foraged foods - blackberry cake

Not-so-Littl'Un loves to pick our blackberries, but I never feel I know what to do with them these days. I don't have time or energy or spoons for jam making and there aren't always enough berries for a crumble or a pie, and a blackberry fool is a VERY decadent thing!  I don't always cope with too much decadence!

My parents were coming over for supper, and I was just making a very simple pot roast chicken, so I wanted something different for pudding.

I did a bit of googling and managed to find this blackberry cake recipe from The Happy Foodie, because one of the kids won't eat cakes made with ground almonds and LOTS of summer fruits cakes use ground almonds.  That same kid later decided to announce that they don't like cake other than fruit cake (don't get me started on the difference between a cake with fruit in, and a fruit cake) so I needn't have actually hunted!!!

Anyway, it then turned out that I don't have a 23cm cake tin, let alone a springform one, but I DO have a 19cm one and a 25cm one.  I decided more is more, rather than less is more, and I thought I could have a go at scaling up the recipe.  I had more than enough extra blackberries to scale up with anyway!

The biggest thing to remember with this is not to wash the berries, this can be tricky when they are handpicked, but if you wash them, they become soggy and the cake will be too wet and not rise properly.

Here's my scaled-up version.

Ingredients:

350-400g blackberries

175g unsalted or slightly salted butter

4 medium eggs

150g caster sugar, plus a little extra for sprinkling.

2 tbs demerara sugar (or sugar crystals for coffee which is what I used, as I don't have demerara and I wasn't about to buy a bag just for 2 tbs!)

300g plain flour

1.5 rounded tsps baking powder

150ml semi-skimmed milk

Equipment:

25cm springform cake tin (min 6cm deep)

non-stick baking paper

cake mixer or electric hand whisk

Method:

1.  Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F/Gas 4). Line the cake tin with the non-stick baking paper.  If you only have greaseproof, make sure you use the dregs of the melted butter to grease the paper.  

2. Check through the blackberries for dirt or wildlife, and put to one side. Melt the butter, and set aside.

3. Put the eggs and the sugars into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a balloon whisk (not the flat beater or its equivalent) attachment and whisk until pale and fluffy; alternatively use a hand-held electric mixer.

4. Add the flour and baking powder, and mix until incorporated (I switched to the normal cake beater for this.) Pour the melted butter and milk into the mix, and whisk again.

5. Sprinkle a handful of the blackberries into the bottom of the prepared tin. Pour about half of the cake mix over the top of the blackberries. Sprinkle half of the remaining blackberries over the cake mix, then add the remaining cake mix. Finally, sprinkle the remaining blackberries over the top and sprinkle with a little caster sugar (or vanilla sugar if you have some).

6. Put the cake tin on a flat baking sheet (to catch any potential spillages) and bake in the preheated oven for about 1 hour, or until the cake is golden on top and a skewer comes out clean.  Leave to cool in the tin, before popping the spring open and transferring to a cooling rack.  

Emergency Banana Cake

Our lovely church playgroup has been the joyful participant in the FareShare scheme and a local Tesco Express branch donates pastries and breads most weeks which Papa goes to collect and we share with playgroup and church members, with any left over being taken to a local homeless shelter - so there really is no waste!

However, the Tesco we receive donations from has apparently had a broken freezer for a few weeks, and the repair is not likely to be swift.  So when I received the text to inform me that there was no donation this week, I decided to use some black bananas to whizz up a cake for playgroup instead.

I used to bake every Thursday once upon a time, when our playgroup was a small circle of parents and carers, but since beginning online advertising, we've had far higher numbers and I just can't cope with the volume each week!

But just this once, I wanted to.  Besides, those bananas were going to go to waste otherwise!

So I looked for a quick and easy recipe online using the right amount of banana, and then of course I slightly tweaked what I found because it was too high in sugar for my preferences.

Here is what I did, I'm afraid I mix and matched the measurements because the original recipe was a "cups" recipe, and while I like that for liquids and powders, I don't like it for things like butter.  Just try it, you won't be sorry.   At least 7 people asked me for the recipe...

Emergency Banana Cake

4 oz butter 

3/4 cup sugar. I used a mix of dark brown soft and golden caster sugars

2 eggs

4-5 mashed bananas

2 cups of plain flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 Preheat the oven to 180˚, and line a 2lb loaf tin with greaseproof paper.  I also used 3 silicone muffin cups as all the mixture didn't fit in the loaf tin.

2 Cream the butter and sugars together until smooth.  Beat in the eggs, then the bananas.  Add the flour and bicarb, and just stir gently until just combined.  Do not over mix.

If you are doing the creaming and egg mixing in a machine, stop and use a spatula to fold the flour and bicarb in by hand.

3 Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 30 mins.  Remove the smaller cups and turn the loaf around.  Cook for another 15 mins and you should find that a toothpick comes out clean by then.  Turn out and cool.  Slice and share and eat.  Sit back and accept the adulation for very little effort.

HINTS AND TIPS:  The recipe suggests using a 9" x 5" pan. I didn't have anything in even a vaguely similar size so I improvised. It suggested using one whole cup of sugar.  I reduced this to three quarters, and would actually happily reduce the sugar further than I did already.  It also suggested cooking for 1 hour, but I felt my cake was done perfectly, but I do have a new fan oven.

Using up biscuit type cereal and using up bananas too

Well, it has been a while, because I or Godpapa have been doing almost all the cooking from Slimming World recipes, and so far, since March I have managed to lose 11.5 lbs, and so I'm extremely happy, and hardly ever hungry. I'm not going to explain the SW ethos or method, it is easy enough to sign up online or join your local club!

However, I do crave a little something sweet from time to time, and obviously home made is far better as you know what's gone into it, and I've even been known to sit and CALCULATE the Syn value of every ingredient in a cake, add them up, then divide that by how ever many portions we've served and usually it's a perfectly decent number. On the SW plan you are encouraged to have between 5 and 15 Syns a day, and that makes it much easier to not feel deprived!

Anyway,  thanks to my Dad, we recently discovered a super new gluten free biscuit cereal  - Nutribrex -  and I really enjoy it, however, it isn't on the list of "allowed" breakfasts, tho each biscuit is only 3 Syns, so I sometimes have one as an included treat snack just before bed-time.

Today I had some bananas which everyone was refusing to eat, and I stumbled upon this lovely recipe from the Australian blog The Organised Housewife, so it seemed like a super plan.

I suddenly remembered that Australian cup measurements and tablespoons are different from American and UK ones, (US cups are based on the imperial 8oz cup volume, and the Aussie cup is based on the metric 250ml volume.) If you want exact conversions, feel free to google it and weigh the flour out, but I just used my American cups and heaped them a little!

Now, the beauty of this recipe is that it can be converted so many ways!

Using the Nutribrex, and if you use Doves Farm (or any other) gluten free flour, you can make this a gluten free treat very easily. Using Pure and a non-dairy milk you can make this dairy free. Using actual Weetabix (or shops own variation) and sweetener, and low fat spread, you can easily make this a very low Syn treat (if  using the biscuit cereal as your HEb) Anyway, however you make it, MAKE IT, it is easy, delicious and fun for the kids to help with too.

You will need:

3 bananas (over ripe and mushy is perfect) mashed up

4 Weetabix style biscuit cereal bix.

3/4 -1 cup of milk

80g butter/margarine/low fat spread

2 eggs

1.5 cups self-raising flour

2 tbs brown sugar

a handful of choc chips (obviously we used white choc, the original recipe calls for milk choc)

I would have added cinnamon but Big'Un says she no longer likes cinnamon. I'm glad I didn't tho.

Heat up the oven to 180-200 degrees. You know your oven.

Line a 12 hole muffin tin with muffin papers.

Get the kids to crush up the cereal biscuits in a medium sized bowl. They will LOVE this. Or do it yourself and get some anxiety out!

Add the bananas, and then the milk. Mix well and leave to stand for 10 minutes.

In a LARGE bowl, beat together the butter/marg with the eggs. Don't worry if this is a weird texture like you sometimes see in the clouds on summer evenings, it will work.

Add the banana mixture, and fold it through. Add the flour, sugar and then the choc chips and mix until just combined, and spoon the mixture into the prepared muffin cups.

Bake until golden and a skewer comes out clean, about 20-30 minutes depending on the size of the muffins. We found it actually made 12 cakes, we never get the amount stated in the recipe, but this was SPOT on.

Really tasty, and a lovely texture.  And I wouldn't have a problem serving them for brekkie really either!

Inge's Banana Hazelnut Cake

My parents have a lovely German neighbour called Inge.  She is just the perfect German grandma, and she comes to my Monday morning knitting group regularly, and makes me feel homesick talking about the typically German foods she enjoys.  She spoils my kids rotten and often has little bits and bobs for them, knits them lovely warm socks when she has odds and ends of sock wool to use up, and chats to them in a way they really enjoy.  One day we popped in to my parents' flat when they weren't there and her door was ajar with an amazing scent of baking wafting out.  As we were leaving, we couldn't resist knocking to say hello, and to enjoy the smell a bit more.  She was delighted to see us, as she'd baked a bundt type cake for her family and with the little bit of cake mix that hadn't fitted in her tin, she had made 3 little cakes for us!

I have to say the 2 bites of cake I got from the 3 kids just transported me to my childhood, and I just HAD to have the recipe.

I was delighted to be presented with the recipe, scanned from Inge's recipe scrapbook, clearly clipped from a magazine and lovingly kept.  All in German, but that's not a problem for me.  Anyway, I baked this recipe in heart shapes for Valentine's Day. It was delicious, and I wanted to share as it is easy, and slightly different.  We don't tend to use a lot of hazelnuts in the UK, and they are such a Germanic flavour.  So here we are:

Inge's Banana Hazelnut Cake

180g Butter

3 eggs, beaten

220g sugar

1 packet (about 5g) vanilla sugar

3 bananas

150g ground hazelnuts

300g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

Method:

Soften the butter in a bowl and slowly add the beaten eggs, sugar and vanilla sugar.  Mash the bananas with a fork and add to the mixture along with the hazelnuts.

Sieve the flour and baking powder into the mixture and fold in.

Pour the batter into a greased ring tin, any excess can be made into small cakes.

Bake in a preheated oven 190 degrees  for 40 minutes for smaller cakes and an hour for the larger cake.

breakfast bite flapjack morsels

Another end of cereal packet recipe.

You may recall I pour the dregs and crumbs and powder of a pack of breakfast cereal, be it muesli, granola or branflakes, into a medium lock and lock and store until I can use it.

I often bake a little something on a Thursday evening for the Friday morning playgroup I host, but as Littl'Un had no school, we had a little extra time on Friday morning itself, so I threw these together and ate my brekkie while they baked. Mixing took no more than 5 minutes.

I poured about half the amount I had collected, I'd say about 4-6 ounces, into a bowl, added a large squirt of liquid marg, a glug of squeezy golden syrup, a tablespoon or 2 of sugar (depending on the cereal dregs in use) and about a 100ml boiling or warm water. 

I then stirred this all together until it was clumping and sticking together. 

Then I lightly oiled the cups of my lovely silicon mini muffin tray (which was a Christmas pressie from Papa) and gently pressed a teaspoonful of the mix into each.

I then baked this for 15 mins at 180 deg C.

I then left it to cool a little in the tray before popping the little bites out of the cups and leaving them to cool completely.  These are chewy, crumbly, crunchy and very economical to make! Yours will be unique, relying upon your own cereal library input.  Each batch will even differ.  Have fun experimenting!