Pumpkin and oatmeal loaf cake

Pumpkins are now appearing in the supermarkets, another sign of Autumn. I love pumkin soup, so bought one to make some, and to make some kind of cake or biscuit with the rest of the flesh.

Looking online and in cookery books there are lots of recipes for muffins, cookies and cakes. I just wanted something plain, something in which the spice and pumpkin flavours would really shine. I found this recipe in a book I bought from a charity shop, and it's full of great baking recipes from various sources. The book's simply called 'Baking' and it's from 1978.

The October challenge from We Should Cocoa has a guest hostess, Natalie of Hungry Hinny, and she's chosen pumpkin as her added ingredient. This will be my offering to the challenge.
In her blog, Hungry Hinny shows you how to make pumpkin puree and which spices are used in pumpkin spice. Have a look here http://hungryhinny.wordpress.com/ at the October 10th post.
In the end I decided to use the tin of pumpkin puree I'd bought, so my pumpkin will be used next week!

375g plain flour
2 tspn bicarbonate of soda
1 tspn cinnamon
1/2 tspn ginger
1/2 tspn freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tspn ground cloves
1.2 tspn salt
60g porridge oats
500g fresh or tinned pumpkin
3 eggs
300g caster sugar
300g light brown sugar
120ml vegetable oil [ I used rapeseed]
120ml milk
120ml evaporated milk
100g dark chocolate
sour cream

Quite a list of ingredients. This makes 2 loaves.

Preheat oven 180C/gas4
Grease and flour 2 x 900g loaf tins

Sieve the flour, bicarb., spices and salt together in a bowl. Stir in the oats.
Put the pumpkin in a mixer bowl and beat on a low speed to break it up.
Beat in the eggs, one at a time till smooth.
Then beat in the sugars, oil and milks again beat till smooth on a low speed, so they're just mixed.
Add the flour mixture and beat in till it's just blended.

Divide the mixture between the tins and bake till the cakes are risen and a dark golden colour. Mine took about 50mins for the tin and 5 mins longer for silicone mould.
Leave the cakes to cool in the tin for about 15 mins then cool on a wire rack.
When cool, wrap in foil and leave overnight for the flavours to develop.
I decided to freeze one, so wrapped it well in foil and a freezer bag.

As I'd decided to use this cake in the challenge, it needed to have some chocolate, so I made an icing of 100g melted dark chocolate mixed with some sour cream and used it to ice the top of the loaf cake.

Have just eaten a piece of the cake with a cuppa and it's got a very soft texture, but it lacks 'ooomph!' You can't really taste the spices, and the oats don't add anything to the texture.
The original recipe used 100g chopped pecans or walnuts, but I decided to leave these out. Maybe they were necessary to the cake. I like it, but it definitely needs another flavour or texture. Will have to play around with it. Maybe chocolate pieces, or stem ginger. Food for thought!
Have frozen the second cake, but when I want to use it will cut it through the middle and fill with a good strong filling, maybe adding some coffee.

We Should Cocoa is a monthly challenge hosted alternately by Choclette of Chocolate Log and Chele of

Chocolate teapot.

October's challenge, as I have already said, is guest hosted by Natalie of Hungry Hinny blog . Have a look at the rules here http://choclogblog.blogspot.co.uk/p/we-should-cocoa.html.

Pear, date and cinnamon chutney

This month's challenge from Tea Time Treats is to make jam, chutney, curd or conserve. More about this at the end of the post.
I love chutneys; they are versatile as they go with so many foods - cold meat, curries, cheese [eaten with a lovely crusty loaf] etc. and there are so many fruits around at this time of year that make great chutneys - apples, pears, plums, dates to name a few. I have to admit that I don't like marrow chutney - my mil used to make it to use up the glut of veg from her allotment. Maybe it's an acquired taste.
I had some really ripe pears in the fruit bowl that needed using, so had to find some other ingredients to go with them. Before Julian Graves sadly closed, I'd bought a large box of dates, so I found a  recipe in my inherited handwritten notebook from mil for this chutney. She was a WI member for many years, and loved making jams and chutneys with them, so maybe this is one of their recipes.
 I haven't used cider vinegar in a chutney recipe before, but it gave it a good flavour. It says to leave the chutney for at least a month before eating, but we tried some straight away with blue cheese, watercress and a lovely crusty loaf, and it was delicious.


1kg ripe pears, peeled, cored and chopped
450g dates chopped
450g shallots finely sliced
2 eating apples, peeled, cored and chopped
300g light muscovado sugar
2 cinnamon sticks
600ml cider vinegar


 Put pears, dates, shallots, apples, sugar and cinnamon sticks in a pan. Pour in 300ml of the cider vinegar, season and slowly bring to a simmer, stirring, till the sugar has dissolved.
 Cook for 25-30 minutes till tender.
Pour in another 300ml cider vinegar and cook for a further 30 minutes, stirring often, till it's thickened. If it's still runny, simmer for another 10-15 minutes.
Divide the hot chutney between sterilised jars and set aside to cool. Put a cellophane circle on top of the chutney before putting on the lid. Don't forget to take the cinnamon sticks out before you bottle it!!
Store in a cool, dry place for at least 1 month before eating. It will keep for up to 6 months. Chill after opening and use within 1-2 months.
I made 21/2 jars of chutney using normal jam jars. The recipe said it made 1.2kg.
It's quite a chunky chutney, which we prefer, with a nice tangy flavour mixed with the spicyness of the cinnamon. I thought it would be quite sweet, but the vinegar seems to have countered the sweetness of the sugar. A lovely Autumn chutney.

I'm going to use this post for the Tea Time Treats October challenge. This is a monthly challenge hosted alternately by Kate of What Kate Baked and Karen of Lavender and Lovage and this month Kate is the hostess and has chosen Jams, Chutneys, Curds and Preserves as the challenge. Have a look at Kate's post for September 30th to find out all about it.

Nougat cake

The letter for the AlphaBakes October challenge is N, a difficult one. N for Nutella or nuts, and then I had a brainwave, N for nougat!

[See more about AlphaBakes at the bottom of this post].

It's a special birthday for my younger daughter, so I'd thought to make something rather more elaborate than my usual homebakes. She loves nougat, so I hunted round, with difficulty, to find a cake which used it, and I came across this recipe in one of the 'Femme Actuelle' mags I'd brought back from France. It doesn't use nougat, but has the nougat flavours of ground almonds, icing sugar and egg whites, so just what I wanted. For me it's more complicated than my usual teabreads, but it's a challenge! I liked the idea of chocolate and coffee icing.

300g ground almonds
350g icing sugar
6 large eggwhites
50g dark chocolate broken into pieces
30ml strong black coffee [I made mine with coffee left in the perculator, but instant's fine]
50g butter
2 large egg yolks
double cream to pipe rosettes and a little grated chocolate [optional]


Preheat oven 180C/gas 4
Grease and line a 20cm springform tin

Sift the almonds and 300g of the icing sugar into a large bowl.
Whisk the eggwhites till stiff. Stir a quarter of the eggwhites into the almond and sugar mixture, then gently fold in the rest. Put into the tin and bake for about 55 mins. The top should be golden.Take it out and cool on a wire rack.

Topping -  melt the chocolate with the coffee in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Take the bowl off the heat, cool then put in the fridge for 10 mins.
Cream the butter with the rest of the icing sugar (50g) till it turns a thick and creamy pale yellow.
Beat the egg yolks into this mixture till it's pale and creamy, then add the chilled chocolate and coffee mixture. Beat till smooth.
When the cake is completely cool, decorate it by spreading the topping over the top and sides with a palette knife. Serves 8 - 12.

As it was for a special occasion, I decided to really push the boat out and pipe some cream rosettes on top and grated some chocolate to sprinkle over. Before I took it to the table I added a few sparklers and lit them. She was delighted. The cake really does have a nougat flavour and is moist and a light texture. The icing has a lovely light texture, not as cloyingly sweet as most butter creams. An unusual cake that I'd make again.

AlphaBakes is a monthly baking challenge set alternately by Ros of The More than Occasional Baker and Caroline Caroline Makes. Each month a letter is chosen randomly and this month it's N and Ros is hosting the challenge.

Plum tart

As I said in a recent post, plums are one of my favourite fruit. I love making crumbles and tarts with them, but wanted to find something different to try.
This recipe is from a Woman's Weekly magazine; it's one of the hundreds of recipes I have to sort out in my cuttings folder!
I bought a punnet of plums from the supermarket which were marked as seconds, and they were really hard. Anyway I thought I'd use them in my new recipe, and they turned out soft and juicy.

250g plain flour
170g chopped up butter
1 egg yolk

I used my processor to make the pastry, putting in the flour, butter and egg yolk and adding a tbspn of water and blitzing till the pastry started to come together. Roll out and line the flan tin and chill for 30 mins. it's a very short pastry and breaks easily, but is easily patched up.

Filling:
1 tspn cinnamon
2 tbspns soft brown sugar
750g plums, stoned and quartered

Topping:
1 egg + a yolk
125g creme fraiche
45g soft brown sugar

Preheat oven 200C/gas6
Grease a 28cm shallow flan tin

Remove flan tin from the fridge; mix the cinnamon and sugar together and sprinkle over the pastry base.

Arrange the plums, cut side up and pack them together. If there's any left over, put them skin side up on top in a pattern. I just about had enough fruit to fill the tin.

Mix the ingredients of the topping together and spoon over the plums.

Bake for 25-30 mins till lightly browned.

I really like the flavour of the tart; the cinnamon and sugar come through in the background and the texture of the creme fraiche topping is creamy and not too sweet [for my taste anyway]. I'll certainly make this again, and it would work with other fruit like apples, cherries etc.

Aberffraw cakes

These were mentioned recently on the GBBO, so I thought I'd find out more about them. They're made on the Isle of Anglesey and are a traditional biscuit really, not a cake. They're served sprinkled with sugar and even with cream and jam, like a scone.
The bit I liked was that a scallop shell is pressed into the top to give it a shell-like pattern. Nowadays, a lot of the Aberffraw cakes have the pattern put on with a knife. I have a bag of scallop shells, brought back from France so I used a genuine one to make my pattern.
The recipe is a 3.2.1  - quite common for biscuits. This means 3 parts flour to 2 parts fat to 1 part sugar.

175g flour
110g butter
55g caster sugar
a little milk
more caster sugar for sprinkling over

Preheat oven 190C/gas5.
Grease a baking sheet.

I used a processor to make my dough.

Put flour and sugar in a bowl and rub in the butter. Bind together with a litle milk to make a soft dough.
Roll out and cut out circles. I used a 7cm cutter and made 12 cakes.
Use a scallop shell to press the scallop pattern onto the top, or cut the pattern with the back of a knife.

Put the cakes to cool on a wire rack and sprinkle with sugar. You can eat them served with cream and jam, but they're delicious as they are.

They have a nice crunchy texture, and the butter gives them a rich flavour.

Swedish orange cake

I love citrus cakes so had to try this one; the recipe was given to me by a church friend whose son is married to a Swedish girl. This is Anneke's family recipe, and she calls it a teabread and serves it as a dessert with some fruit salad. It's lovely as a cake with your afternoon cuppa.
 Another easy cake for my repertoire.

150g butter
120g caster sugar
3 eggs
greated zest of a lemon
60ml fresh orange juice
orange essence [opt]
250g plain flour with 2 tspn baking powder added
breadcrumbs to coat the tin

topping:
80g icing sugar
orange juice - 1-2 tbspn

Preheat oven 175C/gas4
Grease a 900g loaf tin and sprinkle with breadcrumbs

Beat butter and sugar together till fluffy.
Whisk the eggs in one at a time then mix in the rind, juice and flour. Blend together.
Pour into the tin and bake for about an hour.
Remove from the tin and leave to cool under the upturned tin!

Mix the icing sugar with enough juice to make it the consistency you want; make sure it's smooth, then spread over the cake.

I decided to drizzle the icing over, not easy when the cake has risen considerably. Not very pretty, but the cake is really delicious. It's nice to have an orange cake for a change.

It has a lovely fresh flavour and is light and airy. I enhanced the orange flavour with a few drops of orange essence and used an orange glace icing. I didn't put any breadcrumbs into the tin; am not sure why they're there!