No 38 - Mudcake

While I was as University I worked nearly full time 5 nights a week in a local restaurant.  The owners were head cook and maitre d' together and ran one of the most 'hip' restaurants in town.  They eschewed formal 'cheffing' qualifications and pulled together everyday dishes from a wide range of ultures and countries where they had travelled.  Dishes on the black board menu hailed from around the Mediterranean, Middle East, North and West Africa, Mexico, Indonesia & Japan - and anything else that was tasty, unfussy, fresh & personal.

Daily changes in the blackboard menu reflected that which was seasonally available and as much as possible was purchased from local producers. (And this was the 1980's)

Sue grew a wide range of herbs, and fresh herbs featured abundantly.  My own garden supplemented this on occasion.  We sometimes used quient afternoons when all 'prep' forthe evening was complete, to make up jars of colourful preserves that were displayed on open shelves between the otherwise open kitchen andthe dining room: salted lemons, spiced mandarins, red capsicum jelly, asparagus and red pepper strips, pickled carrot sticks for the antipasti platters, pickled qualis eggs, feta cheese in herbed olive oil & garlic......

Only the desserts and puddings were relatively unchanging -homemade icecreams, cakes, special mousses, and guest appearances using seasonal fruit.

This mud cake was a standard.  I don't recall it ever going off the menu, and it was always in demand.

Mud Cake

Sift together:

2 cups flour

1/2 cup cocoa

1 and 3/4 cups raw sugar (I use golden sugar in UK)

1 tsp baking powder

2 tsp baking soda

then whisk in

2 large eggs

2 cups water

1/2 up oil

And really whisk it lots.  Introduce lots of air.  Give your whisking arm a work out.

This is a really runny mix - don't be alarmed by that.

Line he base of a 9 inch loose botton tin and grease the sides.  Pour in the mix and bake at 180 degrees C (fan oven) for 1 hour. 

Let it cool in the tin.

When it is cold use a large knife to slice it into 3 layers horizontally.  Put raspberry jam generously between the bottom and middle layer.  Put raspberry jam AND some of the icing between the middle and top.  Put icing all over the top and sides.

The Icing:

1.5 cups icing sugar

1 cup cocoa

125 g butter

juice of 1 lemon

100 g sour cream.

Sift the dry ingredients, soften the butter and beat all the ingredients together.  I make this in advance, put it in the fridge for a while, then microwave it just before I use it - that seems to improve the texture, makes it  easier to spread, and makes it go really glossy.

No 16 - Sticky Lemon Cake

This recipe first saw the light in my kitchen for my partner’s 50^th birthday.  There was a huge party, 2 roast shoulders of pork, 2 shoulders of mutton in a Moroccan stew, gallons of chilli beans, and a table groaning under salads and bread, fruit, cheese and a roasting dish sized banana cake.  (I’ll get onto banana cake eventually.)  I wanted something  that was sharp and flavoursome in small servings and settled for this cake.

I love cakes with ground almonds.  I love cakes with yoghurt, and I love lemon sweets (Lemon ice-cream, lemon baked cheesecake) so this ‘ticked all the boxes’.

Sticky Lemon Cake

175 g (6oz) unsalted butter
250 g (9 oz) castor sugar
2 lemons
3 eggs
75 g (2.5 oz) plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
150 g (5.5 oz) ground almonds
150 g (5.5 oz) natural yoghurt

Preheat the overn to 170 C.  Grease and line an 8" deep spring form tin
Cream the butter and 150g (5.5 oz) sugar.  Add grated zest of both lemons.
Gradually beat in the eggs one at a time.
Mix the dry ingredients, then fold in the creamed mix.  Stir in the juiceof one lemon and the yoghurt.
Bake for 40 minutes (till the cake is firm to touch).  Do not open the oven for the first 20 minutes.
Leave the cake to cool.
Heat the remaining sugar and lemon juice, skewer the cake a few times and pour the syrup over the cake.
Leave it to cool completely before removing it from the tin.

No 19 - Squidgy Lemon and Ginger Cake

Squidgy Lemon and Ginger Cake

Another cake I first enjoyed after a session of yacht racing – thanks again to Sarah G.

The recipe is on the internet at http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1711/squidgy-lemonginger-cake and it has everything going for it:

1 – it’s a fabulous tasting cake

2 – it’s moist and keeps well

3 – it’s easy (no ‘cream the butter and sugar’ stuff)

Years ago I spent a summer sailing in the Baltic.  In a Polish port I meta very interesting Finn who’d been sailing to Polish ports for decades; since well before the end of the Communist era there.  This gentleman worked for a famous Finnish telephone manufacturer and entertained us for hours with takes of his travels about the world marketing their technology. 

At some stage the conversation came around, as it often does amongst long-distance sailors, to electronic equipment on board.  The environment, as salt laden as it is, is not conducive to the endless reliable operation of things we have come to rely on. I will never forget our hosts expression for giving up on something that has broken down one time too many: “paint it green and throw it overboard”.

My family’s response to ‘failed’ cakes might be similarly characterised as “cover it in custard and call it pudding”. 

Such was the fate of this fabulous cake the first time I made it for them.  I had probably greased the tin with oil with the result that at least 1/3 of the cake remained firmly attached when I tried to turn it out.  (In my experience nothing greases a cake tin like butter, but then I am Kiwi and we are famous for our association with the stuff.)  Anyway the texture of the cake meant it would rather let go of itself than the walls of the tin.

It got covered in custard and called pudding; so successfully in fact that my family now regard this only as a pudding.

So the lessons are: 1. Grease the tin with butter, 2. Use a spring-form tin, and 3. If all else fails cover it in custard and call it pudding.

No 22 - FTC Square

 FTC Square (uncooked)

In 1979 when I left home to joint he NZ Forest Service, vast tracts of man-made pine forest marching across the NZ landscape were still owned by the State.  I started work for the government.  Our training was carried out in Rotorua where resided the main research and educational facility for production forestry in NZ.  The Forest Training Centre had one of those (even then) old-fashioned institutions – the tea lady.  The tea-lady is an endangered species.  Ours was delightful.  She served tea from an enormous enamel pot propelled from room to room on a trolley; and she supplemented her wage by baking and selling alongside the tea a few biscuits or squares.  There was one variety each day.  She came from the Keep it Simple School of Catering  - you either bought it or you didn’t.  Mind you, she knew what would sell, and most remarkably, gave me some of her reipes.  So I’ll share this one with you.

Note: In New Zealand we have a malted wheat flake ‘biscuit’ which we eat as a breakfast cereal that goes under the brand name ‘Weetbix’.  In some other parts of the world these things exist with spelling variations, but a recognizably similar name.

FTC Square

9 crushed Weetbix

1 cup desiccated coconut

4 oz  melted butter

½ tin of sweetened condensed milk (called Highlander in NZ, Carnation in UK)

1 cup of mixed fruit (fruit cake mix)

¾ TB cocoa

Mix all that up and press it into a lined sponge roll tin (about 8” x 12”).  Ice with lemon or orange icing. 

It improves with being stored for 2-3 days.

No 13 - Citrus Muffins

Citrus Muffins

Mum sent this recipe over a couple of years ago.  I’ve no idea where she got it from but it amused me because her enthusiasm for it indicates she must have finally got herself a food processor.

She apparently makes lemon ones.  I haven’t tried lemon yet but the orange, tangerine or mandarin ones are fabulous – fabulously easy, fabulously moist and tasty.  Rare for a muffin recipe, these are still moist and palatable on the second day after they were made, but there are seldom any left at the end of day one.

200g citrus (skin and all)

1 c sugar

 Blend these together in the food processor.

Add

1 large egg

½ cup of milk and blend thoroughly.

Sift together 1½ cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda and gently pulse these dry ingredients into the wet mix until just mixed.

Lastly mix in 100g melted butter

Bake in well greased muffin pans (12 standard size) or cupcake papers,  20 minutes at 170 -180C.

Citrus Muffins

No 5 - Lemon Biscuits

Lemon Biscuits

Drawing up my list of things to bake, I realized that I had nothing flavoured lemon; quite remarkable really as despite an extensive veg garden when growing up, we grew no fruit except a lemon tree.  There was an ancient pear tree in the orchard of the ‘old house’ on our farm (the house by then a grain store and tractor shed), whose pears were sparse and hard, but no apples, no plums, none of the fruit trees which could easily have graced our growing space. 

I suspect the lemon tree was more a gardening challenge than an enjoyment or culinary necessity.  We must have been beyond the southern limit of where they happily thrive and I don’t recall its lemons making it into anything other than the ginger beer.

So my recipe book had nothing lemon, but I was sure there must be such things a lemon biscuits; so I resorted to the internet.

I chose this one: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/267608/lemon-biscuits

It seemed a bit odd that it had no leavening and only 2 egg yolks.  The biscuits were a bit ‘lemon shortbread-ish’ but of all the things I’ve produced for work (I’m up to 17 in this challenge but have been baking for these cake-testers for years), this is the one that has had the most repeat requests.

I’ve also subsequently tried it with 1 egg instead of 2 yolks; it doesn’t work well so find another use for the whites and stick to 2 yolks.