Gluten-free Goes Glam

Torta Gianduja

 

This weekend’s challenge was to produce something luscious and sexy that also happened to be gluten free. And I’ve found something which ticks all the boxes and more. Torta Gianduja is an Italian celebration cake, and I’ve used the Hairy Bikers recipe. (Hairy Bikers Bakeation on the BBC) I do love the lads, Si and Dave, and I must say this recipe is a real winner. However, I must point out that it requires a fair bit of effort. It’s a labour-intensive, time-consuming recipe, but hey, it’s so worth it.

You can save some time and effort by buying ready blanched hazelnuts. In fact you can save even more time and effort by buying them already ground. I did neither, so effectively added on about half an hour to my preparation time. I’ll know for the next time…

I’ll take you through it step by step.

INGREDIENTS

250 g hazelnuts (blanched and ground if you’re clever)
200 g butter
200 g good quality dark chocolate (I used Lindt 85% cocoa solids – worth the extra expense)
6 large free-range eggs, separated
200 g golden caster sugar
3 tablespoons amaretto or similar liqueur. Or orange juice if you prefer.
A jar of Nutella for the topping – you’ll need about three tablespoons.

Grease and bottom line a 23 cm springform tin

METHOD

First things first – prepare the hazelnuts. Preheat the oven to 200 C and spread the whole hazelnuts onto two baking trays . Pop them into the hot oven for no more than ten minutes. Give them a shake from time to time and don’t let them burn or they’ll go bitter. Remove from the oven and let them cool for a few minutes before taking handfuls and rubbing them between your hands until the papery membrane rubs off. This is really easy to do.

Hazelnuts

Pop the blanche nuts into the food processor and pulse until they resemble fine breadcrumbs. They don’t have to be too finely ground, in fact a bit of texture is desirable.

Blanched and ready to grind

Break up the chocolate and cut up the butter and place together in a heat-proof bowl over a pan of simmering water. The base of the bowl should not touch the water. Leave to melt. You can be grinding the hazelnuts whilst the chocolate and butter melt together.

Remove the bowl from the heat, leave to cool a little, then stir in 200 g of the ground hazelnuts. Reserve the rest for the topping.

While this mixture cools, beat the egg yolks together with the sugar. Beaat well with an electtric mixer (I used my big Kenwood on a medium speed) for a good 5 – 7 minutes, until you have a thick, pale and creamy result. Stir the sugar and yolk mixture into the choclate and hazelnuts mixture and mix well until beautifully combined.

Creamed caster sugar and egg yolks

Now wash the bowl and beaters thoroughly and place the egg whites into the bowl, whisking at medium to high speed until the egg whites are really stiff.

Now stir the liqueur (or fruit juice) into the chocolate mixture, followed by a couple of spoons of egg white. Mix lightly and quickly with a metal spoon. Add the rest of the egg white. Fold it all in as gently as possible, then scrape into the preapred tin.

Torta Gianduja – nearly there!

Place in the centre of the oven ad bake for 50 – 60 minutes. The Hairy Bikers suggested 35 – 40 minutes but I found the centre of the cake still wet and squidgy after that time and it needed almost an hour to set nicely.

Torta Gianduja

Remove from the oven and leave to cool before removing the spring form tin. The cake should rise really well, souffle-like, and may sink back a little. Don’t worry.

I inverted the cake onto a serving platter to give a nice smooth, flat surface.

Spread three tablespoons of Nutella on the top of the cooled cake. Dip a metal spoon in boiling water to make iteasier to spread.

Torta Gianduja – buonissimo!

Sprinkle over the remaining ground hazelnuts.

Delish!

 

 

Tags: chocolate, gluten free, hazelnuts

Banana and Poppy Seed Cup Cakes

Banana and Poppy seed cup cakes

Yesterday was one of those tidy-out-the-baking-cupboard days. From time to time it becomes essential to have a good old tidy out, chuck out the items that are past their best or past their sell-by dates, rescue long-forgotten gizmos lurking a the back, and generally have a good old spring clean.  So it was that I discovered the following : 2 packs of poppy seeds, both open, both half-used; two packs of pistachio nuts, ditto; three open tubs of bicarbonate of soda - why?; two unopened tubs of Italian mixed peel – what was I planning?; three full bags of flaked almonds; countless little packs of this and that, nuts and fruits and decorations. Clearly the time had come for a) a sort out and b) a decision to do something with all the bits. So today I tackled the poppy seeds and came up with the following recipe, a kind of variation on the banana loaf theme, this time as cupcakes. Nice and quick and simple, an all-in-one recipe with minimal washing up, which results in a moist and tasty cupcake equally delicious iced or un-iced.

This quantity made 24 dainty little cakes. You could easily make about twelve larger ones, but I rather like them small. That way you can have two, and as they contain bananas, you can feel a teeny bit healthy and smug whilst you eat them.

Preheat the oven to 180 C and line a cupcake tin with 24 (or 12) paper cases

INGREDIENTS

2 large, ripe bananas, mashed
175 g butter at room temperature
175 g self raising flour
175 g soft brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 tablespoons poppy seeds
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

METHOD

1. Place all the ingredients – yes all of them – in  a large bowl and beat well until smoothly combined. You can do this more quickly in a food processor if you wish, or just enjoy using some elbow grease and beat the daylights out of the mixture by hand
2. Plop tablespoonfuls into each paper case. About 2/3 full should be fine as they will rise a little.
3. Place in the oven and bake for twenty minutes before peeping.
4. Mine were ready in twenty in minutes but if yours need a little longer kleep an eye on them. You want them lightly browned and springy to the touch.
5. Leave to cool on a wire rack, and if you wish stop at this point and wolf them down with a cup of coffee.

ICING (OPTIONAL)

I topped mine with a little butter cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon but honestly they didn’t need icing. I just fancied indulging. As always.

So if you wish to here’s what you need:

150 g softened butter
300 g sifted icing sugar
a little ground cinnamon

Whizz the butter and icing sugar together in a processor or beat by hand, which is very satisfying.
Pipe a little onto each cake, or just swirl it on with a palette knife, then sprinkle on a little cinnamon.

Banana and Poppy Seed Cup Cakes

I’m going to dedicate these cupcakes to my lovely friend Zara who has recently been bitten by the baking bug

Tags: banana, cup cakes, easy, poppy seeds

Victoria Sponge with a Difference

And the difference of course, is chocolate. Cocoa to be precise. In fact, every bit of this recipe needs you to be precise. The secret of a great Vic Sponge, light, fluffy and downright delicious, is precise measurements. Normally I’m more laid-back with quantities and have been known to throw in a bit of this, chuck in a bit of that, add more flour or less, depending on how the mixture looks. But not with the old Vic. Oh no. Precision is the name of the game. Digital scales are your friend when making this particular cake.

Chocolate Victoria Sponge with vanilla buttercream icing

However, it’s important to remember that this is also the easiest cake in the universe. Ok maybe there are easier ones, but this recipe really is a doddle, quick to whizz up, a short time in the oven, and in less than a couple of the hours, on the table while you sit back and bask in the compliments.

So here we go. You’ll need two 20cm “sandwich” tins, well greased and bottom lined. You’ll also need scales and a sieve, and a couple of bowls, one large, one small. Preheat the oven to 180 C.

INGREDIENTS

3 large free range eggs – crack them into the small bowl and weigh them! They’ll be about 175 g
175g (or equivalent weight of eggs) of each of the following: caster sugar; softened butter; self-raising flour.
2 heaped tablespoons cocoa
3 tablespoons milk

METHOD 

1. Whizz the butter and sugar together until really light and fluffy.
2. Add the eggs and blend well.
3. Now place the sieve over the large bowl and add the two tablespoons of cocoa.
4. Add the flour until the scales read 175 g (or equivalent weight of eggs)
5. Fold in the flour/cocoa  and then add the milk, folding gently with a metal spoon.
6. divide the mixture between the two tins and bake for approximately 25 minutes until risen and springy to the touch.
7. Allow to cool on a wire rack before icing.

ICING

4 – 5 table spoons strawberry or apricot jam, slightly warmed.
150 g softened butter
300 g icing sugar

METHOD

1. Whizz the icing sugar and butter together to make a nice thick, smooth, butter cream.
2. Place one cake on a serving plate.
3. Spread the top of the cake with the warmed jam.
4. Then spread on half the butter cream.
5. Place the second cake on top and smooth on the remaining butter cream.
6. Decorate with pretty sugar paste flowers (optional – haha!)

It’s a lovely light cake and a versatil recipe and the jam makes the cake supermoist. Have fun trying out different combinations

Chocolate Victoria Sponge

The seal of approval!

One of my regular cakefans

Tags: butter cream, chocolate, cocoa, easy, Victoria Sponge

New toys!

I’m a sucker for kitchen gadgets in general and baking gadgets in particular. If money and space were no object I’d have everything in the Lakeland catalogue and every other catalogue besides. Lots of gadgets are pretty useless though and I admit to falling for a number of gizmos that really are, well, pointless. I can live without one of those things to peel a pineapple, but I have one, virtually unused. My life would be pretty fulfilling even if I didn’t have one of those things to turn veggies into a spiral, but I have one. However, as of yesterday I have a lovely new toy which works and produces great little sugar paste flowers for decorating cakes. Oh yes.

Flower cutter

These great little cutters stamp out excellent sugar paste flowers and I’m sure I’ll get lots and lots of use from them. In fact today’s cake was decorated with them. Very easy to do, very pretty and very cost effective. The cutters were just £2.99 each, but shop around as I’ve seen them for lots more.

Get baking with a Bakewell Cake

Time flies, not just when you’re having fun, but when you’re working harder than usual too. And for the past two weeks I have been so flat-out busy that my lovely blog has been neglected. Apologies, cakefans, but this term has seen me return to the chalkface after an absence of eight years from the classroom. The joys of preparation and planning, not to mention marking and assessing, are once more part of my daily routine. Along with perpetual tiredness and a desire to suck throat lozenges.  I love teaching, I really do, but I love baking too, and I feel bereft when my weekend goes by without a baking session or a blog update.

Bakewell Cake

So let’s get baking. And how about a variation on the classic Bakewll Tart?

INGREDIENTS

150 g ground almonds
150 g golden caster
150 g self raising flour
150 g butter
2 eggs
1 teaspoon almond essence
200 – 250 g fresh or frozen raspberries
50 g flaked almods
icing sugar to sift

Heat the oven to 180 C and grease and bottom line a 20cm spring-form tin.

METHOD 

1. Place the ground almonds, caster sugar, flour, butter and eggs and pulse until smoothly combined.
2. Spread half the mixture on the base of the tin then scatter the raspberries over and sprinkle on some icing sugar.
3. Blob on the remaining mixture and smooth the top.
4. Scatter over the flakes almonds then pop into the oven for 50 minutes to an hour, until firm to the touch and golden.
5. Leave to cool on a wire rack before removing from the tin and sprinkling on some icing sugar.
6. Delicious warm or cold. With ice cream or without.

A little taste of spring!

Tags: almonds, flaked almonds., ground almonds

Nintendo DS Birthday Cake

Nintendo Cake

My son turns twenty-one this month and despite being a legal adult in terms of years, he remains, like most blokes, a little boy at heart.  He’s been a fan of Nintendo gaming for as long as I can remember, so when it came to a cake for his 21st I hit upon the idea of a DS, a handheld gaming gadget which he loves very much. His first ever DS was ice blue which is the colour I chose for the icing. His current one is black, not so nice for a cake!

I started by making a giant brownie. I trimmed the edges and cut it in half…

And then I spent hours rolling out white fondant icing and colouring it with drops of blue food colouring, drop by drop, until I got the right shade.

Getting the cake to stand up saw me resorting to Blue Peter construction tricks. And old cardboard box provided the support for  the back. To get the speaker holes I used a three-tined cake fork, and the control buttons are mini Smarties. The cross-shaped control button was just cut out of left-over icing. I finished off with smooth squares of foil to resemble the screens and some “Mario” badges for a bit of fun.

I’m happy to report that the cake was well received

Happy birthday my darling boy, and many, many more.

Peter 21 - Nintendo cake

 

Tags: Birthday cake

Crunchie Cake Challenge

One of my “other sons” has a habit of setting me unusual baking challenges. Last year he wanted a Creme Egg cake for Easter. This year he requested a Crunchie Cake. A cake which would in every way resemble the chocolate bar of the same name. I accepted the challenge!

I decided on a chocolate loaf cake which I would sandwich together with honeycomb. Ah, yes honeycomb. I’ve never made it before but did a fair bit of online research – how difficult could it be? Then I went into full-on Heston Blumenthal mode and before long the kitchen resembled a laboratory and I looked like some crazed, apron-wearing scientist.

Honeycomb? Epic FAIL!

Perhaps I was a bit nervous of the bubbling boiling sugar when I added the bicarbonate of soda and perhaps I took it off the heat too soon, whatever the reason, my first attempt was a resounding FAIL! But I tried again and voila, a perfect layer of honeycomb, light and golden, which looked exactly like the stuff you find inside a Crunchie bar.

Honeycomb? SUCCESS!

The next part was easy. I made a nice dark chocolate loaf cake. When it was cool I sliced it in half horizontally and sandwiched it together with gorgeousness that is honeycomb!

Crunchie cake under construction

Iced and ready!

I then smothered the cake in melted milk chocolate and left it to set.

Tadaa! Here we have it. A cake that tastes remarkably like a bar of Crunchie – only with about a squillion more calories.

Happy sugar overload!

Tags: chocolate