift the flour, baking powder and bicarb together into a bowl and set aside.

- Pour the buttermilk into a jug and stir in the vanilla.

- Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl using an electric mixer until light and fluffy.

- Mixing slowly, add the eggs one at a time, continuing to mix for 30 seconds between each. Add a spoonful of flour if you're worried about the mixture splitting.

- Add flour mixture and buttermilk mixture alternately until all used up, blending well after each addition.

- When all thoroughly combined, pour approximately half the mixture into a smaller bowl and set aside.

- Sift the cocoa powder, remaining buttermilk from the carton (I used a 284ml carton so had a little left) and the zest of the orange to the remaining cake mix and combine until evenly brown coloured.

- Place blobs of mixture alternately into the tin and then, using the handle of a spoon (or something similar, a skewer is too thin for adequate mixing in my experience) drag back and forth through the mixture until you feel it is marbled. Don't do too much, you want to retain the individual colours and flavours. I was pleased with the way mine turned out (photo above and below).

- Bake for 50mins - 1 hour (but start checking at 40 mins if you know your oven is hot) until a skewer/cake tester comes out clean when inserted into the middle.

- Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the tin before unmoulding and allowing to cool completely on a wire rack.

I cut this into 18 generous pieces.

You can just see the marbled top of the cake. It has cracked slightly but no matter, you can see the dark and light mixtures peeking through.

This would definitely be my go-to cake recipe for a straightforward cake recipe from now on and it only requires buttermilk in addition to the normal sponge cake ingredients. It also takes adaptation very well!

This is a really, really delicious cake, it's moist (putting that down to the buttermilk) but light and tender at the same time, and was devoured at work. I was really pleased with the way the marbling worked and it didn't require any sort of icing or other embellishment. The chocolate orange flavour came through really well, although a stronger flavour other than vanilla would have been required to compete with it in the non-chocolate part - I might try lemon next time but it was gorgeous just as it was.

Fairtrade Fortnight and banana chocolate fudge cookies

Firstly, and most importantly, it's Fairtrade Fortnight at the moment (it runs from the 23rd February to 8th March) which is something I believe in passionately. As usual, Wikipedia has a good summary article outlining the principles and history of fairtrade, found here. In the UK, The Fairtrade Foundation are one of the main bodies involved in the certification of products and their promotion. Do check out their website, it's really fun and informative and has lots of info and links to campaigns, resources and much, much more. I really can't do it justice here, but I urge you to check it out and get involved.

Speaking of getting involved, it really doesn't have to be difficult. Shop in Sainsburys? Buy bananas? You're already involved. All of Sainsbury's bananas are fairtrade, even the value bananas. (And no, I have no affiliation to Sainsbury's, it's just where I happen to shop - The Co-op are also very well known for supporting and promoting Fairtrade products.) Many workplaces only serve fairtrade tea and coffee - it's just as tasty as other brands now, although I'm aware that many years ago this didn't use to be the case (I'm reliably informed, not being a coffee/tea drinker myself). There are so, so many Fairtrade products out there, from fruit to juice to coffee, tea, rice, pasta, jam, sugar, cocoa, chocolate, dried fruit, wine...... I could go on and on, but suggest you click here to see the Fairtrade foundation's list of products.

Go on, make a difference to the life of someone you don't know, but who deserves better. Buy Fairtrade. Right lets move on to a recipe to use some of those yummy fairtrade bananas that were slowly turning black and fragrant in my fruit bowl.

This is another recipe from Dan Lepard, and you can find the original here, on his forums. As he says, they're ideal for using up a couple of fragrant, mushy looking bananas and you can get fairtrade sugar, vanilla and cocoa too!!!

Chocolate banana cookies
Makes 30 biggish ones
Recipe
125g caster sugar
125g soft light brown sugar
2 very ripe bananas, mashed
250g butter, softened
2 tsp vanilla essence
200g plain flour
50g cocoa
2 level tsp bicarbonate of soda
175g rolled oats
lots of icing sugar for sifting

Method

- Beat the sugars and butter together until light and fluffy. Add the banana (I added mine in chunks) and essence and continue to beat. Mine looked ick here - all sort of split, but never mind.

-Sift the flour, cocoa and soda together, beat this in followed by the oats.

- Cover and chill the mixture for 30 minutes. (I put mine in an unheated room, so cool, but not chilled really)

-Preheat the oven to 180C (fan assisted)/ Gas 4 and lightly grease a baking tray (or put baking parchment onto it).

- Spoon blobs the size of unshelled walnuts (40g - 50g) out of the bowl, roughly shape into balls then press these onto the tray spaced 3-4 cm apart. (The mixture was very sticky and messy to work with - don't try answering the phone at the same time!)

- When the tray is full (mine took twelve and even then, they were starting to make friends by the time they were cooked) return the bowl to the fridge (um, I didn't bother.... I didn't see that chilling it had helped much anyway, but then I don't suppose I chilled it properly)

- sift loads and loads of icing sugar over each cookie (I didn't squash mine down at all - they were still ball shaped ish when they went into the oven) until you can't see it.

- Bake for 15 - 20 minutes until the cookie looks baked (it's a tricky one to judge) then leave for a moment before easing each off the tray with a spatula onto a wire rack, and repeat with the remaining mixture.

As Dan says, it's very difficult indeed to tell when these are done. Mine definitely took 20 minutes and possibly a bit longer, but you don't want to go over and burn them. I had to put two trays in at one point, and the lower tray took over 20 minutes - at that stage they were very wobbly indeed.

Some of mine welded themselves together. I really must get a second baking tray as my small one just isn't up to the job. Hence the triangular cookie you see above!

So were they good? Need you ask? They aren't much of a looker, it has to said, but they make up for it in taste and texture. I thought they would be quite wet inside, but they were beautifully light and moist, with neither the banana nor the cocoa flavour being too dominant. I didn't find them too sweet either and the oats provided a really nice chewiness. Really good.

My colleagues (at yet another new place - I'm rotating at the moment, to the extent that I'm nearly dizzy!) loved them and there are calls for baking EVERY day!

PS Check out the rather lovely Emma Bridgewater cake tin. Someone with great taste obviously bought it for me - you know who you are ;-)

Golden Syrup Tea Bread

Well, after all that indulgence, a lower fat treat is called for. This tea bread is just the thing. In common with many tea bread recipes it contains no added fat and the combination of the syrup and tea-soaked fruit makes sure it is moist and pleasant to eat.

I adapted the recipe from one I found on the Waitrose food website. You can find the original recipe here.

I have given my adapted recipe below:

Golden Syrup Tea Bread
Ingredients
225g raisins
300ml strong tea
75g golden syrup
125g glace cherries
2 lightly beaten large eggs
275g self raising flour
1/2 tsp ground mixed spice (optional - I didn't bother)

Method

- Brew the tea and dissolve 75g golden syrup in it.

- Place the raisins in a bowl and pour over the sweet tea. Leave to soak for 2 hours, or overnight if more convenient.

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas mark 4. Grease and line a 2lb/900g loaf tin.

- Stir the glace cherries (chopped in half and rinsed of their syrup to prevent them all plunging to the bottom of the cake) and the two lightly beaten eggs into the raisin mixture. Mix to combine.

- Add the flour and spice if using and mix well until no pockets of flour remain.

- Transfer to the prepared tin and bake for 1 hour 10 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Try not to overcook it like mine, as it has a tendency to dry up slightly.

- Cool on a wire rack and serve sliced and buttered.

This went down very well at work. I felt it was a little dry, but nothing that a nice thick smear of butter wouldn't fix!

I cut it into 10 slices and from memory, the Weightwatchers (UK) points were 3/slice. (Without butter, obviously, but sadly!)

Blueberry cheesecake

This is the second dessert I made for my Grandfather's birthday party (click here to see the first one - a chocolate truffle torte). I've never made a baked cheesecake before and felt that it ought to be part of my repertoire. As luck would have it, somebody on one of the messageboards I frequent mentioned that they have often made this recipe with great success. Having read all of the user comments (which seriously took a while - loads of people have made and commented on this!) it seemed likely to be a success - important when you're trying something for the first time I always think. (I find it really depressing to spend time, effort and ingredients making something that turns out burnt or inedible or totally different to the picture, so all the positive comments reassured me).

As you can see, I decided to go with a blueberry cheesecake, rather than raspberry. Neither are in season in the UK at the moment, but at least blueberries are in season in the countries they're being imported from (South America mostly I think) rather than the forced Spanish rasberries. And blueberries travel well, whereas I've seen raspberries in the supermarkets recently that have actually been mouldy on the shelves (how stupid do these supermarkets think we are - am I the only one to actually look at the produce I'm planning to buy???). I guess you could also use frozen fruit, but it's nice to have some fresh berries to top the cake with!

Anyway, here's the recipe as I made it; there are a few minor amendments:

Blueberry (or raspberry) baked cheesecake

Ingredients

8 hobnob biscuits
50g butter , melted
300g full fat cream cheese (you can use all full fat if you want, I just used what I had in)
200g low fat cream cheese

2 tbsp plain flour
175g caster sugar
vanilla extract
2 eggs, plus 1 yolk
200ml soured cream
300g blueberries
icing sugar

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180C/gas 4.

- Crush the biscuits in a food processor (or put in a plastic bag and bash with a rolling pin - which I did, in the absence of a food processor). Pour the melted butter onto the biscuits and then press into a 20cm springform tin and bake for 5 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool.
- Beat the cream cheeses with the flour, sugar, a few drops of vanilla, eggs, the yolk and soured cream. (At this point the original recipe says until light and fluffy. This is a lie - mine was runny and neither light nor fluffy - still, I persevered)

- Stir in half the blueberries and pour into the tin.

- Bake for 40 minutes and then check, it should be set but slightly wobbly in the centre. Leave in the tin to cool. (Mine took about 1 hour, but I may have overcooked it.)
- Keep a few blueberries for the top and put the rest in a pan with 1 tbsp icing sugar. Heat until juicy and then squash with a fork.

- Push through a sieve if you want, I didn't bother because blueberries don't really have pips like raspberries.

- Serve the cheescake with the blueberry sauce and extra blueberries scattered on the top.

You can see the naked cheesecake without its adornments in the picture above. It did crack slightly on cooling, but I didn't mind! (It wasn't too obvious really, and once the sauce and extra blueberries were one, no-one was any the wiser!) It took longer to bake than the recipe said, and the cheese-y mixture at no point went 'light and fluffy' but otherwise, a very easy to make recipe indeed.

So, how was it received? A massive thumbs up from everyone who had some - I was really quite proud of this dessert! It was quite light and if I'm being really picky (which I am) the base wasn't particularly crisp (but J says that they quite often aren't on baked cheesecakes) and the texture was smooth but not super-smooth (as I was hoping) but it did taste fabulous and I would make it again.


There was some left after the party and T was lucky enough to enjoy a piece for his breakfast the next morning. Yum! I'll leave you with a final picture of the glossy sauce and blueberry topping.