RSS Feed

Tag Archives: loaf

Pear and Sour Cherry Loaf

Posted on May 11, 2022 by The quirk and the cool

What to do with a couple of over ripe pears? Put them in a loaf of course and add sour cherries for a tangy flavour. And almond extract goes really well with both these ingredients!

A couple of things to say about this loaf. First, it’s an all-in-one loaf, and made in the food processor too. So it’s super simple. Believe me, the all-in-one method produces great results!

Secondly, I have been very interested in the Queen of Baking Mary Berry’s advocacy of baking spread, rather than butter, in cakes. I’ve used baking spread in Mary’s Victoria Sponge recipe and it produced a lovely textured sponge. So I have used baking spread in this recipe. But by all means, use butter if you prefer, but make sure it’s super soft.

Ingredients

125g caster sugar

125g baking spread (I use Nuttelex here in Australia)

2 free range eggs at room temperature

125g self raising flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon almond extract

2 very ripe pears, peeled, cored and cut into chunks

100g sour cherries

Method

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C. Butter a 21cm x 10cm loaf tin, or similar size.

Put everything except the cherries into the bowl of a food processor. Whizz until everything is combined. Don’t overdo it or the mixture will be tough.

Stir in the sour cherries.

Spoon the mixture into the loaf tin and place in the preheated oven. Bake for 20-25 minutes until a skewer inserted into the loaf comes out clean.

Cool completely in the tin before turning out as the loaf is quite fragile while warm.

Serve sprinkled with a little caster sugar. A dollop of cream or yoghurt would be nice – I had some passionfruit curd on hand so I smothered the loaf with a few spoonfuls!

Advertisement

1 Comment

Posted in Bread, Breakfast, Cakes, Dessert, Lunch, Sweet Food and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Lemon Drizzle Loaf

Posted on August 13, 2021 by The quirk and the cool

I know that most people have made a version of a lemon drizzle, but just because it is such a great and easy cake to make, I thought I would write up my version for anyone looking for a simple recipe.

It’s a great lockdown cake! And really easy as it’s an “all in one cake” – you just mix all the ingredients together in a bowl.

This week I had a Zoom cookalong during lockdown with a friend, and we made this cake, with great success. I have included photos in the post of both our lovely loafs.

While you can bake this in a round cake tin, we baked it into a loaf tin, which cuts into beautiful thick slices! If you haven’t got a loaf tin, bake it in a round cake tin, 18 cm or 20cm.

Tip: it’s important to have the butter really soft and the eggs at room temperature.

Ingredients

Cake

175g self-raising flour

175g caster sugar

175g very soft butter

3 large free-range eggs, at room temperature

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Zest of a lemon

3 tablespoons milk

Lemon Syrup

100g caster sugar

Juice of a lemon

Lemon Icing

Juice of 1/4 lemon

Enough icing sugar to make a dripping icing (about a cup)

Method

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees fan or 180 degrees non fan.

Grease a 21 cm loaf tin with butter. Line the base with baking paper.

To make the cake, place all the cake ingredients (minus the milk) into a large bowl. Using electric beaters, mix the ingredients to a smooth batter with no lumps.

Add the milk to loosen the batter.

Transfer the mixture to the loaf pan. Place in the preheated oven and bake for 35-45 minutes until the cake is brown on top and a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes our clean. Remove from the oven.

While the cake is baking, make the lemon syrup. Heat the sugar and lemon juice until the sugar is dissolved in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer and cook for a couple of minutes until slightly thickened.

Once the cake is out of the oven, prick all over with a skewer. Pour the warm syrup all over the cake. The cake is still in the pan.

Once cool, turn the cake onto a board or plate. Turn right way up.

Serve as is or with an optional simple lemon icing.

To make icing, put the lemon juice in a small bowl and then add enough icing sugar to make a dripping icing. Using a palette knife, drip a thin layer of lemon icing over the cake.

1 Comment

Posted in Cakes, Dessert, Sweet Food and tagged , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Healthy Banana Bread

Posted on May 28, 2021 by The quirk and the cool

Everyone loves banana bread! But the banana bread you get in cafes is really banana cake – too sweet and too “cakey” in texture! I picked up this recipe from a television show Hemsley +Hemsley: Healthy and Delicious. The Helmsley sisters cook food that is natural and healthy – grain, gluten and refined sugar free.

This banana bread is made with coconut flour and coconut oil. The sweetness comes from the bananas and some treacle and golden syrup. It does have 3 eggs. The bread cuts into 12 slices easily, so I think that distributes the extra calories quite well!

It’s a much healthier bread than the usual sweet and cake-like cafe offerings.

As usual I made my version with a few tweaks. You could really add anything you like – nuts or seeds would be great, and honey would be a great sweetener too. The treacle in my version gave a lovely, malty flavour and rich dark colour.

And it’s a throw-in-the-food-processor recipe so it takes no time to prepare.

One more thing – it keeps forever! It doesn’t dry out, and keeps really moist.


Ingredients

350g or 3 medium size bananas, mashed

60g  coconut flour

1 /2 tbs cinnamon

1 pinch salt

3 free-range eggs

50g coconut oil, melted

1 tsp vanilla extract

1.5 tsp bi-carbonate of soda

1 tbs apple cider vineagr

1/2 tbs treacle

1/2 tbs golden syrup

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.  Line a loaf tin with baking paper.

Put all the ingredients (except the golden syrup) into a food processor and whizz until smooth.  Spoon into the prepared tin. Drizzle over the golden syrup onto the top of the mixture.

Bake for 50 minutes. Cool on a wire rack completely before turning out of the tin.

I served my banana bread with cashew butter and fresh figs. The bread is quite sweet, so the cashew butter works well. Peanut, or any nut butter would be fine.

Leave a comment

Posted in Bread, Breakfast, Healthy, Sweet Food, Vegetarian and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.
%d bloggers like this: