No 27 - Honey Fruit Cake

The bees have been looking for new homes.  We ran out of hives to put them in.  Meanwhile someone from Mr B’s beekeeping class, having had a run of bad luck with his bees, decided that perhaps this was not for him and offered us his three hives – sans bees of course, but still laden with stores that his bees had put away before departing his ‘care and control’ (if bees could ever be said to be within anyone’s control; as we have discovered).

The honey contained in these frames was set completely solid so the only way to ‘extract’ it was to cut the whole lot from the frames, pile it into a cauldron and heat it very gently.  At about the halfway mark I have bottled up about 6-8lb of very dark rich honey, and set aside a couple of good sized slabs of wax for soap making.  Because the honey has been heated I will keep it all at home for baking and making mueslei.

I thought I had a recipe somewhere for a fruit cake that used a lb (454gm) honey but I can’t find it, so searched the web and found a great selection of honey recipes on this website. I like to promote beekeeping and beekeeping websites, so you will find this in my list of links as well.

I modified this recipe to use only Mixed Dried Fruit, then doubled it, and I boiled my fruit (which was a bit hard and dry) in a whole 440ml can of Guinness, and proceeded from there.  The cake is definitely rich, with strong honey flavours and just a hint of Guinness.  Even sliced up and packed in a large plastic box it survived the motorbike ride in my backpack.

Honey Rich Fruit Cake

4oz. Mixed Dried Fruit

4oz. Sultanas

4oz. Dates

2oz. Dried Apricots

2oz. Cherries

 ¼ Pint Beer

4oz. Butter

6oz. Honey

2 Eggs

4oz. Plain Flour

4oz. Whole Self-Raising Flour

½ Tsp Spice

Cream butter and honey together. Beat eggs and add alternatively with sifted flour and salt to creamed mixture. Add fruit and enough beer if necessary to give a dropping consistency.

Turn into well greased 7 inch round tin (or 2lb. loaf tin) and bake on middle shelf for about 1¼ - 1½ hours in a pre-heated oven (300°F/150°C)

Allow to cool a little then turn out onto wire cake stand and leave to cool.

Yacht Racing

Race starts at Harwich tomorrow morning, goes across to Holland by some route around the North Sea, and we won't be back until late Sunday.  So I won't get any baking done this weekend. 

A lovely lady at work has just given me a gift of some baking ingredients, so I shall put my thinking cap on and find recipes that use them.  What are your best recipes with ground almonds?  All help gratefully accepted, atributions given....  just click on the word 'comments' below this and send me yours.

No 26 - ANZAC biscuits

This recipe came out of a New Zealand icon - the Edmonds Cookbook.  I have been told that in the early days of the book's existence (written to promote Edmonds baking products, strapline: "Sure to Rise"), the Edmonds used to send a copy to all newly engaged women.  I assume that they got the details from the engagements announced in the country's newspapers.

Generations of us have grown up with the Edmonds Cookbook, and more than one mother has deemed it an essential for a son leaving home to do so armed with a book of Edmonds' cooking wisdom.

My recollection of the copy at home was an A5 sized soft covered book  (a picture of the Edmonds Factory with its "Sure to Rise" icon on top, and the beautiful gardens it was also famed for in front), dog-eared and stained with years of baking spills, falling open at the Queen Cakes recipe.  (Since those days sprial binding transformed recipe books.)

ANZAC Biscuits

2 oz flour
3 oz sugar
2/3 cup rolled oats
2/3 cup desicated coconut
2 oz butter
1 Tb golden syrup
1/2 tsp Baking Soda dissolved in 2 Tb boiling water

Melt the butter and golden syrup together and add the soda and water.  Pour the wet ingredients into the mixed dry ingredients and stick it all together.

Drop teaspoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet and bake in a moderate over for about 15 minutes, until spread out and golden all over.

They range, depending on your mix, from a bit sticky in the middle and crunchy round the edges, to crunchy all the way across.  Take care as they can burn quite quickly after passing the stage of being 'ideal'.  For the English cooks out there - think slightly sticky hobnob.

No 24 - Spiced Date Triangles

Given that we were at No 14 when I let someone talk me into this blog, it has taken me a while to catch up with myself.  This is it - when this goes on-line I will be up-to-date and can concentrate in getting some photos together to illustrate some of the entries.  I never realized that this blogging business would require me to be so organized about baking.  Writing the recipes down has been the worst bit; I can't make all this up as I go along.  I have had to work out a measurement for some of the guesstimates I regularly use!

Here is a proper recipe and another one for those little biscuit things that go well beside a cup of 'sterk' coffee.

Spiced Date Triangles

2/3 cup (110 g) chopped pitted dates
1/4 cup (60ml) golden syrup
1 TB water
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ginger
1 tsp mixed spice
1.75 cups (260 g) plain flour
1 cup (125 g) ground almonds
1/2 cup (100 g)firmly packed brown sugar
125 g butter, chopped
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 egg whie lightly beaten
1 Tb cinnamon sugar
3/4 cup (60 g) flaked almonds

Combine dates, syrup, water and spice in a pot and simmer for 2 mins; cool.

Combine sifted flour, ground almonds and sugar, and rub in the butter.  Add the egg and the cooled date mixture, stir well, knead gently and using a piece of foil to wrap it in, shape the dough into a long triangle (big Toblerone comes to mind).

Refrigerate it for 1 hour and then slice about 5mm thick, place them on greased oven trays, brush with egg white and sprinkle with almond flakes.

Bake about 12 mins in a moderate oven (that's 170 to 180 deg C)

Makes about 55.

No 25 - Friesland Dumkes

I've been away from home for three weeks.  While I've been away we've finally reached the top of the Council's list for an allotment, I did some motorbike touring in Nederlands, and I attended a course on Managing Maritime Emergencies at the Smit (salvage) facilities in Rotterdam.  Great course - I recommend it to anyone in a relevant industry.

I met some really great people, and had a fairly comprehensive look at Rotterdam.  I'll reserve my comments on Rotterdam as my impressions were unfairly blighted by rain quite a bit of the time.  Touring in the rain - particularly on a motorbike - doesn't have a lot to recommend it.

Before the course we spent a weekend in the north to go to the World Superbike racing at Assen.  Assen is a lively place, great Saturday market, nice outdoor bars, good mix of the old and the new.  In fact we arrived the day they opened their 'arts' complex - theatres, library etc.  Interesting installation on the steps outside - pillars with some sort of proximity trigger that makes them light up and make surreal sounds when you get close to them.

We stayed in Appelsha.  Like most establishments in Continental Europe when they serve you tea or coffee you get a little biscuit on the side.  Nowhere in Nederlands that week did I get one of those per-packaged factory models of biscuit.  They were all the 'specialty' of the house.  Commendable.  I fell in love with the Dumkes that accompanied that first much needed cup of tea on arrival at Appelsha.

So I looked up Freisland Dumkes on the internet and this is what I got:  (the ones I've made taste great, but I might have been a bit more generous with the size than the 'dunkers' that were served with tea)

Freisland Dumkes (thumbs)

150 g butter
150 g dark brown sugar
 2 eggs
250 g flour (sifted) with a pinch of salt
100 g hazelnuts (chopped finely)
1 tsp anise seed - crushed
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger

Heat the oven to 150 deg C.  Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs one at a time untiil foamy.  Sift in the flour and add the nuts and spices.  Knead the dough until smooth, roll it out about 1cm thick, cut into strips 2cm x 4cm and bake on a greased (or teflon) sheet until browned.

I think you are meant to press them with your thumb when they come out of the oven - to make a thumb impression, but I skipped that step.  I'm sure they taste the same without the markings - and as I have been struggling all this weekend to dig buttercups and docks out of a waterlogged allotment, my hands are looking a bit stained at the moment (which might have added unwanted flavour to the Dumkes).

I'm about to go and do a second lot of baking today.  My motorbike had been in need of a carbs rebuild, a job which has been sorted out beautifully this week by the hardworking and extremely decent blokes at Chas Bikes in London.  The least I can do I drop off some sultana biscuits on my way back into London on Tuesday morning.  My gratitude is immense.  The bike still perfomed acceptably at speed but the effort of nursing it through towns and filtering at lower speeds was really beginning the wear me down last week.