Cinnamony-Coconutty-Carrot Cake!!! :)

I know I am posting alot of fruity cake type recipes at the moment - I hope this is ok with everyone! ;) The reason for this being is that my granny is over visiting us as we speak and she does needless to say love her fruit cakes ;) And here is the cake I made today - a scrummy moist carrot cake flavoured with a wee bit of coconut and a sprinkling of cinnamon! :)

Ingredients..

• 150 g coarsely grated carrot (I used 2 medium sized carrots. Top the carrots and remove the outer skin before grating them. Dont worry if the amount is a little abbove 150 g of course! :)
• 2 large eggs
• 125 ml sunflower oil
• pinch ofsalt
• 125 g self-raising flour
• 1 heaped tsp ground cinnamon
• 125 g light brown soft sugar
• 25 g dessicated coconut

Method..

• Preheat oven to 180c/160c fan. Grease a 20 cm square cake tin. Line the base with baking paper.
• Sieve the flour, cinnamon and salt into a bowl. Stir in the brown sugar. before you add the sugar, sift through it with your fingers to make sure there are no hard little clumps. Crumble these between your fingers so that they disintegrate into fine grains if you come across any.
• Beat the eggs lightly in a jug. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients. Add the beaten eggs and the oil. Mix well with an electric mixer for about three minutes until well blended. Pause the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl halfway through the mixing to assure it is all nicely incorporated.
• Using a large metal spoon, fold in the grated carrot and the coconut.
• Transfer to the prepared tin. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes, until risen, golden and slightly firm to the touch. 
• Cool in the tin and then cut into 12 (or 9 or 16, depending on how big or small you want them:) ) squares. Once cool , store in an airtight container, preferably in the fridge, and eat within three days. The carrot cake is so moist that it usually doesn't keep as long as other cakes might, especially in warm weather! So be sure to eat it up when it;s still lovely and fresh :)

Apple crumble cupcakes!! ;)

Apple and cinnamon...ahh, the two of them are just made for each other, aren't they? Once autumn comes round and cooking apples start plopping down from the heavily-laden fruit trees and accumulating themselves on the soft, leaf-covered ground - seemingly begging to be utilised in some scrumptious way - the door of the little cupboard in the corner of my kitchen which houses my well-stocked stash of spices and herbs may find itself bbeing opened more frequently than usual; with several cannisters of my favourite-ever spice having been placed at the very front of this said cupboard for ease of access. ;) Apple pie, apple crumble, apple cake, apple turnovers...the list of possibilities when it comes to putting cooking apples to good use in the bakery is endless. If only the same could be said for the seemingly never-ending supply of cooking apples from the orchard. For before we know it, autumn is over, and we're back to mud-stained wellies, broken umbrellas from  gale-strong winds, and endless flickings of the kettle switch in order for yet another pot of tea to be put on to brew, for yes, it sure is bloody freezin' out there today chucks!!!. Ahh, just some of the many joys of winter at Derryguile House. ;)

But one thing about this lovely, but rather nippy time of the year  that does not fill me with enthusiasm is the fact that beneath those very trees which, only a few months ago, were literally groaning with the weight of so many gorgeous apples, now nothing at all remains, save perhaps the odd shrivelly mushroom or some sort of tough-stemmed weed which has some sort of unnatural resistance to wet and cold. No more fresh apples!! And if the case may be that I do get in a rather fruity mood and in the need of something sweet, appley and cinnamonny...well I have to somewhat reluctantly plod down to Tescos in the hope that they will have some nice cooking apples that aren't too miserable-looking. But earlier this week, I had something of a dilemma.I really, really wanted to make something of an appley-cinnamony kind...but there was not one cooking apple to be found in Tesco or Lidl. But before I could resign myself to despair and defeat...a-ha.... what was to be found at the very back of yet another one of my bottomless cupboards?? A jar of Coleman's apple sauce!!! ;)

And so I rustled up these scrummy little buns, with the limited ingredients I had...but I reaped very fruitful rewards from my experimenting indeed. I ended up with a batch of golden, lightly-spiced, seductively moist and totally irresistible little cupcakes which, when eaten warm from the oven with a splodge of custard on the side, make the perfect treat for a cold winter's evening. <3

Ingredients :)

For the crumbly topping...

• 50 g plain flour
• 45 g butter, diced
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 50 g demerara sugar

For the cupcakes...

• 150 g self-raising flour
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 90 g demerara sugar
• 60 g margarine, softened
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• A 280 g jar (or around that ;) ) of good quality, chunky apple sauce
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Method :)

1. Preheat the oven to 180 c/160 c fan. Put 14 paper bun cases in fairy cake tins.
2. Make the crumble mix first. Dice the butter into small cubes. In a bowl, stir together the plain flour, the cinnamon and the 50 g demerara sugar. Lightly Rub the diced butter into this mix using your fingertips.
3. next, make the cupcakes: beat the margarine in a bowl with an electric mixer until very soft, then add the demerara sugar and mix well for a couple of minutes until fluffy. 
4. Sift the flour and cinnamon together in a separate bowl.
5. Add about one quarter of the beaten egg, along with a small spoonful of the sifted flour mix. Beat well until incorporated.
6. Repeat the process, adding a quarter of the egg and a spoonful of flour at a time, and beating well between each of the additions, until all of the egg has been used up.
7. Empty the jar of apple sauce into a deep bowl. Add the bicarbonate of soda to the apple, and mixwith a spoon. Be careful as it will fizz up!
8. Spoon half of the apple sauce into the cake batter, and then add half of the remaining sifted flour. Fold gently in with a large metal spoon. 
9. repeat with the remainder of both the apple sauce and the flour.
10. Distribute the cake batter equally amongst the paper cases in the fairy cake tins. Add a sprinkling of crumble mix to the top of each, pressing down very gently with your fingers.
11. Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes, until risen and golden. Leave them in the tins for abbout 5-10 minutes before very carefully transferring to a wire rack to cool. :) xxx

Plum crumble. :)

I want now to make a humble crumble apology to this delightful dessert that I made a good while ago now...gosh, I think it must have been 2 months ago :o at the beginning of autumn...one of my favourite times of the year, it has to be said. All the colours and the ripening fruits and berries on the trees, and the first few grumbles of "it's cold" floating about in the air alongside the twittering of the swallows as the prepare to depart to warmer climes. And in the orchards of our gardens, one can occasionally hear the odd plop or thud as a ripened fruit drops from its branch to the grassy floor beneath its parent tree.
 AND then another falls...and another...and another. And as is often the case when one is lucky enough to have their own fruit trees, supply can be found to be greater than demand. It's lovely to be able to have an apple a day, but in general we don't want to have anymore than that. And so unfortunately - and this is a source of great sadness to Ganache-Elf - walking amongst fruit trees at this time of year is often a scenario which involves a great deal of squishing and slipperiness. Yes, one of the few sights of autumn that doesn't fill me with pleasure...for yes, similar to the way I don't like wasting my Oreos (see previous post.. ;) ), I do so hate to see any kind of lovely fruit go to waste. So it is crucial, in order to maintain this wonderful sense of tranquility brought about at this time of year, to come up with some yummy ideas to utilise as much ripening fruit as possible.

At the very bottom of our garden, we have a small cluster of apple trees, and also a plum tree. Which funnily enough never yielded anything for the past sixteen years we've been at Derryguile House. But this year...it's as if the plum tree felt the sudden need to make up for its general fruitless-ness by producing a bumper crop of purpley-red plums.
 Trying to think of ways to use up cooking apples isn't too difficult as I am sure you all know. But plums are something I am not quite so familiar with. Up to this year I admit, I actually don't think I have had a plum before. Biting into one, I had a rather unpleasant surprise to find a little stone inside, which I found rather off-putting. These little guys were just like smaller versions of the much-loved nectarine, only not quite as sweet and with half the quantity of succulent fleshy fruit around the stone. And I had LOADS of them. What on earth was I going to use them for? And then, once again, Daddy Dearest comes to my rescue with a request for plum crumble.

Now I have to say, daddy is (or maybe that should be was..for (sniff sniff) crumble is most certainly not included on the healthy heart diet... :( ) one of those people who really, really does appreciate a good hearty crumble. This, however, was my first ever plum crumble...and I was, initially, pretty much certain that this new addition to the crumbly collection would never, surely, prove as popular as the classic apple and blackberry, or the scrumptious rhubarb. There's just something so wonderfully simple and comforting about crumble; in its irresistible combination of sweet, soft fruit, topped by a buttery, sugary mixture which is delicately crunchy in texture, though not too hard on the teeth...and yes, even though I often feel inclined to put twice the amount of toothpaste on the brush to clean my teeth afterwards to counteract such an intense hit of sugar, crumble always will hold a very special place in my heart and in my kitchen. It's one of the first things I baked as a little girl. And that first ever crumble was, needless to say, NOT plum. So did I rhu (heehee) substituting the beloved rhubarb for my glut of ripening plums? Was I berry wrong to make the risky decision of not using the traditional filling of blackberry and apple, for the sake of using up all these surplus plums?

Well no, I didn't, actually. Try this recipe out for yourself and you will understand exactly what I mean. I can honestly say that plum crumble is as equally delicious as its more popular counterparts...if not even yummier.
Ingredients

For the crumble...

• 225 g plain flour
• 125 g butter or margarine
• 125 g demerara or granulated sugar, or half of each. 
• A little extra demerara sugar, for sprinkling 

For plum crumble...

• about 600 g fresh ripe dessert plums, halved and stoned. 
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon.
• 2 tbsp light brown soft sugar.

• Preheat oven to 180c/160. Grease a deep overnproof dish. Mine is round and about 20 cm in diameter.:)
• Grease the dish and lay the halved plums, cut side up, in a neat, even layer in the bottom of the tin. You might need to lay some of the halves on top of eachother, but that's ok.:) Once you've used up all the plums, sprinkle with the soft brown sugar and the cinnamon.
• To make the crumble, sift the flour into a bowl, stir in the 125 g sugar, and then dice the butter/margarine into small cubes.
• Rub the fat into the flour and sugar. Do this with your fingertips, lightly rubbing the cubes of butter/margarine until you end up with a fine, breadcrumbley mixture. Hold your hands high above the mixture as you do this, keeping your hands about the level of the bowl rim.
• Once the butter is completely rubbed in - there should be no big lumps of fat - sprinkle the crumble mix all over the plums in the dish. 
• Sprinkle over the extra demerara sugar.
• Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes, until the crumble is pale golden and the filling is hot.
• It is DIVINE served warm, with custard...mmmmmmm. :)

Carrot, coconut, cinnamon...and a wee bit of ginger too. :)

These little guys were rustled up today in my spare time…well we have just had our first (hoorah!) long-awaited glut of carrots from the garden…but I’m afraid I wasn’t permitted to use THEM in the featured cupcakes above, oh no. You see carrots were on offer this week in Aldi, so in the fridge we already had tonnes of these wonderful orange vegetables, and then just today daddy comes in through the back door of the house with his arms full of homegrown ones. Which we are having later on for dinner, btw – so it was up to me to use up those ones in the fridge, some way. Well, what better way than carrot cake? But hang on – these are even better than carrot cake…light scrumptious little cupcakes packed full of grated carrot, ginger, cinnamon..and one of my alltime favourite ingredients…dessicated coconut.

Ingredients

About 2 - 3 carrots, depending on size: you need approx 150 g worth of grated carrot. 

110 g soft light brown sugar

6 tbsp sunflower oil

30 g dessicated coconut 

1 large egg

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

75 g self-raising flour

Pinch of salt

A little icing sugar for dusting

Method

 Line a muffin pan with 6 paper muffin cases. Preheat oven to 170/150c fan.

Sift the flour, bicarbonate, salt and spices into a small bowl.

Beat the egg in a separate bowl with a wooden spoon or electric mixer and add the oil and the sugar. Mix well once more until well blended.

Top and tail the carrots, peel and then coarsely grate them (ganache elf tip: prepare them just before you need them so you don’t need to worry about them going brown or storing in water to prevent that. ;)

Add the carrot, coconut, flour, bicarbonate, spices and salt to the egg mixture and fold in with a large metal spoon.

Carefully fill the muffin cases with the mixture (I usually pour straight from the bowl – but you can use a spoon if you would prefer…but the mixture is quite sloppy so be warned ;) ). Place the tray in the preheated oven and bake for about 20-25minutes, until well risen, light golden brown and springy to the touch.  

Leave in the tin for about 5 mins before removing carefully and placing on a wire rack to cool. dust with icing sugar before serving. They don't keep very long because they are so moist and are low in fat, so try to eat as fresh as possible - bit they should be fine kept in an airtight tin for up to four/five days. :)