Jam Buttermilk Muffins

Brief note to self - don't bother making these again, there are better ways of using up a tub of buttermilk. I seem to be having a run of making things that just aren't quite to my taste at the moment. Hope I snap out of it soon, very frustrating!

The recipe came from 'Muffins - Fast and Fantastic'. It's the basic buttermilk muffin recipe with a tsp of morello cherry jam added before baking. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the recipe, it just isn't to my taste. Not quite sweet enough I think, and when the muffins were baked there was a slightly odd (and offputting) appearance to the tops of them.

Eaten up happily at work, which goes to show that everyone's tastes differ.

Morello Cherry Hot Milk Sponge

I recently bought 'Bake!' by Nick Malgieri, after it was recommended by Celia. I have had a flick through it and there are a number of the recipes that I'd like to try. One of them was 'kyra's hot milk sponge cake' in the chapter on Sponge and Meringue Layers. I was interested to know how the process and texture of the cake would compare to the ones that I make as my standby recipe (Victoria sponge proportions: 2 eggs/120g fat, flour, sugar).

It is described as 'the easiest and best-tasting sponge layer you can imagine' and I was interested to see if it lived up to this claim! However, I didn't actually make the recipe from the book. By complete coincidence (and I actually can't remember how it happened - I imagine I was either reading someone elses blog, an online forum or it was something to do with Twitter) I ended up reading an article Nigella Lawson wrote in September last year about this exact recipe (here, scroll down to see the article, the page appears to be blank at first). Since she says that she had simplified the method somewhat and had also baked in two 8"(20cm) tins rather than the 9" (23cm) tins specified in the book, I decided to go mostly with Nigella on this one.

I think that next time I will perhaps allow the butter/milk mixture to cool a little more - there seemed to be a few tiny flecks of bright orange that I am assuming were cooked bits of egg in the final sponge and I would also sift my flour (I followed Nigella and didn't bother) and fold it in by hand rather than just leaving the KitchenAid running with the whisk attachment on. There weren't very many flour pockets I don't think, but any is too many really when making cakes like this.

You can see just how runny and bubbly the batter was when I poured it into my tins above.

I found my cakes took 27 minutes to bake and I was mostly pleased with the way they turned out. I filled the cakes with morello cherry jam, but didn't dust the top with icing sugar, because it has a tendency to dissolve into the cake on the way to work and is therefore a bit of a waste of time!

I don't think it was the easiest cake in the world, although it was by no stretch of the imagination difficult to make. I enjoyed it and would probably make it again. I think the texture was closer and more fine grained than the usual sponge I make, and it was interesting to try out a different way of making a sponge cake. There are plenty more recipes in 'Bake!' that I'm looking forward to making.

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.

Perfect plain pittas

It's been ages since I've made anything for Short and Tweet, the twitter challenge (#shortandtweet) for baking from Dan Lepard's Short and Sweet organised by @EvidenceMatters. Not because I haven't wanted to, just because I'm disorganised! And seeing all of the excellent pictures other bloggers and twitter folk have taken of the various items that I haven't managed to bake yet is making me want to make them even more.

Lovely soft crumb

One of the challenge recipes for this week was perfect plain pitas, but because I've always known them as pittas, that's how I'm going to carry on spelling them. I very first made these years ago, pre blogging. In fact, I think they were one of the first baked items I ever took photos of, and this is simply because pittas are magic. (It was a fairly short step to both taking pictures of food and blogging it...) You place a fairly thinly rolled out dough into the oven, and then as if by magic you remove a puffed up football of a bread. Aside from the scorching heat needed for these they would be loved by small children for the visual spectacle!

Sticky, sticky dough

Since I have far too much bread in my freezer at the moment (Dill potato, rye sourdough, malted grain amongst them) I opted to make half of the recipe. When I originally made these I used the recipe here, which was originally published by the Guardian in their little 'Guide to Baking' booklet that came out in November 2007. This is a case where the book recipe is identical to the online version. In my half recipe I used 1tsp sugar and miscalculated my water, using 190ml instead of 165ml. Perhaps this is why my dough was wet and sticky. It wasn't too hard to work though. I also missed one of the kneading steps, again with no worries. I remember the pittas as being quite big, so as well as making a half batch I decided I would still make eight. This makes them a more manageable size for my lunch.

Rolled out and resting

Because the pittas need such a high heat I preheated my oven to Gas 8 (nearly as high as it will go) and placed a baking tray in it to warm up. I then shaped my pitta and placed them on a piece of baking parchment on a second tray, to use as a makeshift peel. I only baked two pittas at a time, and this method of transfering them from their unbaked state to the preheated tray was really successful, and I'll do it again.

Rolled out on a piece of parchment, ready to slide onto the waiting hot tray in the oven

When they were puffed up and baked through (6-7 minutes in my oven) I took them out and tipped them onto a napkin, covering them with a second napkin to keep soft and moist.

Puffed and golden, set against the gathering darkness, ow, ow, hot!!

Tender and chewy, these are a million miles from the long-life excuse for pitta bread that you find in the supermarkets.  They were just as successful as I remember them, and I had forgotten that they are relatively quick to make - you don't have to bother waiting for the second prove stage, and once you have a little production line going it's quite fun to keep seeing them pop out all puffed up! My one regret is that my oven has a solid door so I can't see the magic happening!

Perfect plain pitta

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!