Coconut, almond & blueberry cake

March 13, 2022

   

Three years ago, I baked a housewarming cake for our friends Simon and Noni. We had such a nice time delivering and sharing the cake and meeting their new puppy that I suggested the same again when they moved this month. The cycle is a teeny bit further and the puppy is now enormous. I chose a coconut, almond and blueberry cake from Goh & Ottolenghi's Sweet for morning tea.

This cake uses melted butter and doesn't need an electric mixer so it's easy to stir together (and therefore it's no bother to your neighbours if you happen to have slept weirdly and commenced prep at 5:40am). It has the distinct moist crumb of a cake based on almond meal plus extra flavour from desiccated coconut; there's a little plain flour in there too, so it's not actually gluten-free. The butter caramelises the crust, it's all shot through with bright blueberries, and the cake is crowned with toasty almond flakes. 

It is an excellent cake that's feels a bit fancy but is actually very unfussy. I'm sure it could be veganised  and/or de-glutened with your favourite butter, egg and flour replacements. (That said, we've also got a great lemon and blueberry loaf recipe just sitting here being vegan from the get-go.)

   

Coconut, almond & blueberry cake

(very slightly adapted from Helen Goh & Yotam Ottolenghi's Sweet)

spray oil

180g almond meal

60g desiccated coconut

250g caster sugar

70g plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 eggs

200g butter, melted, at room temperature

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

zest of 2 lemons

200g fresh blueberries

2 tablespoons flaked almonds

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a springform cake tin with baking paper and lightly spray it with oil.

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the almond meal, coconut, sugar, flour, baking powder and salt.

In a medium mixing bowl, lightly beat together the eggs. Gradually whisk in the melted butter, then the vanilla and lemon zest. Pour this mixture into the large mixing bowl of dry ingredients and mix until almost combined. Fold in 150g of the blueberries until the cake batter is fully combined.

Pour the cake batter into the tin, lightly smoothing over the top. Sprinkle over the remaining blueberries and the flaked almonds. Bake the cake for 50-55 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.

Give the cake plenty of time to rest before removing it from the tin and serving - the original recipe recommends 30 minutes, and mine was still warm and soft in the middle after a couple of hours resting and being cycled to its destination!

Rum & raisin cake

May 29-30, 2021

   

On Michael's birthday this year, Melbourne entered another pandemic lockdown. There were a couple of social arrangements to cancel, but we figured out some good takeaway food and cooking projects across the weekend to compensate (more to come!). I was also ready to bake his pick from Goh and Ottolenghi's Sweet: a rum and raisin cake.

This cake is intended to be baked in a bundt pan. The cookbook shows a decorative cake with the icing in motion, following the neat channels of the cake form. A springform cake tin is a plainer, easier alternative. The cake's preparation isn't complicated, though I had a couple hiccups - the morning was cold, the butter was cold, and my electric beater just wasn't up to the job.

The finished cake had a magnificent texture on the day of baking - crusty at its edge, soft all the way through and just a little fudgy right in the centre, with plenty of rum-soaked raisins scattered throughout. It settled into something firmer and more uniform over subsequent days. I only poured half of the icing over the cake, because the remainder looked likely to just spill onto the plate, and I kept the leftovers in a jar to spoon over one cake slice at a time. The icing has a lovely caramel and rum flavour, but I think I'd be just as happy not bothering with it, since the cake already carries these flavours well itself.

While this cake could certainly be veganised, we've actually got a ready-to-go vegan rum'n'raisin cake recipe on the blog already! Whichever way you bake it, it's a comfort during another locked-down winter.

   

Rum & raisin cake

(from Yotam Ottolenghi & Helen Goh's Sweet)

cake

200g raisins

120mL dark rum

300g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

250g butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing

250g brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

200g sour cream

icing (I recommend halving the recipe, or even omitting it)

60g butter

80g brown sugar

3 tablespoons milk

1 tablespoon dark rum

100g icing sugar

A day in advance of baking the cake, mix together the raisins and rum in a shallow plastic container, cover them with a lid, and let them macerate overnight.

Preheat an oven to 190°C. If you have a 23cm bundt tin, grease and flour it. Instead, I used a ~23cm round springform pan, lining it with paper and greasing it.

In a medium-large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and salt.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar with an electric beater. Beat in the vanilla and the eggs. With the beater on a low speed, add in spoonfuls of the flour mixture and sour cream in turns, until everything is well mixed. Mix in the raisins and rum until just mixed through the batter. Pour the cake batter into your tin and smooth over the top. Bake for 50-60 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.

To make the icing, melt the butter in a small saucepan. Stir in the sugar until well-mixed. Add the milk and bring it to a boil. Turn off the heat, whisk in the rum, and let the mixture cool to room temperature. Sift in the icing sugar and whisk until smooth. Gently pour the icing over the top of the cake.

Tahini & halva brownies

January 5, 2021

   

   

I had one of my very occasional urges to make sweet stuff this week. We wanted something portable, and Cindy suggested these brownies from Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh's Sweet. We'd been lucky enough to eat them before but we'd never actually made them. They're fancy, but super easy - there's no separating egg yolks and whites, no complex techniques, just pretty basic baking.

They're incredibly rich, stuffed with halva on top of all the chocolate, butter and sugar, but they're really, really good. 

Tahini & halva brownies
(very slightly adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh's Sweet)

250g butter, cut into small cubes
250g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
4 eggs
1 1/4 cups of caster sugar
1 cup plain flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
200g halva, crumbled into 2cm pieces
4-5 tablespoons tahini


Preheat the oven to 200°C. Grease a 30 x 20cm baking tin and set aside (you can line with paper too if you're cautious, but mine came out fine).

Gently melt the butter and chocolate in a saucepan until you've got a thick, shiny sauce. Set aside to cool down to room temperature.

Whisk the eggs and caster sugar in a large bowl until creamy, about 3-5 minutes with electric beaters. Gently fold in the chocolate mix.

Sift the flour, cocoa and salt into a small bowl and stir them together. Fold this dry mix into the chocolate mix and combine. Gently mix in the halva pieces.

Pour the mixture into your baking tin, smoothing it out with a spatula if necessary. Dollop the tahini onto the mix in 10-12 places and swirl them with a skewer to make a marbled pattern.

Bake for 20-25 minutes - it will come out looking like it needs more time, but will set as it cools. Leave for at least half an hour before cutting it into brownie sized pieces. 

Gingerbread with lemony apples & crème fraîche

July 25, 2020

Our Ottolenghi Cooking Club met online for dinner over the weekend. This mode of meeting is suboptimal in one important way - we can't share each other's foods and therefore try six or more dishes! It was still such a pleasure to chat to everyone, and to marvel at the chocoflan that our host spent all afternoon preparing.

For our part, we cooked our dishes a day early and ate them as reheated leftovers. For the main course, Michael revisited the over-the-top lasagne with four kinds of mushroom and five kinds of cheese. For dessert, I decided upon this Sweet recipe. It's a tall, warm gingerbread cake served with apples and crème fraîche.

The cake is simply put together, and doesn't require an electric beater. It's intended to include pieces of stem ginger, which is a new ingredient to me. I didn't have the energy to make my own, and substituted uncrystallised ginger instead - it sank to the bottom of the cake, but provided the right boost of flavour. In the apple recipe, I traded dark rum for the intended brandy to use what we had on hand. The apples ended up tasting more strongly of lemon juice than liquor anyway, so I've performed a substitute on their name too.

This recipe is just as filling and comforting as I'd hoped, and looks a little special without being excessive. The cake would also make for a fine unpretentious afternoon tea without all the trimmings.

Gingerbread with lemony apples & crème fraîche
(very slightly adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh's Sweet)

gingerbread
300g treacle or molasses
100g brown sugar
120g caster sugar
220g butter, melted and cooled slightly
3 eggs
zest of 1 orange
400g plain flour
1 tablespoon bicarbonate of soda
1 tablespoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
300mL boiling water
100g stem ginger (I used 100g uncrystallised ginger), roughly chopped into 1/2 cm pieces

lemony apples
5 golden delicious or pink lady apples
50g butter
120g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
zest of 1 lemon
50mL brandy or dark rum
50mL lemon juice
pinch of salt

400g crème fraîche

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Choose a cake tin - options include a 20cm square or round springform tin, or a 23cm bundt tin. Grease/flour a bundt; line a springform tin with paper, going up beyond the height of the sides, and grease it too.

In a large bowl, whisk together the treacle/molasses, brown sugar, caster sugar, and melted butter. Check that it's not too warm from the butter, then whisk in the eggs and orange zest. Sift over the flour, bicarb soda, ginger, cinnamon and salt, and stir to combine. Pour over the just-boiled water and whisk thoroughly to combine. Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake for 50 minutes, until the cake passes the skewer test. (I think I baked mine for 60 minutes.) Allow the cake to cool for at least 10 minutes before it is transferred to a serving plate.

During the second half of the baking or while the cake is cooling, peel and core the apples and cut them into 1-1.5 cm slices. Set a large frypan over high heat and add the apples. Cook them, tossing them around every couple minutes, until they're golden. Transfer the apples to a bowl and return the frypan to the heat, turning it down to medium. Melt the butter in the frypan, then add the sugar, vanilla and lemon zest, stirring well. Add the apples back into the pan, stirring to coat them in the sugar mixture. Add the brandy/rum, lemon juice and salt, and cook until the sauce is thick.

Serve the cake in warm slices with spoonfuls of apple and crème fraîche on the side.

Flourless chocolate layer cake with walnuts & rosewater cream

May 28, 2020

It's just as well Michael had a big birthday bash last year, because our options were a bit more restricted this time around. We did pretty well: there were presents and fancy crumpets in the morning, Smith & Deli in a park for lunch, followed by a bike ride and afternoon game of Wingspan. He requested black pepper tofu for dinner. In my free moments around the edges, I baked a birthday cake.

Michael picked this one out of Goh and Ottolenghi's Sweet. It looked a little intimidating, but all my lockdown baking had prepared me perfectly for the egg separating, white beating, and cake layering that's needed.

The cake component is an unusual one: it's made mostly from eggs, sugar and chocolate, forming something with the texture of a sponge cake without any of the flour. There's an anxious moment of mixing watery coffee into melted chocolate which creates a very strange, almost rubbery, texture. Unfortunately we couldn't really taste the coffee in the finished cake, so it probably wasn't worth the drama. The best trick is that this layer cake doesn't require any lengthways slicing: it's all achieved by making a huge rectangular sheet of a cake, and dividing it into three stackable rectangles.

In between sponge layers, there's rosewater whipped cream and walnuts. I was wary of the large rosewater dose, but it was balanced out well by the other flavours, and not too perfumey or soapy. The walnuts are an essential counterbalance of crunch and subtle bitterness, but they also prevented the cake-and-cream layers from sticking to each other properly.

The coffee and the construction are well worth reworking, because this is a fabulous cake! It looks fancy without being finicky. We got eight thick slices out of it; each time we'd launch into the cake's light texture with gusto, and be thoroughly satisfied by the time we finished the thick buttery top with its candied walnuts.

Flourless chocolate layer cake with walnuts & rosewater cream
(from Yotam Ottolenghi & Helen Goh's Sweet)

cake
120g walnuts
6 eggs, yolks and whites separated
215g caster sugar
215g dark chocolate
2 1/2 teaspoons instant coffee granules
50mL hot water

topping
30g caster sugar
40g walnuts

rosewater cream
380mL double cream
2 1/2 tablespoons icing sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons rosewater

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a 35cm x 25cm Swiss roll tin (for me, this was just my regular baking tray) with baking paper, and spray it with oil.

In a small baking tray, spread out 120g walnuts and roast them until fragrant, about 8 minutes. Allow them to cool, roughly chop them, and then set them aside for the final assembly.

Turn the oven up to 200°C.

Gently melt the chocolate using your preferred method. Dissolve the coffee in the hot water. Very gently stir the coffee into the chocolate.

In a large bowl, beat together the egg yolks and caster sugar for several minutes until very pale and fluffy; Ottolenghi and Goh reckon it should triple in volume. In three batches, gently fold the chocolate mixture into these yolks.

Using clean equipment, whisk the egg whites to form stiff peaks. Gently fold the whites into the chocolate mixture. Spread the mixture out in the Swiss roll tin as evenly as you can. Bake for 20 minutes, until the cake is cooked through but not blackening at the edges (it was a close call with mine!). Allow the cake to cool completely.

Line a small baking tray with paper. Place the topping ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat and cook them, stirring regularly. Gradually, the sugar will melt, coat the walnuts, and turn golden brown. Keep a close eye on the mixture to avoid burning! When all of the sugar is melted and brown, spread the nuts out across the baking tray to cool. When the nuts have cooled, roughly chop them and set them aside for the final assembly.

Whip together the rosewater cream ingredients to form soft peaks, and refrigerate until the final assembly.

To assemble the cake, slice the chocolate cake into three stout rectangles of the same size. Place one layer on a serving plate and spread it with one third of the rosewater cream. Sprinkle over half of the roasted walnuts. Repeat with a second layer each of cake, cream and roasted walnuts. Repeat with the third layer of cake, the remaining rosewater cream, and top with the candied walnuts.

Flourless coconut & chocolate cake

December 14, 2019

A few days after Cindy's actual birthday I finally got around to making her a cake. She had her choice of anything in Ottolenghi and Helen Goh's Sweet. She went for this coconut and chocolate cake, thankfully well within the range of my baking skills. It's gluten free, made almost entirely of butter and sugar, with just enough coconut and almond meal to hold everything together. The ganache is a bit fiddly to make but adds a glossy, chocolatey sheen that's worth the effort. This was a real winner - rich and decadent, with a simple coconut and vanilla flavour. Recommended.

Flourless coconut & chocolate cake
(from Yotam Ottolenghi & Helen Goh's Sweet)

cake
200g unsalted butter, room temperature
250g caster sugar
2/3 cup desiccated coconut
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups almond meal
shake of salt

ganache
60g dark chocolate
1/8 cup caster sugar
25g glucose syrup
3 tablespoons water
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
25g unsalted butter, diced into small cubes

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease and line a 23cm spring form tin.

Mix the butter, sugar, desiccated coconut, vanilla and salt in a big bowl with an electric mixer, until the mix is pale and fluffy. Add in the eggs, one at a time, beating after each. Add in the almond meal and mix some more, until everything is combined.

Scrape the mixture into your tin and bake for 40-50 minutes, until it's gone brown on top and a skewer comes out clean. Set aside to cool and then remove from the tin.

To make the ganache, combine the sugar and glucose syrup in a small saucepan over medium heat and stir gently until the sugar is melted and everything has combined a bit. Simmer for 5 minutes or so, until it starts to brown.

Pour in the water - the mixture will seize up immediately - just keep it on the heat and everything will melt down again. Add in the vanilla. Once everything is liquidy and combined, kill the heat. Pop the chocolate chips in a bowl and pour the hot mixture over the top. Once the chocolate is melted, whisk in the butter, one cube at a time.

Spread the ganache over the cake and serve!

Sticky fig pudding with salted caramel & coconut topping

July 8, 2018

Hosting an Ottolenghi Club gathering in our own home is an opportunity to make something that doesn't travel well, and this was at the forefront of my mind as I browsed Sweet. The best wintery contender, I thought, was the sticky fig pudding with salted caramel and coconut topping - it could travel straight from the oven to the table, still warm! 

The prologue to the recipe mentions that it takes inspiration from the sticky date puddings that are so common on Australian and Kiwi menus. My experience of those puddings is that the dates blend completely into the caramelly pudding, while here chopped apples and dried figs offer some gentle, fruity variation in the cakes. Their preparation is no more arduous than for a standard cake - beat together butter and sugar, then an egg, followed by the dry ingredients. I prepped the fruit earlier in the day, then readied the cakes in the hour before our guests arrived, spooning the batter into a paper-lined muffin tray and popping them into the oven as we sat down to eat the main meal.

Muffin trays are the 'inelegant' alternative to the recipe's preferred serving method, something to do with bottomless rings and tulip papers that I'd never even heard of. I wasn't too bothered, and nor were my guests, as they watched me melt together the coconut caramel and bake it onto the cakes after dinner. It was a little messy, but in the best possible way, with the cakes soaking up some of the syrup and any spills setting into a chewier caramel around the edges. The coconut was also toasty and chewy and really the star of the dish, even if it wasn't as pretty as a tulip.

I served one little pudding to each guest, with the choice of cream or icecream on the side. We all had the good fortune of another leftover pudding each to enjoy the next day, and they were still quite lovely at room temperature.

Sticky fig pudding with salted caramel & coconut topping
(from Yotam Ottolenghi & Helen Goh's Sweet)

pudding
2 medium Granny Smith apples
200g soft dried figs
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
250mL water
200g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
125g butter, at room temperature
200g caster sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla

caramel coconut topping
75g butter
95g brown sugar
60mL double cream
95g coconut flakes
1/4 teaspoon salt

Peel and core the apple, and chop the fruit into 1cm pieces. Remove the tough stalks from the figs and roughly chop the fruit. In a small saucepan, stir together the apple pieces, fig piece, bicarb soda and water. Bring it all to the boil, then simmer it over medium heat for 5 minutes. Stir it occasionally, making sure all the fruit spends some time immersed. When you turn off the heat, the figs should be starting to collapse. Set the saucepan aside to cool to room temperature.

Preheat an oven to 200°C. Line a muffin pan with paper cups (I used 10).

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. In a second larger bowl, beat together the butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla until well incorporated. Gradually beat in the flour mixture and the cooled fig-apple mixture until everything is well combined. Spoon the cake batter into the muffin cups, until they're about three-quarters full. Bake the cakes for about 25 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.

During the last 5 minutes of the cakes baking, place all of the topping ingredients in a small-medium saucepan and set them over low-medium heat. Stir them often, until everything is melted and well combined. When the cakes are baked, carefully spoon the topping over each one, and bake them for a further 12 minutes.

Allow the puddings to cool on a bench for 10 minutes before serving, with a dollop of cream or a small scoop of vanilla icecream.

Mont Blanc tart

March 30, 2018

Late last year a friend of mine gave me a small can of sweetened chestnut spread, after they'd been travelling in France. I had little idea what to do with it, but I had a hunch that Ottolenghi would have a suitable recipe or two. Sure enough, chestnut spread turns up in the index of Sweet as an ingredient in two desserts.

The Mont Blanc tart is reinterpretation of an Italian dessert where chestnuts are sweetened and whipped into cream. Goh and Ottolenghi's version starts with a sweet shortcrust; it's lined with a thin layer of dark chocolate and then filled with the chestnut spread. The name then comes in with a tower of whipped cream, which is sprinkled with candied pecans.

The presentation of my version didn't fulfill that vision, though it was pretty enough. Instead of baking individual tart shells I formed a single large pie. The double cream I bought became thicker and denser with whipping, lacking the airy texture needed to form a white mountain.

On its own, the chestnut spread had the nuttiness and velvety texture of hummus, though it was a lot sweeter. In the dessert, it acted as an unassuming caramel filling - the cream was richer, the chocolate had more depth, the pecans were sweeter. Together they formed a fancy and tasty dessert, even if the chestnut centre was overshadowed. For me it was a successful one-off project that I was proud to share around Ottolenghi club - I don't foresee any more little cans of chestnut spread coming my way, and this project hasn't inspired me to order them online.

Mont Blanc tart
(slightly adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi & Helen Goh's Sweet)

pastry
200g plain flour
120g cold butter
30g caster sugar
pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons ice water

candied pecans
1 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon glucose syrup
1 tablespoon caster sugar
120g pecan halves
pinch of salt

filling
60g dark chocolate
250g can sweetened chestnut spread

cream
300mL double cream
1 tablespoon icing sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla rum

Start with the pastry. Drop the flour into a large food processor, dice the butter and drop it in after the flour. Add the sugar and salt. Pulse the ingredient together until they resemble coarse breadcrumbs. Add the vinegar and water, and pulse further until the dough just starts coming together. Turn the dough onto plastic wrap, forming it into a ball the then flattening it into a disc. Refrigerate the dough for at least 1 hour.

This is plenty of time to candy the pecans. Preheat an oven to 190°C. Line a large baking tray with paper. Place the maple syrup, glucose and sugar in a small saucepan and set it over low heat. Stir them together until they're combined and smooth, then add the pecans and salt. Turn off the heat and stir the pecans until they're evenly coated in the syrup, then turn them into the baking tray, spacing them out so that they're minimally touching. Bake the nuts for 8 minutes, until the syrup is bubbling and they smell toasty. Allow the nuts to cool to room temperature, then roughly chop them.

When the dough is ready, roll it out between two sheets of plastic wrap and fit it into a greased pie dish. The dough will contract when baked, so leave plenty of extra pastry on the edges. Refrigerate the pastry shell for 30 minutes. Preheat an oven to 180°C. Retrieve the pastry shell, prick its base with a fork, line it with paper, and pour in some pie weights (I have some old dried chickpeas for this job). Bake the pastry shell for 18 minutes, until it is golden brown around the edges. Remove the paper and pie weights, then bake for another 8 minutes, until the pastry is cooked through. Allow the base to cool.

Gently melt the chocolate using your preferred method, then pour it into the base of the pastry shell, spreading it evenly with the back of a spoon. Refrigerate the pastry to set the chocolate. When the chocolate is set, spoon in the chestnut spread and spread it out evenly. Return the tart to the fridge.

When you're almost ready to serve the dessert, place the three cream ingredients in a small bowl and whip them with an electric beater until medium-soft peaks form. Serve slices of the tart topped with white mountains of cream and sprinkle the candies pecans on top.

Rhubarb-iced yo-yos

January 11, 2018

For the past two weeks, I've been hosting an international guest at work. In a bid to break the ice with my coworkers, I brought in these biscuits to draw a crowd to my guest's first lunch in the office. 

Initially I was planning to bake a cake and set on trying something from my newest cookbook, Sweet. But, as I flicked through the pages, biscuits or little cakes seemed more sensible. They'd be less fussy to transport, and folks could help themselves whenever they were ready rather than waiting for me to ceremoniously portion out something larger. Oh, and I had rhubarb in the fridge! The rhubarb-iced yo-yos were an excellent fit.

I made one-and-a-half times the original quantity and turned out 20 generous biscuit sandwiches. I let my shortbreads get just a teensy bit brown around the edges, which I think is traditionally a bit of a no-no, but really worked out fine. The icing is the major novelty here, as it's prepared in a food processor and contains baked rhubarb! I was very, very worried about the fibres remaining stringy in the icing - they were visible, and I picked some of them out, but actually they seemed very soft and inoffensive in the couple of biscuits I ate. If I made this recipe again, I'd blend the rhubarb in my spice grinder attachment to give it more contact with the blade, then perhaps beat it together with the other icing ingredients in a bowl.

I stored the biscuits (airtight on the bench) and icing (airtight in the fridge) overnight before assembling the yo-yos, with the aim of keeping them fresh, uncrushed and non-soggy. This worked well; they needed gentle handling but none of them crumbled under my fingers and all of them looked handsome at the lunch table. Their buttery crumble was just right between the teeth, and I enjoyed the pink tanginess of the icing. I can't be sure whether the biscuits or the special guest was more enticing but there was a huge, friendly turn-out, an auspicious start to a lovely visit.

Rhubarb-iced yo-yos
(slightly adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi & Helen Goh's Sweet)

biscuits
260g plain flour
100g custard powder
100g icing sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
250g butter, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

icing
100g rhubarb
100g butter, at room temperature
200g icing sugar
juice of half a lemon

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line a baking tray with paper.

Chop the rhubarb into 3cm lengths and set them out on the baking tray. Bake them for 30 minutes, until softened. Allow them to cool to room temperature.

Time to switch to the biscuits! Turn the oven down to 170°C, and line two baking trays with fresh paper.

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, custard powder, icing sugar and salt. Chop the butter into cubes and drop it into the flour mixture. Carefully beat the butter into the dry ingredients, adding the vanilla as you go, until the mixture forms a dough.

Use two teaspoons to grab scant tablespoons of the dough, rolling them into balls and placing them on the baking trays. Use a fork to gently press down on the balls - mine formed biscuits about 3cm in diameter and 1 cm thick before they went into the oven. Bake the biscuits for around 25 minutes, catching them just as they start going golden around the edges. Allow them to cool for 5 minutes on the tray before transferring them to a rack to cool right down to room temperature. If you're not assembling and serving them right away, store the biscuits in an airtight container.

Back to the icing! Place the rhubarb in a small food processor bowl and blend until as smooth as possible. Blend in the butter, then the icing sugar and lemon juice. Keep blending for a few minutes until the icing is as smooth and whipped as possible. If you're not assembling and serving the yo-yos right away, transfer the icing to an airtight container and store it in the refrigerator.

When it's time to assemble the yo-yos, carefully choose matching pairs of biscuits by size and shape. Use two teaspoons to scoop half-tablespoons of icing, placing them on one of the biscuits and gently sandwiching the second biscuit on top. Serve the biscuits right away, or store them in an airtight container for a couple of days (I refrigerated mine because I thought the icing looked delicate).

Rhubarb & strawberry crumble cake

December 11, 2017

Regular readers will be well aware that Cindy is the baker and sweet-tooth in this food-blog duo. It's rare for me to take on a cake, but I decided to give it a shot for Cindy's birthday. I grabbed her a copy of Ottolenghi's new dessert book as part of her present and we picked out this recipe for me to attempt. 

It's a little involved, but not beyond my fairly limited skill level. Things took a terrifying turn when I dropped the cake as I was putting it back in the oven for its final 10 minutes under foil, but I managed to patch things up enough to present to Cindy without too much shame. Even better, it tasted terrific - a fairly plain cake with a gorgeous layer of sweet fruit topped with sugary crumble. You've gotta put aside a good chunk of time for this one - 70 minutes baking plus a good half hour of prep (more if you're me), but it's definitely worth it. We're excited to try more goodies from this new book - this really set a high benchmark.

Rhubarb & strawberry crumble cake
(from Sweet by Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh)

crumble
120g unsalted butter, melted
150g brown sugar
190g plain flour
30g dessicated coconut
1/4 teaspoon salt

fruit
3 sticks of rhubarb, cut into 1cm slices
250g strawberries, hulled and sliced into 0.5cm pieces
25g brown sugar
30g cornflour
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste
1/3 teaspoon salt

cake
185g plain flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
160g unsalted butter, cubed
220g icing sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla paste

Preheat the oven to 200°C and lightly grease and line a 23cm springform tin. Combine all the crumble ingredients in a large bowl and stir everything together well. You want quite a chunky texture. Put the crumble aside.

Combine all the ingredients for the fruit in another bowl, mix well and set aside.

For the cake: Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt into a small bowl and set aside.

Place the butter and icing sugar in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer for about 3 minutes until it's light and fluffy. Add in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one.

Add the vanilla paste and the sifted dry ingredients and beat some more to combine everything. 

Pour the cake mix into the prepared tin and smooth out the surface with the back of a spoon. Add the fruit mixture on top and then sprinkle evenly with the crumble mixture (I had heaps of crumble leftover, which came in handy when I needed to patch up my mistakes later).

Pop the cake in the oven and bake. Check after 50 minutes and if the crumble is getting too dark cover the whole thing with foil. Pop it back in the oven (without dropping it!) and bake for a further 20 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.

Leave the cake to cool before removing it from the tin and serving. We had it straight up, but it'd go well with yoghurt or cream.

Brownie-style chocolate cake with espresso mascarpone

October 21, 2017

This Ottolenghi club meeting, I made a recipe requested by our host Alice. She'd been browsing recent articles about Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh's new book Sweet, and coveting what is alleged to be the world's best chocolate cake. Alice's oven doesn't currently work and I was glad to supply the cake she craved.

Happily, the world's best chocolate cake isn't the world's most laborious chocolate cake! In fact, you don't even have to cream room-temperature butter and sugar in this version. The process reminded me more of some brownies I've baked, where the butter is melted and everything can be whisked and sifted directly into the saucepan. The two optional (but enthusiastically requested) accompaniments come together just as breezily: the chocolate topping is a one-saucepan ganache (although the recipe also includes a bizarre food-processor technique), and the espresso mascarpone can be whipped in a bowl by hand or briefly with an electric beater. I had both mixtures ready to go in less time than it took the cake to bake.

And how about that tentative "world's best" claim? Well, I can't be sure that it's not the world's best chocolate cake, because I can't recall eating a better one myself. The cake stands tall and dark, with a moist, melt-in-the-mouth medium density. It contains more than a cup of espresso, but that only serves to liven the chocolate flavour and doesn't create an explicit coffee taste. That's in the complex, grainy mascarpone, along with vanilla and cinnamon (incidentally, a half-quantity of this is just about enough to go around).

After a couple of hours in the fridge the cake changes, of course - it's firmer, denser, and the subtler flavours were lost to me. I'd recommend gathering some friends and getting as much enjoyment from this cake as you can during its first few hours out of the oven.

(And if you're after a vegan alternative, my best offering is this recipe.)

Brownie-style chocolate cake with espresso mascarpone
(slightly adapted from a recipe by Helen Goh and published in good food)

cake
spray oil
350mL espresso coffee
250g butter
200g dark chocolate
250g caster sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
240g self-raising flour
30g cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

ganache
200mL heavy cream
3 teaspoons golden syrup
3 teaspoons butter
200g dark chocolate

espresso mascarpone
375mL heavy cream
190g mascarpone
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 teaspoons ground espresso
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons icing sugar

Preheat an oven to 170°C. Line a 23cm diameter springform cake tin with paper and spary it with oil.

Heat the espresso in a large saucepan, and add the butter. When the butter is completely melted, turn off the heat and add the chocolate, stirring continuously until it is melted through. Whisk in the sugar until it's dissolved. Check the bottom of the saucepan and allow it to cool a little if it's still hot. When the mixture is just gently warm, whisk in the eggs and vanilla. Sift over the flour, cocoa and salt, then stir everything together to combine. Pour the cake batter into the springform tin, and bake it for around an hour, until a skewer comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool in the tin for around 20 minutes, before removing the edge. It's gonna have deep cracks; don't worry about 'em!

To prepare the ganache, place the cream, golden syrup and butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring, until the butter is melted and the cream starts to bubble. Turn off the heat and add the chocolate, stirring constantly until the ingredients are well combined and silky smooth. Allow the ganache to cool a little, then place plastic wrap on its surface.

To prepare the espresso mascarpone, whip together all the ingredients with a whisk or an electric beater, until soft peaks form.

To serve, transfer the cooled cake to a serving plate. Spread over the ganache and serve the espresso mascarpone on the side.