Yogurt and oil cake with fresh fruit

It is getting significantly cooler, you can feel autumn in the air. Is there anything more pleasant than a slice of homemade cake on a rainy day? Most certainly the answer is yes:) Nevertheless the cake is also a big pleasure.

I had a pot of natural yogurt and wondered what do I do with it? If it was warm I'd had hundreds of ideas but when it's cold out there somehow yogurt stops appearing on my -favourite food of the season list-
But as in 9 out of 10 cake does become an answer.

I used a polish recipe as a base to this cake. I also what I do not do often these days used a cup measurement for the recipe. In Poland when we use a cup in a recipe it usually means a 250ml glass which makes things easy when you use the same glass to measure all ingeredients.
I used blueberries and raspberries in the cake but this is that kind of cake that would welcome any kind of fruit.

Yogurt and oil cake with blueberries, raspberries and almond flakes

Ingredients:

3 medium eggs
1 1/2 cup of sugar
3 cups of all purpose flour
2tsp of baking powder
1 cup of natural yogurt
1 tbsp of vanilla paste
1/2 of cup of oil
150g punnet of raspberries
200g punnet of blueberries
almond flakes
icing sugar

Let's do it:

Preheat the oven to 180C (fan assisted) and grease your baking tin. Again I used my fluted cake ring as recently I love using it for all cakes so I greased it with a bit of sunflower oil using a brush.

In a big bowl using a hand mixer beat sugar and eggs until pale, this will take around 3-4 minutes. Add vanilla paste, then yogurt and oil and mix with the hand mixer.
Sieve flour into a separate bowl with the baking powder and then slowly keep adding to the batter only a bit at the time until well incorporated. Pour the batter into the greased tin, spread blueberries, raspberries and almond flakes around. Bakes 50 minutes until the clean skewer. Remove from the oven, make sure that it completely cools before removing from the tin. Sprinkle some icing sugar on the top.

Eggless cider cake with pear and sultanas

Egg less cider cake with pear and sultanas

This is a very easy and quick to assemble cake. It is a pure pleasure to eat on a weekend with a cuppa enjoying the time off and then on a week day with a cuppa at work, remembering that there is always another weekend to come.

Inspired by Hugh F-W, was published in the guardian Cooking with cider recipes

Ingredients:

250g self-raising flour
125g cold butter cubed
60g muscovado sugar
125g sultanas
100ml apple cider
2 tbsp cider vinegar
1 large or 2 small pears peeled and sliced
1 - 2 tbsp demerara sugar

Let's do it:

Preheat the oven to 190C, grease your cake tin and line with a baking parchment. As I used the fluted tube tin I only greased it with a bit sunflower oil using a brush. In a food processor or using your good hands mix the flour and butter until reaches breadcrumbs consistency, next stir in sugar and sultanas. Separately mix cider with cider vinegar, pour into the dry ingredients and mix well but gently. Lastly add sliced pear again gently folding in. Bake 45 minutes or to the clean skewer.

Courgette and carrot rosti with smoked salmon and creme fraiche

Deliciously light and summery Sunday night supper!

Courgette & carrot rosti with smoked salmon and creme fraiche

Serves 3-4

Ingredients: 
3 medium courgettes washed and grated
3 medium carrots peeled and grated
2 small/ medium eggs
4 tbs of flour
salt and pepper
oil

To serve:
smoked salmon
creme fraiche
chopped dill
lemon slices/ wedges


Let's do it:
Place grated courgettes in a kitchen tea towel and squeeze the excess moisture out. Transfer to a big bowl and add grated carrots, eggs and flour and seasoning, mix well.  Heat the oil in the frying pan. Using a table spoon form a rosti in the frying pan and fry until golden brown on both sides, this will take around 10 minutes, around 5 minutes on each side. Try to make them fairly flat to make sure that they are cooked inside.
Use a paper towel to remove excess oil.

To assemble put rosti on a plate, top with bits of smoked salmon add a blob of creme fraiche, sprinkle dill and lemon juice. Enjoy!