Category Archives: cakes

Orange polenta cake

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Gluten free – if you use gluten free baking powder

Vegetarian

cake
cake ingredients
serving

 

This excellent cake is based on one we tasted and enjoyed at a branch of Jamie Oliver’s restaurants. He describes how to make it on his website. We increased the amount of polenta and reduced the quantity of ground almonds. Being naturally lazy, we also just put everything into one bowl so it super-easy to make.

The texture is soft and moist yet has a crunch. Really worth a try

 Ingredients – for the cake

  • 200 g unsalted butter , at room temperature, plus extra for greasing
  • 200 g demerara sugar
  • 3 large free-range eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
  • 100 g ground almonds
  • 200 g coarse polenta
  • 2 oranges , zest of
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder

Ingredients for the syrup

  • 200 ml orange juice , (from about 2 to 3 oranges) You can use the oranges used for the zest
  • 125 g sugar

Method

  • Preheat the oven to 160°C/320°F/gas 2½.
  • Grease a 20cm tin, line the bottom and sides with baking

paper.

  • combine all the the ingredients in a bowl and mix. Providing the butter is not too cold, this is easy to do with a power whisk. If it looks a little too stiff add a slurp of orange juice
  • Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 40–50 minutes, until the surface is light brown and the cake is coming away slightly from the sides of the tin.
  • Remove the tin from the oven, leave to cool for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a plate. This cake will be quite moist and a little fragile, so handle carefully as you remove it.
  • To make the syrup, put the sugar and orange juice in a saucepan and simmer over a low–medium heat until reduced and thickened slightly, it should take about 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.
  • Prick the cake all over with a skewer, then brush generously with the syrup.

 

Serve in slices with a dollop of crème fraîche, yoghurt or ice cream.

Freya and Hermione’s gorgeous gluten free cup cakes.

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Vegetarian

Gluten free

This is a basic sponge recipe, enlivened by creating whatever you want to celebrate! Freya was making cakes decorated for Easter with some plainer ones for her dad. All were delicious and, gluten free flour, made these tastier than their gluten full counterparts.

Ingredients

  • 3 eggs
  • 170g self raising gluten free flour
  • 170g butter
  • 110g caster sugar –170g if cakes are not iced to avoid sugar overload
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • splash of milk

Bung in bowl and mix. I usually have to add a splash or two (technical kitchen language) of milk because the GF flour makes a drier mixture.

Line a cupcake tin with pretty colour cases. Dollop (more jargon – hope you can understand) about a desert-spoon of mixture into each case.

Place into a preheated oven at 180C (gas mark 4) for about 15 minutes until risen, lightly golden and spongy (keep up, now!) when prodded.

Even if small people are desperate to ice these cakes they must wait until they are cool or else the icing will melt and run away. These will be the longest minutes of your life (listen to the mantra – are they cool yet? are they cool yet? are they cool yet?).

Make the icing. This is not a true butter icing – we only use a bit of butter to make the icing soft – the kids are not keen if it tastes too buttery. This comes down to personal taste: you might prefer to use loads of butter and to cut down on the icing sugar! Anyway…

Place a generous knob of soft butter in a bowl. Add in loads of icing sugar (remember that when you add water in a minute it will magically shrink to no icing sugar at all!) using a spoon if you just want to get the job done, or with a sieve if you like a thin layer of sticky snow over your kitchen. Don’t forget kids have to suck in the icing smoke around the bowl!

Use the back of a spoon to press the butter and sugar together until it looks like breadcrumbs. Add a few drops (or more!) of the craziest colouring you can find and a drop or two of vanilla. Add in some hot water A TEASPOON AT A TIME and mix after each addition.

If you are going to pipe the icing then it needs to be thick enough to hold its shape. If you are going to drizzle then you can add more water. Here is the magic part. Leave the children in the kitchen with the icing, the cakes and a selection of sweets and sprinkles. Go and have a cuppa where you can’t see. When you return there will be the most creative, delicious cakes you have ever seen (worth a quick count to see if they are all there) and a kitchen that you just won’t believe!

Gluttony free Chocolate Brownies

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suitable for folk trying to avoid too much butter

Based on a Good Housekeeping suggestion, this unlikely recipe uses aubergine to replace much of the butter. It really works and makes really good brownies that are not too rich.

  • 100gm unsalted butter
  • 300gm peeled and cubed aubergine – I used one largish fruit
  • 250gm dark chocolate, finely chopped – I used Sainsbury’s 70% and just a little less than 250gm
  • 250gm brown soft sugar – the original recipe called for light brown but I used dark and it was fine
  • 50gm cocoa powder
  • 4 smallish eggs beaten
  • 50gm ground almonds
  • half a teaspoon of baking powder.
  • Quarter tsp salt
  • Put cubed aubergines into a pan of water, cover, simmer for 15 mins. Drain well and return to the pan.
  • While still warm, add chopped chocolate and butter to the aubergine and stir until butter and chocolate is melted.
  • Scrape into a food processor and blend until smooth.
  • Add sugar and cocoa powder and blend again.
  • Finally, add eggs, ground almonds baking powder and salt – blend.
  • Pour mixture into a buttered tin and into the oven for 30 mins at 180°C (160°C fan assisted).
  • Leave to cool in the tin, sprinkle with cocoa powder and cut into squares.

These will keep in a tin for up to two days but I recommend storing them in the fridge. You will eat them anyway much sooner than that!