Tag: easy bakes

Winter Fruit Sponge
Stylemesisteradmin
November 23, 2018

Winter fruity Sponge Bake

Crisp colourful leaves on the ground. Bit knitted tops. Bowls of tomato soup and darker evenings watching box sets. Yes that pretty much sounds like Autumn. I love every season going and when the seasons change I often dream about what will happen in this season. Autumn to me is about comfort, appreciation and preparing for ‘come what may’. The colourful leaves followed by the crazy colourful fireworks have me lusting for this season a lot.

And as a baker with children with a sweet tooth I love experimenting with flavours and in Autumn I love gently spicing food with cinnamon, ginger and cardamom. The warm aroma makes me feel safe and snug.

What says ‘hey it’s Autumn’ to me is the combination of apples and blackberries. So here I have an awesome recipe for winter fruit sponge. It’s not too sweet, not too tart and has a spongy warm layer that says Autumn has arrived.
Serve this beauty with lashings of custard….or if you are still pining for Summer a scoop of vanilla ice-cream!

Ingredients:

For the fruity layer
500 grams Apples, Blackberries & plums
175 ml water
60 grams sugar
1 small cinnamon stick

For the spongy top:

125 grams butter at room temperature
125 grams castor sugar
125 grams self raising flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg whisked
50 ml milk

1) Place the apples, cinnamon and sugar in a pan and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and cook for 5 minutes.
2) Add the blackberries and cook for a further 2/3 minutes. Turn off the heat.
3) In a large bowl beat together the sugar and butter until creamed together. Add the egg and beat further.
4) Add the flour baking powder and ground ginger and beat. Don’t worry if it looks a bit lumpy that will be fixed later.
5) Now add the milk and stir in.
6) Take the baking tin and place the apple and blackberry in it. Spread evenly. Remove the cinnamon stick.
7) Pour over the sponge mix and spread evenly with a spatula.
8) Bake at 170 for 25 minutes (or until golden brown).
9) Take out of the oven and serve warm with custard.
10) Enjoy!

Chocolate Concrete Cake
Alliyah Dawud
October 19, 2017

Chocolate Concrete Cake

So if you were an 80s baby in England and attended mainstream public school there’s a huge possibility you will remember hard slabs of cake like substance served with colourful custard. The cake was fondly knows as concrete cake a nod to it’s hard texture and make up. But once you left it in lashings of custard it turned into this soft delectable delight. My old School could cut it into rectangular slabs (and sprinkle on some extra granulated sugar).

Recently my oldest asked me about my memories of School. The one thing that was apparent was I blocked out a lot of stuff (perhaps due to the constant bullying the Schools chose to ignore) but what I can remember is the delectable desserts (I was a foodie in the making from a young age). So recently we tried a few recipes and this one below in my opinion smells and tastes like the retro School dinner classic.

Don’t forget to serve it with colourful custard. I used instant custard with a bit of food dye added. Yes this is a treat so I didn’t mind injected my children with nasty food colours.

Preparation time:
10 minutes

Baking time: 30 minutes

Servings: 8 slices (easy!)

I used a 20 cm shallow pie dish to bake the concrete cake. You can use a sandwich cake tin if that’s what you have on hand. Grease the tin with butter/oil.

Ingredients:
200 grams plain flour (shifted)
200 grams granulated sugar (that’s right-granulated!) plus a little extra for sprinkling on top
60 grams cocoa powder (shifted)
110 grams butter (or substitute that is suitable for baking). softened. You could soften it in the microwave if you wish.

1) Mix together the flour, sugar and cocoa powder.
2) add butter. Stir. The mixture will start to look like breadcrumbs. Stir until all the ingredients are thoroughly.
3) Now tip the mixture into the greased baking dish. Pat down.
4) Bake in the oven at 180 c for 30 minutes on the middle rack.
5) Take out of the oven and either: allow to cool down completely (which is what I do). Or cool enough to remove from pan, slice and serve (warm). Don’t forget to sprinkle on the sugar.

I allow the concrete to cool over night. I then remove from the pan and slice. Serve with some bright coloured custard. And enjoy the walk down memory lane.
PS: if you do end up with any leftovers store them in an airtight container and you’ll be good for 4 days.