Tamarind date cake

from The Guardian

tamarind cakeIn the running for best date cake ever. I’ve assumed you have a mortar and pestle for the cardamom, a bit cheeky I know, but better flavour than pre-ground spice.

200g chopped dates
50g tamarind paste
250g unsalted butter
150g dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
275g plain flour
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
175g shelled walnuts, roughly chopped
150g icing sugar
the seeds from 6 – 8 cardamom pods, finely ground
juice of 1/2 lemon

Line the base and sides of an 18cm deep cake tin with non-stick baking paper, and heat the oven to 180°C/fan 160°C/350°F/gas 4. Put the dates and tamarind paste in a pan with 300ml water and bring to the boil. Boil for a minute then remove from the heat, add the butter and leave 10 minutes to cool. Add the brown sugar, stir well then beat in the eggs until smooth. Beat in the flour and soda then stir in the walnuts. Spoon in the tin and bake for about an hour, or until a skewer poked in comes out clean. When cold mix the icing sugar, cardamom, juice and a little water if needed, to a thick smooth icing and spoon this over the cake so it dribbles down the sides.

If you have any questions about the recipe just ask over on our forum

Tamarind coffee cupcakes with fudge frosting

Tamarind paste gives a flavour a gentle lemon-like flavour to these coffee cupcakes. The simple chocolate and espresso frosting has a slight sugar grain to it, just like good fudge, but much quicker to make.

Makes 9

125g unsalted butter, softened
125g light soft brown sugar
1 tbsp ground coffee
1 tbsp tamarind paste
2 large eggs
200g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp cream of tartar

for the frosting
75g dark chocolate
25g unsalted butter
250g icing sugar
espresso-strength coffee
shavings of dark chocolate

Line a muffin tray with about 9 muffin papers and heat the oven to 190°C/fan 170°C/375°F/gas 5. Beat the butter and brown sugar until light and whipped. If you have an electric mixer, use it as you’ll get a much lighter cupcake. Add the coffee and tamarind, beat well then beat in the eggs one at a time until light and smooth. In a small bowl stir the flour, bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar together then sift this into the butter mixture and fold in gently but evenly. Fill the muffin papers to three quarters with the mixture then bake for 20 – 25 minutes.

Leave to cool then make the frosting. Melt the butter and chocolate together then pour into a bowl and leave until barely warm and almost setting. Add the icing sugar and just enough coffee (start with 2 – 3 tbsp) until it forms a thick creamy icing beat well until smooth. Spoon a blob onto each cupcake and swirl it to finish, then sprinkle with some of the chocolate shavings.

Apple, blackcurrant and clotted cream cupcakes

Apple, blackcurrant and clotted cream cupcakes

New tricks with old apples: a little fruit conserve brightens last season’s fruit. Here the rich blackcurrant icing adds a little sharpness to the flavour and a beautiful twist of colour to the top of each cupcake. Make the cupcakes the day before, store in an airtight container. The un-iced cupcakes can also be frozen.

Makes 20 cupcakes

3 dessert apples, peeled and cored
2 tsp mixed spice
50g unsalted butter, softened
1 x 113g tub clotted cream
150g caster sugar
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 large eggs
75g ground almonds
225g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
100g good blackcurrant conserve

For the icing
150g icing sugar, sifted
75g good blackcurrant conserve

plus:
2 cupcake trays lined with 20 cupcake cases

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C, fan 170°C, gas 5. Chop the apples into rough small dice. Toss the mixed spice through.

2. In a bowl beat the butter, clotted cream, sugar and almond extract until smooth. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until smooth, then fold in the ground almonds. Sift the flour and baking powder into the bowl and fold this through, too. Scrape the apples from the plate into the bowl and fold very gently until just combined.

3. Half fill the cupcake cases with the mixture. Dilute the jam with 25ml of boiling water, beat well, then spoon a little into each cupcake. Then top each one with a teaspoonful of cake mixture.

4. Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden; leave for 5 minutes then loosen each cake with a knife and move to a wire rack to cool.

5. Beat the icing sugar with the conserve and a little water, until creamy. Spiral the icing onto each cupcake and leave to set.

First published in Sainsbury’s Magazine

Whole lot of baking going on

Wholemeal flour, the whole grain milled as finely as possible with all of the outer bran and inner germ intact, is one of the best white flour improvers I know of. If you want a rich wheat flavour, or a slight moistness in the crumb, or a richer colour to the crust, then spooning in a little wholemeal flour – no matter whether it’s milled from rye grains, barley or wheat – takes the flour from bland to bold for little effort.

In my kitchen there will always be bags of rye wholemeal flour and wheat wholemeal flour (the latter is usually called “wholewheat flour”) in the cupboard because I’ll use them, in some proportion, in most of the recipes I bake. I hold back a little in published recipes because of space and to avoid everyone having to always do what I do. Most recipes work well using just white flour. It’s just that I believe those recipes are often better if some of the white flour is replaced with a wholemeal equivalent. (more…)

Chocolate Rum Truffles

truffle2

A chocolate rum truffle

I would never suggest that the amazingly talented and experienced bakers who follow this site ever put a foot wrong. But when I had my teashop & patisserie, and was baking cakes every day, there were times when things didn’t turn out quite perfectly. Perhaps it was a new assistant in the kitchen, or a recipe that needed several attempts to get just right. But whatever the cause, if I found myself left with something I couldn’t proudly put on sale, I was faced with that glum feeling that all those good ingredients were going to waste. Until one day, my ever-resourceful mother asked me why I wasn’t making rum truffles. Not those dainty little confections of chocolate ganache dusted with cocoa powder or in an almost non-existent crisp chocolate coat, but the big, stick-to-your-ribs balls of cake crumbs, glued together with jam and dark rum, and rolled in chocolate vermicelli. The sort of thing your English grandma might have tucked into, when the Vicar came to afternoon tea.

So when, a couple of weeks later, a new chocolate cake recipe resulted in four cakes which had all sadly sunk in the middle, I decided that all that flour, butter, eggs and good Belgian chocolate and cocoa would make the perfect starting point for an experiment: or, what to do, when good cakes go bad.

Chocolate Rum Truffles

Makes 18-20; all quantities in this recipe are approximate and can be adjusted to taste, as long as the mixture is firm enough to retain its shape.

800-825g chocolate cake crumbs
170g caster sugar
70g cocoa
270g smooth apricot jam
125ml dark rum (or more to taste)
150-180g dark chocolate vermicelli

cakepieces

1. Chocolate cake, cut into pieces

Cut the chocolate cake into pieces and then run them through a food processor, to create a fine crumb. This way, even the harder bits of crust get reused and you don’t need to waste anything. But if you don’t have a food processor, you can crumble the cake finely between your fingers and discard any recalcitrant lumps.

Combine the cake crumbs, sugar and cocoa in a large mixing bowl. Add the jam (sieving it if necessary, to remove any large pieces of fruit) and then the rum.

Rendering of template gallery-feature4.php failed

Knead to a sticky but firm paste, and then form into balls of around 75g by rolling between your hands. Then, while still warm and soft from your touch, roll in the chocolate vermicelli, in a small bowl. Place into paper cases and chill until required. If possible, leave out of the fridge for 20 minutes to warm up slightly before serving.

Rendering of template gallery-feature4.php failed

tea time

8. Perfect with afternoon tea

Oh, and the result ? Well, they all sold; one regular customer ate two; and the next week, I was making extra chocolate cakes, just to have some spare for making more chocolate rum truffles.

Page 1 of 3