Chocolate and Salted Caramel Bundt

Apologies, for many things. Firstly, may blogging laziness, and secondly the quality of this photo. Honestly, I forgot to take a pic until the cake was almost gone (which wasn't long!)
Here it is: my little invention...

It honestly does look better in one piece!

I love my Bundt tin, and I decided it should house a combo of salted caramel and chocolate cake. Who wouldn't want to?! Plus I made a caramel to drizzle all over the top in it's grainy, sludgy saltiness. Yum yum indeed. Serves 10.

Ingredients:
Group one...
350g plain flour
200g golden caster sugar
100g dark brown soft sugar (or muscovado, just something fudgy and dark)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarb
1/2 tsp salt

Group two...
3 eggs, lightly beaten
150ml cream, sour cream, greek yogurt or other dairy style wetness
125ml sunflower oil
170g melted salted butter
300g chilled water

Extras...
2 tbsp plain flour
1 tsp vanilla extract

2 heaped tbsp cocoa powder

Caramel topping...
100g butter (salted)
100g dark brown sugar
good slosh double cream
sprinkling maldon sea salt or other nice big flakes of salt

Method:
Preheat your oven to 170 (fan) and butter your big Bundt tin (approx 28cm diameter). SMaller ones will suffice.

Add group one of ingredients into a bowl and whisk together until any lumps of sugar are broken up.
Whisk group two together until well combined, then beat into group one until a smooth batter is formed. Then, divide the mix into two, and add the cocoa to one half and flour and vanilla to the other. You will then have one beautifully dark and mysterious bowl of batter, and one lightly tanned one, like it's been on holiday. Yum in itself.

Pour the two in whichever way you fancy into the tin and marble them together (slightly) with a teaspoon or any other favourite kitchen implement. I like to have a gently marbled cake, but you could mix it more thoroughly if you like. Then, bake it for 55 minutes or so until your skewer comes out clean. Leave it to cool in the tin for about 10-15 minutes, then turn it out.

To make the caramel topping, melt the butter and sugar together until the sugar has dissolved, then bubble gently for about 30 seconds to a minute. Add the cream (careful, it will bubble!), a pinch of salt, then set aside after stirring well until it's slightly thickened and a little cooler. hen, pour gently over the cake and sprinkle salt over to taste.

Bloody lovely.

JB x

Pistachio and lemon streusel cake

Cake cake cake. I wanted to make a different cake and chose to do a combination of a couple of favourite flavours / techniques to create this bad boy:

Pistachio and lemon are good friends. Something about the buttery freshness of pistachio seems to get on well with lemon. Other nice combos could be maple and pecan, apple and oatmeal with ginger, coconut and lime, or if you're feeling decadent macadamia and vanilla?

Streusel cake is a cake made with a crunchy topping (and in some cases filling) made of something resembling crumble topping, or breadcrumb based if you're of a more traditional mindset. This gives a nice bit of textural contrast to a soft cake, and they're traditionally baked in a ring tin. I see no reason why this recipe couldn't be quite happy in a different shaped tin though :)

The base of this recipe is a Hummingbird bakery version, but I've (as usual) changed things about a bit... below is what I did. The streusel is layered through the cake batter, then a lemon syrup is poured over after baking, then finally a glacé icing is added with nuts (and I put crystallised lemon peel) for final prettification.

Streusel:
80g plain flour
50g marg or softened butter
50g demerera sugar
zest of 1 lemon
85g chopped pistachios

Rub butter into flour and sugar, then stir in the nuts and zest. Set aside. It should look kind of like this...

Cake:

170g softened butter or margarine

250g caster sugar

3 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

300ml soured cream

420g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarb

Pinch salt

Butter and flour a big (25-28cm diameter) ring tin (non stick is definitely best). Comme ça...

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then beat in one egg at a time (use an electric mixer of sorts or prepare for a very sore arm...). Then stir in the sour cream and vanilla until all mixed completely together. Sift the flour, baking powder and bicarb into the wet ingredients, then stir in the salt and give it a good beat until all combined. Now layer streusel and cake mix... Half of the streusel goes into the tin first (to form the crunchy topping), then half the cake batter, then rest of streusel, then rest of batter...

  Streusel, then cake... then streusel...

 then ready to bake! 

Bake at 170 degrees C (fan) for 1 hour until a skewer comes out clean.

Syrup:
juice of 1 lemon made up to 50ml with water, boiled up with 50g sugar for a minute until all dissolved. Once cake is out of the oven, pop lots of skewer holes in and pour syrup gently in, then leave the cake to cool in the tin.

Then turn it out...

Then ice with the juice of a lemon made up to icing consistency with icing sugar and sprinkle with pretty stuff. Yummy!!!






JB x

Chocolate cherry cheesecake cake

I made this beast of a pud this week. It's from the Hummingbird Bakery Home Sweet Home book, and boy oh boy is it calorific :)

It's basically an adventure into a Bundt tin involving dense chocolate cake wrapped around a cheesecake core studded with sour dried cherries. Oh, and glazed with cherry jam. Obvs.

I won't repeat the recipe for copyright reasons but the idea of cake wrapped around cheesecake is a winner in my book... I'm thinking future incarnations would be chocolate cake and ginger cheesecake, coconut cake with lime cheesecake, chocolate and raspberry cake with raspberry vanilla cheesecake...

Tin...

Half of the cake mix in...

Piped with cheesecake mix...

Covered with more cake batter...

Finished and glazed :)

JB x