Coffee and Walnut Cake | The Thursday Murder Club

‘So you have a suspect? How wonderful! What do you make of the coffee and walnut?’ says Joyce.
Chris lifts a slide of coffee-and-walnut cake to his mouth and takes a bite. Also better than M&S. Joyce, you wizard!
The Thursday Murder Club
Richard Osman

I have a vague memory of last updating this blog and thinking, yep - I’m totally going to be more frequent with my recipe updates. Cut to more than a month later and apparently that was a lie. Slowly sorting my brain out.

Took some time this week to make a cake for the house, an amazingly spiced walnut and coffee cake that was so delicious. From the fantastic Thursday Murder Club, a hilarious novel that I recommend picking up if you have time.

Coffee and Walnut Cake
Ingredients
150g roasted walnuts
2 tsp ground cinnamon
215g butter
1 tbsp dark brown sugar
300g raw caster sugar
210ml milk
2 tbsp instant coffee
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
360g plain flour
2 tsp bi-carb soda
Pinch salt
1 tsp vanilla
Icing sugar, to dust

1. Preheat oven to 160C and grease a bundt cake tin and dust with flour.

2. On a low heat melt 30g of the butter, mix in the dark brown sugar, cinnamon and walnuts. Put to the side to cool.

3. Combine 110ml of the milk with the apple cider vinegar and mix, leave to the side to curdle.

4. Combine the remaining milk, vanilla and instant coffee, whisk until the coffee is mixed in and frothy. Put to the side.

5. Cream together the remaining butter and raw caster sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the milk and vinegar mixture and stir. Add in the flour, salt and bi-carb soda and then the coffee milk mixture. Mix well until all flour has been combined.

6. Pour half of the cake batter into the prepared tin, pour the walnut butter mixture over the batter in the tin and then add in the remaining cake batter over the top and smooth over.

7. Bake for approx. 55 minutes. Leave to cool before turning the cake carefully out onto a cake tray to cool. Dust with icing sugar and serve with coffee or tea. Enjoy!
   
   

Honey Cakes | The Hobbit

This is what he promised to do for them. He would provide ponies for each of them, and a horse for Gandalf, for their journey to the forest, and he would lade them with food to last them for weeks with care, and packed so as to be as easy as possible to carry - nuts, flour, sealed jars of dried fruits, and red earthenware pots of honey, and twice baked cakes that would keep good for a long time, and on a little of which they could march far.
The Hobbit
J.R.R Tolkien

It is maybe my dream to go and live in a tiny hobbit hole built into the side of a hill, and spend my time gardening, baking and generally enjoying life. I’ve been called a hobbit many times by people and to be fair, I can identify with the delights of a cozy home and multiple breakfasts.

I read The Hobbit for the first time when I was quite young, attempting to follow it up with The Lord of the Rings. That one was quite not as successfully read - I definitely read it, but understood nothing.

I definitely want to revisit the dinner Bilbo is forced to relinquish to the dwarves when they first interrupt his quiet life. But, I was gifted this incredible honeycomb cake tin for Christmas and wanted something to test out with it - it came out so beautiful and now I want to make every cake in it.

These honey cakes aren’t quite what I think would have been packed by Beorn for the dwarves journey. Bryt from In Literature has created what is probably the most accurate representation of them, more of a biscotti, hard cake that could be packed and would last for days. Mine is much more of a - eat it fresh from the oven in a cosy hobbit hole, kind of cake.

*Note: I don’t use honey in my cooking as it is not plant based. I generally use replacements like rice malt syrup or maple syrup which are just as good. If you do use honey, reduce the amount by about 20g, as it is quite a bit sweeter than rice malt syrup.

Honey Cakes
Ingredients
250g plain flour
200g butter
100g muscovado sugar
200g rice malt syrup OR honey *see note
1 tsp bi-carb soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
2 tsp ground ginger
180ml milk
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
Oil or butter, to grease the cake tin
20g cornmeal
Syrup
140g rice malt syrup OR honey
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
20g muscovado sugar
Sea salt

1. Preheat the oven to 180C, and grease your cake tin. This can be be done in muffin tins also - but reduce the baking time by ten minutes and keep an eye at them so they don’t overcook.

2. Combine the milk and apple cider vinegar together and leave for around 5 minutes to curdle into a buttermilk.

3. Heat the butter, muscovado sugar, and rice malt syrup/honey on a low heat - until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved in.

4. Combine the flour, bi-carb soda, baking powder, ground spices, adding in the butter mixture and buttermilk and combining until all lumps of flour have been mixed in.

5. Before you pour the cake batter into the tin, sprinkle the cornmeal across the greased surface of the tin - this will help have it not stick - and also look quite nice when it comes out of the oven.

6. Bake for around 30 minutes, checking it after 25 minutes with a skewer to see if the middle is cooked.

7. While the cake is baking, combine all the syrup ingredients into a small saucepan and cook on a low heat until the sugar has dissolved into the rice malt syrup/honey.

8. Pour the syrup across the cake to serve - I served mine with an oat cream and it was delicious!
   

Chocolate Cake | Call Me by Your Name

When I looked at my dessert plate and saw the chocolate plate speckled with raspberry juice, it seemed to me that someone was pouring more and more red sauce than usual, and that the sauce seemed to be coming from the ceiling above my head until it suddenly hit me that it was steaming from my nose.
Call Me by Your Name
André Aciman

Spring is filling the air recently, the days are getting warmer and I've been setting up picnic blankets in the front yard during the past week - spending hours outside with my work computer and notes, soaking up the warmth. It may just be the stricter restrictions that the city has been living with in the past month, but the urge to move to a tiny cottage with chickens, a vegetable garden and somewhere to pick wild mushrooms has been rising a lot.

As picturesque as the above could be, I would miss the streets of Melbourne immeasurably I am sure. I'm contenting myself with ordering seeds and herbs from stores, planting an array of vegetables in pots and containers that line the kitchen table.

I picked up Call Me by Your Name again recently, someone at work mentioned wanting to read more so we've begun a tiny book club, something to keep him more accountable of having reading goals. The first on his list was Call Me by Your Name - the perfect excuse to do a re-read. There is no better time to read this book than spring I think - the words within the pages make me want to spend a spring and summer in Italy, picking fruit from trees and running barefoot around the grass. I'll have to make do with the flourless chocolate cake and raspberry coulis below, a dense, incredible cake that honestly took so many tries to get right. Most flourless chocolate cake recipes require 4 - 8 eggs, and the vegan versions I found had avocado, silken tofu and other substitutes that just don't sound that appealing. Chickpea flour worked a treat though - keeping the dense texture of the cake, but ensuring that it would not fall apart.

*Note: this recipe needs a strong binder since it's flourless - chickpea flour works quite well. But if you do eat eggs, you can remove the chickpea flour and instead replace it with 4 eggs.

Chocolate Cake and Raspberry Coulis
Ingredients
Cake
200g almond meal
2 tbsp cocoa, sifted
150g caster sugar
100ml milk
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp bi-carb soda
9 tbsp chickpea flour *see note
9 tbsp water
1 tsp vanilla extract
200g butter
180g dark chocolate, chopped
30 ml coffee liquor or coffee
Raspberry Coulis
150g raspberries, if using frozen leave the water out of the recipe
60g caster sugar
30ml water
Juice of one lemon

Cake

1. Preheat your oven to 160C and prepare a springform tin, grease it well and layer with baking paper.

2. Combine the chickpea flour and water together, stir well. It should become quite thick - you don't want it too watery. Put it to the side for now.

3. Combine the butter, dark chocolate, cocoa and coffee or coffee liquor in a sauce pan and heat on a medium heat. Stir as it melts so it all becomes combined into a smooth mixture and add in the vanilla. Put to the side to cool.

4. Mix the apple cider vinegar and milk together and place to the side to let it curdle into buttermilk.

5. Combine the almond meal, bi-carb and sugar together in a large bowl and add in the melted chocolate mixture, the chickpea and water mix, and the buttermilk. Stir well - you don't want lumps of the chickpea mix to remain solid in the batter.

6. Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 60 - 70 minutes. Check on it frequently - if you're not using eggs, under baking this cake runs the risk of it collapsing and not holding together properly.

7. Test to see if it's ready by inserting a skewer, if wet batter comes out it's not done. When it has cooked, let it cool completely before removing from the pan.

Coulis

1. Combine all the ingredients into a saucepan and heat over a low heat. Cook for around 10 - 20 minutes or until the raspberries begin to mush together into a sauce and the sugar has dissolved.

2. Once done, cool in the fridge and it will thicken. I like my sauce with the seeds and whatnot in it, but you can strain it out if you want a smooth sauce.

3. Serve with the cake and enjoy!

Madeleines | The Essex Serpent

Charles commanded an awestruck girl in a white apron to bring at least a dozen of the cakes she personally liked best, and a gallon of tea. She evidently favoured coconut: there were macaroons, and speckled shortbread, and lozenges of cake doused in raspberry jam and rolled in coconut flakes. Cora, who'd walked several miles that morning, placidly ate her way towards a centrepiece of madeleines.
The Essex Serpent
Sarah Perry

I think Melbourne going into much stricter restrictions recently has driven my reading habits much more towards that of the Victoria era. I've been rushing through numerous Jane Austen's and Brontes', savouring the descriptions of the dreary moors or the spring time in country sides that seem very out of reach to myself at the moment.

The Essex Serpent was a great addition to add to the wistful dreaming. A town by the ocean, with numerous occupants and an overarching mystery of the serpent that hunts them, mixed in with a wistful romance and longing from afar? Perfect.

When I am finally allowed to take in the outside again, and spend more than just an allotted hour getting exercise, I have numerous plans of how I will spend my days. Trips to local museums, picnics in parks and a visit to the coast. The below recipe of madeleines is bound to make an appearance in many of the upcoming picnics.

Years ago, I worked at a small cafe that made all their cakes and pastries from scratch in the kitchen, I have memories of serving up delicate madeleines on floral china with cups of tea, wondering what the appeal in the tiny cakes was exactly. Now having made them - I get it. They're so good. I think my household cleared the two batches I made in one weekend within a few hours, inhaling one after another with alternating cups of tea and coffee.

*Note: aquafaba is the liquid from a can of chickpeas - it's a good replacement for egg whites. I've made this recipe with and without it - and honestly it's fine without it as well, they still turned out great. But adding it in does make the mixture more airy and light. 

Madeleines
Makes approx 18 - 20
Ingredients
120g butter, melted and at room temp
1 tbsp aquafaba *see note
100g caster sugar
90ml milk
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1 tsp vanilla extract
135g plain flour, sifted
1 tsp bi-carb soda
Sea salt
Icing sugar, to garnish after baking

1. Combine the juice of the lemon and the milk together, mix and let sit for around 5 minutes or until it curdles.

2. In the bowl of stand mixer (or if you have very strong arms and a good whisk, any bowl you want) combine the sugar, aquafaba and curdled milk, beat for around 8 - 10 minutes until well combined. Add in the vanilla extract and the lemon zest and mix till combined.

3. Remove from the mixer ad gently fold in the sifted flour, bi-carb soda and salt. Do it bit by bit, so the mixture stays slightly fluffy.

4. Slowly pour in the melted butter, it will take a bit to work it into the mixture but once you have it should be thick and shiny. Place the batter into the fridge for about half an hour.

5. Five minutes before the batter comes out of the fridge preheat your oven to 180C and prepare your madeleine tray/s, greasing with a little extra melted butter.

6. The batter from the fridge should be slightly sponge like, leave it like this and do not mix it. Use a table spoon to place a scoop of the mixture into each of the moulds on the tray, don't worry about smoothing it out - it will do so in the oven.

7. Bake for around 10 - 15 minutes, checking on them every few minutes. The edges should be slightly more browned than the middle but if you leave them too long the edges will burn and become quite crunchy.

8. When they're ready, remove them from the oven and turn the tray out onto a cooling rack - the madeleines should fall out easily.

9. Dust with icing sugar and enjoy with a coffee or cup of tea!

Vanilla Layer Cake | Anne of Green Gables

The cake did rise, however, and came out of the oven as light and feathery as golden foam. Anne, flushed with delight, clapped it together with layers of ruby jelly, and, in imagination, saw Mrs Allan eating it and possibly asking for another piece!
Anne of Green Gables
L.M Montgomery

I dived into Anne of Green Gables for the (what I thought) first time recently - I found a very scraggly copy at a local bookstores sale and had the price knocked down to a mere $2 based on the fact that the back few pages had basically been cut off. The further I got into it's pages, the more familiar it seemed and I realised that I had actually read this book before. It must have been when I was quite young, young enough to have no solid memory but enough that small pieces came back to me the further in I read.

Like many children's books, there's an abundance of cosiness and quaintness throughout the pages, bringing forth images of cottages, spring time and, of course, baking. I tried my hand at the cake Anne so desperately wants to impress Mrs Allan with, an attempt that fails when she accidentally replaces the necessary vanilla with medicine instead. This cake is luckily fluffy, delicious and very full of vanilla.

Though don't make my mistake and bake is during a quarantine as you will be forced to either eat it all yourself, or force it onto a roommate or partner.

Vanilla Layer Cake
Ingredients
Cake
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 cups milk
620g plain flour
450g raw caster sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp bi-carb soda
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 tsp vanilla extract
Pinch sea salt
Frosting
100g vegetable shortening, softened
250g butter, softened
500g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
Pinch sea salt
Jam of your choice

1. Preheat oven to 180C, and prepare three 8” cake tins - greasing the sides and bottoms well. I recommend putting a circle of baking paper at the bottom as well, it’ll help get them out better.

2. Combine the vinegar and milk and let it sit to the side to curdle - will take about five minutes or so. If it gets a bit chunky - perfect!

3. Combine the flour, baking power bi-carb soda, sugar and salt together in a large mixing bowl.

4. Add the oil and vanilla extract to the vinegar and milk and add to the mixed dry ingredients. Mix until everything is combined but make sure not to over-mix.

5. Divide the batter between the three prepared tins and bake for about 30 - 35 minutes or until the tops are golden and a skewer inserted int he middle comes out clean.

6. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for about ten minutes before removing the cakes from the tins. Turn them out onto a cooling rack and wait till they are completed cooled before frosting. You can pop them in the fridge to rush the process along a little if needed.

7. While the cakes cooling - prepare the frosting. Combine the shortening and butter in the bowl of a mixer and cream until fluffy.

8. Add in the vanilla, salt before gradually adding in the icing sugar a little at a time until it has all combined. It should be fluffy and easy to spread.

9. Sandwich the three cake layers together with a good layer of the jam and frosting between - depending how skilled you are at cake frosting, either decorate the sides of the cake or have it as is! Either way will be delicious, and I guarantee even if this cake isn’t the prettiest at the end, it will still be delicious.

10. Enjoy!

Lemon Rosemary Bundt Cake | The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

The room filled with the smell of warming butter and sugar and lemon and eggs, and at five, the timer buzzed and I pulled out the cake and placed it on the stovetop. The house was quiet.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Aimee Bender

I turned 30 at the beginning of this year. It was an interesting milestone, that assumption that one should be filled with dread at the prospect of their thirties, the end of their carefree twenties. There's a slightly different feeling I have about it though, because in all honesty I think I probably had the mentality of someone in their thirties for the last six years. Declining any big nights out to instead stay in with a new television show, a book or a particularly delicious take away meal.

My 30th wasn't much different. After an incredible 10 course dinner at a local restaurant, my night was spent greedily watching reruns of Buffy (I forgot how amazing that show is) and scoffing slices of the lemon rosemary bundt cake I'd made earlier that day.

The inspiration for the cake came from a book that I surprisingly had many people recommend to me, insisting I'd find many meals I'd be wanting to recreate from its pages. Well, I had already read it and they were correct. I'd been wanting to find an excuse to make a lemon cake, I much prefer to the tartness of it compared to other cakes, and the glimpse of my copy of the book as I wandered past the bookshelf was enough to have me bundling up lemons at the local farmers market, and picking twigs of rosemary from a neighbours front yard.

This cake is quite delicious, enough so that between myself and my partner we practically demolished it within the day.

Lemon Rosemary Bundt Cake
IngredientsCake
2 1/4 cups plain flour
2/3 cup raw caster sugar
Zest of one lemon
2 sprigs of rosemary, stripped from the trig and diced very finely
1 tbsp vinegar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bi-carb soda
1tbsp cornflour
1/2 tsp salt
115g butter, softened
190ml milk
3 tbsp yoghurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
Glaze1 cup icing sugar + extra just in case
Juice of one lemon

Cake

1. Preheat oven to 180C and prepare a 22cm bundt pan (if you have a different size one - it'll likely be totally fine) by greasing the inside thoroughly and then sprinkling a light scattering over flour throughout.

2. Combine the vinegar, yoghurt and the milk, leaving to the side for five minutes or until the milk curdles into buttermilk.

3. Sift the flour and cornflour together into a large bowl, adding in the bi-carb, baking soda, diced rosemary and salt.

4. In a seperate bowl cream together the butter and raw caster sugar until light and fluffy. Adding in the vanilla, zest and curdled milk, combine until well mixed.

5. Slowly add in the flour, making sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl as you go and transfer into the prepared cake tin.

6. Bake for around 40 - 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Remove from the oven and leave in the pan for at least 10 minutes before gently transferring it onto a cooling rack. Leave to cool completely before glazing.

Glaze

1. Combine the icing sugar and lemon juice into a bowl and mix until it is a firm glaze. You may need to add a little more icing sugar or a little more liquid - depending on how runny you want it to be.

2. Drizzle over the the cooled cake. You can garnish with some sprigs of rosemary, lemon zest or lemon slices - what ever you want. Enjoy!