People's Kitchen cakes

I did a bit of cooking and baking over the last few days, for the new People's Kitchen in Glossop.

Recipes have now been requested and as I winged it fairly heavily I'm now going to have to do some serious thinking! Two were intrepid new cake experiments based on the old faithful chocolate cake (I made one of these too, just in case) - added to which, I made them all gluten-free (substituted Doves gluten-free flour blend), which I've never attempted before.

*Note on quantities - this makes a massive amount of batter so I recommend halving it for a normal 8"/9" cake tin. In which case also reduce the baking time by 10 minutes or so.

Ginger, lemon and treacle cake:

Ingredients
3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
3-4 tsp ginger depending on personal taste
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking soda (a bit more if you're using gluten-free flour)
1 tsp salt

3/4 cup oil
2 tbsp vinegar (any kind will do)
2 tsp vanilla essence
2 cups cold water
4 tbsp treacle or molasses

Lemon drizzle:
140g caster sugar
juice of 2 lemons

Method
Preheat your oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6, and thoroughly grease and flour your tin.

Sift your dry ingredients (except the sugar) together in one bowl and mix them up, then mix up your wet ingredients, and the sugar, in a separate bowl. I recommend heating up the treacle or molasses before spooning it in, or you'll be stirring for hours! Add the wet to the dry and mix until just combined, pour it into your tin and bake for 30-40 minutes or until the top is springy and a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.

While the cake is baking, mix your lemon drizzle ingredients together.

As soon as it comes out of the oven, stab it all over with a fork and spoon the drizzle on as evenly as you can. Leave it to cool in the tin. I warn you this cake was very difficult to remove from the tin! The drizzle made the middle of the cake so gooey that it has to be scooped out. I've therefore reduced the quantity of drizzle slightly in the hope of remedying this problem.

Pear and almond crumble cake:

Ingredients

3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp baking soda (a bit more if you're using gluten-free flour)
1 tsp salt
(1/2 cup ground almonds would also be an excellent addition if you're feeling flush)

3/4 cup oil
2 tbsp vinegar (any kind will do)
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp almond essence
2 cups cold water

Pear filling:
Large quantity of firm-ish pears (10-15? depending on how full you want your cake tin), cored and roughly chopped
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp almond essence
1 tbsp treacle or molasses
1 tbsp cornflour
water

Crumble topping:
2 cups flour (this part is very rough as I just eyeballed it, but if you've ever made a crumble topping before you know how it goes!)
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch salt
oil

Mix the cake ingredients as above and pour the batter into your greased and floured tin. Par-bake the cake at 200C for about 20 minutes, so that a bit of a crust has formed on top.

While the cake is in, stir together the treacle with a cupful of water to loosen it up, and then add the cornflour, stirring until smooth. Mix this in with the pears, then add the cinnamon and almond essence. When everything is coated, add some more water if needed (you want the liquid to be 1/4-1/3 of the way up the pears) and then bring to a gentle boil, stirring occasionally. Don't overcook it - the pears should still be relatively intact, and the liquid just verging on viscous.

Make your crumble topping - throw all the dry stuff into a bowl and mix it together, then add a glug of oil and stir. Add more oil bit by bit, stirring it in, until the mixture gets clumpy. Then get your hands in the bowl and rub it between your fingertips until it becomes breadcrumby. If it's too sticky just add more flour - too dry, add more oil. Taste it to check the sweetness level too if you want. (I actually would have used half oats and half flour for this stage, but then I remembered oats have gluten in them! But you can put whatever your please in your crumble topping.)

Whip your half-baked cake out of the oven and, working quickly so you don't lose too much heat, scoop your pear filling on top. It will be impossible to spread so distribute it evenly with a spoon as you go. Then tip out the crumble on top of this (be careful of the hot tin!), spread it out and smush it down.

The tin will be heavy now so be careful getting the whole shebang back into the oven! From this point I baked it for probably 40-50 minutes. It will be difficult to tell if it is done because the soft pears throw the knife test off! But by the time the crumble starts to colour you should be in business. Let it cool in the tin.

I hope they work...

CLF offerings of a very tasty nature

Having been galvanised into action by the challenge, I've finally got round to posting some cake that I made! I've got a big backlog, but this was the most recent batch - and IMHO some of my best ever.

Made for the Cake Liberation Front meet last month, may I present Lemon and Raspberry Sandwich-Drizzle cupcakes:

I used Isa's basic vanilla cupcake (with oil) as a blueprint, added 2 tablespoons of lemon zest (to the batter after combining) and a tablespoon of lemon juice (to the soy milk-vinegar mix - also means adding a touch more baking soda). They rose so spectacularly that I changed my original raspberry topping plan to a raspberry filling. I sliced off the tops, made a lemon drizzle mix (just lemon juice and sugar - 1 lemon, 40g sugar) which I poured over both cut sides, then spread them with a layer of delicious raspberry goo based on the pineapple cupcake topping. 1 punnet raspberries, a few spoonfuls water and lemon juice, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 tbsp arrowroot, 1 tsp vanilla, mixed together and cooked until bubbling and thick, stirring all the time. A dollop of soya whipping cream on top for decoration/good measure, as I had some leftover in the fridge.

I also made a black forest gateau style batch, which was pretty much just the basic chocolate cupcake with amaretto added to the batter (couldn't find kirsch - anyone know of a source in Manchester?!), amaretto/cherry jam glaze and an amaretto whipped cream topping with a dollop of cherry jam in the middle, covered with grated chocolate. In retrospect I should have either added the jam before cooking, to sink into the middle, or at least dug a hole in the baked cakes to squish it into. But I was feeling lazy and couldn't be bothered! They were pretty good though.

Happy birthday, Daddy!

20th April would have been my dad's 74th birthday. For those of you who don't know, as I haven't mentioned it here before, he died in November last year, so this is the year of first Dad-less things!

Now, my dad was a man who liked his cake.

Exhibit A:

So, in his honour, my sister and I decided to bake him cakes. With the added advantage, of course, that this time we get to eat them all ourselves... ;) Well you've got to look on the bright side! Lemon Drizzle was always a favourite of Dad's, so that's what I went with. I think I got the original recipe off the BBC Food site a few years back (possibly for the same reason, to make one for Dad's birthday!), and as I remembered it to have been successful, I decided to have a bash at veganising it. It came out pretty well, if I say so myself! Possibly the best version I've made, including eggy ones. In fact, I think a thin sliver of a cake made from this pre-veganised recipe (just to check out my handiwork), may have been the last non-vegan thing I voluntarily ate.

Vegan Lemon Drizzle Cake

Cake:
225g margarine
225g raw cane sugar (or whatever you've got/like)
6 tbsp soya yoghurt
1/2 cup soya milk
1 tsp vinegar
zest of 2 lemons (this makes a fairly lemony cake, add more or less if you prefer)
225g self-raising flour (or if like me you only have plain flour, add a good tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp baking soda)

Drizzle:
Juice of 1 1/2 lemons (more if you want it more lemony - mine could probably have used more drizzle - adjust the sugar levels as necessary)
85g icing or caster sugar
And if you're feeling adventurous and you have some knocking about, a tablespoon or two of maple syrup (my own genius addition!)

Preheat oven to 180/gas mark 4. Grease and flour (or line with greaseproof paper if you prefer) a largish loaf tin or other tin of similar capacity (but remember to adjust baking time accordingly - more surface area means less oven time).

Mix the vinegar with the soya milk and leave to curdle. Beat together the margarine and sugar until they are creamed together, fluffy and all that. Add the soya yoghurt and curdled milk, beat again - it probably won't emulsify, but do your best. You can stick it all in the blender for this step, if you have one. Sift in the flour and raising agents if using (make sure you've mixed them into the flour first so that they are evenly distributed), add the lemon zest, and mix together til just combined. Pour the mix into the tin and level it off if neatness is your bag, then bake for 45-50 minutes.

Mix up the drizzle ingredients. Remove cake from oven, and while it's still hot, prick the top all over with a fork or knife and pour on the drizzle, distributing evenly. Leave it in the tin to cool.