Cinnamon Swirl Sour Cream Cake

This is one of those cakes that I tend to put in the category "plain cakes" which sounds a bit negative and unexciting but really isn't. It's just one of those simple cakes that are very easy to put together but even easier to eat. No layers, no icing, no decoration, just a straightforward one-tin bake.

I found the recipe when searching for inspiration for some leftover sour cream and discovered it in one of my Books for Cooks recipe books (compilations of recipes from the shop of the same name).

The cake itself is just a plain sponge, although sour cream is added to the usual ingredients, but the cake is well and truly brought to life by the layers of chocolatey, cinnamony nuts and raisins in the middle. No one flavour stands out; instead you have a lovely hint of the various ingredients mixed up in the slightly crunchy, slightly chewy layers. This is the sort of cake that is as perfect after dinner with ice cream as it is as an afternoon treat. P, who isn't keen on anything too sweet, really liked this one.

Cinnamon Swirl Sour Cream Cake
(adapted from Books for Cooks Favourite Recipes 7, 8 & 9)

For the mix
100g/3 1/2 oz walnuts or pecans
4 tbsp raisins
1tbsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder
175g/6oz dark brown sugar

For the cake
250g/8oz plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
salt
125g/4oz butter, softened
225g/7 1/2 oz caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 large eggs
250ml/8 fl oz sour cream

1) Heat the oven to 180c/350f. Grease and line a 24cm/9 inch cake tin.

2) To make the spice mix, put the nuts and raisins in a blender and pulse until finely chopped. Transfer to a bowl and mix in the cinnamon, cocoa and sugar.

3) Sieve the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl and set aside. In a separate bowl, cream the butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a spoonful of flour with each one.

4) Add one third of the flour to the mix and fold in then add and fold in one third of the sour cream. Alternate with the remaining ingredients until all mixed in.

5) Spread one third of the cake mix over the bottom of the cake tin then sprinkle with half the spice mix. Carefully add another third of the cake mix by dropping spoonfuls over the spice mix and carefully spreading it with the back of a spoon. Repeat with the remaining cake and spice mix, ending with a later of cake. Rap the tin on a hard surface a few times to remove any air bubbles.

6) Bake for 1 hour or until the cake has begun to come away from the sides of the tin and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Leave to cool for 15 minutes before turning out.

Serves 8

Nanaimo Bars for the Beaters Hut Bakers Club

A couple of weeks ago I took part in the third meeting of the Beaters Hut Bakers Club, a local baking group where members bring food to share based on a theme but, unlike the Clandestine Cake Club, there are no restrictions on the type of food you can bring.

This month the theme was International which turned out to be quite tricky - it's possible to have too much choice sometimes! After a lot of mind-changing I eventually settled on a recipe from one of my favourite places, British Columbia in Canada. Nanaimo Bars are thought to have originated in the 1950s when the recipe was submitted to a local Women's Institute Cookbook and have grown in popularity ever since.

Although I have been to British Columbia I have never actually tried a Nanaimo Bar, although I've heard lots of favourable reports from people who have. These have now earnt a permanent place in my repertoire though as they are delicious. They are very sweet (the white centre is basically just a buttercream) but the base of biscuit, chocolate, nuts and coconut adds bags of flavour and texture.

If you search the internet there are many different recipes to choose from but in the end I settled on this one. The top layer of chocolate isn't as thick as it seems to be in some of the pictures I came across but I think the amounts were about right.

Here are some of the other fantastic International dishes we had to choose from...

Janet's Italian Plum Torte

Poppy's French Lemon Macarons

Shauna's Indian Curry and Puri Breads

Jean's Honey Cake

Lucy's Mexican Empinadas, Mexican Dips and Tortillas

Rob's New Zealand Afghan Biscuits

Roger's Italian Focaccia

Shane's Portugese Custard Tarts

Vicky's German Battenburg

Bridget's Italian Panettone

Vicky's Turkish Baklava

Eleanor's French Profiteroles

For some reason I forgot to take a picture of Jessica's delicious Australian Lamingtons.

It was a great evening plus we had the added benefit of taking home the leftovers to enjoy the next day. Thanks to Shauna for bringing us all together. The next Beaters Hut Bakers Club is being held on Thursday 25th October and the theme is Halloween!

Forever Nigella - A New Blogging Event

Well here we are, two weeks into the new year already. I've taken a couple of weeks off from blogging while I tidied away all the seasonal bits and bobs and generally cleared my head ready for the year ahead but now I'm ready and raring to go again.

So, I'm kickstarting the new blogging year by participating in a new blogging event. While looking through the UK Food Blogger Association forums I was delighted to discover that Sarah from Maison Cupcake had made the excellent decision to start up a monthly challenge to celebrate Nigella Lawson's recipes called Forever Nigella.

It's no secret that I am a big Nigella fan and one who loves her books AND her television programmes. OK so a lot of people think that her shows are just too OTT for words and I admit that a black satin dressing gown wouldn't be the first choice of kitchen attire for most people but who cares? Her recipes WORK.

Each month a theme will be set, and for the first month of this blogging challenge the theme is "Seasonal Sensations". Hmmm, well I discovered the Forever Nigella challenge about a week ago so unfortunately my desire to bake something Christmassy has been packed away with the tinsel and all the leftovers have been eaten. No matter though - I have stuck to the theme by taking two recipes from Nigella's Christmas book but they are just the sort of thing I want to eat at this time of year when excess is something I'm trying to avoid.

The first recipe is a fairly simple one - Antioxidant Fruit Salad. Sometimes simple is good though and this combination of mango, blueberries, pomegranate and lime juice is wonderfully refreshing and full of flavour. This is delicious for breakfast with some natural or greek yoghurt or with something a little more substantial, which leads me on to my second recipe.

The second thing I made (and I decided to make both as they are both simple recipes but go so well together) is a Cranberry, Almond and Honey Granola. I love granola and make it often and this one caught my eye I because of the dried cranberries which are my favourite dried fruit. The warm flavours from the cinnamon and honey are complemented by the slight sharpness of the dried cranberries and the almonds and seeds provide great texture.

Now I'm afraid that the rules of this challenge are such that I'm not allowed to post the recipes being used unless I've changed more than two of the ingredients (which I haven't). This is to encourage as many people as possible to go out a buy Nigella's books - an idea I heartily endorse!

Thanks again to Sarah for hosting this new challenge. I'm already looking forward to next month's.

Sweet and Simple Bakes - Cranberry, Pecan & White Chocolate Cookies

For this month's Sweet and Simple Bakes challenge we were invited to make Cranberry, Pecan and White Chocolate Cookies.

I was looking forward to making these as I'd had my eye on the recipe for a while (I'd first seen it in Nigella's Christmas book). Dried cranberries are one of the best things you can put in a cookie in my opinion - they have that nice chewy texture you find in raisins but with a sharper flavour that stands out nicely against the background of biscuit and chocolate.

These cookies turned out really well even without the pecans that I'd forgotten to put on my shopping list. The only thing I'd say, and this applies to all cookie recipes, is that you need to err on the side of caution when it comes to cooking times. Just a couple of minutes over and you move from desirably chewy to slightly too crunchy.

Thanks to Maria and Rosie for hosting another great challenge. The recipe can be found here.

A recipe to keep you going....

The redesigning of my kitchen is now well under way which is fabulous but does, however, leave me without a kitchen to call my own at the moment. Fortunately, my parents in-law have very kindly allowed us the use of their house while they are on holiday, which is much appreciated, however I find there is something rather unsettling about trying to cook in someone else's kitchen! Even the simplest of tasks take more time than they should while I search for things that I could find blindfolded in my own kitchen, or suddenly find myself without a particular ingredient that I would usually take for granted. As a result my baking and creative cooking have been somewhat put on hold for the time being.

To keep my little blog ticking over in the meantime I thought I'd post about a recipe I made recently and put aside on the "to blog about" pile. This is a great muffin recipe, one of my favourites in fact. They are pretty healthy, quick to make and, unusually for muffins, they keep for ages. Oh, and, thanks to the energy-giving oats they'll definitely "keep you going" too - I love them for breakfast or as a mid-morning snack.

Feel-good muffins

(from Good Food Magazine February 2003)

175g/6oz self-raising flour

50g/2oz porridge oats

140g/5oz muscovado sugar (regular caster sugar also work just fine)

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 egg, beaten

150ml/1/4 pint buttermilk (a mix of half milk and half natural yoghurt works just as well)

1 tsp vanilla extract

6 tbsp sunflower oil

175g/6oz stoned prunes, chopped

85g/3oz pecans

1) Preheat the oven to 200c/gas 6/fan 180c. Line a muffin tray with 6-8 muffin cases.

2) Put the flour, oats, sugar, cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda in a large bowl and mix together.

3) Beat the egg then stir in the buttermilk, vanilla and oil. Lightly stir the egg mixture into the flour.

4) Fold in the prunes and pecans.

5) Divide between the muffin cases then bake for 20-25 minutes until risen and golden. Serve warm or cold.

A spare egg white

The Viennese Biscuits I posted about previously resulted in a spare egg white which gave me an excellent excuse to bake the following recipe. This is one of my all-time favourite recipes and ranks very highly on my effort/reward scale! (I will try and elaborate on this at a later date). In short, they are ridiculously easy to make and taste fantastic.

Forgotten Cookies

(by David Oppedisano writing in Good Food Magazine)

2 large egg whites

120g (4 1/2 oz) golden caster sugar

120g (4 1/2 oz) pecan nuts, roughly chopped

150g (5oz) dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa solids), roughly chopped

1 tsp vanilla extract

1) Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas Mark 4. Line two baking sheets with foil.

2) In a large clean bowl, whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff and dry. Gradually whisk in the sugar to make a thick and glossy meringue. Gently fold in the nuts, chocolate and vanilla.

3) Spoon heaped teaspoonfuls on to the baking sheets. These don't tend to spread a great deal so you don't need to leave huge gaps.

4) Put the sheets in the oven, then turn it off and leave the cookies for at least 3 hours, overnight, or until the oven is cold.

5) Carefully peel the cookies from the foil and store in an airtight container.