Orange Walnut Cake

Posted on 29 August 2016 by SJPONeill

I forgot to photograph the process and this little bit was the last remaining piece by the time I remembered…good texture, just a little overcooked…

I’m always looking for new ways to reduce waste and to make the most use of each ingredient. After the success of my lemon icing experiment last month, I thought I’d try the same with orange zest. I looked at a lot of recipes but I liked this one for orange walnut cake from Don’t Forget Delicious as it wasn’t too sugar heavy…

I changed the recipe slightly using half and half combinations of raw sugar and coconut sugar, high-grade flour and home-milled whole flour, and manuka honey and coconut syrup.I didn’t read the instructions properly and baked it in a loaf dish which was too deep to allow the centre to cook at the same rate as the outside: it needs to be baked in a flat pan (I realised this just now as I was checking the recipe). It took three small oranges to around a tablespoon of orange zest…I might aim for a little more next time

Because I used the wrong baking dish, I had to leave it in the oven longer to bake the whole way through and so the final result was a little scorched on top and generally dry inside. Lesson learned for next time.

I wanted a Greek yogurt icing recipe as I had a lot leftover after our beets, feta and rice dinner the other night and found this one:

Ingredients

1 cup plain Greek yogurt
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/2 cup of icing, sifted
1 teaspoon of orange zest – maybe a little more next time for a stronger orange flavour – I only had quite small oranges (took one to contribute about a teaspoon of zest) so using bigger ones next time should sort this

Instructions

Whisk all ingredients until they become a bit thick.
Place in the fridge to thicken even more (at least 30 minutes).
Spread on cupcakes.

This tasted really good but the recipe calls for way too much yogurt: even after a night in the fridge to thicken it as per the instructions it was still really fluid, too much so to effectively spread…next time I will drop the yogurt down to half a cup and see how that goes…

I was only able to smear a little of the icing over the top without it running off the sides but it did it help conceal the slightly scorched crust. I took it into work and it still disappeared pretty quickly so it wasn’t a total flop…

Orange zest is now a proven ingredient and I am keen to see if I can make a workable orange curd spread in the same way you can with lemons…

We can make and enjoy nice treat and stay true to our green journey…

Beetroot Coffee Cake

Posted on 17 July 2016 by SJPONeill

I found this recipe years ago. I’ve made it quite a few times, as writ, with the chocolate but always found the the cocoa overwhelmed the colour of the beetroot.

This time I thought that I might drop the cocoa and focus more on the beetroot. I erred in thinking that I needed to sub something in to replace the cocoa – I didn’t actually need to because the cocoa is not vital to the actual baking process – and added one then two (because one seemed too weak) tablespoons of Moccona coffee granules.

Everything else was as per the instructions

Ingredients

1/2 cup of cocoa powder (nope, 2 tablespoons of Moccona coffee)
11/2 cups of flour
11/2 teaspoon of baking powder
A pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups of castor sugar
1 cup of light olive oil
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
3 free range eggs beaten
1 cup of cooked beetroot, pureed
2 tablespoons of walnuts, finely chopped

Method

Sift the cocoa, flour, baking powder and salt.
Mix with the sugar.
Add the oil, vanilla, eggs, beetroot & walnuts.
Mix well – until it is a glorious purple colour.
Pour into a buttered and floured 18cm (7in) round or square pan.
Bake at 190 degrees for 50 minutes, or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.
Cool before removing from the pan.

Icing

1 cup of cashew nuts (110g)
1/4 cup of strong coffee
very scant 1/4 teaspoon of black sea salt
1/2 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
2 teaspoon of pure maple syrup (10g)
4 tablespoons of vanilla castor sugar

Place the nuts in a cereal-sized bowl and cover them with water. Let them sit at least 6 hours, or, better still, overnight.

Drain the liquid, then combine all the ingredients in a small food processor or blender until super-smooth.

Apply this evenly over the cooled cake.

Insights

If you’re going to add coffee to a cake, do it the same way as the icing and mix it into a paste or small quantity of super strong coffee. The dark flecks in the cake are the undissolved Moccona granules. The additional moisture might not go astray either.

I hate the quantity of oil that goes into the this recipe but love the rich colour from the beetroot. I’m going to retest on this by using beetroot in the same cake base as last night’s kumara cake. That will probably use more beetroot so I’d be anticipating an even richer colour.

The cashew and coffee icing absolutely rocks!! It makes this cake. The coffee kick is quite strong but any potential bitterness is more than mitigated by the sugar and lemon. It was just a little slushy so next time I will reduce the quantity of liquid in the coffee.

I like walnuts so will double the quantity next time.

Edit: forgot to name my source, Chocolate Covered Katie, which I found through this great list at Skinny Mom – I am keen to try some of these other icings but really want to focus on pumping out moist cakes first…

Kumara Cake

Posted on 16 July 2016 by SJPONeill

Kumara this winter has been on special – $1.99/kg – so I naturally stocked up and then had to find ways of consuming it all: you can only soup so much…this kumara cake had a certain appeal…It’s quite simple (I found the recipe on http://www.foodbox.co.nz)

What you need:

150 grams of butter
1 cup of sugar (I used raw sugar but next time will use a banana or two)
2 cups of flour ( I used high-grade but next time will use my own home-ground flour)
3 teaspoons of baking powder
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1 teaspoon of nutmeg
1/2 a teaspoon of ginger powder
1/2 a teaspoon of salt (I used black sea salt)
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
4 eggs
3 cups of peeled and grated kumara
1 cup of chopped walnuts

What you do:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
Melt the butter and blend in the sugar
Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl and make a well in the middle.
Mix in the wet ingredients.
Mix through the kumara and walnuts into a thick wet mix and pour it into a lined cake tin.
Bake it for around an hour til a skewer comes out clean.
Once it’s cool, remove it from the cake tin and peel away the baking paper.

Now the good bit…the icing…

Take 2 tablespoons of melted butter, 60 grams of cream cheese, a cup of icing sugar and teaspoon of lemon rind and blend them with a hand blender until the mix is really smooth.

Spread this evenly over the cooled kumara cake…

Don’t forget to lick the spoon…

Insights

Tasty great, with a nice twist between the spice in the cake and lemon of the icing…still a bit dry but I hope that subbing a couple of bananas for the sugar will fix that plus paying more attention to baking times i.e. checking to see if it passes the test before the recommended hour of baking is up…