Thomasina Miers' Pumpkin Spice Cake with Ginger Icing

Another gem of a recipe that I recently found in The Guardian was Thomasina Miers' Roast Pumpkin, Olive Oil and Nutmeg Cake with Ginger Icing.  I just loved the sound of this cake, and I already had some of the ingredients, including the  pumpkin.

Of course, I didn't make the recipe exactly as written.  Instead of roasting my pumpkin, I boiled it - the weather was too warm for me to want to put the oven on for the extra time to roast the pumpkin.  Also, since I tidied out my pantry cupboard, I cannot find my nutmeg.  This is why I have changed the name of the cake to just Pumpkin Spice Cake.

I think it turned out nicely - here's a peek inside the halved cake:

The ginger buttercream was a revelation - so tasty that I would make it again for other applications.

And the finished cake - it was devine:

Tempted?  To make this cake (with my modifications), you will need:

300g mashed pumpkin
300g plain flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg (if you find it!)
3 eggs
125g brown sugar
175g white sugar
100ml buttermilk (or a tablespoon of lemon juice used to sour 100ml milk) 
150ml olive oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract 

For the icing:

150g softened butter
100g cream cheese
1 x 3cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled
280g icing sugar

Preheat your oven to 180C and grease and line an 8" round springform pan.

Sift the flour, salt, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and spices into a large mixing bowl.

Break the eggs into a small bowl and beat lightly with a fork.

Put the pumpkin puree, eggs, olive oil and vanilla into a food processor and blitz. Make a well in the centre of the flour and pour in the pumpkin mixture, and quickly fold together. 

Pour the cake batter into the prepared springform pan and bake for 45-50 minutes or until cooked through. Remove the cake from the oven and cool in the tin for 10 minutes before unmoulding it onto a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the icing, beat the butter for five minutes in a stand mixer until pale and creamy. Chop the cream cheese into cubes then beat it into the butter until smooth. Finely grate the ginger and beat it into the icing.  Add one third of the icing sugar to the mixture and beat in, then repeat with the remaining icing sugar in two lots.  Place the icing in the fridge to set. 

Cut the cooled cake in half, and spread the bottom half with half the icing.  Place the other half of the cake on top,  then spread the remaining icing on the cake however you please to decorate.

Slice the cake and enjoy!

Tuna with spaghetti, peas and borlotti beans

I am very proud of me.  I recently commenced on the seemingly insurmountable task of weeding out my cooking magazines, which  had started to take over my apartment.  I started this mammoth task with a set of about 10 magazines that were still in their plastic  and had lived under the bed three apartments ago ands been lugged around ever since.  I opened the mint condition plastic around those magazines and went through them one by one, tearing out recipes I might make and discarding the rest.

I have since done the same with the mountains of food magazines perched on furniture in my spare room.  I have gone though nearly five years worth of food magazines.  Now all that is left are the more fortunate magazines that found a place in my bookshelves.

One of the recipes that I tore from that first batch of magazines was a recipe for Spaghetti with Tuna, Peas and Borlotti Beans, on p 88 of the February 2009 edition of Delicious magazine.  I am forever searching for work lunch dishes - I need something hearty and filling, and I get bored easily. 

This dish exceeded my expectations.  Spaghetti with borlotti beans sounded - well weird.  However, the combination of ingredients was really flavourful, and the beans make it a really filling dish.  I made it even heartier by using wholemeal pasta.

To make this dish, you will need:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 finely chopped onion
3 finely chopped cloves garlic
1/3 cup tomato paste
pinch of dried chilli flakes
4 tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and chopped
400g borlotti beans, rinsed and drained
400g can tuna in springwater,  drained and flaked
1 cup thawed frozen peas (I used frozen mixed vegetables)
400g spaghetti (I used 250g - heaps!!)

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat.  Add the onion and cook for 1-2 minutes until soft.  Add the garlic and tomato paste and cook for 1 minute, stirring from time to time.  Add the chilli flakes, fresh tomato, borlotti beans and 1 cup water, then bring the mixture to a simmer.   Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes or until the sauce has thickened, stirring from time to time.

Stir in the tuna and the peas/vegetables, and cook for around 3 minutes or until the vegetables soften.

While the sauce is simmering, cook the spaghetti according to the packet instructions.  Serve the spaghetti topped with the sauce and ton basil leaves (if desired).

TWD - Cocoa Linzer Cookies

Happy Boxing Day!  I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas Day.

Being Tuesday, our last Tuesdays with Dorie recipe for 2017 is Cocoa Linzer Cookies.  Dorie adds cocoa and chocolate to the traditional Linzer cookie to create a new treat.

I made a few tweaks to the recipe to match the ingredients I had in the house.  Almonds were replaced by hazelnuts; raspberry jam was replaced with strawberry jam.  I also just plain forgot to dust the finished cookies with "snow" (icing sugar).

While these cookies tasted good, I think I like the traditional Linzer cookie better.  I found that the chocolate flavour in these took away some of the sweetness without adding richness.

However, these cookies looked the part, and someone at work told me that they thought I had bought them. 

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

Merry Christmas from Melbourne!

Collins Place

 101 Collins St

 833 Collins St

 Brunettis, Flinders Lane

Brunettis, Flinders Lane

 Collins Square

 Federation Square

The Skinny Dog, Kew

Spiced Christmas Nuts

The last item in my Christmas treat boxes was Spiced Christmas Nuts.  I made these as a contrast to the sweet items.  I used a Julie Goodwin recipe which seemed to have the right amount of kick, but not too much.

These nuts are very easy to make, which persuaded me to go ahead even when I thought I couldn't be bothered making anything else.  They are very moorish, so if you are giving them away, you will have to try hard not to snack on them.

For these nuts, you will need:

1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
 1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground chilli
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 egg whites
50og unsalted mixed nuts

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius.  Line a baking tray with baking paper or a silicone mat. 

Put the sugar, paprika, salt, pepper, chilli and cinnamon in a bowl.  In another bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy. 

Add the nuts to the egg whites and toss to coat.  In small handfuls, coat the nuts in the spices.

Place the nuts on the lined baking tray and bake for 20 minutes, then remove from the oven and allow to cool on the tray.

Here are the boxes that I used for my Christmas treats this year:

I also added Soft Salted-Butter Caramels from Tuesdays with Dorie to the boxes.  Some people also received peach jam:

I wish you and your families and friends a wonderful festive season.

Hazelnut strawberry macaroons (Haselnussmakronen)

My second cookie recipe in my Christmas treat boxes is Luisa Weiss's Hazelnut Raspberry Macaroons - or, in my case, Hazelnut Strawberry Macaroons.  The recipe again was in The Guardian.  They are the perfect colours for the season, in red and white.

These cookies, like the Cinnamon Almond Stars, are gluten free and dairy free, so they are perfect for people who are intolerant of or just want to avoid either gluten or dairy or both.

The hazelnut macaroons are much simpler to make than the Cinnamon Almond Stars, with no cutter required and no fiddly meringue topping to apply.  If you are looking for bang for your time buck, these cookies are the money pick.  Just be aware that they don't travel as well as the Cinnamon Almond Stars because the jam stays sticky. (I wrapped these in Glad Wrap to ensure that they didn't coat everything else in the treat box in jam.)

I saved even more time by buying roasted skinned hazelnuts.  Hazelnuts can be a pain to skin so I was happy not to have to do it.

If you love a festive looking, totally delicious cookie that is easy to make, these are the ones to make.  
To bake them, you will need:

230-290g hazelnuts, roasted and skinned 
2 egg whites
¼ teaspoon salt
150g white sugar
150g red jam

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Celsius and line two baking trays with silicone mats or baking paper.

Grind the nuts in a food processor into a fine meal..

Whip the egg whites and salt in a mixing bowl until frothy, then gradually add the sugar to the bowl, beating until soft peaks form. Using a rubber spatula, fold in all but ¼ cup of the ground hazelnuts. Add some or all of the remaining ground hazelnuts only if needed to make a thick mixture that keeps its shape when dolloped onto a tray.

Place heaped teaspoons of cookie mixture onto the baking trays, leaving around an inch between them. Bake in the oven, one tray at a time, for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and immediately press a hollow or "thumbprint" into the middle of each cookie with the back of a teaspoon. Cool on a wire rack, while repeating with the second tray of cookies.

While the cookies are still warm, heat the jam in a microwave until liquefied. Spoon a small amount of liquefied jam into the hollow of each cookie. Allow the jam to set and the cookies to cool completely.

TWD - Chocolate Salami

This week's Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Chocolate Salami.  Sounds weird, yeah?  It's not actually salami but rather a candy-like concoction containing sugar eggs, cocoa, biscuit pieces, dried apricots and pistachios.  It gets its name solely from its appearance.

The chocolate salami looks pretty, but is very rich and does not maintain its shape well out of the fridge for too long.  It was OK, but not something I'd make again.

To see what the others thought of their recipe this week, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.