Caraway Seed Cake

This is one of my mother’s favourite cakes and is also one that I am rather partial to. At heart, it is essentially a Madeira Cake which includes caraway seeds instead of lemon zest by way of flavouring. The seeds impart a mild aniseed-like flavour to the cake which I find very appealing. There is nothing fancy about this cake; it is almost austere in its simplicity – no frivolous frosting or sweet icings here – but it still retains a certain elegance and tastes wonderful to eat.

 

This is a close textured cake but if well-made should not be heavy to eat, but rather, it should leave a satisfyingly buttery but light feeling in the mouth. In a similar way, the flavour of the caraway seeds should be present and distinguishable but should not dominate. The food-writer and broadcaster Nigel Slater recommends the judicious use of caraway seeds when adding them to the cake batter and suggests using a mere teaspoonful in his loaf cake. Whilst I agree that overuse can result in a finished cake with a slightly medicinal taste, I use a tablespoon of the seeds. I feel that this amount is perfect in the recipe that I have given above.
 

Cakes including caraway seeds have been around for many centuries, with some of the earliest recipes being found in AW’s Book of Cookrye in 1591 and The English Huswife by Gervase Markham in 1615. In fact, historically, caraway was extensively used in cooking throughout the British Isles, including Ireland. Recipes for cake, bread and biscuits regularly included the seeds. I often include caraway seeds in my homemade soda bread or in my wholemeal scones. The soda bread is gorgeous served with some leftover baked ham and I find that the ham and caraway combination is a winning one.

 

Another way that I sometimes use caraway seeds is when making the shortcrust pastry for a quiche or an onion tart, where I add a generous pinch. Caraway complements a number of other ingredients and flavours; for example - onions, carrots and cabbage. It also cuts through the richness of fatty meats and as such, is a perfect accompaniment to pork or duck. I keenly urge you to experiment a little with this wonderful spice, but in the meantime, try out this recipe… It really is delicious.
 

Ingredients:

175g butter, softened
175g caster sugar

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

215g plain flour

35g self-raising flour

50ml milk

1tblsp caraway seeds
 

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160C/Fan Oven 140C/Gas Mark 2. Line a 900g loaf tin with non-stick baking parchment and set aside.

2. Place the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, beat together until light and creamy. Gradually add the eggs, beating well after each addition.

3. Sift the plain and self-raising flours together and fold into the egg mixture along with the milk and caraway seeds. Once everything is mixed together, spoon the batter into the prepared cake tin and bake in the preheated oven for approximately 65-75 minutes until the cake is well risen and a thin skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

 

Serves 8-10.
 

Baci di Dama

I have always loved Italy; the food, the culture, the art, the climate… I could go on and on, but I really think that it is the most beautiful country. Italian food is rightly very popular and it stands up as one of the great cuisines of the world.

Italy is the country that gave us pasta, pizza, risotto, ice-cream and many other delicious dishes. I know food historians may dispute the origins of some of these foods, but I think it is fair to say that Italy was the country that popularised these foods and they are foods that are immediately associated with Italy in the collective consciousness. There is a real ‘no nonsense’ philosophy underpinning the Italian approach to food and I find this really appealing. It is not food based on pretension or snobbery; flavour and taste is paramount and this is what makes Italian food so attractive to so many people around the world.

When thinking of Italian food, I don't think that most people immediately think of cakes and biscuits. This is perhaps a little unfair as some classic biscuits/cookies are Italian. I love the almond flavoured amaretti and the hard and crunchy biscotti and cantuccini are amongst some of my favourites. They are perfect to have as an accompaniment to a strong espresso, but I also love them with my good ol’ cup of tea. Basically if a biscuit passes my rigorous ‘tea test’, it has to be good.

 

Baci di Dama (translation: kisses of women) are another biscuit that are hugely popular in Italy. They are little hazelnut or almond shortbread-like cookies sandwiched together in pairs with some melted chocolate. Hazelnut and chocolate are one of those classic flavour combinations that I am always going on about but here, in these biscuits it is a true marriage in heaven. The chocolate makes the nuts taste hazelnuttier and the hazelnuts accentuate the flavour of the chocolate.
 

There’s no point in denying it - these biscuits are fiddly little feckers (as we say in Ireland) to make, but they taste sublime. They literally melt in the mouth. Of course with something that is bite-sized as these are, one is never enough. They are just so easy to pop into your mouth and because they are so light in texture and delicious to eat, you find that you keep reaching for ‘just one more’.

The dough is crumbly to work with and you may think that you will never be able to form the little marble sized balls, but I found that chilling the dough first before rolling helped.

I came across a number of recipes for Baci, but none of them worked until I tried this one, which I found on the fabulous Living the Sweet Life in Paris , a blog by David Lebovitz.

 

The first few recipes I tried used equal proportions of ground hazelnuts, butter, caster sugar and flour, but they failed utterly for me in that they were completely flat and did not have the required characteristic dome shape. I was so frustrated, but I wasn’t going to let success elude me, so I did a little more research and further experimental baking.

 

David recommends using rice flour instead of plain flour, but having tried a number of alternative ratios of flour to ground flour, the following is the recipe that I found to work the best. One further tip… after I had rolled my little balls of dough, I let them chill again for 15 minutes before baking.

 

Also, if you don’t want to go to the bother of melting and piping chocolate in order to sandwich the biscuits together, you could always use a little blob of Nutella instead.

Ingredients:

100g butter, slightly softened
100g plain flour
40g ground rice
100g caster sugar
140g ground hazelnuts (or almonds, or a combination of the two)
To finish:
100g dark chocolate melted

Method:

1. Place the butter, flour and ground rice in a large bowl and using your fingers, rub the butter into the dry ingredients to create a soft buttery crumbly mixture.

2. Add the ground nuts and the caster sugar and using your hands again, work everything together to form a crumbly dough. Gather the dough together as best you can and roll it into a long thick sausage shape. Wrap in cling-film and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

3. Line two large baking trays with non-stick baking parchment and set aside.

4. Roll small little marble sized balls (about 5g each) of the dough and place on the prepared baking sheets a couple of centimetres apart. Place the trays in the fridge to allow the dough to firm up again. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 150C/Fan Oven 130C/ Gas Mark 2.

5. Bake the Baci in the oven for 10-13 minutes until they are just beginning to turn a light golden colour but still retain a dome shape. Allow to cool completely on the baking trays – if you try to remove them too early, they could fall apart; they firm up completely on cooling.

To finish:

6. Sandwich the biscuits together in pairs using a little of the melted chocolate.

7. Allow the chocolate to harden and they are then ready to eat.

Makes approximately 40 sandwiched pairs of biscuits.
 

 

 

 

 

 

Crème Fraîche Cake with Lemon Icing

Cakes by their very nature tend to be sweet and sometimes very sweet. If I had a treat of choice, it would invariably be cake over biscuits, chocolate and pastries. Mind you, I don’t often refuse any of these when offered to me either. But I do love cakes.

I especially love what could be termed classic or retro cakes; by this I mean, the tried and tested classics like Black Forest Gateau,  Pineapple Upside-Down Cake, Victoria Sponge, Lemon Drizzle Cake and the oh so twee, but very tasty and gorgeous classic Battenberg Cake. For me, having a slice of one of these is reassuring and comforting.

 

I also adore plainer cakes such as Madeira Cake or a simple Boiled Fruit Cake. I am particularly fond of Seed Cake – which is basically a Madeira Cake with the added inclusion of caraway seeds. All these are cakes that are great stand-bys and the ideal thing to have with a cup of tea. They are elegant in their simplicity and delicious in their plainness. They are the type of cakes our grandmothers used to make; and indeed my own grandmother regularly did. For her, the height of frivolity would have been a Coffee & Walnut Sponge iced with loads of coffee buttercream icing – but that would only have been made if guests were expected or for special occasions.

 

Anyway, my point is that the trend these days seems to be towards elaborate, intricately decorated cakes which incorporate wacky flavour combinations. Sometimes something plain and simple is like a haven in all the baking madness that seems to dominate. As such, I am always eager to try out recipes that appear quite austere in their lack of adornment.

 

This cake is so simple but is absolutely delicious. I found it in the pages of an old French cook book – you know the type of cookbook that has no picture, hardly any illustrations and is heavily laden with small text. I will admit that the main reason I made it was that I had a tub of crème fraîche lurking around in the fridge and decided that I better use it up before it went out of date. My translation of the original may leave something to be desired, but in any event, the resulting cake was fabulous, so I’m not overly worried about any inaccuracies that may have crept in due to less-than-perfect conversion to English.

The crumb is spongy and looks dense but the cake is incredibly light. But the amazing this is that the ratio of sugar to the other ingredients is fairly small when compared to other cakes. This results in a cake that is not overly sweet and can therefore take the lemon drizzle icing that I decided to include. I decided to bake it in a ring tin and was delighted that I did so because I think that the cake looked so pretty when it was finished.

Ingredients:

8 large eggs
115g caster sugar
150g butter, melted and allowed to cool slightly

200g tub of crème fraîche

2tblsp milk

450g plain flour

2tsp baking powder

Icing:

150g icing sugar

Juice of ½ lemon
 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4. Grease an 23-25cm ring tin with butter and dust it with flour, shaking out the excess.

2. Place the eggs and sugar in a large bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, beat together for about 10 minutes until pale and creamy. Add the crème fraîche, milk and melted butter and beat again until just incorporated. Sift the flour and baking powder together and fold into the egg mixture with a large metal spoon, to create a smooth batter. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking tin and smooth the surface slightly. Bake in the preheated oven for approximately 40 minutes until well-risen, a rich golden colour and when a thin skewer inserted comes out clean.

3. Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the baking tin and then remove from the tin and allow to finish cooling on a wire rack. When the cake has cooled you can ice it.

Icing:

4. Mix the icing sugar and lemon juice together to form a thick, but still runny icing. Drizzle over the cake and allow to harden before serving the cake.

Serves 10-12.

Iced Gems

I’m embracing my inner child at the moment….well, in culinary terms at any rate!

 

We all have foods that we associate with our childhoods and which live vividly in our memories. Without a doubt, many of these memories have been romanticised and bear no relation to what the foods tasted like in reality, but they evoke deep feelings within us and we can remember with startling clarity what we were doing and who we were with when we ate these foods. These memories come flooding back when we eat these foods again in later life.

 

I love the nostalgic feeling I get when I eat certain foods. Every time I eat lemon meringue pie, I invariably think of my grandmother and yearn to eat the fabulous examples she used to bake. There are other foods that instil the same happy feelings within me. I truly believe that most people have at least one food or meal that does this for them.
 

I have talked before about how the only bought biscuits that we ever had with any regularity, in our house were what I would call ‘plain’ biscuits – that is unfilled biscuits without chocolate or other frivolous additions!!! Digestives, Rich Tea and sometimes Malted Milk were the extent of it. Ironically, these are some of my favourite biscuits now, but to a child who yearned for something fancier and more sugar-laden; these biscuits seemed so frugal and unexciting.

 

I regularly implored my mother and grandmother to buy anything chocolate covered or even biscuits with a cream filling. Every now and again, they would succumb to my pleading and would purchase something a little different. I remember the first time that I ate Pink Wafer biscuits, Toffypops, Viscount and the miniature mouthfuls of joy that were Iced Gems.

There is something so appealing to a child about miniature foods, or individual portions of foods. These are hard to share, so you just have to eat them all yourself! Throw in variety, in terms of colour choice for example, and children are hooked. I am convinced that this is one of the reasons why sweets such as Smarties, Jelly Tots, Skittles and others are so popular – that and all the sugar!

 

Essentially, Iced Gems are little shortbread-like biscuits with a little splodge of piped royal icing on top. The royal icing is hard and sweet and contrasts beautifully with the little morsel of shortbread. I’m not going to lie, stamping out all the little biscuits with my miniature cookie cutter almost sent me into a home for the bewildered because it was a little fiddly and the blasted things were so small, but I actually found piping the royal icing on to each individual biscuit quite therapeutic! My children loved these biscuits and I have to admit that I did too. I was really pleased with how they turned out and they definitely brought back warm and snuggly feelings! J

 

Ingredients:

200g plain flour
100g butter, cubed
100g caster sugar

1 large egg, lightly beaten

20g golden syrup

1tsp vanilla extract/paste

Icing:

350g royal icing sugar

3tblsp cold water

3 or 4 Food colours (paste or gel)
 

Method:

1. Place the flour into a large mixing bowl and using the tips of your fingers rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and stir into the flour mixture until mixed through.

2. Mix the egg, golden syrup and vanilla extract together in a small jug. Make a well in the centre of the flour and add the egg mixture. Mix with a wooden spoon or your hands to bring the mixture together into a soft dough. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes to allow the dough to rest and firm up a little to make it easier to work with.

3. Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4. Line two large baking trays with non-stick baking parchment and set aside.

4. Remove the dough from the fridge and roll out between two sheets of non-stick baking parchment to a thickness of about ½ cm. Use a 1 ½ cm round cutter, stamp out little circles and place on the prepared baking trays. (If the biscuit dough has softened a little from being worked, place the baking trays with the stamped out biscuits on them into the fridge for 10 minutes to allow the dough to firm up a little).

5. Bake in the preheated oven for 6 minutes or until a pale golden colour. Allow to cool completely before decorating with the icing.

Icing:

6. Place the icing in a medium sized mixing bowl. Add the water and using a hand-held electric mixer beat together for about 5 minutes until stiff and glossy. Divide the icing between 4 small bowls and add a drop of different food colouring to each bowl and mix through thoroughly.

7. Using a clean disposable piping bag fitted with a small star nozzle each time, pipe a little blob of each icing in turn, on to the individual biscuits. Allow to harden for 2 or 3 hours before storing in an air-tight tin.

Makes approximately 150-170 miniature biscuits.