Sunday 22 January 2012

making up for lost time!


As I mentioned in an earlier post, I haven’t been cooking that much so far this month. I more than made up for things this weekend.
On Friday I made sweet potato falafels with haloumi. On Saturday we had the in-laws over, where I made a recipe on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s page in the Guardian for bulgur wheat and tomato soup, a meaty version of a vegetarian filo pastry pie and steamed apple pudding.
Currently in the oven are: doughnut muffins (I’ve nick-named them “duffins”), coffee cake and parsnip and golden syrup cake. More on how these turned out later in the week.


UPDATE: 18.02.12
Yes, very remiss of me... I forgot to follow up on the parsnip and golden syrup cake, which was a hit! Huge hit. 
The original recipe comes from the November 2011 edition of Delicious magazine. My version went like this:


175g butter
250g cassonde (brown sugar)
3 dessert spoons of golden syrup
3 eggs
250g flour
1 teaspoon of baking powder
A good teaspoon of mixed spice and ginger
250g (2 large) grated parsnips
1 apple, also grated


Heat oven to 160°. I used a square tin, about 18cm in diameter, greased and lined. 


Melt the butter, sugar and the golden syrup in a large pot. You make the cake in the pot, so you will need the space. 


Cool the liquid and whisk the eggs in. Sift in the flour, baking powder and the spices and fold this in. Fold through too the grated parsnips and apples. Pour this into the cake tin. 


The recipe says to cook for 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes. I always find that my cakes need longer, regardless of the oven, so I end up covering them with tinfoil. I cooked this cake for an hour and a half. Once cooked, stand it for about 5 minutes so that it shrinks slightly from the tin, before turning it onto a wire rack.


The cake is really delicious - gooey end earthy, and it smells divine. The parsnip taste is not at all overpowering. 


Parsnip cake. Delicious. Try it. You know you want to!




While I'm here, the coffee cake was 50/50 - I ended up making the cake twice as it was too low (I wanted a 'tall' cake). The first batch was too dense while the second batch was perfect. I don't know what I did different the second time... Just one of the great mysteries of the kitchen.
The duffins were great - another success with family and colleagues. I used a few different types of jam - raspberry, rhubarb and lime - as these ends were lurking in the fridge begging to be finished. Mmmmmmm.



2 comments:

  1. what happened to the parsnip cake? success or not?
    thx

    ReplyDelete
  2. How was the parsnip cake? success or failure?
    thanks

    ReplyDelete