Sour Cranberry Bakewell

Merry Christmas!  I hope everyone is having a great holiday season and is finding time in all the madness to relax a bit and enjoy time with family.

Getting back into the swing of making Jamie recipes from the book I decided to start with a dessert and bring it to a family Christmas party.  Sour Cranberry Bakewell.... is your mouth watering yet?  This dessert was the perfect balance of not too sweet, not too sour and not too rich.  It was delish!

Cut cold unsalted butter into flour and icing sugar until it resembles breadcrumbs.  Then add the zest of an orange, one beaten egg and a splash of milk.

Mix this together until you have a ball of dough.  Just make sure you don't work it too much or you're going to have a time rolling that baby out!  Lightly flour and cover it with plastic wrap.  Let that chill out in the fridge for 30 minutes.

While you're waiting to roll tide roll with that dough go ahead and start on the cranberry jam.  Yep you heard me right, homemade sour cranberry jam.  To. Die. For.

Throw 500g or like a bag and a half of fresh cranberries, sugar and the zest and juice of 1 1/2 oranges into a large sauce pan.  Bring this to a boil and then reduce to a simmer over low heat and kind of break up the softened cranberries with your spoon.  Let that bubble away until it's thick and jammy. Remove from the heat to cool.

After the 30 minutes of fridge time roll the pastry out and lay it into a tart pan.  Fork the pastry shell, cover with plastic wrap and pop that back in the fridge for another 30 minutes.

While you're waiting for round #2 of the big chill you can start making the frangipane.  What the crap is that you ask?  Well... trusty Wiki says, "Frangipane is a filling made from or flavored with almonds."  This recipe swaps out the traditional almonds and opts for hazelnuts and walnuts for a richer more praline flavor.

First order of business is blanching the hazelnuts.  So I was filling a sauce pot with water to blanch the nuts and Matt comes in and says, "Don't you think you ought to google what is means to blanch nuts? Pretty sure you don't do it in water like you would veggies."  So glad he walked in!  Blanching nuts is another term for toasting.  So blanch the hazelnuts in a warm oven until you can smell them.  This will release their oils and make them even more flavorful.

Blitz the hazelnuts and walnuts until it's really fine.  Tip that into a clean bowl the put butter and sugar into the food processor and whiz that up until creamed.

Add the zest of an orange and lemon and 3 eggs to the food processor and keep it running until everything is combined.  Tip the nuts back in along with some flour and flip the processor back on to mix.  Viola!  Frangipane!!

By this time your pastry base should be ready to bang in the oven for a 12 minute blind bake with either baking beads or dried rice to weigh it down.  Remove beads/rice and bake for another 5 minutes.

Spread a third of the cooled cranberry jam into the tart pan and pour the frangipane mixture on top of that.

Plop spoonfuls of the jam over the frangipane and drag a knife through it to make it look pretty.  Finally it's ready to whack in the oven!

45 minutes later, you have this beauty!  Golden crust on the top and gooey on the inside.  Perfecto!

While this is cooling throw together a quick drizzle for the top.  Just some icing sugar and juice from the zested orange and lemon.

This bakewell is a bit labor intensive but if you have the time it's well worth it!  It even freezes well if you have some left over and want to save it for later!

Earl Grey Tea Loaf

This was my first attempt at homemade bread of any kind.  It was surprisingly way less complicated than I had anticipated.  Note:  for those of you who hate raisins, you might make an exception!

Soak a bunch of raisins and dried cranberries in Earl Grey tea and the zest of an orange overnight.  Use 3 tea bags and 3/4 cup of water to get that tea really potent.  I've never tried to rehydrated dried fruit but that's really a genius idea for packing extra flavor into whatever you're soaking the fruit in.

When I read the ingredient "mixed spice" I knew some research was needed.  Turns out this is a blend of allspice, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, cardamom, coriander and nutmeg.  After I followed the recipe I found online I tasted the blend.  It did weird things to my tongue but it tasted really good!  I read the reviews on this recipe and everyone said it sounded authentic so I just went with it. To make this spice blend at home:  2 teaspoons each of allspice, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger; 1 teaspoon each of cardamom and coriander. 

I drained the fruit because there was still some tea in the bottom and the recipe didn't specify whether or not to use that juice.  Get a mixing  bowl out and combine the fruit with one whisked egg, sugar, self-raising flour, 1tsp of the mixed spice, a couple more dashes of nutmeg and the juice of the orange you zested the day before. Combine this until everything is mostly wet.  If it looks a little dry that's alright.


Line a loaf pan with waxed paper and spoon the batter in the pan.  Whack that in a 350 Fahrenheit oven for about 1 hour and 10 minutes.

When the bread has about 15 minutes left on it put 2 more tea bags into some boiling water in a pan on the stove.  Add the zest and juice of a lemon and boil for a few minutes and then remove the bags.  Add some sugar and let it boil without stirring until it has reduced by half.  There you go!  Tea lemon syrup.  This smelled so yummy and I was very excited to find out this would be poured on top of the loaf!






Once the loaf pokes clean with a skewer in the middle pull it out and put it on a wire rack still in the pan.  Poke a bunch of holes in the top with the skewer and pour the tea syrup over top.

Allow the loaf to cool a little in the pan before taking it out to place directly on the rack.

I called up my friend Becca and we had tea time with her pretty tea cups and this bread.  It was so yummy!  She said, "The tea in the bread is a really great undertone.  Not overwhelming at all but really good."  She is a raisin-hater to the core and told me not to tell anyone she loved this because she's got an image to uphold.  Haha, well Bec... I think the secret's out!  Luckily I don't think anyone from your family reads my blog.

These last two pictures were taken with Instragram.... love that app!  Just wanted to play around with it a little :)  By the way, the syrup soaked into the bread a lot on the top so it made it gooey.  If you're not a fan of that use less syrup.  We thought it was great as is!

My Nan's St. Clement's Cake

Have you ever been so busy you don't know whether you're coming or going?  Welcome to my life the last few weeks!  I've decided to cut myself a break and just keep going forward with my goal.  I don't want to stop now!


This cake turned out so yummy!  I've never attempted any sort of sponge cake, much less ever eaten one so I really didn't know what to expect.  The ground up almonds really made this cake extra good!

This recipe called for caster sugar.  Caster sugar?  Caster oil I've heard of but never caster sugar.  ochef.com's answer: Castor or caster sugar is the name of a very fine sugar in Britain, so named because the grains are small enough to fit though a sugar "caster" or sprinkler. It is sold as "superfine" sugar in the United States.  I did wind up finding some super fine baker's sugar at the store so I figured I should be all set.


Cream together the butter and white sugar until totally smooth.  This was a cinch with the super fine sugar!  Add 4 eggs one at a time and beat really well in between each.  Add some of the orange zest and lemon zest to the bowl and let that mix in.  Add the ground almonds (basically throw almonds into a food processor until it becomes a meal) and flour to the bowl and let that mix until blended.  Pour into a greased spring form pan and whack that in the oven for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean from the center.

Juice the zested orange and put that into a sauce pan with some sugar.  Keep on low heat until the sugar is dissolved and you have a simple syrup.  Poke a bunch of little holes in the cake and pour the orange syrup over it.  The cake will totally absorb this and will give it the most fantastic smell, taste, moistness.... really just everything!  The picture below shows how glossy the cake becomes from the syrup being poured over it.  Yummo!
  

Confession: In an attempt to be precise with the measurements for this cake my Mom and I looked up online the conversions from grams to cups for each ingredient.  We accidentally used too much sugar in the cake so it's a little sunken in the middle!!  Oopsy!


For the icing:  Juice the zested lemon and add to a bowl with powdered sugar and give it a stir.... that's it.  And it was so stinking good!  It had just enough sweetness to it to avoid the lemon pledge being sprayed on top of this cake visual you have in your head (or at least do now! haha).  Allow the cake to cool completely and transfer to a serving plate before spreading the icing.  Garnish with some reserved lemon and orange zest and serve that baby up!

I made this cake again by popular demand and used the correct amount of sugar.  The picture above is the non-sinkhole cake!


Warning:  this cake is very addicting.  Step away.... at least from my piece!  Or half... haha!