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!

Chocolate cake with fig jam and mascarpone frosting

Chocolate cake with fig jam and mascarpone frosting

I love Harry Eastwood's cake recipes. Almost every cake contains some vegetable - either courgettes, aubergines, butternut squash or others.

In this one I used Harry's recipe for a chocolate sponge with butternut squash, but the rest is my twist - jam from fresh figs and mascarpone frosting.
However Harry's original recipe sounds great and can be found in a Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache book which I thoroughly recommend.

Ingredients:

For the cake
3 eggs
200 g peeled and grated butternut squash
120g rice flour
160 g caster sugar
3 tbsp cocoa powder
80g ground almonds
1tsp baking powder
1tsp bicarbonate soda
1/4 tsp salt
125ml buttermilk (easy to make - pour a tsp of lemon juice into a glass followed by 125ml of milk, let it stand for at least 10-15min)

For the fig jam
5-6 well ripen figs quartered
2 tbsp pomegranate molasses
1-2 tbsp sweetener of your choice - sugar, honey, agave syrup or I used sumac syrup


For the mascarpone frosting
250g tube of mascarpone cheese
2 or more tbs cocoa
2-3 tbs icing sugar
1 generous tsp vanilla paste
1 tbsp milk

Let's do it:
Preheat the oven to 180C fan assisted, you will need two 18cm loose bottom tins - greased with a little of vegetable oil and lined with a baking parchment.
In a large bowl whisk eggs and sugar until light and fluffy, I used a helpful hand of my husband and this took around 8 minutes. Next beat in butternut squash and add all remained ingredients: flour, cocoa, ground almonds, baking powder, bicarb soda, salt and lastly buttermilk. Mix well to ensure that all ingredients are well incorporated.
Pour the mixture to both tins, make sure that it's roughly the same amount of it and evenly spread. Bake for 30 minutes both tins should be on the same oven shelf.

Once baked remove from the oven and let them cool completely.

Fig jam - place figs in a saucepan, stir the pomegranate molasses and the sweetening agent. Simmer for 10-15 minutes. Turn off the gas and let it cool completely.

Mascarpone frosting: place mascarpone in a big bowl and sift icing sugar and cocoa powder, add milk and vanilla paste and stir well. If you prefer the frosting sweeter or more chocolaty add more icing sugar and/or cocoa powder respectively, but remember to sift it to the mixture.

Assemble the cake only when all ingredients are completely cooled. Enjoy!

Bank Holiday weekend wine discovery

It's the weekend and it's bank holiday weekend! Hurrah:) and I am drinking good stuff! It is incredibly exciting to discover a new grape, new wine which turns up to be amazing:) We went on a stroll down King's Road and reached World's End when you can find Vivienne Westwood boutique shop with a big clock going very fast anticlockwise and next to it there is a wine shop Blanco & Gomez where the wine was discovered, wine merchant's website

Godello is a grape from the north of Spain, the wine is very elegant almost creamy but also have a slightly mineral note. Disadvantage as always the same - it's almost £30 but then again you only live once;)


Happy Bank Holiday!

Hairy bikers inspired post war eggless cake

I needed to bake and I needed to bake something quick and easy. I made up my mind and then a disaster struck. Hubby ate all eggs! What do I do? Egg-less cake was the answer. I like this recipe as it's easy, almost effortless but I adapted to it suit my vision. Nevertheless inspired by Egg-free sponge cake by Hairy Bikers

Egg-free cake with blackcurrants and almond flakes

Ingredients:
175g plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
70g margarine/ soft butter

60 g light brown sugar
1 tbsp honey
125ml milk
50ml double cream
small punnet (approx 120g of blackcurrants)
almond flakes

Let's do it:
Preheat the oven to 180C (fan assisted) and grease a tube cake pan- round or a spring cake form (circa 20-25cm) 
With a hand mixer beat margarine/ butter with sugar and honey until light and fluffy. Add a little flour and milk, keep beating and adding little flour and then little milk at a time until well combined. Add cream and more milk if batter is too thick. Transfer to the baking form and arrange blackcurrants and almond flakes on the top, bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown. 

Siciliana la dolce vita!

Gambino wine tasting menu

I'm back older and wiser after a long break...Perhaps not so much wiser but definitely older, last Sunday I celebrated my 40tieth! Hubby planned a secret birthday-trip-treat:)
For weeks he was showing me photos of places that could be anywhere in this world, gave me conflicting tips including: take your swim-suit, next Friday (one tip every Friday!) he said take your walking boots and fleece. I pretended that I don't care and whatever but it was a torture not to know:)))
Turned out it was Sicily:) La dolce vita and 5 happy sweet full of wonderful food, wine, desserts days! Can I please be back there? This is a message to the universe! Please hear me!

Everything we tasted was so wonderfully full of flavour, simple non-pretentious and made you want more! Wine was great, but we enjoy trying all sorts of fortified wine and here malvasia stands out for me but also passito was amazing.
Cannolo became my favourite treat of every day:) Among many other treats:) But la dolce vita is a commitment:)

Here are two shots from Gambino vineyard. Beautiful place run by a charming and committed family. Wine tasting is 4 wines but they leave bottles on the table and offer you to drink as much as you like. Wine is accompanied by a platter of local cheese, vegetables, delicious bread. And on top of that my fellow coutrywoman works there, thank you for everything Hanna! Na zdrowie! Cin cin!

Me in Gambino enjoying myself a lot:)