Berry Ricotta Cake

Recently, I had some ricotta and frozen berries to use up, so what better way to do so than in a cake!

I topped my slice of cake with some Greek yoghurt - delicious, especially when the cake is still just warm.

The recipe for this Berry Ricotta Cake comes from Woolworths Fresh Ideas magazine. If  you are interested in making it, here is the recipe:

TWD - A Big Banana Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is A Big Banana Cake. The original is a three layer banana cake containing allspice and Greek Yoghurt, topped and filled with biscoff cream cheese frosting.

I didn’t have an immediate use for a big banana cake, so I made a half recipe and turned it into 12 cupcakes instead.

I made a third of the frosting recipe which was more than enough to frost the 12 cupcakes.

The highlight for me was the biscoff cream cheese frosting - it’s so good.

To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Adam Liaw’s Lemon and Ricotta Cake

This week, I made Adam Liaw’s Lemon and Ricotta Cake recipe.
 

This light lemony cake doubles as a dessert with icecream or custard.

I enjoyed this cake heated slightly just on its own with a cuppa.

Look at the texture - lush! It comes from the ricotta and olive oil in the cake.

This recipe is a “keeper”.

TWD - Morning Bundt Cake

This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Morning Bundt Cake. It is so called because it contains lots of breakfast ingredients - muesli, yoghurt, orange juice, dried fruit and nuts.

This recipe makes quite a large cake, but it’s big and beautiful. The hot cake is brushed with a citrus juice syrup, which emphasises the orange flavour from the orange chunks and zest in the cake.

I really enjoyed this cake - much more than I thought I would. The tea towel my cake is a displayed on was a gift from a friend’s New Zealnd trip and it is beautiful.

To see what everyone else made this week, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Strawberry-Rhubarb Squares

This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Strawberry-Rhubarb Squares. It’s summer in the US, so this recipe is a great way to showcase summer fruit. It’s winter here, so I am enjoying summer vicariously through baking.

 This is a delicious cake which has a high proportion of fruit to cake. The fruit is not sugared so its tartness contrasts with the sweet honey and buttermilk cake.

I found the batter challenging to spread over the recommended 9” pan - it is only a thin layer and it takes quite a bit of work to make it cover the pan.

This cake was delicious served with a dollop of Greek yoghurt.

To see what everyone else made this week and their thoughts about it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Double-Decker Salted Caramel Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Double-Decker Salted Caramel Cake. Dorie describes this as caramel upon caramel, and she’s right - a caramel cake is filled and frosted with caramel icing. However, as she rightly says, the slight bitterness of the caramel means that the cake is not too sweet.
 

The cake is cut in half and filled with icing to make it double decker. The icing is made with icing sugar and homemade caramel sauce. For some contrast, I topped my cake with white chocolate bits.

This is a moist, light cake with yummy caramelised edges, and the gooey caramel frosting adds that bit extra. I liked this cake, but wouldn’t go so far as saying I loved it. It’s one for the caramel lovers.

To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Breakfast-In-Rome Lemon Cake

 This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Breakfast-In-Rome Lemon Cake. Dorie developed this recipe to produce a cake which mimicked a cake she ate daily as a treat in Rome.

The cake is a lemon sponge made with oil instead of butter. Dorie’s beloved version was completely plain, but she suggests adding berries in summer. I added blackberries to my cake.

Dorie suggests that this cake be served with just a dusting of icing sugar. However, as it is nearly Easter, I adorned my cake with a lemon glaze and mini Easter eggs.

To see what everyone else made this month and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Chunky Lemon Cornmeal Cake

 This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Chunky Lemon Cornmeal Cake. It is so called because it contains chopped lemon pulp as well as lemon zest, together with cornmeal. Oh, and it contains sumac!

Yep, those specks in the cake are from sumac.

Although this cake is completely unadorned, it’s big on flavour. The cornmeal adds texture to the lemon flavoured crumb.

To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - The Everything Cake

This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is The Everything Cake. The cake gets its moniker because its basic sponge batter can be left as is or paired with a multitude of flavours.
 

I chose to add frozen blueberries and blackberries to my cake, as well as rubbing some lime zest into the sugar. I am not sure if it was due to the berries, but my cake took nearly an hour to bake, double the time quoted in the recipe.

This cake is super easy to make, but super delicious. I think the addition of juicy berries was a great option, as it added colour and texture to the cake.

I ate a generous slice paired with Greek yoghurt and a cuppa. Yum!

To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Banana Breakfast Squares

This week’s recipe for Tuesday with Dorie is Banana Breakfast Squares.

Like it says on the tin, these squares contain bananas. They also contain coffee, pecans, dates and flax seeds.

I only made a half recipe and still ended up with a lot of squares. They taste good, and freeze well - win, win.

To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Lamingtons

 This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is lamingtons. I haven’t made lamingtons for a long time because, as Mardi mentioned, they are rather messy to make.

That said, I love eating lamingtons, so I was happy to make them.

I found the genoise cake base to be a but denser than the lamingtons I am used to, but still good to eat.

I ended up having to make extra icing to get all 16 lamingtons covered.

It’s National Lamington Day on 21 July, so this was a timely recipe.

To see what everyone made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

TWD - Curd, Cream and Berry Cake

 This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Curd, Cream and Berry Cake. 

This rather decadent creation features a sponge cake, brushed with citrus flavoured syrup, and filled with a marscapone/meringue/whipped cream mixture, fresh berries and citrus curd.

I used some homemade blood orange curd and strawberries, blackberries and raspberries.

The number of dishes involved in making this cake was out there, but the cake was easy enough to make.

The end result tasted good, but I think it could have been filled with just whipped cream and berries and still have tasted good.

To see what everyone else made this week and their views on it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Glazed Apple and Pecan Cake for the Coronation

Today is the Coronation of King Charles III. I am interested from a sense of history and a love of the theatre of such occasions rather than anything.
 

It is on occasion begging for a cake, so I flipped through Tea at the Palace by Carolyn Robb, former personal chef to Charles and Diana. I settled on baking a cake from the Sandringham section, the Glazed Apple and Pecan Cake. 

Carolyn describes this cake as “bursting with the flavours of autumn”. It is very autumnal here today, and I had all of the ingredients on hand, so this was the perfect cake for me.

My cake is red because I didn’t have apricot jam to glaze it with, so I used red jam instead. I think it makes the cake look like an exotic jewel, very fitting in the circumstances.

I enjoyed a slice of this cake for afternoon tea, and can say it is delicious. It is also a breeze to nake, being a “melt and mix” cake.

Will you be watching the Coronation? Are you attending a Coronation party, and if yes, what sort of party fare will you be enjoying?

TWD - Mocha-Walnut Torte

 This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Mocha-Walnut Torte.

I didn’t have enough walnuts, so I used almonds instead. This worked out well, as I took it to a friend’s house for dessert and her husband has a walnut allergy.

I didn’t bother putting anything on top of my torte, but my friend served it with butterscotch and gingerbread icecream - yum. I loved the nutty interior of this cake.

To see what everyone else made this week and what hey thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Bara Brith

For St David’s Day, the Welsh National Day, I made Nigella’s Bara Brith recipe. You can find it online here.

 You can mix up the flavours of the Bara Brith by using different dried fruits and different flavoured teas to soak the fruit in. While currants are a must, I went non-traditional with the rest of the fruit, using cranberries and dates. This was of necessity to use what I had rather than by design, but it turned out well.

You can butter the slices of Bara Brith as Nigella suggests, but I served it without, like any fruit cake.

TWD - Swedish Fika Cake

 This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Swedish Fika Cake. It’s a buttery cake topped with a caramel-almond mixture that is designed to be enjoyed with coffee or tea for a morning or afternoon break.

All I can say about this cake is yum!! Caramel + almonds + buttery cake is my idea of delicious.

Do yourself a favour if you can and make this cake!

To see what everyone else made this week and what they thought of it, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.

Halloween Pumpkin Cupcakes

It’s Halloween tomorrow, so just for fun, I made some Halloween pumpkin cupcakes. 

The pumpkin cupcake recipe contains minimal sugar and is super simple to make. The recipe is available online at Kidspot here. I only made half to yield 6 cupcakes.
 

I iced my cupcakes with cream cheese frosting tinted orange. For 6 cupcakes, this recipe at Taste.com was sufficient.

The cute Halloween cupcake papers and toppers are from Coles supermarket.

For those who celebrate Halloween, I hope you have a fun night!

TWD - Java Mini Mads

 This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Java Mini Mads. These are coffee flavoured madeleines, baked in mini muffin tins.

I decided just to bake mine in a normal madeleine pan, yielding 12 madeleines.

These were delicious. The humps that I got on these were smaller than I normally get, but I’m ok with that.

To see what everyone else made this week, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.