Thursday 30 April 2015

Spiced rhubarb loaf cake

Yes yes more rhubarb. Why the heck not. Last week tart, so this week cake. Loaf cakes are one of my favourite things to make and the addition of mixed spice and ginger makes this lusciously warm. Serve cold or even better warmed up with cream or custard. 

Ingredients:
140g butter or margarine 
100g dark brown sugar 
2 tbsp golden syrup 
300g self raising flour
2 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp ground ginger 
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 eggs
250g rhubarb

Preheat the oven to 180/160 fan and grease and line a 2lb loaf tin. Boil the kettle and chop the rhubarb info 1cm pieces.

In a large bowl, beat together the sugar and butter for a few minutes until lighter in colour. Beat in the syrup. Add the bicarbonate to 200ml hot water and mix in with the flour, mixed spice and ground ginger. Finally beat in the eggs and stir in the rhubarb. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 50-60 minutes until a cake tester comes out clean. If it's browning too much on top, pop a little foil hat on top.



Friday 24 April 2015

Rhubarb & custard crumble pie

Say what? Rhubarb and custard and crumble and pie? All together?

Oh yes!

Rhubarb and custard, a match made in heaven (well it is to most, I hate custard). Throw on some crumble and you've got a pretty perfect dessert. If you like rhubarb, which sadly many don't. What these people are missing out on!

So this recipe combines the best of both worlds; pie and crumble. You can substitute the fruit with any other that can be baked. Oh I'm dreaming of an apple version or a raspberry version. Mmmmmmm.

Make it, go on you know you want to!

Ingredients
Pastry:
225g plain flour
120g butter
80g caster sugar 
1 large egg
Milk

Pie filling:
275g fresh rhubarb 
100g golden caster sugar 
1 large egg and 2 yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp plain flour
150ml single cream
70ml milk

Crumble topping:
50g butter, melted
50g golden caster sugar
50g oats
1/2 tsp ginger 

Prepare the pastry and leave to rest in the fridge for 20 minutes or make the day before. Either by hand or in a food processor, crumble the butter and flour together. Add the egg and sugar and enough milk to bring together. Go easy on the milk. Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate.

Chop the rhubarb into 1-2cm pieces and pop in a pan with half of the sugar. (50g) Cook until the sugar has just dissolved, then leave until ready to use (I prepped mine the day before with the pastry). 


Preheat oven to 180/160 fan and roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface. Pop into a 24cm fluted tin ensuring there are no gaps and it comes up to the top of the sides (it shrinks slightly on baking). Prick with a fork and line the tin with greaseproof paper. Fill with baking beans (I use old dried lentils) and bake for 15 minutes, then remove the beans and paper and bake for 5 minutes more. Turn up the oven to 200/180 fan.



In a bowl, mix together the egg, yolks, the other half of the sugar, flour and vanilla essence. Then mix in the cream, milk and any juices from the rhubarb.

Dot the rhubarb pieces around the part cooked pie pastry and pour over the custard mix. 


Bake for 20 minutes until a skin has formed. While it's baking mix the topping ingredients together then spoon onto the top of the part cooked pie and cook for a further 15 minutes. There should be a very slight wobble when it's baked, any more and you need to keep it baking longer.

Remove from the oven and serve warm with cream or ice cream. Or just on its own. Enjoy!





Sunday 5 April 2015

Chocolate and cherry hot cross buns

A couple of weeks ago I saw that Tesco are now selling chocolate hot cross buns. They smell amazing so I thought I'd have a go at home.

Mine didn't turn out as expected, my dough was too sticky because I added too much milk, but they tasted lush to me. Especially with biscoff spread on top instead of butter. Despite not being as expected I'll make them again!

Ingredients
225g plain flour 
1 teaspoon salt 
25g butter/margarine 
7g sachet fast action dried yeast 
40g caster sugar 
15g cocoa powder 
1 level teaspoon mixed spice 
150ml semi skimmed milk
55g chocolate chips 
55g glacé cherries, chopped

Sieve the flour and salt into a bowl and rub in the butter until it resembles crumble. Stir in the yeast, sugar, cocoa powder and mixed spice. Heat the milk until luke warm then stir into the flour mix little by little and bring together into a dough. Knead until the dough is less sticky and more elastic then leave to prove for an hour or until double in size and the dough springs back when pressed.

Add the chocolate chips and cherries to the dough and knead into it. Then split the dough into around 8 pieces and roll each into a ball. Put on a greased baking sheet and leave to prove again for 45 minutes (loosely covered with oiled clingfilm).

Preheat oven to 210/190c fan and make the mix for the crosses. Mix 25g margarine with 55g plain flour and 5 tbsp water. Pop into an icing bag and pipe onto each of the buns.



Bake for 15 minutes until turning golden. Cool on a wire rack then tuck in!

And if you have some biscoff in then definitely try it and tell me it's not immense