Tag Archives: icing

Courgette Cake

Posted on September 29, 2013 | 11 comments

‘Tis the season of squash. Here are organically-grown squash at Better Food Company, Bristol.

Courgettes, or zucchini, are part of the squash family. Squash are one of the Three Sisters (along with maize and beans) planted by Native Americans.

Squash contains gentle soluble fibre, immune-boosting vitamins and minerals plus complex carbohydrates for slow release energy.

This recipe for Courgette Cake is from Make More of Squashes, which I co-wrote with recipe-writer, Patricia Harbottle, and her son-in-law, organic gardener, Peter Chadwick.

The book and its companion, Make More of Beans & Peas, are part of the Make More of Vegetables series – with some non-vegetarian recipes but all with veg as the star. And with instructions on how to grow from seed too!

Buy here from the blog Pete set up with Sue Richardson.

Peter Chadwick died in August. Rest in peace, Pete. This post is for you and your lovely wife, Sue Richardson, who helps people write the right book.

Courgette Cake

Using vegetables in cakes makes wonderfully moist cakes (so butter cream filing is optional). If you do not have self-raising flour or baking powder, experiment with adding two more eggs to lighten the mixture instead. If so, allow cake to bake a little longer in the oven.

Ingredients

Cake: 250g (9oz) coarsely grated courgettes + 2 large eggs + 120g (4oz) caster sugar + 120ml (4fl oz) rapeseed or sunflower oil + 225g (8oz) self-raising flour + 1 tsp baking power + pinch each of ground cinnamon and nutmeg and salt + zest of one large orange (keep 1 tsp for icing). Grate orange to get its zest. Or try lazy method. I use a potato-peeler on the orange, then snip the strips of peel – gives strong orangey taste.

Filling: 120g (4oz) softened unsalted butter + 225g (8oz) icing sugar + 1 tsp orange zest (from large orange above) + juice of half of the large orange.

1. Put grated courgettes in colander and drain for 30 minutes. Press down with a saucer or use hands to squeeze out as much liquid as possible.

2. Beat the eggs and caster sugar until the mixture thickens, then beat-in oil until amalgamated and creamy, like thick double cream.

3. With a sieve, sift the flour, baking powder, spices and salt into the beaten egg, sugar and oil mixture. Beat well until really well-blended. Stir in the courgettes and orange zest.

4. Grease and line two 20 cm (8 in) cake tins. Pour mixture into prepared tins and bake in 170C (150C for fan oven) or Gas Mark 3 oven for about 30 minutes.

5. Keep oven door closed for first 25 minutes then test cakes with your finger tip. Cakes should be firm to touch. If not, bake for a further 5-10 minutes. Leave in their tins for 5 minutes, then turn out onto wire rack to cool.

6. Optional butter cream filling: Beat butter and icing sugar and stir in zest and orange juice to make light butter cream. When cakes are cold, spread the filling over one cake and sandwich the other on top.

This cake keeps well in an airtight tin. Try it with lemons or limes instead of the orange.

Hope you like this seasonal recipe.

11 Comments

Posted in eating well on a budget, food, health, organic, recipe, sustainable, vegetarian

Tagged butter cream, cake, Courgette, icing, patricia harbottle, pete chadwick, seasonal, Squash, sue richardson

Hello Kitty cake

Posted on March 31, 2013 | 7 comments

It’s not often I go mainstream but basically my eldest daughter asked me to make a Hello Kitty cake for my granddaugher Tayda’s fourth birthday party in December (this blog is well-overdue) held at St Werburgh’s city farm.

A few days before I got baking, my eldest daughter had a nightmare about the cake-making.

I said: “Good. Prepare to be disappointed.”

I felt I had to manage expectations.

However, it turned out well. The cake tasted good and actually looked like Hello Kitty.

For the latter, I must thank the opportune arrival of my middle daughter who took over cake-decorating just as I was getting bored. She talked me down from “getting creative”, insisting we adhere to its original design.

So here’s the Hello Kitty birthday cake-making story plus recipes.

I started by looking online for a clear image I could print and trace.

I ended up on GirlyBubble, a website for “girlyness and cute stuff”. Yes, I was in alien territory but fearless in my quest for a clear image of Hello Kitty.

I printed the image and traced it by hand. I admired the clever simplicity of the design, neither round nor oval, and its trademark bow and whiskers.

I owe decoration-detail to Coolest Birthday Cakes where readers have submitted their Hello Kitty cake designs. How grateful am I to the web and its culture of sharing?

Then it was time for real-life cake-decoration shopping at my local sweet shop on the independent-tastic Gloucester Road (one of the last independent high streets in the UK).

Scrumptiously Sweet is a traditional sweet shop offering attentive service and saintly patience as I agonised over icing tubes, jelly beans and marshmallow pipes.

We used bootlace liquorice to outline Hello Kitty’s head and ears, her bow, whiskers and nose.

We squeezed out Dr Oetker Designer Icing to fill in the red of the bow.

And encircled the lower base of the cake with pink marshmallow Flumps (you can see the join in the pic below).

Hello Kitty Cake and Icing recipes

I owe everything to All Recipes.com and its Foolproof Sponge Cake. It is truly foolproof for I am the fool, and here is the proof.

I made two sponges, one square, one round.

The deeper square one (above) was sliced through its middle and filled and covered with pink buttercream icing.

The smaller sponge (above) was baked in a round flan tin, requiring only some trimming with a sharp knife to become Kitty-shaped. This sponge had white icing to contrast with its bigger pink base.

Recipe for Foolproof Sponge Cake

No need to cream butter and sugar. Instead, sieve the flour and mix in the other ingredients. I used organic ingredients for health of people and planet, and butter not marge. It seemed strange to cook a sponge for a whole hour – but it worked. Brilliantly.

Serves: 12

1. Grease and line two 20cm (8 inch) square or round tins and set aside. I used an 8 inch square tin and an 8 inch round flan tin, and did not skimp on the greaseproof lining paper.

2. Pre-heat the oven to 150 C / Gas 2, or 140 C for fan ovens.

3. Sieve self-raising flour into a mixing bowl, add the sugar and butter, then the eggs. I used my electric hand-blender, adding one egg at a time, blending after each one, until all ingredients were amalgamated. Once blended, some extra fast whizzes. The result: a thickish smooth batter.

4. Pour into the tins, place in centre of oven and cook for about 1 hour 15 mins, to 1 hour 30 mins. All Recipes says test with skewer: if it comes out clean, the cake is done.

Thank you All Recipes.com. Now a huge big shout-out to HonieMummyBlog for Perfect Butter Icing – perfect indeed! – and a genius selection of different quantities. Again, gratitude.

Honnie Mummie Perfect Butter icing

250 g / 8 oz butter | 500 g / 1 lb icing sugar | 4 teaspoons milk

For base (not Hello Kitty face), we carefully added drop-by-drop red colouring for a pinky effect, and mixed before adding the next drop.

I made the cakes on the Thursday, the butter icing on Friday, and assembled it all on Saturday – party day.

And did not disgrace my family.

Here is the cake nibbled down to its essential Hello Kitty-ness.

And here’s a under-1-minute video of the cake at Tayda’s party.

7 Comments

Posted in food, recipe

Tagged Bristol, butter cream, cake, children, Hello Kitty, icing, party, recipe, Scrumptiously Sweet, sponge, sweet shop

Icing on the cake

Posted on April 13, 2008 | 1 comment

As a mama of three grown-up darlings, I have made my fair share of birthday cakes. However I have only just discovered this most splendifirous way to ice them.

The icing is melted chocolate with extra lubrication, so it spreads like a dream.

I baked three cakes. One was dry, another crumbled.

But this marvellous icing rescued them from oblivion and gave them star status. Thanks to the icing, people raved about its chocolateness and were coming back for more.

So praise be to Lulu Grimes for her magic recipe in a back issue of Olive magazine.

The amounts were 400g of chocolate (I used Green & Black’s organic cooking chocolate – 150g each bar – for a profound chocolate experience), 25g of butter and 284ml of single cream. Plus 200g icing sugar.

However after baking cakes (one for the office and two for our Five Rhythms dance class), I was bored of weighing.

When I get bored, watch out.

I feverishly broke up three (yes, three) bars of Green & Black’s organic cooking chocolate into a non-stick pan, melted in slices of (organic) butter and slugged in double cream. It took minutes to become liquidy-enough to spread easily.

I split the cakes, sandwiched in the soft warm icing with the flat of a knife and smoothed more over the top of the whole. (Do this before the icing gets cold and hardens).

I pressed white chocolate buttons into the (still) soft icing to spell M. (How easy was that? Wish I had thought of this when I was a maternal cake-industry).

A kind Five Rhythms dancer helped to cut cake (see pic below). Happy birthday, Maude!