Strawberry Cream Cake for The Melbourne Cake Club - Springtime

On Thursday night, seven members of The Melbourne Cake Club met at Lady Grange in St Kilda to celebrate Springtime and eat cake.

My cake was a Strawberry Cream Cake decorated with a flower and spring-coloured decorations.

The recipe for my cake came from Christine McConnell's Deceptive Desserts, which was a birthday present this year.  The book is gorgeous and the cakes spookily sensational.  However, I am largely going to use the book for its unusual cake and icing recipes, as there is very little guidance in the book as to how to go about assembling Christine's detailed creations.  The cake layers contain fresh strawberries and strawberry jelly crystals:

as does the icing:

Instead of decorating my cake as in the book, I left the strawberry icing as the outer layer, and stuck non-pariels over the top of the cake, and positioned coloured cachous around the outer edge.  I finished it off with a sugar rose:

This is what the finished cake looks like inside:

To make the strawberry cream cake, you will need:

225g butter
2 1/2 cups plain flour (I used gluten free flour)
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 tablespoons strawberry jelly crystals
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk (I used 1 cup milk with 1 tablespoon lemon juice in it)
2/3 cup chopped fresh strawberries

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  Grease and line 3 x 9" cake tins.

Cream the butter and sugar in a stand mixer.  Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until combined.  Add the melon juice and vanilla and beat well.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, jelly crystals, baking soda and salt.  Add the flour mix and buttermilk to the cake batter alternately, starting and ending with flour, and beat on low speed until combined.  Fold in the strawberries by hand with a rubber spatula.

Divide the batter evenly between the three cake tins and bake for 35-45 minutes or until cooked through.  Allow the cakes to cool in their tins for 10 minutes before unmoulding and immediately wrapping in cling film, and refrigerate until chilled.

For the icing:

1 cup fresh strawberries
250g softened butter
4 cups icing sugar (I accidentally only used 3 and it worked fine)
2 tablespoons strawberry jelly crystals
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon salt

Hull the strawberries and blend to a puree in a food processor.  Put the puree in a small saucepan and simmer over medium heat until reduced by half.

Cream the butter in a stand mixer, then add the icing sugar, 1 cup at a time, until well combined.  Add the jelly crystals, vanilla and salt and beat well.  Add the cooled strawberry reduction and beat until combined.

Decorate the cakes as you want to!

The other array of springtime cakes at The Melbourne Cake Club were:

Lavender Marble Cake by Judy

Mango Coconut Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting by Nicole

Orange Blossom Cake by Abi

Ricotta Cheesecake by Sue

Vanilla Cake with Blueberries and Lemon by Karen

White Chocolate Cake with Rose Flavoured White Chocolate Buttercream and Modelling Chocolate Roses by Dalya.

If you are in Melbourne and would like to join The Melbourne Cake Club, you can - our Facebook page is here and our Meetup page is here. We meet on the second Thursday night of each month from 8pm to 9.30pm at various venues.

EwE - Spaghetti Frittata - Perfect Pasta

I chose this week's Eating with Ellie theme of Perfect Pasta.  Pasta is not one of my favourite foods, but I guess at the time of choosing the theme, I was trying to be alliterative.  Don't get me wrong - pasta is OK - but it is not something I ate much of growing up, hence I would not miss it much if I never had it.

The recipe that I chose is Ellie's Spaghetti Frittata.  Granted, this dish does not look very attractive - the spaghetti makes it look like something from a Halloween party - but it tastes really good.

The frittata contains spaghetti, spinach, onion, sun-dried tomatoes and cheese.  I'd probably replace the sun-dried tomatoes with fresh cherry tomatoes if I made this again, as I found the strong flavour of the sun-dried tomatoes a little out of place here.

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

TWD - Caramel Tart

It's Tuesday with Dorie, and this month, for my first recipe, I chose the Caramel Tart.  It's basically a caramel custard baked inside Dorie's sweet shortcrust pastry.

Yeah nah - mine doesn't look anything like the pretty food stylist's photograph on the Web:

When I re-read the recipe, I realised that the two separate layers resulted from leaving the foam on the filling of the tart.  Despite my tart being somewhat of an ugly duckling, it tasted good.  I liked it slightly warm, and it was even better when I did what I was told and allowed it to chill completely.

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

Paleo Salted Caramel Slice

It's time for a change of pace, and today, I have a paleo recipe from Michelle Bridges' new book, Food for Life.  I have tried a few recipes, both sweet and savoury, from Michelle's book, and I'd be lying if I said that I loved them.  However, if the super healthy diet is your thing, then Michelle's book could be for you.

One of the recipes that I tried is Michelle's Salted Caramel Slice from p308 of the book.  Now don't get too excited - while this recipe has the word "caramel" in it and it looks not unlike the real deal, it tastes nothing like it.  Unlike other paleo caramel slice recipes that I have seen, this one does not use dates for sweetness, and it ends up being more on the salty side.  I made it while I was on secondment at a government agency where a lot of the other lawyers were vegetarian and/or into alternative diets, so this went down a treat with them.  However, if you don't have such an audience, be prepared for at least some disappointment when your guests bite into this slice.

Michelle warns that this slice is fairly calorie dense, and that would be correct, as it contains lots of coconut oil, nuts and nut products.  The pieces are tiny but pack 250 calories per serve.

If you would like to give this recipe a burl, here goes:

1 cup raw macadamias
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
1/2 cup softened coconut oil

Caramel

1/2 cup softened coconut oil
1/3 cup tahini
1/3 cup maple syrup
3 tablespoons coconut milk
3 tablespoons almond spread
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon sea salt flakes

Topping

1/2 cup coconut oil
3 tablespoons raw cacao powder
1 tablespoon maple syrup

Line a 20cm square tin with baking paper.
Put the macadamias, coconut and coconut oil into a food processor and process until well combined.  Press into the base of the prepared tin, and freeze for 20 minutes.

Put all of the caramel ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth.  Pour over the prepared base in the tin and freeze for 30 minutes.

Put all of the toping ingredients into  a bowl and whisk until smooth, then pour over the salted caramel in the tin.  Freeze for 20 minutes.

Remove the slice from the tin and leave out for 5 minutes to soften slightly.  Cut it into 20 pieces (ie 1cm square).  Serve chilled, sprinkled with a little extra sea salt if you like (I skipped it - it's already quite salty).

TWD - Peanut Butter Change-Ups

There is a new Tuesday with Dorie group baking from Dorie's Cookies, her latest book.  I only found out about this group by accident, so I am posting today instead of on Tuesday.  Luckily, the first month's recipes are on the Web, as the book was only released at the end of October.  It is quite appalling how much more we have to pay for books in Australia - this book costs $20 on Amazon, but the cheapest Australian source was nearly $50.   I have paid $41 Australian dollars to get this book from Amazon after postage, whereas US postage from Amazon is free.  I do not understand it, but if we want certain books here, we have to just suck it up. 

I chose to make the Peanut Butter Change-Ups from the two choices.  The recipe is online here.

These cookies were delish. I left out the extra peanuts because I didn't have any, and I left the sugar off the top because I didn't think that it needed it.  The cookies are soft and cake-like, but are still very much cookies.  I only made a half recipe because I didn't ant the 54 cookies that Dorie stated were in the full batch, but I only got 22 cookies out of the batch.  That's fine with me - I ate two already and don't need the temptation.

To see what the other Dorie cookie bakers made, visit the LYL section of the TWD website.  

EwE - Maple Squash Mash - Fall Harvest

Unsurprisingly, fall is a prominent theme for Eating with Ellie at the moment, and Margaret has continued on with this theme with her choice of Fall Harvest (Fall Veggies).  Although it is spring here, I am quite partial to whatever autumnal vegetables that are available, and this week, I chose squash (butternut pumpkin).

My recipe was Ellie's Maple Squash Mash from So Easy.  This one doesn't break any new ground - combine cooked mashed squash with butter, salt and maple syrup.  It's simple, but tasty. I have never seen frozen "squash" here, so I just boiled up some fresh squash. It was a tasty side.

To see what other autumnal veggie treats the others cooked up, visit the LYL section of the EwE website.

Nigella's Apricot and Almond Cake with Rosewater and Cardamom

Last year, I was given Simply Nigella for my birthday.  I have made quite a few recipes out of it now, and they are all winners in my eyes.

Most recently, I made Nigella's Apricot and Almond Cake with Rosewater and Cardamom:

This cake was really good  - moistness from the apricots, crunch from the pistachios, and just a whiff of gentle floral from the rosewater.

I liked this cake and would make it again. It is a little bit different from your average vanilla cake, and makes a nice change for morning tea.