French Almond Cake

I've had a bag of almond flour sitting in my cupboard waiting for the right recipe...

It was time.  

French Almond Cake

• 110g unsalted butter, melted
• 120g caster sugar 
• 3 large eggs, beaten
• 90g ground almonds (almond powder/almond flour/almond meal)
• 40g all purpose flour
• 2/3 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon milk (any type)
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 
• Optional: 1 tablespoon flaked almonds for sprinkling
• Icing sugar for dusting

Recipe inspiration: here.

Almond Buttercream Icing

• 25g unsalted butter
• 3 tablespoons milk (any type)
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 150g powdered/icing sugar

Makes an 8" cake.

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Pre-heat your oven to 180C.

Begin by melting the butter (about 50 seconds in the microwave), then add the milk and eggs.  Mix well.  Add the vanilla extract and baking powder.  Add the almond flour, stir well, then add in the all purpose flour.

Grease your cake tin, and pour in the mixture.  

Lick the spoon.

Bake for 15min, then cover the top with foil.  Bake for another 20 - 25minutes.  

It's done when you insert a fork into the middle and it comes out clean.  Let it cool, then either dust with icing sugar or ice with almond buttercream icing!

Optional, but recommended: let giant rowers devour entire cake.

Bagels!

If there's one thing I miss from the states, it's the bagels.

Bagels are meant to have a chewy crust, doughy inside and be pleasantly plump.  Here, I find them lacking a bit in the chewy crust, and they're often more bread-like than bagel-like on the inside.  I decided to have a whack at attempting the fabled bagel...

They turned out a wee bit small and the holes shrunk, but taste-wise, spot-on.

Bagels

• 4g dried, active yeast + 50ml warm water
• 225g self-raising flour
• 150ml warm water
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt

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Dissolve your yeast and 1 tablespoon of sugar in the 50ml of warm water.  Stir and wait until it's frothy.

In the same bowl, add the 150ml of warm water, followed by the flour, in 50g increments.  Work together with a fork, then use your hands to mold it into a ball.  This is going to be a very soft dough, compared to the other bread doughs you've seen on this blog, so you might have to create your own new 'kneading' technique.  For this one, I oiled my hands, picked up the ball and simply threw it down into the bowl, over and over again.  It both stretched it and prevented the soft dough from sticking to my fingers.

Plus, it gave me an excuse to throw things.  Awesome.

Form into a ball, oil the sides of your bowl, and cover in clingfilm.

Let it rise for about an hour, or until it's at least doubled in size.  

Stare out the window while you wait.  Admire this strange 'sun' object.

Begin boiling a large pot of water.  Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of sugar to the water.  Re-oil your hands, and divide the mixture into 5 roughly equal sized balls (I totally failed at this).  To create the hole, I "spun" the dough around the handle of a spoon.  You definitely want the hole to be a bit bigger than you think, as it'll shrink massively during cooking.  Massively.

Also, click that oven on to 220C.

The key to getting chewy bagels is to boil them before baking them!  When your pot of water comes to a low boil, add one or two formed bagels to the water.  They'll rise to the top of the pot pretty quickly.  Give them about 1 minute on each side, flipping with a slotted spoon or spatula.

Drain them on the spoon/spatula, then place on your oiled baking sheet.  I used foil because my baking sheet ran away.

Repeat the boiling process with all of your dough balls/bagels-to-be.  

Make sure to add any toppings at this stage.  You can sea that I put sea salt on two, and drizzled honey on one.  The other two I left plain.

Such a weird texture pre-baking.  But it makes for the chewiness, so we'll deal with it.

Chuck 'em in the 220C oven for about 15 minutes, then turn down the oven to 200C for another 15-20min. I accidentally left them on 220C for a wee bit too long... 

They still taste nice!

The one on the right seems to have grown a horn... interesting...

Mmmmmmmmm butter.

These are pretty small sized bagels, so if you wanted ginormous ones (maybe for sandwiches or the like), you could do only 2 or 3 bagels out of this recipe.  

Tastes like home.

Oatmeal Walnut Cake with Date Caramel

So.  I wanted to make some good ole fashioned oatmeal cookies.  But... my cookie sheet had gone missing. No surprises, there.  I only had a round tin available... cue the CAKE!

Or, well, cookie-esque, dense cake.  With delicious topping.

Oatmeal Walnut Cake with Date Caramel

The Cake

• 2/3 cup unsalted butter (~150g) - thinking you could also do half butter, half greek yogurt.. will need to try.
• 2/3 cup light soft brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1.5 teaspoons cinnamon
• 3 cups jumbo/large oats (ie, not the porridge kind)
• handful of crushed walnuts

Date Caramel

• 3 handfuls of dates, stoned (I used Whitworths)
• 1/2 cup milk (you may need more/less.  Will describe later)
• 2 tablespoons of light soft brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

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Preheat your oven to 190C/350F.  Melt your butter in the microwave, then add the flour, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, baking soda and vanilla.  Stir in the eggs.  Add the oats and walnuts last, making sure to distribute them evenly into the mixture.

Grease your round cake tin before pouring in the mixture.  Place the cake in the oven for roughly 30 minutes.

Pre-icing...

As the cake cooks, make your date caramel!

I had never done this before, so it was mostly a shot in the dark... but it seemed to work well!  Heat a small saucepan on low-to-medium heat, adding 1/4 cup of the milk, the sugar, vanilla and all of the dates.  When it comes to the boil, lower the heat slightly and begin stirring every few seconds.  The dates will begin to soften, at which point you can begin 'smooshing' them with the back of your spoon, thus making the mixture much thicker and smoother.  The dates can't be entirely smooshed, so you will have a few date bits hanging around, but I personally think that's even better!  Continue adding the milk until you reach your desired consistency.  Remove from heat and let cool.

When the cake is semi-cooled, feel free to frost it with your caramel!

Oatmeal cake, pre-icing

As you can see, I also added a bit of desiccated coconut on top for flare...

This buddy should feed a small army.  Or, 8 ravenous individuals.

This cake was a true hit with my rowing comrades.  Three cheers for cake!