Tag Archives: cake

19/09/2010 · 3:54 pm

Tea at Bea’s

Bea’s of Bloomsbury has been on my list of ‘must visit’ café’s for ages so when my friend’s Japanese girlfriend mentioned that she’d love to experience a traditional English afternoon tea I knew exactly where to take her. I gathered together a motley, cake eating crew and we headed on down to Bloomsbury to the cake haven that is Bea’s…

The shop front is quite understated and if I hadn’t been purposefully going there I think I would have walked straight past completely oblivious to the amazing cake-like goodies awaiting me inside…

We had to wait a few minutes for our table to be vacated and relaid, which wasn’t a problem as I had the cake display to keep me occupied…

The staff were really friendly and very accommodating when 2 extra friends came along as late entries to join our table. 

Once settled, we were asked to choose from the tea menu…

I went for the vanilla black, which was delicious and fragrant and the perfect accompaniment to the afternoon tea, which consisted of a scone with jam and clotted cream, a cupcake, a mini valrhona brownie, a mini belgian blondie, a mini meringue and a home made marshmallow…

The scones were my favourite part, they were so moist, light and mouthwatering-ly delicious (even more so when piled high with strawberry jam and lashings of clotted cream)…

There were a few varieties of cupcakes on our stand, the choice was tough but in the end I opted for this one…

I didn’t sample them all but I was reliably informed by my friends that they were all delicious. Both the sponge and the frosting were extremely light and I loved the fact that although sweet they weren’t too sickly, plus they were beautiful…

We made a valiant effort to do as we were instructed on the cake stand…

but in the end we were beaten by cake (I never thought I would see the day) and had to leave a few lonely morsels amongst out afternoon tea aftermath…

Our Bea’s experience was lovely…totally unpretentious, delicious and such a bargain at only £9.90!

I was very excited to read on my way out that a second Bea’s is due to open at the end of October in St Pauls…

Right around the corner from where I work…danger danger!

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13/09/2010 · 8:42 pm

Foraging in the fens

I decided this weekend that it was high time I escaped London and visited my friends and family back in Cambridge. There’s something about going home to the flat, open fenlands that gives me an enormous sense of wellbeing and calm. However by Sunday I was having severe baking withdrawal symptoms so I started trawling my Mums vast cookery book collection and came across a book called ‘101 cakes and bakes’. I discovered a recipe for blackberry and apple loaf, which I have also found on the Good Food website here.

Now is the season for both blackberries…

and apples…

so I had the perfect chance to make the most of the fruits growing on my doorstep and in my parents garden. After a yummy homemade Sunday lunch me and my brother went foraging for blackberries straight from the hedgerow…it felt extremely wholesome and we managed to collect a bumper crop…

enough for my cake, with some left over to put in the freezer for another day.

Here’s the recipe I followed for blackberry and apple loaf –

250g self raising flour

175g butter

175g light muscovado sugar

1/2tsp cinnamon

2 rounded tbsp demerara sugar

1 small eating apple, quartered (not cored or peeled)

2 large eggs, beaten

1 orange, finely grated zest

1tsp baking powder

225g blackberries

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Grease and line a (1.7 litre) loaf tin.

This recipe uses a bit of a different method…you rub the flour, butter and muscovado sugar together with your fingertips to make fine crumbs. Measure out 5 tbsp of this mixture in a separate bowl, mix with the demerara sugar and cinnamon and set aside to use later as the topping for the loaf.

Coarsely grate the apple and mix with the eggs and the zest. 

Stir the baking powder into the rubbed-in mixture in the large bowl and then quickly stir in the egg mixture until incorporated but be careful not to overmix.

Carefully fold in 3/4 of the berries trying not to break them up. Spoon the mixture into the tin and level it out. Scatter the remaining berries on top and sprinkle over the topping mix.

Bake for 50 minutes, remove from the oven and cover it loosely with tin foil to stop it browning too much. Then return it to the oven for 20-30 minutes until firm. Insert a sharp knife or skewer, if it comes out clean the cake is ready!

Leave in the tin for 30 minutes…

 before turning it out onto a wire rack to cool…

then slice and revel in it’s beauty…

The recipe says that it will keep for up to 2 days in a tin, however it’s so delicious and moreish, that if you’re anything like me and my family, it probably won’t last longer than a couple of hours let alone days.

The blackberries are tangy, the cake is rich and extremely moist and the topping adds a gorgeous crunchy texture…

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01/08/2010 · 5:04 pm

A trip to the Haberdashery

I feel like I’ve been neglecting my blog a bit recently but I’ve been terribly busy sunning myself on the Dalamation coast in Croatia, eating amazing seafood, drinking copious amounts of strong Croatian coffee and doing a fantastic job of pickling my liver! It’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it!

I’ve only been back in London for a few days but have already been having brunch withdrawal symptoms. My friend Mark recently moved down the road to Crouch End and has been trying to coax me over the hill to visit him ever since. He finally succeeded by telling me about a cafe called The Haberdashery. I checked out their website and menu I didn’t need any more convincing…

The Haberdashery advertises itself as an eatery and coffee house that sells old vinyls. It’s a really cute place with a great atmosphere. It retains a really light and airy feel even though the walls and shelves are filled with cool little trinkets, crockery and original artwork.

There’s also a lovely garden out the back…

where we started our Haberdashery experience…on a picnic bench in a sunny corner soaking up the rays…

We arrived just as the breakfast menu was finishing and the daytime menu was starting. It was such a gorgeous sounding menu that it wasn’t any great hardship…

We started off by ordering coffee to assist us in our decision making…an americano for me with the milk served in a little tea pot..

and a bowl of flat white for Mark…

I ordered a salad of parma ham, grapefruit, avocado, toasted pinenuts and parmesan shavings on a bed of baby spinach leaves, which was served with a rustic olive bread pot…

If I’m honest, the main reason for choosing a salad wasn’t for it’s health benefits but for the accompanying rustic bread pot, which I’d spotted on entering the cafe and fallen in love with!…

Mark had the halloumi sandwich served with rocket and olive jam on rosemary bread…

The food was nothing short of amazing – so fresh and tasty! and although we were both pretty full we decided that it’d be rude not to sample a cake for pudding. We moved to a table inside the cafe for a change of scenery and to soak up the atmosphere and were faced with an array of very tempting cakes…

muffins and pastries…

and a very difficult decision to make.

We ordered another round of decision making coffees and after suffering a severe bout of bowl envy after our first round I ordered an americano in a bowl…

I thought I should put into context just how enormous this bowl of coffee was…

It required two handed lifting and actually sent me into a complete caffeine spin out, which was heightened by the sugar rush that we got from the yummy blackberry crumble cake that we eventually chose…

Everything about The Haberdashery was spot on, the food was amazing, the coffee excellent, it was the right amount of quirky without trying too hard and the staff were very friendly and accomodating!

I highly highly recommend a trip to The Haberdashery…get on your bikes and brave Crouch Hill…a real treat awaits!

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13/07/2010 · 10:06 am

Blueberry, peach and almond cake

A weekend with my family usually revolves around eating delicious food and lots of it! We had quite a few birthdays to celebrate so we rolled them all into one and had a huge family barbecue, to which everyone contributed something. It felt like we ended up cooking up and eating a whole farmyard’s worth of meat…I was in heaven! Once everyone had recovered from the meat fest and tucked into desert of fresh fruit brulee (a family favourite) and Granny’s summer pudding we entered the cake round…my domain. We still had a lot of the saffron clotted cream cake left but I also made Nigel Slaters ‘cake for midsummer’, which I’d ripped out of the Observer Food Monthly magazine in June and stashed in my book of ‘must bake’ recipe clippings. It goes a little something like this…

175g butter

175g golden caster sugar

200g ripe peaches

2 large eggs

175g self raising flour

100g ground almonds

1 tsp grated orange zest

a few drops of vanilla extract

150g blueberries

Line a 20cm (8 inch) cake tin with greaseproof paper and preheat the oven to 170 degrees.

Halve, stone and chop the peaches and set aside for later.

Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. I used a handheld whisk. Beat the eggs in one at a time. If it looks like it’s starting to curdle add a small amount of flour.

Mix the flour with the ground almonds and fold into the butter mixture in a few batches. Add the orange zest and vanilla and last but not least, the blueberries and peaches.

Tip the mixture into the prepared tin and Nigel says to bake it for 1 hour 10 minutes. I like my cakes extra moist so after 1 hour I tested it by inserting a sharp knife into the middle of the cake and as it came out relatively clean I decided it had had long enough in the oven.

On Nigel’s advice I sprinkled the cake batter with golden caster sugar before putting it in the oven, creating a gorgeous sweet, crunchy crust on the moist, fruity almond cake.

This cake was super easy, light, tasty and I never thought I would use this word to describe a cake but it was…well…refreshing!

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15/06/2010 · 8:22 pm

Foodie adventures in the wild west (of Ireland)

It’s been at least a week since I’ve posted any baking photo’s or recipes but I’ve just returned from an amazing trip visiting a good friend in the Wild West of Ireland. So for the time being I hope a healthy dose of Irish food porn will suffice…

My mate Brig lives in a gorgeous little village called Kinvara in an area of West Ireland called the Burren in Co. Galway and runs The Burrenbeo Trust, a landscape charity dedicated to protecting the future sustainable management of the Burren region. As part of the charity they run Cafebeo, where I worked for two days and which I completely fell in love with. 

Cafebeo is Ireland’s only conservation cafe, it serves only Burren produce and 100% of its proceeds go back into the work of the Burrenbeo Trust. They serve delicious homemade soups, Burren organic smoked salmon with local goats cream cheese on homemade brown bread and fresh salad and cakes and the most amazing scones baked by a local lady.

I didn’t realise how popular scones are in Ireland. They’re a whole different ball game to English scones…apparently the main difference is the addition of buttermilk. I’m intrigued by them so I’m going to source a recipe and attempt to make my own.

Brig is well aware, as are most people, of my passion for cafe’s, cakes and food in general and did a sterling job of taking me on a tour of all the culinary hot spots in the area. First stop was the Gallery Cafe in Gort…

where, amongst other things, we ate a yummy goats cheese and beetroot pizza. I forgot to take any photos as I was overcome by hunger after a long day working in the cafe 🙂

Every Friday Kinvara hosts a farmers market, my own little slice of heaven…

It had everything….live music…

cheese…

and the most amazing cake stall serving chocolate fudge cake…

carrot cake…

even the gluten free lemon cake looked amazing…

and a chocolate and guiness cake…not a traditional Irish recipe as you may imagine…apparently it’s one of Nigella’s – another to add to my ‘to bake’ list.

After much deliberation and drooling I decided to buy a slice of mango, banana and coconut cake…it was quite similar to a hummingbird cake that I made a while ago from the Hummingbird Cookery book but substituting pineapple for mango. It was one of the most moist, fruity cakes I have ever eaten…

That evening we popped into Galway and paid a visit to Bar No.8 on the docks. It didn’t look much from the outside but the food turned out to be a real hidden gem. The menu sounded so amazingly good that we decided to share a couple of things…

Parsnip, wild garlic and red cabbage fritters with beetroot yoghurt…

Potted crab with Jess’s Brown Bread. The crab was rich and creamy, mixed with celery and spring onion and was accompanied by a scrummy dressed salad. Simply perfect!

We couldn’t resist the chocolate brownie with wild berry biscuit ice cream for desert. It arrived looking like a true work of art, decorated with edible flowers (well at least we hoped they were edible because well…we ate them). They even cut the brownie in half for us so that we didn’t get into a fight about who had eaten most 🙂

We spent my last day on a mini road trip taking in the beautiful scenery of the west coast and despite not being in the least bit hungry, managed to fit in one last cafe trip to the Burren Perfumery…

for carrot cake…

and a chocolate cupcake…

After such a wonderful trip it was a real struggle making myself leave Kinvara and get on the plane back to London…I have no doubt that I’ll be back.

 

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06/06/2010 · 12:56 pm

Temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and inviting him in.

I love perusing food magazines and am amassing a substantial collection, which I flick through every now and again for inspiration. Two of my housemates share the same birthday, which gave me the the challenge of producing a cake amazing enough to be able to get away with only making one for them to share without them feeling slighted.

I found what looked like the perfect solution in the April 2010 edition of Sainsbury’s Magazine….

Devil’s Food Cake with Raspberries

I am so unbelievably proud of this cake and can’t be modest about how good it looked and tasted 🙂 The texture is more fudgy than spongy and it’s supremely naughty…

225g butter

200g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)

6 large eggs

200g caster sugar

40g plain flour

25g ground almonds

100g white chocolate

350ml double cream

1 tbsp icing sugar

175g raspberries

For the ganache – 

250ml double cream

150g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)

50g soft butter

Line 2 x 22cm cake tis with baking parchment and preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Melt the butter and chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water and leave to cool to room temperature.

In a separate large bowl whisk the egg yolks and 150g of the caster sugar with an electric handheld whisk until thick and pale. Add the cooled chocolate mixture and fold together with the flour and the ground almonds.

In another clean bowl, whisk the egg whites with the remaining 50g caster sugar and 1/4 tsp of salt until they form soft peaks. Gently fold into the chocolate mixture in batches making sure everything is combined. Pour the mixture into the cake tins and bake for 30 minutes until the cakes have risen and are firm the the touch. Leave them in the tins to cool – they’ll sink but that’s normal so don’t panic!

This is the first time I have ever been instructed to do this but…wrap the cold cakes, still in their tins, in clingfilm and chill for 3-4 hours or even better overnight. I made my cakes on Thursday evening and left them chilling until Saturday and they definitely didn’t suffer for it. The chilling just makes them even more fudgy and delicious!

For the ganache you need to bring the cream to the boil, pour over the chocolate and leave for 2 minutes before mixing it in thoroughly. Leave it to cool for another 5 minutes and then add the butter. Leave to cool and then chill for approx 30 mins as it needs to be the consistency of chocolate spread. The ganache was absolutely amazing…the most sinful, creamy, chocolatey, shiny gloop I have ever seen.

To make the chocolate curls you melt the white chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water and then pour it onto a baking sheet of plate and leave it to set for approx 30 minutes. Then drag a sharp knife over the surface to produce the curls. I was impressed with how easy this was to do and how professional they looked.

To assemble the cake place one on a serving plate, whip the 350ml of cream with the icing sugar and smother over. Top with the raspberries and sandwich with the other cake. Pile on the ganache and sprinkle over the white chocolate curls….simple!

I was dying to tuck in but had to wait a few more hours…boy was it worth the wait…

The whole cake was consumed in a matter of minutes and the feedback was really good. Using 70% cocoa solid chocolate means that it’s not too sickly, which is also helped by the tangy-ness of the raspberries.

I have most definitely yielded to the Devil…and invited him in with open arms! 

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09/05/2010 · 7:18 pm

Use your loaf

My favourite way to while away a lazy Sunday afternoon is, surprise surprise, with a spot of baking. I realised that due to my housemate’s dislike for lemon/orange peel I had been neglecting cakes with these ingredients and thought it was high time that I built them back into my repertoire. So I set about trawling the interweb to find a good recipe and found an Observer article written by Nigel Slater called Crumbs of Comfort. I love his writing style and the fact that he is such an obviously, passionate foodie. A few years ago I read his book, Toast, which is the story of his ‘childhood and adolescence told through food’ and is a very good read. 

I decided to try out his Lemon Loaf Cake described as ‘A truly moist cake scented with lemon and almond, with a thin, sweet-sharp icing’. Sounded good to me!

The recipe lacked any raising agents so what came out of the oven was a dense, compact loaf and I was a bit worried that it would be too stodgy but good old Nige set my mind at rest by saying that as a ‘general rule, the taller the cake the less good it is to eat. As usual less is more.’ While the cake was still hot and fresh out of the oven the recipe tells you to prick some holes in it and squeeze over the juice of half a lemon, which made a satisfying sizzling sound and an amazing smell! I had to exercise some patience and wait for it to cool before icing with an icing sugar and lemon juice paste.

But it was definitely worth the wait….


It was amazingly moist. The lemon and almond flavours, which go so well together, were delicate but still shone through the buttery goodness of the cake. In fact it was so good that I even managed to tempt my lemon hating housemate into trying a slice and…she’s a convert! That’s what I call a result.

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