Summer Cherry Crumble Cake (with a hint of rum)

Summer Cherry Crumble Cake (with a hint of rum)

It’s finally summer! After myself and Conor having the most difficult years of our degrees, final year exams for him and five weeks of exams myself, we are done and can enjoy baking and cooking again!

So what could be more summery than a cheery cherry crumble cake?

Ingredients

2 cup self-rising flour

½ cup dairy free butter

1 cup sugar

1 cup soya milk

1 tbsp vinegar

1 large pack cherries (or as many as you desire – chopped and halved)

1-2 tsp rum essence +/- vanilla essence (optional)

Crumble:

- 1¼ cup flour

- ½ cup dairy free butter

- ½ cup sugar

Preheat oven to 180˚

1. Mix soya milk and vinegar and leave to stand briefly.

2. Mix sugar and butter together in a bowl. Add in flour. Add in essence if using (or real rum).

3. Add in soya milk/vinegar mixture and mix.

4. Transfer mixture to greased cake tin (preferably lined with baking paper), top with cherries.

5. Crumble: cut flour and butter together using a butter knife, then add in sugar. Make to fine breadcrumb consistency using the tips of your fingers.

Add crumble mixture on top of the cherry layer in the cake pan.

6. Bake for about 40-50mins or until toothpick comes out clean.

Going to have a lot of cooking now to make up for the year I hope! : )

Coffee Walnut Cake

Coffee Walnut Cake

Recently Conor’s future supervisor gave him a bag of walnuts off a tree at home, telling him they’d be great as walnut cake. Well we thought coffee would taste so good with walnuts in cake…

Took a while to de-shell enough, but it was worth it!

Ingredients:

- 1.5 cups self raising flour

- 1 cup sugar

- ¾ cup strong brewed coffee (if using instant: make up 3/4 cup coffee with about ~1-2tbsp instant)

- ½ cup oil

- ½ cup walnuts

Preheat oven to 180°

1. As always, mix the wet ingredients (coffee, oil), mix the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, walnuts).

2. Mix the two sets together.

3. Put mix into a greased sponge tray and bake in oven for 15-20mins (or until browned).

4. Decorate as you please. We just made up a simple icing (mix some coffee with icing sugar) and topped with walnuts. 

Simple and quick recipe – as it should be!

P.S. The tip to making good cake is knowing your oven. For example, the above recipe works perfectly if you have a good oven, like in Conor’s house back home. In Conor’s oven in his student place though the oven is overly powerful and cooks the cake quickly, so we add another ½ cup of flour to the mix. 

Simple Waffles

Simple Waffles

One of the things I’ve always wanted to try was those sweet waffles you can only really buy (in Ireland no one has waffle makers). However, to my luck I recently came across a shop that was closing down and one of the stock it was selling off was a waffle maker for €10…

Ingredients:

- 2 cups flour

- 1.5 cups dairy free milk (eg soya)

- ⅓- ½ cup sugar (as per your taste)

- 2 tbsp dairy free butter or oil

- Vanilla essence

(cinnamon if desired!)

1. Melt the butter in the microwave (or use oil), mix with milk and vanilla essence. Add sugar, then flour.

2. Put in waffle maker as per directions.

Top with syrup, fruit, jam or whatever your heart desires :)

This recipe is really probably not all too different from the one Conor uses to make his delicious pancakes… which we keep meaning to put up except he usually makes it ‘by feel’ and the pancakes get eaten before we think of photos (as we’re hungry in the morning!). Except we’re making pancakes more often this year than any (everytime I finish a rotation block really!) so should be making some again soon…

Hazelnut praline (vanilla) cake

Hazelnut praline (vanilla) cake

So, currently for the last four weeks I’ve been living out of a B&B in Navan for this rotation (except weekends, which is how I finally made this!). Recently enough, we were sitting around in the B&B and this Rachel Allen baking show came on, starting off with a demonstration of how to make hazelnut praline cake.

Watching this all I could think was how dreadfully complicated it looked and how many ingredients it needed… Who would want to make that cake after seeing such hassle?

Anyways, I decided that I could make a much simpler (which is particularly important for students!) and vegan version. Cake should always be simple – the more this is true, the more cake there is going around!

This cake is very rich and indulgent though – when we made it us and friends could only manage one slice each (after a vegan lasagne dinner though).

 

Ingredients: Cake: 3 cups flour (self raising) 2 cups sugar for cake 1.5 cup soya milk (or other, or water) 1 cup oil 1 tsp vanilla essence (or butterscotch essence) Icing sugar for icing Custard (or just make icing instead!: water + icing sugar): 3tbsp Sugar, vanilla essence 1.5tbsp Cornflour 3/4 cup soya milk

Praline: 1 pack hazelnuts (whole, but chopped would be easier I’d guess) 1 cup sugar (I went with normal brown sugar as I feel brown=caramelize, but it doesn’t matter which type much) 1 tbsp dairy free butter (or use oil)

Preheat oven to 180°

1. -For cake: As always, for the cake: mix the wet ingredients, mix the dry ingredients. Mix the two sets together.

-Split mix into two greased sponge trays and bake in oven for 15-20mins (until browned)

-Once cooked: cut the top off one of them (to be flat, so the other can go atop it!)

2. -Make custard: Put custard ingredients in a pot, boil off on medium heat until thickens to custard consistency.

3. -For praline: Put 1tbsp dairy free butter (or oil) in pot and add sugar. Cook at low heat until it starts caramelising, then add the hazelnuts (reserve some whole ones for decorating if wanted). Continue cooking until caramelises (see pics) and let cool to harden.

-Once hardened, put in a blender/hand blend (can also crush with rolling pin I think) until fine crumbly consistency. 

4. Mix some of the praline crumble with the custard mix (about half), and reserve the rest for decorating (if desired). Spread onto the sponge cake that is to be the bottom one, and put the other one on top. Decorate as wanted (I just iced it (icing sugar + water) and sprinkled the rest of the praline on top).

You can make this a chocolate hazelnut praline cake easily – just add 2-3tbsp cocoa powder.

We ran out of icing sugar so couldn’t do the ‘stiff peak pointy effect’ that the Rachel Allen cake has… But this is easily achievable I’m sure with icing made to be more mouldable (less water basically).

May be making this again in two weeks so we’ll see!

Conor didn’t like the ‘running over the edge’ thing I did with the icing, whereas I thought it made it look more indulgent (like it’s ready to burst with nom nom nom )

P.S. We had extra praline left over, so we added it to this: (just use soya milk/dairy free butter/oil to make vegan): artofdessert.blogspot.ie/2010/11/quick-fix-microwave-brownie.html