Skip to main content

Baking again

One thing I've really enjoyed about working in a cafe again is having a good reason to make cakes.  I've dusted off some of my old recipes and tried out a few new ones too.  Carrot cake and sweet-topped fairy cakes are reliable favourites; a crumble-topped apple cake (with slices of apple pushed into the cake batter) and gingerbread cupcakes have gone down well.

However, I haven't always found much time for baking at home.  This week's been an exception.  Three different bakes have gone in the oven, though you'll have to wait a little longer to hear about the third.

Firstly, I'd had my eye on a recipe for parsnip and pecan loaf for a while.  Yes, parsnip.  Same principle as carrot cake, as in you mostly taste the spices, not the root veg.  Besides, I like cakes with funny ingredients - I've got an aubergine brownie recipe tucked away to see if I ever dare to make it!

Like carrot cake, it uses oil instead of butter, so except for the bit of peeling and grating, it's pretty quick to make.  Pecans aren't cheap on this side of the Atlantic, but toasted pecans are delicious.  I toasted mine several days before I actually got around to baking the cake (so long that Graham asked if they were going to sit on the counter forever, or what) and had to stop myself nibbling at them.





Pecan and Parsnip Loaf (from Nov 2017 Waitrose magazine)

100g pecan halves
150g light brown soft sugar
150ml vegetable oil
2 eggs
170g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp mixed spice
200g coarsely grated parsnip

Preheat the oven to 170°C.  Put the pecans on a baking tray and toast for about 10 minutes.  Cool and chop fairly finely.

With an electric mixer, beat the sugar, oil and eggs together until creamy.  Add the dry ingredients and mix, then stir in the parsnip and most of the pecans, reserving about 2 tbsp.

Pour into a lined loaf tin and bake for 1 hour until risen and firm.  Leave in the tin for a few minutes, then tip out and let cool.

If you wish, ice with honey frosting.  Beat together 60g butter, 120g cream cheese, 100g icing sugar, 1 tbsp honey until smooth.  Sprinkle reserved pecans over the icing.

That recipe was pretty much by the book - except that it was half eaten before I had time to think about icing it, so we had the healthy, uniced, version.  This next recipe was a "what can I make quickly with what I've got in the cupboard?" type of baking.  There actually was a recipe for white chocolate cranberry cookies in my Colossal Cookie Cookbook, but it required chilling.  So I used the white chocolate pecan one instead (more pecans!) but substituted dried cranberries.  And halved it.  And converted on the fly from cups to ounces.  Who says baking has to be accurate?




White chocolate and cranberry cookies (adapted from The Colossal Cookie Cookbook)

3 oz butter, softened
3 oz light brown soft sugar
3 oz white sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
6 oz plain flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
Probably 3 oz Craisins (half a packet or so)
3 oz / 75g white chocolate, chopped

Preheat oven to 160°C.  I should line my baking sheets because my cookies always come out dark on the bottom, but I never do, so let's pretend you're better than me and actually do it.

Beat the butter and sugars together until well mixed.  Add the egg and vanilla and beat until fluffy.  

Add the flour, baking powder, dried cranberries and white chocolate and stir with a spoon until combined.  

Dollop spoonfuls of the mixture onto the baking sheets.  I got about 20 out of this; I think the original recipe made much larger cookies!  Give them 10 minutes in the oven and see how they look; they might need a couple more minutes to finish off.  Cool on the tray for a minute, then move to a rack to cool.

The third lot of baking was Theo's birthday cake for Saturday.  Surprisingly, he asked for ginger cake.  But you can hear about that one when it's been decorated and done its job for the celebrations!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Springtime walks: Croxden Abbey and Shining Cliff Woods

It seems to be taking a long time to get properly warm, this spring. But suddenly there are flowers everywhere and the world has turned green. We had to go and see it all. Croxden Abbey 800 years ago, there was a community of 70 monks at Croxden Abbey, hidden away in a beautiful nook of Staffordshire. Now there are peaceful ruins, carpeted with soft green grass. It was hard to imagine the space filled with busy worship and work. Croxden abbey cloisters the west door of the church We had parked at the village of Hollington and walked down the hill, playing a game of spot-the-animal. In just a few short fields we had seen sheep, cattle, horses, alpacas, rabbits, a dog, and even a donkey. We decided we only needed pigs to make our farm animal collection complete! It wasn't a long hike - we probably spent just as long eating snacks and playing hide and seek in the abbey ruins, as we did walking. Our return journey took us past a few horses, but sadly no pigs. We followed an old Roman r

God is Not a White Man: Spiritual Formation Book 8

"I studied Theology... Despite the fact that most of the world's religious people are not white, we learnt very little about the theological thinking and experiences of Black and brown people." Chine McDonald is director of Theos, an organisation which provides research and opinion on the place of religion in society. She moved to the UK from Nigeria at the age of four. McDonald has been involved with the Evangelical Alliance, Christian Aid, and Greenbelt, as well as working as a journalist, so she has some wide-ranging experiences within the Christian and secular culture. This book uses stories from her own life, and historical examples, to illustrate the problem of racism in the church. She focuses on the British church in particular, although she refers to American events too. What are the main themes of this book? McDonald's argument is that white people - men in particular - have been assumed to be superior. They are regarded as more intelligent, more authoritati

Walking the National Forest Way (with a two year break)

Remember when it was lockdown and we were all stuck in our houses for months on end? Well, way back then I hatched a plan of walking the National Forest Way as a family project. I ordered the map, downloaded the route guides, and we did the first section in 2021: Yoxall to the National Memorial Arboretum (Stage 12). The photos tell me it was a beautiful April day - I was wearing shorts! The 5-mile route was pleasant, across fields and through scraps of woodland, then hopping over the Trent and Mersey Canal into the village of Alrewas. After that we had a hair-raising walk along a pavement right next to the A38 dual carriageway, with cars zipping past at 70mph, but fortunately that was a very short section before we turned off towards the National Memorial Arboretum. Of course we had to celebrate with an ice cream - why else would we finish at the Arboretum instead of starting there?  Smaller boys! Lockdown haircuts! At the finishing point A well-deserved treat There followed a very. l