First Bake!

First baking session of the new year resulted in testing out a Madeira cake.

I know this is often viewed as an old lady's cake, bland and simple, but I have been buying this regularly from our village shop and loving it.

The recipe is based upon Nigella's with a few tweeks, taken from the inspirational blog 100 Cook Books. A straight forward lift of the adapted recipe is:

Ingredients

• 250g butter
• 200g caster sugar plus extra for sprinkling
• grated zest and juice of one lemon
• 3 large eggs
• 300g plain flour
• 1.5 tsp baking powder

Instructions 

1. Preheat oven to 170 degrees C (I reduced the temperature after 30 minutes by 10 degrees as I have a fan oven, I should have reduced it from the start as the edges of the cake were slightly dry)
2. Cream butter and sugar and add lemon zest
3. Add eggs one at a time with a little of the flour between each egg
4. Then gently mix in rest of flour followed by lemon juice
5. Dollop into a loaf tin and sprinkle with tbsp caster sugar
6. Bake for 1hr to 1.25hrs (until a cake tester comes out clean) - I baked mine for 55 minutes, which was enough.

I used a 2lb loaf tin without a liner, next time I'll line the tin and bake for the entire time at 160 deg C.

Autumn fruitfulness

Well, it must be autumn: sunshine, rain, mists, apples, baking... lit fire!

I came across this fabulous recipe for a cider and apple cake in our local Devon Life magazine and just had to bake it, especially as I had some Normandy cider in the house, and a need for some warmth and comfort.

Killerton Cider & Apple Cake

55g/2oz sultanas
150ml/5fl oz dry cider
1 large cooking apple, peeled cored and chopped
115g/4oz butter, softened
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
115g/4oz light muscovado sugar
2 medium eggs, lightly beaten
225g/8oz stoneground flour, white or wholemeal (I used ordinary plain flour)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp demerara sugar

• Preheat oven to 180C/gas 5. Lightly butter a 20cm/8in cake tin.
• Roughly dice the apples to the same size as the sultanas and mix these two ingredients with the cider in a bowl.
• In a large bowl, cream the butter, muscovado sugar and lemon zest until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs, a little at a time.
• Sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon into a bowl.
• Gently fold the flour mixture into the creamed butter, followed by the soaked fruit and cider.
• Gently mix until well incorporated, then spoon into the prepared tin.
• Quickly sprinkle the demerara sugar over the top and bake for 45-60 minutes (I baked it for just 45 minutes and think it's just right) or until well risen and cooked through.
• leave to cool in the tin for 5 mins and then turn out and leave to cool - if you can!

Lovely!  It's Carter's 12th birthday tomorrow (13th October) so perhaps I should share this with him? Hmm, sultanas are a no no for dogs, so I'll have to eat it all by myself!