Honey Apple Banana Cake

For Ross' birthday, I made a new cake that turned out surprisingly well.
This cake is surprisingly healthy in that it doesn't contain any butter or oil!

Check it out.

I started by preheating the oven to 205C/400F.
Then I took my handy apple cutting device.  I pulled back the peeling bit so that just cut and cored, but didn't take the skin off.

 I used it to cut up 3 apples (I sort of wish I'd used 4).  After I pulled the apple coil off the device and then sliced it down the middle so I had a bunch of little curved pieces, which I scattered on a large baking sheet.

Next I drizzled honey all over the slices.

I also took a cap full of vanilla extract and drizzled that too.

Then I put the apples in the oven for about 10 minutes.  Oh, how heavenly it smelled!
While this was going on I set out my over-ripe bananas to thaw.  (If a banana in our house gets the wrong side of ripe, I just throw it in our freezer and then I can defrost it when I want to bake something banana-y.)  There were actually 3 bananas, but I took this picture after I'd already peeled one.

Once my bananas thawed, I peeled them and put them in a large bowl.

Then I used a whisk to mash 'em up real good.

Then I added 1/2 cup of sugar.

And mixed it in with the mashed bananas until it was nice and blended.

Next I added a 1/4 cup of honey.

And then 2 eggs.

Then 1 3/4 cups of plain flour.

By now my apples were done.  This is what they looked like when I pulled them out of the oven.  I then turned down the heat to 175C/350F.

Then I added 1 tbsp. of baking powder.

and a pinch of salt

And a teaspoon of cinnamon

and a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg and mixed it all together until it was smooth!

Next I used coconut oil instead of butter to grease the cake tin.  This is another healthy tip, as coconut oil is INSANELY good for you.  (It can also be used as a fabulous skin moisturiser!)  Don't worry, though it smells  pretty strongly of coconut, it doesn't make the cake taste of it at all.

Next I put my cooked apple slices on the bottom of the pan.  Here's where I should have used fewer slices, unless I had used 4 apples, and then I could have used a few more.

I poured the batter in the tin and then used the rest of the slices to make a pretty flower design on the top of the cake.  Again, it would have been much prettier if I'd had even more slices.  Then I put it in the oven for one our and 10 minutes.

The cake came out looking very nice and smelling fabulous.

I'd say that many people wouldn't have thought this cake was very "birthday-ish", it is almost like a breakfast cake.  It's spicy and dense.  It stayed moist for several days and Ross loved it!

Happy baking!

(Recipe adapted from this recipe.)

Pioneer Woman British Style

Tonight I made a recipe from a cookbook we received as a wedding present.

Thanks Lucinda!

I've not made many of the recipes in it because- delicious as they sound- they aren't necessarily things that Ross can/will eat.  I've made a few things (the cobbler & the egg in the hole), but not ventured into other recipes much.  

Well a few days ago, I decided that I was going to make Iny's Prune Cake.  I won't publish the recipe here, but you can certainly click the link to see it on the PW site.

I ran into a few problems trying to cook PW style in England.  

1.  No buttermilk-  Easy fix.  The cookbook actually tells you how to address this with a combo of regular milk and distilled white vinegar.

2.  No light corn syrup-  The recipe calls for 1 tbsp. of light corn syrup for the icing.  I found a website that said you could make a substitute by melting sugar and water on the stove.  I was going to do this, but then decided to improvise and just used set honey instead.  When I tasted the icing, I didn't have any complaints.

3.  No canola oil- A quick google search provided an easy answer to this.  On one of our first road trips in England, Ross and I passed a field of gorgeous bright yellow.  

Like this

When I asked Ross what it was, he replied that it was rape.  Um.... what?  He was surprised that I'd never heard of it.  He asked if I'd ever heard of rapeseed oil.  I had not.  These fields are all over England, so this rape must be a big deal.  (That just sounds so wrong...)  Anyway- all this is to say that I finally found out what rape is.  Rapeseed oil is the British equivalent of canola oil.  Problem solved!

4.  I didn't have a rectangular cake pan.  Apparently British people don't make rectangular cakes.  They only had cake pans in round, square and loaf.  (How do they make brownies?!?)  I scanned the cooking aisle of Asda and found a "roasting tin" that was pretty much the same thing as a rectangular cake pan.  Problem solved for £5.

The cake in it's roasting tin.

Mmmmm.  Spicy and moist!

I just tried and piece and it was very nice!  Ross said it was fine, but would be better with apple in it.  ARgh!  He's a tough customer! :)

Chocolate Pear Mugs

This recipe is pretty easy to throw together with pears and a few ingredients we usually have on hand.  You could also use apples, or a mix of pears and apples!  It's a nice, sweet dessert with no butter (so ZERO saturated fat) and at least 1 (depending on how much fruit you use) of your 5-a-day.

First preheat your oven to 320F/160C/140C for a fan oven
Then, peel and cut up your pears.  I used 4 small ones.

Put them in a saucepan with a lid and squeeze the juice of half a lemon over them.

Sprinkle the pears with 1 tbsp. of whatever sugar you like.  I used caster (extra fine sugar), because that's what I had, but you can also use muscavado (brown) sugar.

 Drizzle a little vanilla extract over the pears.

Cover and bring the mixture to a boil, then let it simmer.  The pears will make more liquid, so even though it doesn't sound like you can bring a pan of pears to a boil- you can.  Let it cook for about 10 minutes.  Keep an eye on it and stir it occasionally.  Make sure that the fruit doesn't start to stick or burn.  It should be fine, but check it to be safe.

 It should look like this.  Take the lid off and keep simmering it for another 10 minutes or so until the liquid reduces.  Stir it occasionally.

While your cooking the pear, you can prepare the topping.  Start by beating an* egg white.

Bet it until the egg is pretty stiff.

 Take 50g of powdered sugar and 1 tbsp. on cocoa.  (Or if you're like me, realize that you only have 30g of powdered sugar, so use caster sugar for the other 20.  If you look real close, you can see the 2 kinds of sugar on the plate!)

Sift the sugar and cocoa into a bowl.

Add in 25g of ground almond.

Stir it all together.

Add the stiff egg white.

Stir it gently into the sugar mix.

Keep stirring and realize that you need more egg white.

Beat a second egg white and add it to the mix. (*You could, of course, just do 2 egg whites at once.  But what fun would that be? :))

See!  That's better!

Put 2 oven-safe mugs on a baking sheet.

By now, your pears should look like this:

Divide the pears between the mugs.  Psst, you can add a tbsp. of liqueur or congac if you're feeling fancy.

Divide the chocolate mixture between the mugs as well.

 Cook it for 25 minutes.  If you didn't run out of powdered sugar, you could sprinkle a little on top to make it look nice. (This is even more delicious with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or Swedish Glace on top!)

Delicious!

Rustic Italian Grape Cake

I thought I'd share my latest interesting kitchen adventure.

This cake was pretty easy to make and was very tasty.

The rustic texture of the cake was a nice contrast to the light grape flavour.  It would be great on a summer evening after a light BBQ or something.  

Start by putting 225ml of a dessert wine in a small pan.  I used some pretty nasty, cheap wine that Ross had bought at Aldi a while back.  It was just hanging out in our fridge, so I thought this was a good way to put it to use.

 Bring the wine to a boil and let it reduce until it's about 85ml or 1/3 of a cup.  Set it aside and let it cool.
Preheat the oven to 180C/355F.

Coat a springform cake pan with olive oil.  Spread it all over the pan with your fingers.

 Put a tbsp. of plain flour in the pan.

 Turn and shake it until the pan is coated in the flour.  Shake out any excess.

 Cream 100g of butter.

Add 200g of muscovado (brown) sugar and blend with the butter.

Add the zest of 2 lemons and mix again.

 Measure 175ml of olive oil.

 Add the olive oil to the cooled wine and mix.  Then add some of this mixture to the food processor and blend.

Combine 225g of plain flour and 1 tsp. of baking powder.  Add about a third of this the food processor and blend well.  Then add some more of the wine/oil mix.  Blend.  More flour.  Blend.  Etc.  Until it's all mixed in.

Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin.

Cut 175g of white grapes in half the long way.

Scatter the sliced grapes on the top of the batter.

Sprinkle with 4 tbsp. of demerara sugar (that brown sugar in the raw stuff- though you could use regular sugar).

 Bake for about 55 minutes.  It's ready when a knife comes out of the center cleanly.

Enjoy!