Friday 22 August 2014

Maple Pecan Bundt Cake

I am designated supper maker for our Toastmasters meetings. I have made a variety of different sweets and taken a few savoury things along. I wasn't sure what to make for the meeting before last. I went through all of my magazines but nothing grabbed me so I turned to my cook books. It really is terrible, I have so many cook books but don't seem to use them any more. It is about time that I started cooking. I don't think I had ever made anything from Kitchen by Nigella. I found this wonderful looking cake. I got so many compliments for it. In fact I was told that it was the best thing I had ever made for them. I also got two orders for the cake, so it must have been good. 

I was going to wait until I made it again and was able to cut it and show the inside but I really don't have any idea on when that is going to happen so here it is now. You will just have to make it to see what the inside is like, and it is definitely worth it. 

from Nigella Kitchen

Ingredients
Pecan filling

75g plain flour
30g soft unsalted butter
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
150g pecans (or walnuts), roughly chopped
125ml maple syrup


Cake

300g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
125g soft unsalted butter
150g caster sugar
2 eggs
250ml crème fraîche or sour cream
1–2 teaspoons icing sugar, for decoration
Flavourless oil, for greasing
1 x 23cm bundt tin


Directions

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Using flavourless oil (or a squirt of cooking spray) grease your bundt tin, and leave upside down on newspaper for the excess oil to drain out.

Make the filling for the cake by mixing together the 75g flour and 30g butter with a fork, till you end up with the sort of mixture you’d expect when making crumble topping. Then, still using the fork, mix in the cinnamon, chopped pecans (or walnuts) and maple syrup, to form a sticky, bumpy paste. Set aside for a moment.

For the cake, measure the 300g flour, the baking powder and bicarb into a bowl.

Now, cream the butter and sugar (i.e. beat well together until light in texture and pale in colour), then beat in 1 tablespoon of the flour mixture, then 1 egg, then another tablespoonful of flour mixture followed by the second egg.

Add the rest of the flour mixture beating as you go, and then finally the crème fraîche or sour cream. You should expect to end up with a fairly firm cake batter.

Spoon just more than half the cake batter into the oiled bundt tin. Spread the mixture up the sides a little and around the funnel of the tin to create a rim. You don’t want the sticky filling to leak out to the sides of the tin.

Dollop the maple filling carefully into the dent in the cake batter, then cover the filling with the remaining batter. Smooth the top and put the tin into the oven for 40 minutes, though it’s best to check with a cake tester after 30 minutes.

Once cooked, and the cake tester comes out clean where it hits the sponge (obviously, any gooey filling will stick to the tester), let the cake cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes in its tin, then loosen the edges with a small spatula, including around the middle funnel bit, and turn the cake out onto the rack.

When the cake is cold, dust with icing sugar by pushing a teaspoonful or so through a tea strainer.




Maple pecan bundt cake

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