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. 

Maple Pecan Bundt Cake

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.

Feast - Heather Honey Chicken

It has been a long, long time since I have been compelled to blog about a recipe immediately after having finished it but I just had to tonight.

I don't often buy Feast magazine anymore. I find that so many of the recipes have stuff in them that I just cannot access. I was looking through the magazines last night when I was shopping and flicked through this issue. I noticed a few things that I would like to make and have access to all the ingredients. This is the first of those recipes.

So this dish was amazing. There is so much flavour and the meat just melted. I would use a bit less oil next time, and there will be a next time. I just loved this. The name refers to honey from heather flowers. They said in the magazine that it has a very limited availability here and to substitute manuka honey. Well, I didn't have that but I had recently bought 1 kg of local honey so, of course, used that. I think a leatherwood honey would been good. I didn't have any dijon mustard either. I had two choices a hot mustard or wholegrain. I went with the wholegrain. Although maybe a mix of the two would have been better. Oh it doesn't really matter, it was wonderful just the way it was.

Heather Honey chicken

Feast magazine - September 2014 - page 60

1.7 kg whole chicken

2 onions, cut into wedges

6 sprigs rosemary (apparently my plant is dead, I used dried)

100 ml olive oil

90 g (1/4c) manuka honey

1 1/2 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 tbsp curry powder

2 garlic cloves, crushed

Preheat oven - 180 C

Put onion & rosemary in casserole dish with a lid. Add half the oil.

Mix remaining oil, honey, mustard, curry powder & garlic. Place chicken in casserole dish & pour over honey mix.

Roast, covered, 30 minutes. Remove lid & bake further 1 hour or until cooked basting as necessary.

Let rest 10 minutes before serving.

July 2014 - Beetroot Chocolate Fudge cake

Wasn't much I wanted to make. I have started doing the supper for our Toastmasters meetings so decided that making one of the sweet items from the issue would be good. I decided on this cake. I have always seen chocolate cakes with beetroot and have been tempted to make them. It turned out really well. 

Valli also had a recipe for a parsnip cake with coffee icing. I would have liked to have made that but just wasn't sure how it would turn out. I hate parsnips. Although I assume that, like carrot cake, you wouldn't be able to taste it. Parsnip is a strong flavour those so decided not to do it.

Beetroot Chocolate Fudge Cake 

250 g dark chocolate

3 medium free-range eggs

250 g light muscovado sugar

2 tbsp golden syrup

2 tbsp clear honey

1/3 c (50g) self-raising flour

1/3 c (50g) plain flour

1/4 tsp bicarb soda

1/4 c (25g) cocoa powder

1/2 c (50g) almond meal 

 250 g beetroot, peeled and finely grated

100 ml strong espresso, cooled

1 1/2 tbsp sunflower oil 

Pre heat oven - 160 C. Grease & line 20cm square tin (I did actually line it I don't normally bother but thought it was probably necessary and yes I think it was)

Melt chocolate over water, cool slightly. 

Beat eggs, sugar, syrup &a honey - 5 min or until thick. 

Add flours, bicarb & cocoa mix. Fold in almond meal. 

Drain grated beetroot (I didn't really have anything to drain maybe because I chopped in tmx instead of grating)

Stir in beetroot, chocolate & oil. 

Bake 1 hr 15 min or until skewer comes out clean. (I think mine took longer but I forgot to set the timer initially so not sure) 

Cool and top with whipped cream to serve. 

 

June 2014 - Palace Eggs with Caramelised Onion

Okay, so leaving things to the last minute doesn't always work out. Although, strictly, I am actually making this post in time. It is just not exactly what I was planning but it is a recipe from the June delicious magazine so it does comply with my overarching theme. 

I had plans to make the Braised beef short ribs with silverbeet and haloumi crumbs. I mean how good does that sound? Pretty awesome if you ask me. I kept putting it off and putting it off. Busy with other stuff on this day or that day. So finally on Thursday I decided that I couldn't put it off any longer as end of month was fast approaching. On Friday after work I would grab the short ribs from the butcher and some silverbeet from the supermarket, I have everything else in the house. If I had gotten myself organised I would have had silverbeet in the garden but I didn't so I don't. However, not every thing went to plan. Instead of going to the supermarket and the butcher on Friday afternoon I had a trip to the hospital in an ambulance. What did I do you ask? Well, I somehow managed to fall down 2 stairs at work and wrench my ankle into a position it shouldn't have been in. My co-worker called the ambulance and they came, gave me morphine (yay for morphine!!) and off we went. Thankfully it isn't broken but I have been rather hobbled on a set of crutches, oh and my rolling office chair. That chair by the way is pretty awesome. It means that I don't have to use the crutches to go to the kitchen. Lol. Needless to say the dish did not happen. 

I was kind of resigned to the fact that I wasn't going to get anything made. I didn't feel much like eating. Plus I have been pretty fuzzy from the painkillers. There are other things in this issue that certainly did look promising. The Moroccan spiced lamb chops with moghrabieh and roasted beetroot sounds excellent. I don't have moghrabieh but do have some of the pearl couscous which could easily be substituted. However, the lamb is in the chest freezer which is tucked away in the corner of the laundry. I also know that the lamb is toward the bottom of the freezer since I had to clean out my fridge/freezer in a hurry a few weeks ago and everything just got dumped in there. I didn't fancy balancing on one leg digging around in the freezer for some lamb chops. 

Another dish that I am keen to try is another slow cooked meal, Pork cheek with celeriac puree. Beef cheek seems to have become the in thing to use I guess that pork cheek is probably going to be next on the hit list. I am pretty sure that my butcher wouldn't have any on hand so it is a meal that will involve a little planning. As I said, planning hasn't really been my forte lately. I will also have to buy a bottle of Pedro Ximenez for the recipe. I have a pretty good idea that isn't all that cheap. Although I do have a few other dishes that use it so I am sure that it wouldn't sit in the cupboard long. One day.

This morning I decided that I will not succumb. I will not let a month go by without a delicious magazine recipe. Okay, so I have also cut back the painkillers. Anyway I was looking through the issue for something that would be easy and I came across this recipe. It is really easy. Basically 2 kg of onions caramelised and then some allspice and cinnamon added. The onion is then placed in a dish and four eggs cracked into it and then cooked until the whites are firm. 

I cheated. I made a heap of caramelised onion a few weeks ago so I grabbed a packet of that out of the freezer and heated it up. I put them in a little pan that I found in a kitchenware store a while ago, cracked in the egg and I baked it in the oven at 160 C for 9 minutes. It was probably a minute too long as the yolk wasn't really runny anymore. I tend to forget that they continue to cook once out of the oven. It wasn't the best thing I have ever eaten but it was nice  and a bit unusual. It is supposed to be a breakfast meal but I had it for lunch. I think that it would be really good on a piece of toasted turkish bread (since it is a Turkish recipe). I won't be rushing to make it again but when I do cook up another lot of caramelised onions I might give it another shot. 

Herb & Spice crumbed pork chops

I have heaps of things waiting to be blogged. This is one of them. Problem is some of them I don't remember that much about them now. I do remember this was really good. I am pretty sure that I reduced the amount of fennel. It can be quite a strong flavour when freshly ground. I know that I didn't do the sweet potato with it instead serving it with a quick little salad. A great meal. I might have to make it again just to confirm it was as good as I remember...

Recipe: Herb & Spice Crumbed Pork Chops