Raspberry coconut cake

I love Instagram. For many reasons but especially when I find out about new recipes.
At the moment I crave anything sweet. Breast feeding two babies has turned me into a ravenous eater. I can't muck about if I get a free 5 minutes, I eat.
Rather than feeding my sweet tooth with chocolate (which is what I have been doing) I have been trying to bake an almond based cake for snacking on. For two reasons, Rob is on a gluten free diet, and an IG friend, @jenni1029, kindly sent me a book "Mother Food" which notes that almonds are lactogenic. Since then I've regarded any cake with almond meal as an essential dietary requirement. So I was a bit excited when I saw this cake pop up on my IG feed. The recipe was kindly passed onto me from @brionyk and she had sourced it from @andykitten.

Robert's Coconut cake

125g butter
125g SR Flour (or as I did 60g GF flour, 70g almond meal and 2 tsps baking powder)
1 cup desiccated coconut
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup of milk

Heat oven 180 degrees
Line 23cm round cake tin

Melt butter and allow to cool.
Mix all dry ingredients together.
Pour in butter and mix.
Mix eggs and milk together and then add to batter and mix.

Pour into cake tin and top with frozen berries, like blueberry or raspberry.

Bake for 25 minutes (I baked mine for 55 minutes until the middle stopped wobbling and a skewer came out cleanish).

It is delicious and we've nearly eaten the whole thing already. It is easy to bake and easy to eat.

I love Instagram.

Monday Menu

What a lovely weekend, the weather was gorgeous, and we finally did our spring cleaning.

Our menu culminated with our lunch yesterday with friends-

Monday: Potato, carrot and pea frittata.
Tuesday: Broccoli, peas, beans, asparagus and bacon.
Wednesday: Pasta with bacon, cream, peas and parmesan.
Thursday: Broad bean risotto.
Friday: BBQ sausages and bread.
Saturday: Steak and silver beet.
Sunday: We served our friends marinated ocean trout with Pigeonhole rye and molasses bread with yoghurt cheese, marinated olives and soy roasted almonds. The main course was a slow roasted lamb shoulder, carrots, parsnips, peas and broad beans (from our garden) and steamed pink eye potatoes. Lemon and almond tart.

After all the cleaning and getting ready I was pretty tired, I fell asleep at about 7.30 on the window seat!
Hope you had a good weekend.

Our baker’s dozen

I have to admit that with my slight autistic leanings I love writing lists. I do it all the time, for work, for home, for grocery shopping, for what I’d like to buy, plants, spices, cookie cutters. Oh dear! But one I’ve recently started is a baking recipe list to keep track of ones we do cook and how we rate them. There are over 200 cakes I’d like to try from our cook books, and we’ve barely cooked any of them. I admit we had a large bias towards one particular cook, and although we are moving on from our love affair with the domestic goddess in most cases, there are a few of her cakes that we do cook over and over. Last week it was my turn to bake a cake for the work morning tea roster. I tried to pick some new cakes to try. I ended up baking David Herbert’s lemon syrup cake (wasn’t on our list as it was in his book I’m borrowing from the library) and Nigella’s store cupboard chocolate orange cake. So my list writing wasn’t entirely successful: I didn’t pick a new recipe! What are our favourites, the ones we cook again and again? In no particular order here is our baker’s dozen of cakes:

1. Christmas cake- combination of Stephanie Alexander’s, Maggie Beer’s and Nigella’s recipes. We bake on average 5 Christmas cakes a year as we give most of them away. I love the spicy, fruity smell of the cake mixture pervading the house as they bake. They’re not difficult to prepare but do take some patience, as they take several hours to cook. If you rush the cake will be dry and overly browned. Whilst I mix up the batter, Rob carefully lines the tins with baking paper and wraps them in brown paper to help insulate them; also Maggie’s tip is to put a tray full of water in the oven to create a nice moist environment. As neither of us is overly fond of mixed peel we add a few tablespoons of our cumquat marmalade to the mix. We usually decorate them with plain white fondant icing- they look pretty but I actually peel it off to eat. Come to think of it, there’s a nicely maturing cake at home, only 6 months old, might have to try it soon!

2. Chocolate Guinness Cake – Nigella. A recent addition but a great textured chocolate cake, and any cake with cream cheese frosting has got to be a winner.

3. Upside down pear and almond cake- Ian Parmenter's recipe, we made a few of these recently with the Comice pear season.

4. Banana Bread- Nigella. A quick mix cake for those bananas that are looking a bit sad in the fruit bowl. Bananas walk a fine line in our house- I like them slightly under ripe, once they taste too much like a banana I can’t eat them (silly I know). Can also add choc chunks or brandy soaked sultanas.
5. Orange and almond cake- Claudia Roden. A classic - Rob’s trick is to pierce the oranges a few times with a skewer and then microwave them for a few minutes instead of boiling them for 2 hours. Perfect with Greek yoghurt.

6. Chocolate Cloud Cake-Nigella. A cake lightened by whipped egg whites. Rises impressively in the oven but sadly sinks once out. But then that’s what cream is for. A lovely combination of textures, crisp outer shell and mousse like interior.

7. Lemon syrup cake- David Herbert’s recipe is straight to the list. This cake has a serious lemon kick. Not only does it have lemon juice & rind in the mix, it is soaked once cooked with lemon syrup then topped with a covering of lemon icing. Sounds simple: it is.

8. Nutella cake-Nigella. One of those cakes moist with ground nuts- hazels in this case. With the chocolate and Nutella, this cake is for when you need chocolate.

9. Date and chocolate cake- Stephanie Alexander’s short recipe hides in her comprehensive tome, The Cook’s Companion. As she says- simple and very easy to make. With only 4 ingredients, it’s one to keep in mind as a dessert.

10. Store cupboard Chocolate Orange Cake-Nigella. A cake where the first step is melting chocolate and butter. Then mix in a jar of marmalade (cumquat of course), or raspberry, cherry (below) or apricot jam, or Armagnac soaked prunes. Topped with ganache another special chocolate cake.

11. Persian Love Cake- A cake featured in Gourmet Traveller – a reader request for a recipe from Qöm. After combining almond meal, raw and brown sugar and butter, half of the mix is pressed into the base of the pan. To the remaining mix add a few eggs, Greek yoghurt and a serious amount of freshly ground nutmeg. Pour this over the base top with some chopped pistachios and bake. Heaven.

12. Gingerbread-Nigella, I know yet another Nigella recipe. Her gingerbread is a favourite topped with lemon icing. Fudgy and dark, very addictive. It doesn’t last long in our house.

13. Apple and almond cake-Nigella. You may have realised by now, we quite like almond meal cakes. Another moist cake, and as it has fruit in it, Rob considers it a health food!

What is your favourite cake recipe?

Photos from: http://www.nigella.com, http://www.styleathome.com/