In our household Honey Cake usually refers to a dense Icelandic cake that Mum makes for Father’s Day and Pabbi’s Birthday, she dislikes it, I love it, Pabbi likes it and Matthew is indifferent over it just as he is with pretty much everything. After a busy morning spent on the computer researching my last assignment I decided to make myself a cake for afternoon tea and when I saw a recipe for Honey Cake in the wonderful Tessa Kiros book Apples for Jam, I said to myself, I will have to cook this. The best thing, we all like it.
Honey Cake
Apples for Jam, p. 279
The recipe also lists 1 tbsp of finely chopped rosemary but I didn’t have any so it is absent and it tastes quite fine without it.
150g butter
0.5c brown sugar
0.5c honey (place the bottle in warm water for a while so the honey is easier to measure)
1 2/3c plain flour
1.5tsp baking powder
0.5tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
Line and grease a 22cm springform tin. In a small saucepan over a low heat melt the butter, sugar, honey and 1tbsp water, stirring once or twice until sugar is dissolved and butter is melted. Leave to cool for 10-15 mins. Preheat oven to 180°C.
Sift flour, cinnamon and baking powder in to a bowl; add the eggs and butter mixture. Mix until smooth. Pour into to the cake tin and bake for 30-40 minutes or until cooked. Leave to cool in the tin.
Icing
The recipe lists a lemon butter cream recipe but I just made a simple lemon icing sugar icing. A a couple of tablespoons icing sugar, a teaspoon of margarine and two of lemon juice, the zest of half a lemon and enough hot water to produce a spreadable paste. Ice the cake and sprinkle the zest from the other half of the lemon on the cake.
When I was in high school, I used to take a cake to school when my friends had birthdays. When it was my birthday the other month, Georgie Girl brought a slice of cake to uni for me. Her birthday is tomorrow so she is getting a slice of cake 🙂
I had a 20% off borders voucher last week so I spent some time looking at the shelves to decide what I wanted and after comparing many Moroccan cookbooks I eventually decided on Claudia Roden’s Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon (I have linked to amazon.co.uk as it is the version I have, look at that pretty cover, it is not released in the USA until October, 11mths after it was released everywhere else round the world). This book is gorgeous, I have only really had a good look at the Moroccan section but I have already planned future meals.
M’Hencha
A Moroccan pastry filled with almond paste and coiled into a snake shape which is what gives it it’s name (m’hencha is snake, I have also seen this called M’hanncha so I guess it is just variations of the word).
Since this recipe can be scaled very easily and depending on what you are making it for you may only want a small snake or perhaps you will want a large snake that could feed a hoard. The recipe in the book called for 1.5kg ground almonds to serve 30-40.
Filling
1.5 parts ground almonds/almond meal
1 part sugar (caster is recommended but I just used plain)
1 tsp or so ground cinnamon
2 tblsp rose water (orange blossom is called for but I only have rosewater at home)
few drops almond essence (optional)
I only used 1 tblsp rosewater and then used some water and a bit of butter to form it into a paste.
Pastry
filo sheets
1 egg beaten
melted butter
Preheat oven to 170°C and line a baking tray with al-foil.
Mix together the dry filling ingredients and gradually mix in the rosewater to form a paste. If it is dry, mix in a little bit of butter and water.
Lay down a filo sheet with the long side facing you and brush with melted butter. Pick up a small lump of the paste and in your hands roll into a snake that is about 2cm in diameter. Place this down on the filo sheet about 2cm in from the bottom and the edge, continue doing this till you have filled the length of the filo sheet, butting together each snake so you have no gaps and leaving about 2cm at the other end as well.
Roll the filo sheet and place on the baking tray. Carefully and gently curve the roll into a coil. The filo needs to be curved gently so not to tear.
Continue with more sheets until the paste has been used up, each time butting the ends of the rolls together to continue the coil. Brush the top of the snake with the egg and bake for 20-30 minutes or until the top is crispy and golden.
You could sprinkle the top with some flaked almonds before putting it in the oven.
Serve cold cut into wedges like a cake or break off bits of the coil.
I first went to type this post the other day but just before I pressed “publishâ€? we had an itsy bitsy power surge which quickly erased my post. I can’t even really remember what most of the filler noise was that I had typed so it mustn’t have been important.
As often happens when I am making something I will wander to wherever Mum is at that time and start offering her my different flavour suggestions. This time it was a string of Blueberry and X muffins. Blueberry and Chocolate? Blueberry Poppy Seed? Blueberry with Sunflower Seed topping? Blueberry and Sultana? Blueberry and insert your own idea? Mum liked the idea of either chocolate or sultana but my mind was going for poppy seed or chocolate, after looking in the cupboard and seeing that there was no chocolate I decided to make half a batch with poppy seeds and half a batch with sultanas.
1.5C plain flour
1.5C wholemeal plain flour
0.75C raw sugar
1.5tsp baking powder
1.5tsp salt
0.5C honey
1.5C milk
4 eggs
vanilla
zest of a lemon or an orange
115g butter (melted)
200-300gish blueberries
poppy seeds, sultanas
Preheat oven to 180ºC, grease muffin pans.
Sift together the dry ingredients in a bowl and put to the side.
Mix the honey, milk, eggs, vanilla and zest together. Pour in the dry ingredients and mix till they are just incorporated. Whilst slowly mixing the mixture pour in the butter till it is mixed in.
Now you can have fun mixing in other things. I placed half the mixture back into the bowl which I had mixed the dry ingredients in and divided the berries between the two bowls. I added probably two tablespoons of poppy seeds to one half and two handfuls of chopped sultanas to the other half.
Cook for 25mins or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in the pans for a while (5 mins) and then turn out onto wire racks to cool.
I am a firm believer in both using what you find in the cupboard when cooking even when the recipe may call for something else and mixing things up to create new things.
I hadn’t planned on posting these biscuits because they are similar to the Helen’s Best Ever Biscuits, you just change the ingredients depending on what you have. However I was eating these Chocolate and Blueberry in Sunflower Seeds Biscuits yesterday in a lecture break when two my uni girls commented on them. After chatting about them for a while I wrote www.helenthura.com on a scrap of paper and told them that I would post the idea. So here it is.
I have a biscuit recipe that came to us as Apricot Wheat Germs and over the years I faithfully made the recipe as it was listed though occasionally it would be Fruit Medley Wheat Germs if we had no apricots in the house.
Fan-forced oven at 160°C.
Cream butter and sugar, add eggs.
Mix in the rest.
Roll into balls and flatten lightly and cook in oven till when a finger pressed lightly into a biscuit does not leave a mark. Makes plenty.
These are very yummy and in the last 10 mths or so I have started playing with the recipe, changing the quantities of the cornflakes, coconut, rolled oats, wheat germ and apricots or replacing them all together with what ever I find in the cupboard.
These changes led to Helen’s Best Ever Biscuits back in February. Then in May there was Sultanas and Dried Strawberries and in July there is Chocolate and Blueberry in Sunflower Seeds. Whilst the same basic recipe provides the base each time, changing the “fillings” provides a totally new biscuit experience each time.
The ideas behind the Chocolate and Blueberry in Sunflower Seeds came in many parts. I was inspired to roll the biscuits in sunflower seeds after thinking of biscuits I had made with Renata (my host mother) when I was in Germany for Christmas in 2002 as well as biscuits I had a little while ago at my friend Leanne’s house. The blueberries came about because I happened to have quite a few packets left in the freezer and the chocolate was because if I left the pack of 85% cocoa in my drawer for much longer it would have been going straight down my throat.
From the basic recipe the Chocolate and Blueberry in Sunflower Seeds did not have the rolled oats or apricots or wheat germ. I increased the coconut and flour, added 80grams of Lindt 85% chocolate, 200gish of frozen blueberries and the sunflower seeds of course. The mixture was quite gooey so I just kept on adding some more of the dry ingredients till it became more user friendly.
There are some instances in life when I am scared of what the result will be. Each time I get a uni result back I work up the courage to open the email or paper to see what I was given. Sometimes when I receive an email it may sit unread for a little while till I decide whether or not I want to read what someone is telling me. There are times I take a photo and it may sit unlooked at on my computer for a day or two till I decide I want to see if it turned out how I imagined it in my head.
So why I am telling you this? The Friday just gone I spent the afternoon in a flurry in the kitchen making a myriad of things. I made a big batch (11 servings) of Pumpkin Soup to put in the freezer so I can take a packet out when I want soup for lunch, Chocolate Puddings for dessert (Friday was Mum’s 55th birthday) as well as Strawberry Mascarpone Tarts. In addition to the three different types of meringues I had made the night before with the extra egg whites from the Chocolate Puddings.
The Strawberry Mascarpone Tarts were either going to be a flop, so-so or a success I had no idea how they would turn out as there were a few firsts involved in the tarts. First time using Filo pastry, first time using mascarpone and I was really making the recipe up on the fly. In fact they stayed untouched for 42hrs before I took the step to try one. It was soooo nice. Not too heavy but not too light. Not too sweet but still sweet enough. Just Right!
If they were a flop you wouldn’t be hearing about them. Once I had wolfed down the one I had grabbed for morning tea, I rushed round the house getting my camera gear, setting up my little studio and “styling” the shot.
24 days ago I saw a post on Lex Culinaria for Cherry and Lemon Cream cheese Tartlets, I loved the idea of using Filo pastry for the shells. Shortly around this time also, the Filo pastry we sell in the freezer section at work was deleted which meant that the price went from $3.69 to $1.49. I was not going to put off making something with Filo now. The strawberry season for SE QLD started the other week and since it has been quite dry (rain, what is that?) the strawberries are fantastic, red all the way through and sweet. This of course means that strawberries would be the fruit of choice to go with the tarts I was dreaming up in my head.
I am essentially a shelf packing machine at work and I will often be packing something away and my brain will start turning with ideas of what I could make the item. Since I am mainly a shelf packing machine in the Dairy/Freezer section (Dairy Fairy is the correct term thank-you) I have often looked at the ricotta and mascarpone as I have packed it and thought of what I could do. As life would have it, when I was at the shops getting fresh eggs and caster sugar to make meringues, I saw a tub of mascarpone reduced to clear in the dairy. Well that went into my basket and I headed on my merry way home.
This isn’t really a scientific recipe, in fact most of the things I make that are not following a recipe I just add in the amount that feels, looks or tastes right.
Strawberry Mascarpone Tarts
250g Mascarpone
1 egg
1 tbsp caster sugar
2 or 3 tbsp honey
dollop of vanilla
2 maybe 3 tbsp plain flour
4 sheets Filo Pastry
strawberries, cream and icing sugar to serve.
Preheat oven to 160 °C.
Beat the egg and sugar for a few seconds until well mixed. Add the mascarpone and beat till it is creamy. Add the honey and vanilla and beat in as well. How much flour you add really depends on how runny your mixture is, I just added a tablespoon at a time until it had a nicer consistency.
Grease a muffin tray. Lay out the four sheets of filo pastry and cut the stack into squares that large enough to fit your muffin pans. Depending on how large your sheets are you may need more sheets to make enough cases for the tarts. Place the stacks of pastry in the muffin pans and fill with the mascarpone mixture. For me the mixture gave me enough to make 8 tarts.
Place the muffin tray in the oven and cook until a fork comes out of the mixture clean. I have no idea how long these took to cook as I was busy doing other things – I would say 10-15 minutes but it could have been less. Allow tarts to cool on the bench, then remove from the pans and chill in the fridge till serving time.
Serve with cream and strawberries, dust with icing sugar.
Something else you may have noticed, at the bottom of each post I have added a “Print This Post” link which will give you a printer friendly version of the post.
If you are making these to follow dinner, I would not turn the oven to preheat until a short while before dinner so that you can put the puddings in the oven whilst you eat dinner.
Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease six dariole moulds. Break 30g of the chocolate into six pieces and set to the side.
Melt the remaining chocolate and the butter using your preferred method (I like using a double boiler). Whilst the chocolate and butter is melting, beat the eggs, egg yolks and sugar. When the chocolate and butter is melted, remove from the heat and stir until it is smooth, allowing it to cool slightly.
Add the flour and chocolate mixture to the sugar mixture and stir well. Pour into the dariole moulds and into each mould push in one of the pieces of chocolate reserved at the start. Cook for 10 minutes or so. When cooked allow to stand in the moulds for 1 or 2 minutes during which you can melt the extra chocolate to serve with the puddings.
These were so yummy! Speaking of yummy I think I need to think of better words to describe food with other than just yummy 🙂 These were rich, decadent and full of chocolate 🙂
