Raspberry blondies

Ingredients

175 g butter
200g soft light brown sugar
100g caster sugar
200g white chocolate
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs
200g self-raising flour
75 g frozen raspberries

Method

1. Melt the butter, light sugar, caster sugar and 100g of the white chocolate in a bain marie. Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperature.
2. Line a square 20 x 20 cm tin with greaseproof paper. Preheat oven to 180oC.
3. Add the vanilla extract to the cooled mixture, followed by the beaten eggs, one at a time.
4. Add the flour, and mix until smooth.
5. Add 50g of the remaining white chocolate, broken into small pieces, together with the raspberries, and pour the batter into the tin.
6. Bake for 50 minutes until just set, and leave to cool in the tin.
7. Melt the remaining 50 g of white chocolate in a bain marie and drizzle over the blondies.

Moist chocolate cake

This has been our standard chocolate cake for a few years now, but I decided to revisit it and add a couple of notes about the tin and the cooking time, together with posting some new photos. This cake should be really moist - not just in the middle but almost out to the edge. There's no point doing the skewer test on it - that will simply tell you that you should have taken it out of the oven 15 minutes ago! Also, it is important to use a small tin for this, so that the cake is quite high. I bake this in a tin which originally contained a Glenfiddich Christmas cake, and which is 16cm in diameter.

Ingredients
150g butter
250g dark chocolate (>70% cocoa solids)
150g demerara sugar
5 medium eggs
100g plain flour

Method

1. Set the oven to 180oC and line your cake tin with greased baking paper.
2. Break the chocolate into small pieces, place in a large bowl with the butter and sugar, and heat in a bain marie until melted.
3. Separate the eggs. Add the yolk and flour to the chocolate mixture, and beat thoroughly.
4. Whip the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Mix a couple of spoonfuls into the chocolate mixture, then fold the rest in gently but thoroughly.
5. Pour into the tin and bake for 25 minutes.

Orange polenta cake

I first made this cake a few years ago, and have baked it intermittently ever since (whenever my children allow me to make something other than chocolate cake).


I took this cake along to the book group I have just joined (at Blackwell's on South Bridge, in Edinburgh). My cake was finished off almost instantly, which is more than can be said for this month's book - the diaries of Sofia Tolstoy, in which the wife of Lev Tolstoy spends 40 years complaining about her husband.

Ingredients
for the cake batter
2 large oranges
1 cup of strong green tea
6 green cardamom pods
6 eggs
150 g quick-cook polenta
150 g ground almonds
250 g golden caster sugar

for the syrup
1 orange
50 g caster sugar
50 ml water

Method

1. Place two of the oranges in plenty of water, bring to the boil and simmer for one hour. Drain the oranges, cut into quarters and allow to cool.
2. Make a cup of strong green tea, and add the cracked cardamom pods to it.
3. Preheat the oven to 180°C, and line and grease a springform cake tin.
4. Peel the orange quarters, remove the pithy centre and any pips, and puree in a food processor.
5. Transfer the orange puree to a mixing bowl, add the polenta and 50g of cardamom-infused green tea, stir well and leave to sit for 5 minutes or so.
6. Add the eggs, almonds and caster sugar and beat well. Pour the mixture into the tin, and bake for about 45 minutes.
7. Meanwhile, zest the remaining orange. Make a syrup by heating the caster sugar, zest and water until the sugar is dissolved. Strain through a tea strainer to remove the zest.
8. Allow the cake to cool before removing from the tin. Prick it all over with a toothpick, and pour the syrup over it.

Apple crumble cake

We had to bring Carmela's birthday forward this year, as on her actual birthday we will be in Italy, where we won't know anyone. As a result, once again she will be having two birthdays. In addition to the customary chocolate cake, I decided to make an apple cake for the adults, as I had been gifted a bag of cooking apples. Having made this, I'm not sure why there aren't more crumble cakes.



Ingredients
For the cake
juice of 1 lemon
4 small cooking apples
1 tsp ground cinnamon
200g caster sugar
200g butter or margarine
200g self-raising flour
4 medium eggs

For the crumble
1 tsp ground cinnamon
50g caster sugar
50g butter or margarine
50g self-raising flour

Method

1. Grease and line a springform tin, and set the oven to 180oC.
2. Peel and core the apples, cut them into very thin slices, place in a bowl, just cover with cold water, and add the lemon juice.
3. Mix all the crumble ingredients together, and rub gently with your fingertips until it has the texture of rough breadcrumbs.
4. Put the remaining sugar (200g) and the eggs in a large bowl, and beat very thoroughly, until you can leave a trail on the surface of the mixture.
5. Meanwhile, gently melt the butter or margarine, turning off the heat while there are still some solid lumps left in it, stir and leave to sit for a few minutes.
6. Pour the melted butter or margarine into the sugar and egg mixture, sift in the remaining flour (200g) and fold into the mixture gently.
7. Strain the apple pieces.
8. Pour half of the mixture into the tin, then add a layer of apple slices, then add the rest of the mixture and another layer of slices. Top with the crumble mixture.
9. Bake for 45 minutes.

Plum crumble

When I was a child growing up in Stirling, there was a pear tree, an apple tree and a plum tree in our fairly small back garden. The apples were a now rare variety known as Stirling Castle which were quite tart - halfway towards being a cooking apple - The pears were inedibly woody but the plums were Victoria and were delicious. Unfortunately, one year the crop was so large that the poor little tree literally snapped in half under the weight of the fruit. I saw some Victoria plums in the greengrocer's the other day and they looked, felt and smelt exactly like the ones I remember from my childhood, so I decided to make some plum crumble with them.



Ingredients
the filling
750g plums
3 tablespoons of demerara sugar
1 teaspoon of cinnamon

the crumble
250g plain flour
150g butter or margarine
100g demerara sugar
50g rolled oats
50g almonds (either ground or slivers)

Method

1. Stone and halve the plums. If they are a little hard, then stew them in a saucepan for a few minutes with the sugar and cinnamon. If they are already very ripe then this is not necessary. Put the plums in a medium-sized ovenproof dish.
2. In a large bowl, mix the butter or margarine with the flour, sugar, oats and almonds, and rub gently between your hands until it has the texture of fine breadcrumbs.
   
3. Cover the plums with the crumble mixture and bake for 30 minutes in an oven preheated to 190oC.

Proportions and preferences
Sometimes in life it's best to be left wanting more, and I think this definitely applies here. You should be left with the feeling that if only there had been a little more of the crumbly topping then it would have been perfect: if you don't have that feeling, then there was probably too much topping and not enough fruit.



Apart from the crumble:fruit ratio, the other big issue when making crumble is how cooked the fruit should be. For soft fruits (ripe plums, blackberries and that kind of thing) I don't think the fruit benefits from pre-cooking as it will already be soft and juicy from the oven. However, if you're making apple or rhubarb crumble then the fruit is definitely improved by being stewed for a few minutes before having the topping added and being baked.

Scrumping
Every autumn kids in Stirling used to come and 'scrump' our apples. They would knock on the front door and ask if they could come through and have some apples, but it was understood that if you refused then they'd come over the wall and help themselves anyway. The 'scrumpers' came from the top of the town - the working class area at the top of the hill, which corresponds to the old town before it expanded in the late 19th century, while we 'scrumpees' lived in the King's Park, which was the posh area built when the town expanded in the Victorian period. Thinking about it now, it seems that this scrumping was the embodiment of a tense social relationship which combined a mixture of patronage, obligation, resentment and intimidation.

Oranges with mint and green tea syrup

This recipe is a really easy way of producing a nice fresh-tasting dessert. It's based on one sent to me by my dad Mike, who I got back in touch with recently after a long gap. Anyway, it turned out he had also been writing down recipes and he sent me a short book full of them. His version is with rosemary and black pepper - the method is the same, but you just replace the mint and green tea with ... you guessed it, rosemary and black pepper.

My version is based on Moroccan tea, which has the same combination of green tea, mint and sugar, although in slightly different proportions. If you want to be really pedantic you can insist on using Moroccan oranges too.



Ingredients
4 good-sized oranges
150 g brown sugar
150 ml water
a large bunch of mint
½ a teaspoon of green tea

Method

1. Zest one of the oranges, peel all of them, slice as thinly as possible, and arrange in a shallow bowl.
2. In a pan, combine the sugar, water, mint and orange zest. Heat gently until the sugar is dissolved, bring to a boil, add the tea, and remove from heat.
3. Pour the liquid from the pan over the oranges, using a tea strainer to ensure you don't get any bits of mint, zest or tea on the oranges.