Almond Cake with Port Roasted Plums

For something that is so simple to make, this cake is packed full of almond flavour with added textural crunch supplied by the flaked almonds which are scattered on top prior to baking. This is another example of the types of cake that I love so much, because they can be served as desserts with a soft cloud of whipped cream or some fruit on the side or can be eaten as a cake in their own right.

If served as a dessert, the great advantage of this type of cake is that it is prepared in advance and all you have to do is slice it and serve with your accompaniment of choice. In this way it is a completely stress free dish to prepare. Here I have paired it with the most fantastic tasting plums which are gently oven roasted in a rich port wine syrup.

I was worried that the plums would be too sweet, but the slight sourness of the plums that I had, coupled with the addition of some rosemary cut through the sweetness somewhat and created a dish that I thought was beautifully balanced. The inclusion of rosemary happened at the last moment and was borne out of a desire to further experiment with it in sweet dishes after the success of the pine nut and rosemary shortbread biscuits that I recently made. If you really aren’t a fan of rosemary, you can omit it.

Plums have a natural affinity with almonds and in fact all stone fruits can be successfully paired with anything almond flavoured. I know that I regularly use Amaretto in my baking but it is great for adding an extra almond flavoured kick to all manner of baked goods and I much prefer using it to almond extract or essence. It is too easy to add too much almond extract and if this happens it can result in a very artificial taste, which I find unpleasant. This is not an issue with Amaretto. Given how regularly is use Amaretto, I find it astonishing how long a bottle lasts…so go out and get some and use it in your baking and cooking – you wont be disappointed.

As I state in the recipe below, I like to serve the plums chilled with a slice of slightly warmed almond cake. To be honest, a dollop of cream also doesn’t go astray, but you can make your own mind up on this. The contrast between hot and cold works very well and creates a dish which is extremely delicious. This is a wonderful dish to serve as a dessert in late summer, but it also wouldn’t be out of place in autumn either.

The plums keep very well covered in the fridge and are also lovely served with hot rice pudding as a dessert or with natural yoghurt for breakfast. Basically, the roasted plums are hugely versatile, so let your imagination run riot!
 

Ingredients:

Cake:
115g butter, softened
150g caster sugar
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
100g ground almonds

50g self-raising flour, sifted

2tblsp Amaretto (or milk)

50g flaked almonds

Plums:

10-12 plums (Victoria), stoned and halved

200g caster sugar

150ml red wine

150ml port

200ml water

1 cinnamon stick

1 sprig of rosemary
 

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/ Gas Mark 4. Grease and line a 20cm round cake tin with a removable base with baking parchment and set aside.

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

3. Next, add the ground almonds and self-raising flour to the creamed mixture and ix through. Finally, add the Amaretto and stir into the batter that you have created.

4. Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and level out the surface with a spatula. Sprinkle over the flaked almonds and bake in the pre-heated oven for 30-35 minutes, until well-risen and a golden colour. Check the cake after 20 minutes and if it is browning too quickly cover the tin with aluminium foil to protect it for the remainder of the baking time. Once baked, remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, before transferring to a wire-rack to finish cooling.

Plums:

5. Preheat oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4. Place the plums, cut side facing upwards in a roasting dish so that they sit snugly in a single layer. Place the roasting tray on baking tray and set aside.

6. Place the sugar, red wine, port, water cinnamon stick and rosemary in a medium sized saucepan and bring to the boil over a moderate to high heat, stirring occasionally to make sure that the sugar has dissolved. As soon as the mixture boils, carefully pour it on top of the plums and place the baking tray with the roasting dish into the preheated oven for 30 minutes.

7. Using a slotted spoon, carefully transfer the roasted plums to a separate dish and pour the roasting liquid into a medium sized saucepan. Place over a high heat and bring up to a rapid boil. Allow the liquid to reduce by two thirds until you are left with about 200ml of syrup. Discard the cinnamon stick and sprig of rosemary  and pour over the plums and allow to cool.

8. I like to serve the plums chilled so after they have cooled to room temperature, I then cover and refrigerate them.

 

Serves 6-8.
 

Pine Nut and Rosemary Shortbread Biscuits

Rosemary is one of my favourite herbs and I really enjoy eating foods that have been gently flavoured with it. This quite robust tasting perennial shrub originally hails from around the Mediterranean and established plants may flower during late spring early summer, producing beautiful blue flowers. In order for flowering to occur, conditions must be quite humid.

Even though rosemary is most suited to the Mediterranean climate, it can be gown quite successfully in Ireland, provided you have a sunny, sheltered and well drained location. I have always had great success with growing rosemary and was therefore devastated when my well established bushes died in hard winter frosts a few years ago. However, I planted replacement bushes and these soon thrived. Folklore has it that rosemary flourishes in a home where the woman is boss… I’ll say no more!

As I have mentioned a number of times in previous blog posts, I have quite an extensive cookery book collection. My husband definitely despairs at the fact that they are to be found in each room of the house and that every bookshelf is crammed full of them. I also have piles of cookbooks beside the couch in the living room because as I explain to the poor hubby, “these are books I’m using at the moment”. There is a similar pile (i.e. tower) of books beside the bed. He recently inquired whether I actually cook any of the recipes from them.

The truth is that as I have grown in confidence with my cooking, I less slavishly follow recipes, but I do still like to get ideas from the library of cookbooks that I own. The recipe that follows was inspired by one that I found in a lovely little book called A Table in the Tarn written by Orlando Murrin, one time editor of BBC Good Food Magazine.

This book documents the setting up of his little boutique guest-house and foodie getaway in the south-west of France. When I first read this recipe, I was intrigued as it uses rosemary as a flavouring in a sweet shortbread biscuit. I found it hard to imagine what it would taste like. I was convinced that although sweet, the biscuits would inevitably have a savoury edge. Well, these biscuits are hard to describe… there is definitely something very grown up and sophisticated about them but they are incredibly delicious. I adapted the recipe slightly and baked a couple of batches which I then taste tested on my family and friends. They were a resounding success and given the fact that I absolutely loved them, I feel that they will become a regular feature of my baking…

Ingredients:

25g pine nuts

2tsp finely chopped fresh rosemary

85g butter, softened
125g caster sugar
2tblsp double cream
1 egg yolk

160g plain flour

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp ground ginger

To finish:

1tblsp caster sugar

A handful of pine nuts for topping the biscuits
 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 160C/Fan Oven 140C/Gas Mark 2 ½. Line two large baking trays with non-stick baking parchment and set aside.

2. Toast 25g pine nuts in a small dry frying pan over a moderate heat, shaking the pan regularly so that they don’t burn. Keep a close eye on them as they can burn very easily. As soon as they are a deep golden colour, remove from the heat. Place the roasted pine nuts and the rosemary in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until finely ground (but it doesn’t matter if a few lumps remain.

3. Place the butter and caster sugar in a mixing bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, cream together until light and fluffy. Add the double cream and egg yolk and mix again until fully incorporated.

4. Add the roasted pine nuts and rosemary mixture and then the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger. Using a wooden spoon, mix everything together to form a soft dough.

5. Using your hands roll, small balls of the mixture about the size of a walnut (I weigh them out so that they are all the same size – 10g – but this is not necessary). Place the balls that you have made on the prepared baking sheets spacing them well apart as the mixture spreads a little when baked.

To finish:

6. Sprinkle with the extra caster sugar and lightly press a single pine nut on the top of each biscuit. Bake in the preheated oven for 13 minutes or until a light golden colour. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking trays for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling completely.

Makes approximately 40 biscuits.

Potato, Ricotta & Mint Ravioli

I have something to admit… I’m not a massive fan of potatoes! Potatoes, more so than other foodstuff seem to be linked in most minds with Ireland and being Irish, but at most, I would eat them once perhaps twice a week and certainly not every day. I know that they’re versatile from a cooking point of view but I’ve never felt the need to have them as a vital part of every meal. I imagine that it’s partly due to my influence but my children love rice and pasta and many of our meals are based around them.

Having said all this, I do love gratin dauphinoise and I am rather partial to potato gnocchi; a properly cooked roast potato (i.e. crunchy on the outside and fluffy on the inside) is something truly wonderful, but in the main, it is rare that I yearn for potato based dishes.

This is why I find it quite astonishing that I have been dreaming about making these potato and ricotta filled ravioli ever since I first came across the idea leafing through some old recipe books. I was worried that potato and pasta might be a starchy carbohydrate too far and that they would sit heavy on the stomach after consumption… but let me tell you, these were wonderful. They were surprisingly light and incredibly moreish. I found it hugely challenging restraining myself from eating a gargantuan portion all in one go. They were just absolutely delicious!

It has been a while since I made my own pasta and given how easy it is, I berated myself for not doing so more often. Fresh pasta is a different beast to the dried pasta that is so readily available to purchase, but if you are keen to experiment with your own filled pastas such as ravioli and totellini, you need to be able to make your own. The pasta machine I have is nothing fancy… it is one that I picked up fairly cheaply in Argos, but it does the job perfectly, rolling thin sheets of pasta with relatively little effort. You can roll the dough using a rolling pin but having done it, I much prefer the ease of the pasta machine.

There are a couple of tricks involved in producing these ravioli. Firstly, try to roll the pasta as thinly as you can as the last thing you want is to have to eat lots of claggy thick pasta. Secondly, when filling the ravioli and encasing them with the second layer of pasta, try to gently expel as much air as possible as this will prevent them from exploding when cooked in the simmering water. Finally don’t crowd them all in a small saucepan; fill a large saucepan with lightly salted water and bring to the boil, before adding the ravioli. Once you have added the pasta, reduce the heat slightly making sure that the water is still simmering briskly.

I think that the mint in these ravioli and in the butter sauce adds a wonderful freshness to the overall dish, but you could experiment with different herbs. Some sage could work wonderfully, but remember that it has a very strong flavour, so you may need to use less than the amounts that I have specified for the mint.
 

Ingredients:

Filling:
200g Rooster potatoes
250g fresh ricotta
75g freshly grated parmesan
1tblsp finely chopped mint
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Pasta:

400g plain flour (Tipo ‘00’)

Pinch of salt

3 eggs plus 1 egg yolk

Butter sauce:

100g butter

Large handful of coarsely chopped mint
 

Method:

Filling:

1. Preheat oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160/Gas Mark 4.

2. Bake potatoes in oven for 30-40 minutes until cooked through. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Hold each potato in a clean tea towel and scoop out the cooked flesh, discarding the skins. Work at a fast pace so that the potatoes don’t cool too quickly. Pass the potato flesh through a potato ricer and stir in the ricotta, parmesan and finely chopped mint. Set aside.

Pasta:

3. Place the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the eggs and mix with your hands to bring everything together to create a soft dough (if required, add a tablespoon or two of water to create a dough that is pliable).

4. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work-surface and knead for about 5 minutes until smooth and it feels silky. Cut dough into 4 to make it easier to pass through the pasta machine.

5. Pass the dough through the pasta machine starting with the widest setting and gradually working your way down to the thinner settings. NOTE: Pass the dough through each setting twice before moving on to the next one. I usually stop at the second last setting.

6. Place generous teaspoonfuls of the filling onto one of the pasta sheets spacing them about 7-8cms apart. Brush around each mound of filling with a little water. Place another sheet of pasta on top and press down around the mounds of filling, encasing each and trying to expel as much air as you press down, to seal the ravioli. Cut around each ravioli, leaving a 1cm border. You can use a knife or cookie cutter to do this. Repeat this process with the remaining two sheets of pasta dough and the rest of the filling.

To finish:

7. Bring a large pan of lightly salted water to the boil. Add the ravioli and allow to simmer for 2-3 minutes or until the ravioli start to float to the surface. Remove with a slotted spoon. Toss the ravioli in the mint butter sauce and serve.

Butter sauce:

8. Melt butter in a small saucepan over a low heat. Stir in the coarsely chopped mint and season well.
 

Serves 6-as a main course and more if served as a starter.

Fresh Apricot & Cherry Upside-Down Cake

I absolutely adore fresh cherries and rejoice when they are in season and readily available to buy. I have been playing around with different recipes where cherries might be used and admit that most of my ideas have been variations on the clack forest gateau theme; in other words recipes that marry cherries with chocolate. It is so hard to deviate from this combination, because cherries and chocolate just taste so darn good together. However, in this recipe I have come up with what I think is another winning combination… Cherries and apricots. Going on the premise that Mother Nature is very wise and has arranged it so that foods that are in season at the same time, tend to have an inbuilt natural affinity for each other, I decided to see how cherries and apricots would taste together.
 

I chose to make an upside-down cake for my first experiment and I was delighted with how the cake turned out. Asides from looking very exotic with its stained-glass like exotic looking colours, it tasted absolutely fabulous. I used a fairly standard sponge cake base to which I added some ground almonds to keep everything moist and add a little body. I also added a good splash of Amaretto as I felt that its almond flavour would work well with the stone fruits. Amaretto is one liqueur that I always have around the place because it is so incredibly useful to the home cook and so much nicer to use than almond extracts or flavourings.

 

Preserved or bottled cherries are available to buy and these can be used in many recipes, but when fresh cherries are in season, I love to use them. One of my favourite recipes to make is cherry clafoutis – a sweet Yorkshire pudding-like batter in which cherries are baked. (I have previously given my recipe for this delightful dessert and it was one of the first that I blogged about). Preserved cherries work wonderfully in a clafoutis, but for this cake, You really do need to use fresh cherries.

As the cake bakes, the fruits soften and release some of their juices which caramelise slightly to give an added sweetness which is absolutely delicious. The apricots that I used were slightly tart but the sweetness of the cherries compensated for this and the overall taste was fabulous. In fact, I think it is because of this contrast between the two fruits that this works so well. I really do encourage you to try making it.

 

This cake is wonderful to eat as just a cake, but served still slightly warm, with some lightly whipped cream on the side, it would make a wonderful summer dessert.

Ingredients:

Topping:
50g butter, softened
50g soft brown sugar
6 Apricots, cut in half and stoned

150g cherries, pitted and cut in half

Cake:

175g butter, softened

175g caster sugar

3 large free range eggs

135g self-raising flour, sifted

35g ground almonds

1tblsp Amaretto

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4.

Topping:
2. Grease the inside of a 20cm round spring-form tin with butter and sprinkle the sugar over the base. Arrange the apricots and cherries in the bottom of the tin with the cut-side in the butter and sugar mixture.
Cake:
3. Place the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, beat together until light and fluffy, gradually beat in the eggs until they are well incorporated. Fold in the self-raising flour and the ground almonds. Finally mix through the Amaretto.
4. Spoon the cake batter over the apricots and cherries and smooth the surface with the back of a spoon. Place the cake tin on a baking tray and bake in the preheated oven for 25-35 minutes until well risen and a golden brown colour.

Serves 6-8.