Pineapple cake with lime soured cream frosting

Firstly appologise for the photo! This cake was made for my Grandma's birthday on Saturday in a bit of a rush - and everyone was keen to tuck in as soon as it was finished.

I loved the sound of this cake, fresh, moist and with a tartness that suits spring. It should have had lime zest on the top, but one of the bunnies got into my carrier bag and was away with the second lime!

The recipe for this cake comes from Gizzi's Kitchen Magic This book is fast becoming my new kitchen bible. Not nessisarily for baking things, but for general cooking its fantastic. It goes right back to basics, showing you how to make simple sauces like hollandaise, gravy and mayonnaise, and then how to vary those sauces to make something a bit moe interesting. Recipes are easy to follow, well tested, and most importantly, photographed. They're also appetising and fresh, something I really rate. I'm quite experienced in the kitchen, but I still find the quality of these recipes second to none.

Anyway, back to the cake in hand. I messed up a bit by completely forgetting to put the pineapple in and had to take it out the oven after 5 mins to add it in! This is likely to have made it a bit more solid and less light and fluffy as obviously I let the air out of it. Despite this is was still a lovely, light cake, and very moist. I was dissapointed that I couldn't taste the lime in it at all, maybe the second lime zest would have made all the difference! I also found the recipe made far too much frosting, I think you could comfortably knock 1/3 off the quantities here and still have enough.

7/10

Recipe

200g butter at room temperature
200g light muscavado sugar
4 large eggs
200g self raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon mixed spice
225g tin of crushed prineapple or finely chopped pineapple chunks
zest and juice of one lime

frosting:
200ml soured cream
juice and zest of 1 lime
100g icing sugar
200ml double cream

• Heat oven to 170C
• Line a 20cm cake tin
• Put the butter and sugar in a mixing bowland beat together until pale and fluffy
• Add the eggs one at a time and mix in
• Sift over the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and mixed spice and stir in using a metal spoon
• Finally stir in the pineapple, vanilla and lime juice and zest
• Pour into the tin and bake for around 30minutes, until a skewer comes out clean
• Leave to cool in the tin (stood on a cooling rack to avoid a soggy bottom!) for 15 minutes then transfer directly onto the cooling rack
• When completely cool make the frosting by whipping the double cream until stiff.
• In another bowl mix together the soured cream, lime zest and juice and sieved icing sugar. 
• Fold the cream into the soured cream mixture gently
• Top the cake with the icing, and grate some lime zest over to decorate.

A Paddy's Day Treat, Chocolate Guiness Cupcakes

I've made these before as one big cake, but this was the first time I tried this recipe as cupcakes. Most of my adaptations to the recipe worked fine, however there wasn't enough frosting to get a decent 'head' on your pint of cupcake. The recipe below has been adapted to provide enough for all the cupcakes.

These have a very unique, earthy taste. The chocolate brings a much needed sweetness. All I can say is try them, everyone will love them, they're quick to make and a great all round 9/10 from everyone.

Makes 16 cupcakes.

Ingredients

250ml Guinness
250g unsalted butter
75g cocoa
400g caster sugar
1 x 142ml pot sour cream
2 eggs
1 tablespoon real vanilla extract
275g plain flour
2 1/2teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
300g Philadelphia cream cheese
150g icing sugar
125ml double or whipping cream

• Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C.
• Pour the Guinness into a large saucepan, add the butter and heat until the butter is melted.
• Whisk in the cocoa and sugar. 
• In a seperate bowl beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and then pour into the brown pan mixture.
• Whisk in the flour and bicarb.
• Spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases, around 3/4 of the way up.
• Bake for 20 minutes until a skewer comes out clean. 
• Leave to cool for a few minutes before transfering the cases to the cooling rack.
• To make the icing sive the icing sugar into a bowl with the cream cheese and whisk till smooth and light.
• Add the cream and beat again until it makes a spreadable consistency.

Lemon Cake with White Chocolate Icing

Yesterday morning I returned from the doctors (who still didn't have my results!) and decided to make a cake. Lemon cakes have always been a bit of a bane of mine, mainly because my mum is so good at them. 

The recipe calls for a loaf tin, however I used a shallow half sandwich cake tin instead. It is worth noting this is a small recipe, and only makes a cake with 6-8 small slices, making it perfect for Sunday tea but terrible for feeding a group.

White chocolate has long been another fear of mine, it just doesn't react like milk and dark chocolate. Melting in a bain marie causes it to become a congealed, gooey mess. However the recipe uses a neat trick as you will see, although I did find I needed to use at least another 50ml of cream to get even close to covering the chocolate, and even then it cooled too quickly so I had to give the whole mixture 20 seconds in the microwave to finish it off.

The finished cake was very flat, but still light and fluffy, and had a very sharp lemon taste which contrasted really well with the rich white icing. I'm not sure if the recipe makes a mistake and should call for self raising flour rather than plain, might be worth a try sometime. I was dissapointed that my icing looked like normal fondant icing rather than rich frosting style icing, I'm not sure if this is because of the type of chocolate used (Went all out with Tesco Finest Madagascan Vanilla white chocolate), or that I had to use more cream than the recipe stated.

Overall the result was a success, and everyone made those reassuring 'mmm' noises, although it didn't completely bowl me over. Probably a 7/10. 

Lemon cake with white chocolate icing

65g unsalted butter

135g golden caster sugar

2 eggs

135g plain flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

zest & juice of 2 lemons

Icing:

150g white chocolate broken up (plus extra to decorate)

75ml (quite probably a bit more) double cream

17 x 9cm loaf tin, or a small cake tin

• Preheat oven to 170C/Gas 3
• Put the butter and sugar in a bowl and beat well with an electric whisk. 
• Add the eggs and whisk for a few minutes until pale and fluffy. 
• Fold in the flower and baking powder with a metal spoon. 
• Stir in the lemon juice and zest and stir until well mixed.
• Pour the mixture into the greased or lined tin and bake for 25 minutes until golden. 
• Remove from the oven and place on a cooling rack to cool. 
• Put the broken chocolate in a mixing bowl. 
• Put the cream in a saucepan and heat gently, stirring frequently until boiling. 
• Pour into the mixing bowl over the chocolate and beat with a whisk until evenly blended. 
• Put in the fridge for 15 minutes to stiffen. 
• Spread the icing evenly over the cake and decorate with grated chocolate.