Not just your standard cherry cake

My mum, and indeed so am I, is a huge fan of anything that involves glace cherries, which leads to a great many things being made with them! Coupled with that is a love for anything involving almond, so it is extremely handy that the two things go so well together! A little while ago I did a post involving cherry and almond flapjack, and the list of things I have crated involving the two ingredients is rather long so I won;t put them all down here. This post is for what appears to be a simple cherry cake, but it packs an almighty punch of rich, nutty almond sponge with a zesty lemon kick, punctuated with beautiful sweet, artificially red cherries, and finished with a crunchy sugar top - it is a favourite in the Appleby household, and definitely deserves its own post on this blog.

The Ingredients

 Butter, caster sugar, glace cherries, ground almonds, plain flour, baking powder, eggs, zest and juice of 1 lemon, and sugar lumps for the top.

To start, cream together the butter and sugar in a large bowl until it is smooth and pale.

 Then put the creamed mixture to one side, take the glace cherries and cut them into quarters. You do not need to worry about washing them.

  In another large bowl, place the quartered cherries and add to them a spoonful of plain flour and the ground almonds. For this recipe I grind my own almonds because I feel it adds to the flavour and texture of the cake - this is obviously down to personal choice and if a smoother sponge is wanted then finely ground almonds should be used.

 Mix the cherries thoroughly with the flour and almonds so that they are well covered.

 Leaving the cherries on one side, into the creamed mixture add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Then add the remaining flour and the baking powder and mix well.

 Next, add in the cherries.

 Finally, mix in the lemon zest and juice.

 Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin - the tin used is a round springform tin, around 20cm/8 inches. I use cake release spray, which I absolutely love, but you can just butter and/or line the tin if you prefer.

 Level out the tip of the cake with the back of a spoon or a spatula and then sprinkle the crushed sugar cubes all over the top of the cake. The sugar cubes want to be in a variety of sized lumps, evenly spaced over the top of the cake.

 Cook in the oven for 1-1 and 1/4 hours, when cooked it will have nicely risen and browned, and started to crack on the top.

And there you have the finished product.

The sugar cubes are such a brilliant touch because they give the entire cake a crunchy topping without being overly sweet. The lemon in the cake tones the sweetness down also, which is definitely needed because of just how sweet the glace cherries are, and there are lots of them in this cake! It might seem like it is just a standard cherry cake but it is genuinely so much more - I haven't met anyone (yet!) that hasn't tried it and absolutely loved it!

Kate

xxx

A Christmassy treat #1

I have been completely absent from the blog for an entire month! I feel this is awful behaviour! I have, however, been ridiculously busy! That is my excuse and I am sticking to it! Life is only going to get busier though it would seem because not only is it the week before christmas but I found out today that I will actually be getting the keys for my new premises on Monday! Very very exciting but also rather stressful!

Now, next week is not only a week of finishing the christmas shopping, wrapping presents, and making beautifully decadent Christmas treats for family and friends, it is also a week of clearing, cleaning and possibly even decorating! I think there is still a little way to go before the doors will actually be opening to the masses though! However, over the next few months, this blog will be featuring fewer recipe posts and many more posts on the progress of the premises! I've been doing all sorts of grown up things like opening up a business bank account and sending off for business cards! Plus things keep arriving that are addressed to the 'Managing Director'! Just a tiny bit scared! 

As another point, I am also working on getting my official website up and running. You might notice that I have added it as a page at the top, and if you do go for a look, bare in mind it is very much a work in progress at the moment! 

As it is almost Christmas, I thought I would get back to my blog with a Christmas post! Hopefully I'll get a few more up over the week and then maybe after the Big Day itself too! My baking exploits are normally saved for the 27th, when the Appleby family have 'Day-after-Boxing-Day Tea'! Kicking off proceedings is a recipe for an Iced Ginger Cake. It really is a beautiful cake; a light, crumbly sponge with a lovely tangy ginger icing on top. I love using ginger and other spices at this time of year because they just taste and smell so festive! This cake is definitely a perfect christmassy treat!

The Ingredients

175g Butter, 175g caster sugar, 3 eggs, 1 tbsp treacle, 2 tbsp ginger syrup, 225g self-raising flour, 1 tsp ground mixed spice, 1 tsp ground ginger, 1 tbsp ground almonds, 2 tbsp milk, and 70g stem ginger. 

Start by creaming together the butter and caster sugar.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs.

Add the treacle and the ginger syrup to the eggs and whisk.

In another bowl, mix together the flour and spices.

Alternately, add a little of the egg mixture and then some of the flour mixture, to the creamed butter and sugar mixture, until all mixtures are completely combined.

Next, add the ground almonds and the milk, and stir together until you have a smooth mixture.

Finally, chop the stem ginger into reasonably small pieces and add to the mixture, then mix everything together.

Spoon into a prepared tin and smooth the surface - note my use of silicone once more! I do always line the bottom of my silicone moulds though. If you don't have silicone, then make sure your tin is well greased/lined. 

Bake in the oven (160/Gas Mark 3) for 45-50 minutes, until the cake is well risen and firm to the touch. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

When the cake is completely cool, make up some glace icing with 225g of icing sugar and 1tsp of ginger syrup. 

Pour the icing over the cake - it will be runny so be prepared! If you don't like the consistency add some more icing sugar.

To finish, decorate the cake with edible gold balls.

It was enjoyed by all here in the Appleby Household, and I hope it will be enjoyed by my future customers also! If you try making it, I hope you enjoy it too!

Kate

xxx

Cinnamon and Caramel Cookies

I have wanted to make the biscuits in this post for quite a while, but I kept forgetting to buy the toffees or I'd find something else to make and forget all about them! However, this week I finally got round to making them, and I am very glad I did! The biscuit is so lightly spiced and crumbly it is truly divine, and the toffee brings just the right amount of sweetness because it doesn't overpower the other flavours. They go perfectly with my favoured tea of the moment, Chai - I can't stop drinking the stuff! It will definitely be featuring on the Delicious Decadence drinks menu when we finally open - fingers crossed, in fact everything crossed, it will be soon now because we only have a couple of things left to tie up! 

Anyway, enjoy the post!

The Ingredients

8oz Butter, 5oz caster sugar, an egg, 1tsp vanilla extract, 10oz plain flour, pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp ground mixed spice, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, and toffees.

Firstly, cream together the butter and sugar until pale and smooth.

Next, separate the egg, and add just the egg yolk (you don't need the white) and the vanilla extract.

Then add the flour, ground mixed spice, ground cinnamon, and a pinch of salt.

Stir everything together until you have a smooth and fairly pliable dough, and then drop spoonfuls of it onto a lined baking tray. Use your fingers to round the drops and flatten them down a bit. Make sure the amounts are well spaced out because they spread when they bake. 

For the toffee part, you need individually wrapped round toffee sweets - one for each cookie.

After 6 minutes in the oven (190), remove the cookies, and place a toffee in the middle of each one.

Put the cookies back in the oven for another 8-10 minutes and then remove, at which point the cookies will be a beautiful golden brown and the toffee in the middle will have started to melt slightly. 

And there you have it. The cookies have a beautiful flavour and I think you could just make them as a plain biscuit without the toffee if you fancied it! The toffee remains chewy in the centre and compliments the biscuit well. Well worth a try I think!

Kate

xxx

Chocolate Post #4

I am a keen member of the WI, as I have said in previous posts, however, I was incredibly bored at last night's meeting. In the programme for the year we were told we would be getting a demonstration on cake decorating, which I was very much looking forward to, but when we arrived at the village hall we found out that our speaker had cancelled on us at the last minute - something our WI seems to have a serious problem with. 

'Oh no', I hear you all cry, 'what did you do?' We got taught how to make chocolate brownies........ 

I was not particularly impressed, especially when the lady (another member of my WI) started talking about this 'new idea' of having a brownie for dessert...and people wonder why younger women don't want to join! On trying the brownie at the end I was even more unimpressed.

Having gone through this last night, I thought I would knock together a related post, and so here is a brownie recipe I found only recently, but am a serious fan of it! Mainly because it isn't ruined by the addition of walnuts! I can't stand walnuts but I do think brownies need something else in them to lighten the denseness of the chocolate - in this recipe that something is cranberries, which I do rather like. When I found it in a new recipe book I've just acquired I couldn't resist giving it a go and it was well worth it! Just to clarify, I am not now teaching you how to make brownies!

The Ingredients

 Butter, chocolate, caster sugar, cocoa, eggs, plain flour, baking powder, and cranberries.

First, put the chocolate and the butter in a medium sized bowl and melt in the microwave.

In a seperate bowl, beat together the eggs and the caster sugar until pale and smooth.

Then add the melted chocolate and butter and mix thoroughly. 

Next, sift in the plain flour, cocoa, and baking powder, and combine.

Finally, carefully fold in the cranberries.

Spoon into a rectangular tin, once again I am using my much favoured silicone one, and bake.

Remove from the oven when the top has become crisp and pale, and is beginning to crack.

When it has cooled slightly, cut it into squares (or as close to squares as you can get) and leave to cool on a wire rack.

And there you have a beautiful chocolate brownie with a slight twist because of the cranberries. The texture is the perfect combination of crisp on the outside and gooey in the middle, while the cranberries take the edge off the chocolate just the right amount.

If you're feeling really adventurous, why not try this 'new idea', and serve it warm with ice cream and chocolate sauce for a very nice dessert.

Oh the hilarity! Enjoy!

Kate

xxx