Friday 24 February 2012

Fantasy Cake & Honeycomb Recipes

So, I got my bake on today, and I'm quite pleased with the results...

I made both recipes from Lisa Faulkner's fab book.

I chose to make Fantasy Cake and Honeycomb - both recipes were simple, straightforward and easy to follow.

Fantasy Cake
Serves: 6-8

Ingredients

175g unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
150g caster sugar
150g self-raising flour, sifted
2 eggs
3 tablespoons milk
100g ground almonds
1 teaspoon almond essence
400g strawberries, hulled and halved depending on size, or raspberries, or both
Icing sugar, for dusting

Method
Preheat the oven to 160°C, gas mark 3 and grease and line a 23cm loose-bottomed cake tin.

1. Cream the butter and sugar together in a large mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Then add in the flour, eggs, milk, ground almonds and almond essence and mix well. Stir in the fruit, reserving a handful for decorating.

2. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and put the remaining handful of fruit on top of the cake.

3. Bake in the preheated oven for about 1-1¼ hours. To test if it is cooked, pierce the cake with a skewer – if it is clean when you pull it out the cake it cooked, if it’s not, return the cake for another 5-10 minutes and check again. Careful to not overcook!

4. Turn the cake out of the tin onto a wire rack to cool and dust with icing sugar. It is best served just as it is turning from warm to room temperature.

Here's the cake before baking....



And after baking....


And after eating.... :-)


It was really super delicious...sort of puddingy in texture when it was warm from the oven, and really fruity and almondy. I loved being able to use beautiful fresh strawberries (one of my favourite fruits) and with the use of the ground almonds it was reminiscent of a Bakewell tart in flavour.
This cake would be equally nice served with custard as a pudding or just sliced as a cake and served with a cuppa! Definitely worth a bake.

(Although not at all good for your waistline at 422 calories per 1/8 of the cake!)
Honeycomb

Ingredients

Oil, for greasing
4 tbsp golden syrup
200 g caster sugar
1 tbsp bicarbonate of soda

Method

1. Line a 20 centimetre square cake tin with non-stick baking paper and grease or spray with oil. 

2. In a large saucepan, gently heat the golden syrup and caster sugar together until the sugar has melted. 

3. Increase the heat and simmer for a further four to five minutes until the mixture has thickened and is a darker caramel colour. 

4. Take the pan off the heat and quickly whisk in the bicarbonate of soda - the mixture will froth up quite a lot. 

5. Pour into the prepared tin and leave to set. This should take a minimum of 30 minutes. 

6. Break into pieces and dip in melted chocolate if you wish.

I was so excited to make this, as I'd been meaning to try this science-tastic recipe for yonks! There is something so scary/fun about adding the bicarb and watching the crazy reaction happen.

The honeycomb as it was cooling/setting. 

Here's another shot after I'd broken it up and dipped half in chocolate (I used Green and Blacks milk chocolate, naturally!)... trust me when I tell you that there's nothing quite like a homemade Crunchie bar! 


You simply have to try these!

I was so pleased with how it turned out, and I felt like Heston when I was making it - when you add the baking soda it just goes INSANE! :-)

All in all a fun afternoon of baking.

Mrs B
xxx