Grilled pineapple and butterscotch sauce

 More BBQ goodness.

1 fresh pineapple, peeled/cored/chunked, marinated overnight in the juice and zest of 2 limes, 1-2tbsp caster sugar (to taste), and a handful of chopped fresh mint.

Thread the chunks on skewers and grill, or just eat from the bowl. Delicious with butterscotch sauce - I used a recipe from simplyrecipes.com which translates as:

225 g / 8 oz light muscovado sugar (lump free) (original said dark brown sugar, but I think this made it too treacly, whereas light brown will not overwhelm)
112 g / 4 oz unsalted butter
175 ml / 6 fl.oz double cream
1 tbsp vanilla extract
sea salt to taste (original = kosher salt)

In a heavy bottomed pan on a medium heat, melt the butter. Add the sugar and stir well - it will look like wet sand. Let the sugar melt and the "sand" mixture become more liquid, stirring to make sure no sugar gets left behind. Once it's liquid (it will still be slightly granular), pour in the cream and whisk well. Keep whisking occasionally as the mixture bubbles away for about 10 minutes. Pour into a heatproof but cool container and leave to come to room temperature, then stir in the vanilla and salt.

Goes well on the pineapple, but also other fruit, ice cream, biscuits, fingers, etc...

And she'll have fun fun fun 'til somebody takes her sprinkles awayyyyy

I fancied trying funfetti cake. It's a USAnian invention, plain white cake with fun bursts of colour courtesy of sprinkles in the mix (you know, sprinkles, like these)

It was featured on The Kitchn food blog this week, with a from-scratch recipe rather than the usual boxed mix version. Having been asked to bring something sweet to a birthday barbecue, I thought this would be the biz, especially as cupcakes. And I knew I had some hundreds and thousands in the cupboard to be used up.

I thought I'd make the effort and follow the linked recipe for white cake. It was quite an effort... the flour + butter + sugar + milk mixing stage could only be described as claggy. I am sure I will be finding randomly flung blobs of cake mix for weeks to come, but most of it seemed to coagulate around the stems of my mixer's beaters. Weird. I think next time I may just make a normal sponge cake! However, kudos to the author for giving grams as well as cup measurements.

So I made the cake mix, gently gently folded in my hundreds and thousands, blobbed it into a dozen silicone cupcake moulds (and then another dozen paper moulds - there's loads), and baked. After baking, it was time to try one (in the name of science of course) so I eased it in half and... no sprinkles. No Sprinkles!

Having gone ahead and shared them anyway, I can say that in some of the larger cakes, there were vague smears of yellow and pink. But on the whole - No Sprinkles. I can only assume that my use of hundreds and thousands, which were tiny sugar balls with natural colouring, was insufficient. The colours just diluted and dissolved in the cake mix. Re-reading the recipe, I see it says "The best sprinkles for baking into a cake are the longer "jimmies" — multi-colored and waxy". Darnit. Bring on the artificial colours!

Just as well I iced them and sprinkled more H&T on the top, eh? No sprinkles. Pah.

Photo: Crazy Cool Colorful Candy Confetti Creative Commons by Pink Sherbet Photography, on Flickr

And all because... (lemon and poppy seed cake)

... I only had medium-sized eggs.

This was one of those recipes inspired by one random bit of potential food waste that I wanted to avoid. Approximately 63% of a lemon lingered in the fridge after yesterday's oven-baked cod fillets with lemon (duh) and parsley, and a bit of ferreting around in the cupboard unearthed a packet of poppy seeds, albeit with a palaeolithic Best Before date. Ha - we scoff at such trivialities. Lemon and poppy seed cake was on the cards.

I even delved into a new cook book. Life on the edge, I tell you. Just like mother used to make features the following recipe:

Ingredients:
125g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
125g caster sugar
25g poppy seeds
zest of 1 lemon
pinch salt

2 large eggs, beaten
2 tbsp milk
dash vanilla essence

125g butter, melted

Method:
Combine the first five ingredients. Combine the last 3 ingredients. Add half of mix 2 to mix 1, plus half the butter. Mix well. Add the second half of mix 2 and the butter, and mix well again. Pour into a 20cm cake tin and bake at 180°C for an hour.

I found I only had medium eggs in the cupboard. I've been caught like this before so I used 2 whole eggs plus another yolk. I also decided to make a loaf cake, since lemon and poppy seed cake just should be a loaf in my book. Everything else went swimmingly. I decided to make a syrup from the otherwise-unneeded lemon juice and some more sugar, to top the cake off and make it into a lemon drizzle kind of thing.

Then I got carried away. I whisked up the leftover egg white, determined to make meringue. For some reason I chose to do this by hand. By the time I had got it to soft peak stage, the unwatched lemon syrup was lemon caramel. Rats. At this point, a quick check of the cake revealed it was a) volcanically uneven and b) somewhat toasty (ahem) at one end. And there were still 12 minutes left on the timer. An hour my arse. I dribbled the caramel on it anyway.

So, a nearly-but-not-quite burnt lemon and poppy seed loaf, with nearly-but-not-quite-burnt lemon caramel topping. Which sticks to your teeth. And is quite eye-wateringly lemony ("makes your tabs sing", I can hear mum saying) (tabs being ears, for the latitudinally challenged). It's edible, but domestic goddessicity is not at home today.

The meringues are still in the oven, but they'll have to go some to redeem the cake. [Edit: they were pretty good, but were fully crisp after 1h40 @ 125°C; glad I didn't do them at 140°C for 2h like the book gave in another recipe, and actually I would have preferred them a bit gooey in the middle...]

Note: making the mixture with melted butter made it relatively runny for cake batter. It pooled in the tin and levelled itself, when I think I could have done with making a hollow in the middle to even out the rise. Sorry, Tom Norrington-Davies, I don't know how your mother used to make cakes, but I'm not convinced this way is for me. I'm going back to Hannah Miles next time!

Note 2: while initially writing this post I constantly mistyped poppy as poopy. Says it all.

Something that's not cake - kale, pumpkin and bacon one-pot

A BBC Good Food recipe. Basically, cook bacon and shallots, add squash or pumpkin in smallish cubes,  chopped kale and stock. Simmer and serve when the squash is tender.

The recipe says streaky bacon but I would use back bacon next time - the streaky was too fatty and didn't crisp up (I was too impatient and/or it was supermarket bacon with added water). I did my usual trick of microwaving the squash for 7-8 minutes to start it off but I needn't have as the kale took longer than I thought. I also used home made chicken stock from earlier in the week and that was pretty good - ham stock would be good too I reckon. We didn't bother with the toast. I had a smear of Kozlik's maple mustard with mine and that added a nice little wow factor - could be good in the pot next time.We also agreed we could try small crispy bits of chorizo instead of bacon next time. Definite possibilities!

Rose peshwari cake / cupcakes

I read this and thought it was a fab idea! Yes, another one from my baking bible. I'm going to shorthand the recipe, partly for speed and partly because I'm not sure about reproducing in full quite so many recipes from the same book here! I did modify this one by adding the rose element, which I thought would go well with the theme.

Small cakes or muffins: (see below for large cake)
These always go down well at bake sales! As does the full size cake (below) if you can transport it.

Make a basic 6oz/175g sponge mix: 3 eggs, and the same weight (~175g) each of butter, sugar and SR flour; begin by creaming the butter and sugar, then add the eggs and finally the flour. Add a good pinch of ground cardamom (freshly ground seeds from a few pods, if you can).

In a food processor whizz up 50-60g each of pistachios, desiccated coconut and sultanas, and stir this into the cake mix. Without a processor, just make sure the pistachios and sultanas are chopped well. This makes 20-24 small cakes, or 12 generous muffins, which bake in 15-20 minutes at 180°C/160°C fan (but do the skewer or spring-back test to check).

When cooled, top with basic fondant icing (fondant icing sugar & cold water measured by eye and mixed to a stiff but still dribble-able consistency), flavoured with a couple of drops of rosewater and coloured with a tiny amount of red colouring. Optionally, sprinkle with pistachios, coconut, dried rose petals (!) or sprinkles.


Large cakes:
Make an 8oz/4-egg sponge version (you could increase the nuts etc. as well, it's not an exact science) and bake in two lined 20cm tins until springy. When cool, sandwich the cakes with raspberry jam (or spread of your choice - something a bit sharp is nice) and half the buttercream (see below), with the rest of the buttercream on spread the top, or just use jam in the middle and then water icing as above. Don't forget the sprinkles!

Make buttercream with 200g icing sugar (well sifted) and 100g soft butter, plus milk to loosen if necessary, and rosewater and red colouring as above. Optionally, you can use the thicker, solidified part of a tin of coconut milk instead of (some of the) butter, and then use the liquid part to loosen.

The 'berg is back

I made my old favourite Coffee Battenberg for a friend's tea and cake afternoon today. I say old favourite, but I haven't actually blogged it before even though I've made it at least three times and had various rave reviews!

[2016 update: I've added a method variation for a non-coffee version, at the bottom.]

It's a basic 6oz sponge mix, half left plain and half mixed with cocoa and coffee, baked in two loaf tins and then trimmed and cut into bars. Sandwich with coffee buttercream and wrap in marzipan... job done.

Of course, the reality is a bit trickier, but it's still not too hard to make.

Ingredients
Cake
175g butter, softened
175g caster sugar
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
175g self raising flour
1tsp baking powder
1tbsp cocoa powder
Half of: 1 tbsp coffee granules dissolved in 2 tbsp boiling water and cooled
1 tbsp milk 

Assembly
100g butter
200g icing sugar, well sifted
Other half of the coffee mixture
400g white marzipan


Method
Oven to 180°C / 160°C fan, grease and line 2 loaf tins (note - the more crisply you can line the tins, especially at the corners, the less cake edge you will have to trim!). You could use silicone pans, which don't need lining but tend to have softer corners. Or, take the Great British Bake Off/Mary Berry tactic of making a greaseproof divider in a square tin, but make sure it's at exactly halfway. A divided square tin will need more cooking time.

Cream butter and caster sugar until fluffy. Add eggs gradually and beat well after each addition.  Sift in flour and baking powder and beat well. Divide the mixture in half as accurately as you can (this is important - weigh if you have to), and add the cocoa and the (half) coffee mixture to one half, mixing well before spooning it into the tin. The plain mix has the tbsp of milk beaten in (to keep the texture the same as the coffee one) and goes in the other tin. When levelling the mixture, leave a generous dent in the centre to allow for more rising there. Bake for 30-35 minutes (45+ for a square tin) until springy in the middle / a skewer comes out clean; test both cakes! Cool in the tin for 5 minutes and then on a rack.


Beat the butter, icing sugar and coffee mixture until smooth, and set aside. Roll the marzipan out to pound coin thickness, at least as wide as your loaf tins are long and four times as long as your loaf tins are wide (at the bottom) - leave a safety margin for trimming. A silicon pastry mat is really helpful here. Use icing sugar to prevent it sticking, and keep flipping and turning it as you roll. Crucially, make sure it is not stuck to your surface before you start constructing!


When the cakes are cool, trim them as sparingly as you can, i.e. remove only what you need to make two evenly sized blocks with neat right-angle corners. Leave the ends until later, to trim them and the marzipan at the same time and get a neat finish. I do all of this trimming with a bread knife. Crucially, the cakes need to be the same height and width otherwise you'll have a wonky finished product. I have found that stacking 3 CD cases (you remember those...) each side of the cake gives me a way to trim the top nice and level without wasting too much, and then I stack the cakes on top of each other to trim the sides vertically and ensure they are the same. Finally, cut the two blocks in half lengthways to make two sticks of each flavour. I have to confess that I get a ruler out at this point! 

To construct, take a bricklaying approach. A palette knife and a jug of hot water for warming it will make life easier. Spread buttercream on one side of one sponge and put it buttercream-down on the marzipan near one end (leaving a margin for final wrapping). Then spread more on the inner side of that sponge. Buttercream another (opposite colour!) sponge and place it icing-down next to the first, against the spread side. Spread the top of both these sponges together, add another sponge on top, spread its inner side, and add the final sponge to make the square. Now cover the three outer sides of the block with buttercream too and you're ready for marzipan.


Bring the marzipan over the cake, being careful not to tear it, and making sure the corners are not baggy. If you have a fondant icing smoother tool, it can help get everything flat. Leave the ends rough for now. Allow a centimetre or two for the overlap along one side, feather the edge that will lie on top (press it down to make it thinner), and moisten it with water to make it stick. Roll the cake over to put this on the bottom. Now trim the marzipan edges and the cake ends at the same time to get a clean, flat face, and pinch along the corners of the cake slightly to sharpen them. The trimming can be easier to do if you chill the cake first, to firm up the buttercream and marzipan.

Overall, this is not your delicate afternoon tea Battenberg in this particular incarnation. It's pretty hefty! But it seems to hit the spot and it all disappeared at the tea and cake session... and every other time I have made it since.

Non-coffee variation:
Make the plain mixture as above. Rather than the coffee and cocoa, add a little red colouring and (optionally) rosewater to one half, and (optionally) almond essence to the other. Gel colour will give a nice shade without making the cake mix too sloppy. Sandwich with jam (sparingly) instead of buttercream - plum or seedless raspberry work well, apricot would also be fine. Wrap with yellow marzipan.

Marmalade & not-whisky cake

Yet another one from the Big Book of Cakes and Cookies - I knew I had basic cake ingredients (mainly a couple of eggs that needed using) and it was to hand, so I browsed for inspiration and came up with Marmalade and Whisky Cake.

Ingredients

• 100g sultanas soaked overnight in 3tbsp whisky
• 225g butter, softened
• 115g caster sugar
• 115g soft dark brown sugar
• 4 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 225g self-raising flour, sifted
• 3tbsp thin-shred marmalade
For the topping:
• 15g butter
• finely grated zest of 1 orange
• 2tbsp demerara sugar
• 4tbsp plain flour, sifted

Oven: 180°C. Tin: deep 23cm springform, greased and lined.

Method


For the cake, cream the butter and sugars together well. Beat the eggs in gradually. Fold in the flour, marmalade and sultanas, and spoon into the tin.


If making the topping, combine just like crumble topping and sprinkle over the cake. Bake for 35-40 minutes until springy and/or a skewer comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes in the tin and then on a rack.

First of all, with only 2 eggs, I made half the mixture. This made a decent sized loaf cake so I'm glad I didn't do the full amount! I did use the full amount of sultanas, but I soaked them in Cointreau rather than whisky which I don't really like and therefore don't have. Unfortunately, although they were lovely and plump, there wasn't really an orangey taste, even with the marmalade as well, which was a shame. I think next time I would put the orange zest in with the sultanas to soak in the alcohol, and if I made the full amount, I'd also think about making two round cakes and sandwiching it with marmalade for that full orangey hit.

Like the last cake I made from this book, this one has a crumbly topping, but this time I don't think it really added anything (the coffee and nut streusel was a definite enhancement to the previous one). It just makes it hard to take out of the pan, and messy to cut and eat. So next time I'll bin the crumble, put the orange zest in the cake, and maybe just make an orange/sugar syrup for the top.