I’ve always been turned off by the idea of green smoothies. I don’t know why, because I love my greens! Spinach? Yum! Kale? One of my favourite foods! But the idea of drinking them just sounded wrong to me! But I am officially a convert, green smoothies are awesome!
September is my favourite month (yes I know it’s October now, but shh). It’s the start of autumn, the weather is cool but sunny, there are warm spices wherever you turn. And figs come into season! I love figs a lot. It’s hard to get them fresh where I live though so I pounce on them whenever I get the chance. And when I was walking past the fruit market stalls in town last week and saw they had fresh figs – I went a bit crazy. I came home with over 1kg of fresh figs!
It’s time for European Cakes week of my GBBO challenge! Yay! And I made this fig and orange kugelhopf! A kugelhopf, or gugelhupf, is a yeast leavened cake usually filled with soaked dried fruit such as raisins or dates. I think it is Austrian, but also native to Germany and Hungary and it’s what inspired the American favourite – the bundt cake! I know what you’re probably thinking – but Michelle, why is the Great British Bake Off doing a European Cakes week? Isn’t that a bit redundant considering Britain is in Europe? Well, maybe. But one thing you should probably know about us Brits is we don’t really consider ourselves real Europe (I think some Brits like to think of us as our own continent sometimes!). Taking a day trip to France? You’re not just going to a neighbouring country, you’re going to “the continent” – it’s like we’re a little village on the outside of a big city! So when you hear Brits talking about “Europe” we most likely mean any European country that isn’t part of our Islands!
This cake was a bit of a challenge for me! This is my first time using yeast to leaven a cake and let me tell you, it’s made me appreciate baking powder a lot more! But this is the way they used to make cakes rise before such wonderful things like baking powder were invented, and Europe sure does love it’s traditions! My first attempt was a big failure, my dough just didn’t rise at all – I baked it anyway though to test the flavours and I ended up with a very dense, malt loaf kind of texture. The flavours were great though so at least I knew I had that part sussed. My mum, however, loved it and she ate almost the whole thing! Which was a little weird, but at least it didn’t go to waste! For my second attempt I tackled it from a different, more cake like way as the first time I treated it like a bread dough and mixed the ingredients as such. And it came out great!
As you might imagine, this cake has more of a fruit bread texture than a cake texture, but it is very light. It’s great eaten warm, fresh from the oven and would be yummy with afternoon tea. It’s also wonderful toasted and eaten for breakfast, it would be amazing with my cinnamon honey butter generously spread on it. This kugelhopf is stuffed full of orange zest and dried figs, the dried figs were soaked in orange juice and spiced rum overnight. I then saved the liquid from that to make a honeyed syrup that I cooked fresh figs and orange segments in to decorate the top, and poured the syrup over the warm cake. There were so many warm, yummy flavours coming from this cake – it’s a definite winner. It’s a bit of long winded process to make this cake but I think it’s worth it, you can however speed up the process a little and I’ll explain how in the notes after the recipe.
Last week (September 15th-21st) was National Cupcake Week in the UK and I only found out on Saturday, this happens to me every year! So yesterday I decided to celebrate the last day by developing a new cupcake flavour – and so parsnip and raspberry cupcakes with raspberry swirl cream cheese frosting were born!
I love putting vegetables in cake, they give the cake a moistness you can’t really get any other way. The parsnip in these cupcakes also give them a depth of sweetness you just can’t get with sugar, they lend themselves really well to cupcakes and I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to bake with parsnips! It’s weird though, when I told people I was putting parsnip in cake they were confused – the same thing happened when I made sweet potato cupcakes – yet nobody bats an eyelid at the idea of carrot cake! I made my mum taste these cupcakes before I would tell her what was in them so her opinion wasn’t swayed by the unusual ingredient – she loved them. She said she could taste something but couldn’t put her finger on what it was, when I told her it was parsnip she was surprised but definitely a convert!
I didn’t want to use just parsnip and raspberries really compliment the parsnip and spices in this cake, it’s definitely a winning combination. The raspberry flavour comes from a homemade raspberry sauce and raspberry cider. I’ve been baking a lot with raspberries at the moment, I want to use them as much as possible while they’re still in season, and Tesco’s raspberries have been really good lately! I’ve bought a bunch that I’ve frozen to use in smoothies later!
This Lemon Cardamom Drizzle Cake is a delicious twist on the classic British cake. Fluffy, moist and full of flavour – it’s a total star bake!
I am starting off my Great British Bake Off challenge with a real kicker, lemon and cardamom drizzle cake! The theme for last week’s GBBO was cake of course and I knew I wanted to make a British classic and decided on lemon drizzle cake. I wanted to give it a little depth though and make it a little more interesting and I thought cardamom would do just that, so this Lemon Cardamom Drizzle Cake was born!
The cake is moist and crumbly with a sharp, tart lemon flavour, just like a lemon drizzle cake should be. Then the cardamom brings in a subtle undertone that really gives depth to the flavour without taking away any of the tartness from the lemon. Lemon and cardamom really do compliment each other, it’s definitely a flavour profile I’ll be using more often.
Are you a Lemon Lover? Check out these Pancake Cupcakes with Lemon Buttercream
This is a really simple recipe to do, as you want the sponge to be nice and light you start with creaming the butter and sugar together and then beating the eggs and zest. You fold in the flours by hand so you don’t over mix it, then you stir in the juices and cardamom and you’re ready to bake. The cardamom comes in pods that you have to split open to get the seeds, then you have to grind the seeds into a powder before you put them into the cake. This was a great excuse for me to buy a mortar and pestle since I didn’t already own one and have always wanted one! While the cake is baking you make up the simple syrup of sugar, lemon juice and a little more cardamom so it’s ready to pour onto the warm cake when it comes out of the oven! And thus, a Lemon Cardamom Drizzle Cake is born!