SnapShots & WhatNots

Buttery Lemon Cake with Lemon Frosting

Do you ever just get such a craving for something and then once you start thinking about it you can’t stop until you give in and make it – well that’s how I ended up making lemon cake on a Monday night after work.

I googled a few recipes but I couldn’t find any for a small enough cake using ingredients that I already had so I ended up just mixing a few together and hoping for the best. It turned out great!! I had to try really hard not to just scoff the entire thing in one sitting.

Here’s the recipe:

Cake:

4 oz of butter

1 cup of sugar

1 egg

Zest and juice of 3 lemons

1 and ½ cups of flour

¼ teaspoon of baking powder

¼ teaspoon of baking soda

¼ cup of plain yogurt

2 tablespoons of milk

Syrup:

¼ cup of lemon juice

¼ cup of sugar

Frosting:

2oz of butter

1 cup of icing sugar

2 tablespoons of lemon juice

Directions 

1) Preheat oven to 350 F and grease a loaf tin. Cream together butter and sugar. Add the egg and lemon zest and ¼ cup of lemon juice. Combine flour, baking soda and powder and mix slowly into the butter mixture. Then lastly add the yogurt and milk. Transfer to loaf tin and bake for 50 mins or until a skewer comes out clean.

2) As the cake is cooling make the syrup by dissolving ¼ cup of sugar in ¼ cup of lemon juice. Poke lots of holes into the top of the cake and pour the syrup in.

3) once the cake has completely cooled make the frosting by creaming the butter with the icing sugar and adding lemon juice to get the consistency and flavour – I added quite a bit of lemon juice

Then devour!!

Zucchini and Apricot Bread Recipe

Yea I’ve never heard of zucchini and apricot bread either but you know what this is was really tasty! I’ll be totally honest with you it’s meant to be zucchini and walnut bread with prunes but I had neither prunes nor walnuts in the house. I did however have the majority of a packet of dried apricots leftover from a delicious cheeseboard that were going spare.

So I figured what harm, just do a substitution and see what happens – I based it on a recipe I found this awesome library book….which also has bagel, beer bread and ciabatta recipes I want to try…..but I modified it a bit to fit my cupboards.

Ingredients:

8oz zucchini

½ cup butter

¾ sugar

2 eggs

1 ½ cups of plain flour

2 teaspoons of baking powder

¼ teaspoon of baking soda

¼ teaspoon of nutmeg

1 teaspoon of cinnamon

4 oz of dried apricots

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375 F, and grease and lightly flour a standard loaf tin. Top and tail the zucchini and then grate it. Meanwhile, cream together the butter and sugar and then beat in the eggs. In a separate bowl combine the flour, baking powder, soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, grated apricots and chopped apricots. Stir the butter mixture into the flour mixture until just combined and then spoon dough into loaf tin. Bake for 1 hour or until a skewer comes out clean.

Obviously with the sugar and fruit this is a sweet bread – it’s got more of a bread texture and density than cake but it’s for sure a treat/snack rather than a new breakfast option. We ate this over 3-4 days and it stored perfectly fine just wrapped in cling film (saran wrap) on the counter top.

This is going on the “make again” list and it’s clearly a recipe that’s very open to modification. Next up beer bread but right now I only have Coronas in the fridge and I think it’d be better with an amber ale or something along those lines. 

Homemade Cherry Cake - a Christmas Eve tradition

Every Christmas Eve night right before bed my mam used to unwrap the cherry cake and cut everyone a slice while my dad make a huge pot of tea. There was no other time throughout the year that we would ever have cherry cake or glacé cherries in the house. It was always a favourite time for me and one tradition that I knew I wanted to continue now that I’m no longer at home.

So I got the recipe from my mam and then made 3 trips to the supermarket looking for glacé cherries and cream of tarter. I finally found the former in Publix but I couldn’t find any cream of tarter at all. After some googling for substitutions and realising that there isn’t really a good one I decided that my best bet instead was to use some baking powder. Happily it worked out perfectly and the cake tasted divine.

Ingredients:

225g plain flour

150g soft butter

3 eggs

150 castor sugar

½ teaspoon of baking powder

400g glacé cherries

Directions:

Cover cherries in a fine layer of flour making sure that each cherry is lightly covered – this helps prevent the cherries from sinking to the bottom of the cake during baking. Preheat oven to 320 F (160 C).

Cream butter with 125g of plain flour. In separate bowl beat the eggs and sugar together for 3-5 minutes. Gradually combine the egg mixture into the flour-butter mixture. Add the rest of the flour and stir in the cherries.

Transfer the mixture to a baking tin (7 inch) or a 1lb loaf tin that’s been lined (bottom with tall protruding sides) with grease proof paper. Use any remaining egg white form shells to glaze the top of the cake.

Cover the top of the tin with grease proof paper to prevent the top form over cooking. Bake for approx. 2 hours but cooking time varies with ovens. Check the cake after 90 mins by inserting a tooth pick into the center of the cake when it comes out clean the cake is cooked. Remove the greaseproof film from the top of the cake about 10 minutes before the end of baking time.

Allow to cool completely. Slice and serve with a huge mug of tea.

Enjoy

 

 

Orange and pomegranate muffins

My landlord stopped by unexpectedly the other day and handed me a bunch of pomegranates from his garden. My first thought was “wow that’s pretty random” quickly followed by “what the heck am I gonna make with pomegranates?”

Salads in winter don’t seem that appealing but cake…yep cake sounds appealing! So I thought I’d make pomegranate muffins, but I couldn’t imagine them tasting of much by themselves so maybe I could put orange with it (like the way you use orange juice to make cranberry sauce). I figured I’d just take my banana muffin recipe and switch some things about and hope for the best. Until I googled “Orange and pomegranate muffin recipe” and found that my muffin idea had already been tried and tested many times!

So I used this recipe pretty much as is, except that I didn’t have rolled oats only quick oats but I soaked them for less time and they turned out just fine, and I used butter rather than applesauce and they were scrumptious!

Good thing I have another 3 pomegranates to make the recipe again with because this batch was gone in no time!

Potato and Leek Soup

Potato and leek soup is one a soup that I love to eat but rarely make. When I think about making soup I always default to my usual Butternut Squash and Roasted Red Pepper recipe but I think I’ve actually eaten it so many times recently that I’ve been in the mood for something different. So I bought some leek and potatoes and decided to give it a go.

Ingredients:

2 leeks

2 Russet Potatoes

1 onion

1 clove of garlic

1 vegetable stock cube

Directions:

Peel and chop the potatoes and chop up the leeks and onion. Fry the onions and garlic until soft then add the potatoes, leeks and 6 cups of water. Bring to the boil and then let simmer until the vegetables are soft. Allow to cool slightly then blend until smooth. Season to taste with salt, black pepper and parsley.

I made this soup one evening after work, while I was making soft bread rolls. I can’t remember whether I wanted the soup because I was making the rolls or the other way around but either way I’m glad I made them both because they went perfectly together.

Now that Autumn is slowing rolling in it’s the perfect time for me to branch out and attempt some different soup recipes outside of my easy 3 (oh and the third one is tomato soup!).