Monday Recipe: Roman Honey Cake

I love archaeology, especially the archaeology of Roman Britain and as part of my Archaeology BA (which I have just graduated from so, go me!) I spent a year working in The Roman Baths Museum in Bath. The following recipe is taken from a post I wrote for the museum blog, a link to which can be found below. I take no credit for inventing this recipe it's one that is used at food themed events the museum holds. As soon as I find out where this recipe originally came from I shall post full credits.

The first thing most people think of when you mention Roman food is garum also known as fish sauce. Famously made from rotting fish entrails, the idea puts many people off Roman food. However there is a lot more too Roman food than fish sauce, plenty of Roman dishes don’t actually contain any, this is one such recipe.
I used a 17cm sandwich pan to bake this in, I wouldn't suggest using pans much bigger or smaller than this.

Fresh from the oven, please excuse the fact it's still in the pan!

Ingredients
200g/7oz clear honey
3 eggs
50g/2oz plain white flour

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C (350 F)/gas mark 3. Prepare a baking pan either by oiling it with vegetable oil (olive if you want to be really Roman!) or lining with baking parchment

2. Beat the eggs, and then slowly add the honey. Beat until all the honey is mixed in and the surface of the mix is covered in tiny bubbles

3. Sift the flour and carefully fold it into the mixture

4. Pour into the baking pan and bake for 30-40 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the thickest part of the cake comes out clean.

Serve warm and drizzled with more honey or enjoy it cold. Either way it’s absolutely delicious!!!

And now a selection of links
Original post on the Baths Blog
The Roman Baths Blog

Monday Recipe: Rhubarb and Custard Cupcakes

The rhubarb season is just coming to a close, but since I had some lying around and its way too hot here to be making a crumble it seemed like cake was the best option! So we have these lovely vanilla cupcakes filled with stewed rhubarb and custard, topped with a custard butter cream. 

I like to use pre-made custard for these, mostly because I’m too lazy to make my own custard! The ginger in the stewed rhubarb is optional, but I do recommend it, it helps to cut through the sweetness of the custard in the cakes and the custard butter cream. This recipe makes 8-10 cupcakes. I don’t suggest making these in a cupcake maker as you need a big cake for these and cupcake makers make rather small cakes!  

My favourite sweets!

Ingredients
Cake
115g/4oz butter
115g/4oz caster sugar
115g/4oz Self-rising flour, sifted
2 eggs, beaten
½ tsp vanilla extract

Custard Butter cream
75g/3oz butter
175g/6oz icing sugar, sifted
½ tsp vanilla extract
3 dessertspoons custard

Finishing Touches
Custard
Stewed rhubarb with ginger
Rhubarb and Custard sweets

Method
Make the stewed rhubarb by chopping up 2-3 sticks of rhubarb and placing it in a pan with a couple of tablespoons of sugar, a splash of water and about 1 teaspoon of powdered ginger. Cover and cook on a low heat for 15mins, stirring occasionally until the rhubarb breaks down. Leave to cool.

Make the cake by creaming together the butter and sugar, then beat in the eggs and vanilla extract. Fold in the flour and divide between the paper cases. Bake in the oven at gas mark 4 or 180 degrees C for 25mins until golden brown and cooked all the way through. Leave on a wire rack to cool.

Once the cakes are cooled, cut a hole in the top of each cake. Trim the piece of cake you removed so you get a flat piece of cake. Put a spoonful of the rhubarb into the hole, then a spoonful of custard and then place the flat piece of cake over the hole. Then cover with the butter cream and top with a rhubarb and custard sweet.

To make the butter cream, cream together the custard and the butter. Then beat in the vanilla and icing sugar until smooth. Chill before using!

I find these cakes are best served chilled, keeping the cakes cool helps to bring forward the flavour of the custard in the butter cream. The downside is that this does suppress the ginger flavour somewhat, but the ginger is only there to cut through the sweetness of the icing anyway!

Friday Review: The Great British Bake Off recipe book

Ok so I'm now having a few technical difficulities with the pictures in this post *grumble*. I'll fix it later!

As series 3 of The Great British Bake Off (TGBBO) started this week, the recipe book that accompanied series 2 of the show seemed like the perfect choice for this week’s review. So this week we have Linda Collister’s The Great British Bake Off, How to Bake the Perfect Victoria Sponge and Other Baking Secrets.Wow what a mouthful!



Available from: Amazon.co.uk

Nice clear layout and the top tips are well intergrated

So what do I like about it?
Well for starters the range of recipes is amazing; every chapter starts with an “easy introduction” recipe. For example the cake chapter starts with a Victoria Sponge, bread starts with a simple white loaf and so on. The recipes then go on to include the “technical challenges” from the show, these are Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry’s own recipes which are aimed at the more experienced baker. There are also the “Best of the Bake Off” recipes, these were invented by the contestants of the show and finally there are lots of normal recipes. These normal recipes also feature little icons which indicate if it's a good recipe for children to try, or good for celebrations etc. Basically no matter what you want to make you’ll find it in here or something pretty close to it. And as an added bonus there is a secret code hidden in the book which gives you access to the recipes cooked in the series finale. 

The chapters are really well organised and are they are all divided by type (cakes, bread, savoury pastry etc.), the general layout is fantastic, quite a lot of the recipes are accompanied by good clear photographs and everything is laid out in a clear manner. The layout really comes into its own when you consider the technical challenge recipes and the introduction recipes though; these pages feature good clear images of every step of the recipe with extremely detailed instructions. This layout makes these recipes a lot less daunting for the inexperienced.

 

Layout used for the
introduction and technical challenge recipes

In addition to all of this the start of each chapter features several pages of advice on how to avoid common pitfalls, what sort of equipment you need and just general good advice. And scattered throughout the book are lots of tips (including many from Paul and Mary) and tricks to make your baking easier and ensure success.

And what don’t I like?
To be honest, nothing. I really love this book and can’t find any real faults with it. The layout is splendid, the photography is superb and it’s full of excellent recipes for every skill level.  Everything is well written and there are lots of handy hints and advice scattered throughout the book. I suppose some readers might find the photographs of the contestants a little annoying, but since this book features their own recipes and is designed to accompany the TV series I think it makes perfect sense to have picture of the contestants!

So final rating? 5/5
This book is fantastic, it’s full of challenging recipes for the experienced baker and easy ones for beginners. There is so much practical advice in here I think success is pretty much guaranteed with every recipe no matter what your personal skill level! I really feel that this is one of the best recipe books available at the moment and is perfect to give someone if they are just getting into baking. Well worth the money! Based on how good this book is I am looking forward to getting the series 3 book!

Monday Recipe: Lemon Drizzle Cupcakes

Lemon drizzle is one of my favourite cakes, it’s tasty and easy to make. And it works pretty well as a cupcake. However speed is of the essence here, the lemon syrup must be added while the cakes are still hot! The usual rules apply, these quantities are designed for use in a Cupcake Maker, but the recipe can also be baked in the oven. This amount will make approximately 6 fairy sized cakes, but can easily be scaled up to make more.

I suggest leaving these on a plate to cool as the syrup can get everywhere!

Cake Ingredients:
1 large egg
50g/1oz Self-rising flour, sifted
50g/2oz Caster sugar
50g/2oz Softened butter or margarine
Zest of ½ a lemon

Syrup Ingredients:
Juice of 1 lemon
approx 2 tbsp’s of caster sugar

Method:
Cream together the butter and sugar then beat in the egg.  Then fold in the flour and lemon zest.
Divide between 6 cake cases and then bake in the cupcake maker for approximately 10 minutes or in the oven at Gas 4/180 C for about 15 minutes. The cakes are ready when a skewer inserted into the thickest part of the cake comes out clean!

While the cakes are cooking place the lemon juice and caster sugar into a saucepan and heat gently until the sugar is dissolved. Once dissolved taste and if desired add more sugar to taste, keep the syrup warm until the cakes are done. When the cakes are cooked, poke a couple of holes into the surface of the cake with a cocktail stick and immediately spoon over the lemon syrup.  
Leave on a wire rack (or plate!) to cool.

I find the best topping for these cakes is a plain water icing, just mix some icing sugar and water together until you are happy with the consistency and spoon over the cakes.

Friday Review: Cupcakes for Princesses

I thought it was about time I wrote a book review, if only to give you all a break from my obsession with Lakeland! The first book up for review is Cupcakes for Princesses by Love Food.

Available from: Amazon.co.uk

So what do I like?
I love the concept of the book; the book is sold as “the perfect cookbook for every little princess”. I love that, it’s really cute and the princess theme is continued throughout. The chapters are given titles like “party princess” and “pretty princess cupcakes” which is cute and there are some adorable photographs of little girls dressed as princesses. I love all that stuff, it’s very cute and most of the book is pink which matches the theme! There are also some lovely extras at the back, two templates for party name plates (a crown and a star) and some stencils for use when dusting icing sugar onto cakes and biscuits (crown, heart, flower and star). I will admit that these are one of the major reasons I brought this book!

Neat layout and cute photographs

Despite being called “Cupcakes for Princesses” there is a really nice variety of recipes, there are plenty of biscuit recipes and lots of other nice little things. There is even a recipe for mini-meringues! I haven’t tried any of the recipes in here yet but reading through them I can see that the instructions are clear and easy to follow.  The layout of the recipe pages is neat and organised, with every recipe page including at least one photograph of the finished product.

And what don’t I like?
This will seem strange given my praise in the previous paragraph but I don’t like the recipes much. I should rephrase that, I don’t like the cupcake recipes. With the exception of two recipes (warm strawberry cupcakes and lemon meringue cupcakes) all the cupcake recipes are for plain vanilla cakes which are just decorated differently! And on four occasions the decoration is just a vanilla butter cream with some sweets thrown on top! However for me the most annoying “recipe” are the “princess doughnuts”, why? Because this recipe basically tells you to make a simple water icing, dye it pink and then spoon it onto shop brought doughnuts! That is not a recipe in my mind.

Really not a fan of this font

I’m also not a huge fan of the font used throughout the book, it’s readable but I just prefer seeing something simple like Times New Roman or Arial used in publications.

So final verdict and score? I’ll give the book a 3/5
This is an ok book to give a child as their first cookbook, but I wouldn’t recommend it for girls above age 8 or 9. While I happen to find it cute, older children and adults will probably find the princess theme a little childish and I think young girls might get bored with some of the recipes on offer quite quickly.  The layout is generally ok, and the instructions are clear and concise which is good. But while there is some variety amongst the recipes I am really not happy with the standard of some of them.

Monday Recipe: Honeycomb Cupcakes

I admit it, a lot of my baking is fruit based at the moment as all my favourite fruits are in season. But not everyone likes fruit in their cakes so here is something a little different.  These cakes are made with honeycomb (also known as cinder toffee), sounds odd but it works very well in cakes. The heat of the oven causes the honeycomb to melt and turn into toffee, very tasty!

As per usual these quantities are designed for use in a cupcake maker and makes 6 fairy cake sized cakes. However they also work baked in the oven and can easily be scaled up to make more.
I normally use a 40g Cadbury’s Crunchie Bar for these but a handful of honeycomb pieces also works as would homemade honeycomb!



Left un-iced so you get an idea of the toffee made by the melted honeycomb



Ingredients:
1 large egg
50g/1oz Self-rising flour, sifted
50g/2oz Caster sugar
50g/2oz Softened butter or margarine
40g Crunchie bar or other form of honeycomb

Method:
Using a rolling pin, break the honeycomb bar into pieces. You want small pieces but try and avoid turning too much of the bar into dust!
Cream together the butter and sugar then beat in the egg, then fold in the flour and the smashed up honeycomb.  
Divide between 6 cake cases and then bake in the cupcake maker for approximately 10 minutes or in the oven at Gas 4/180 C for about 15 minutes. The cakes are ready when a skewer inserted into the thickest part of the cake comes out clean!
Leave on a wire rack to cool. When cool top with melted chocolate.

I like to mix some popping candy into the chocolate for a bit of fun, however if you don’t have any try sprinkling some more crushed honeycomb on top. Oh and a word of caution, make sure you break the honeycomb into small pieces, if you use large chunks when it melts during cooking you might get rather large holes in your cake!

Previews and an explanation

So over the last few weeks my updates have become a little patchy as my life has suddenly got a bit busier. I’ve had so much normal stuff to do in addition to starting a new volunteering job this week. However I’m on top of everything now so my normal posting schedule will be resumed on Monday.

Now I’ve explained myself here are some previews for future posts! Firstly there will be more recipes, in a couple of weeks I intend to post the first non-cupcake recipe. Secondly the Friday reviews should become a little more varied, I’m going to start the book reviews and some slightly more unusual products (which I promise won’t all be from Lakeland!). Finally I’m going to start occasionally posting on Wednesdays; these posts will be one-offs about specific subjects. Future Wednesday posts include: baking troubleshooting, kitchen essentials, discussions on cake sizes etc.

I’m also planning to introduce a series of themed posts entitled “My Dream Kitchen”; these posts will basically be me posting pictures of things I really like and kind of want! This will include kitchen gadgets/appliances, books, home decorations etc.

I hope you enjoyed this little preview and are looking forward to seeing the new posts on Princess Cupcake! Oh and I promise there will be layout improvements coming soon as well!