Notes on running a cake plant (aka Hermann or Amish Friendship Cake)

Cake plant recipes did the rounds in the 70s / 80s, and we were given starters to feed by friends several times over that period. Inevitably, we would maintain them for a couple of months, handing out starters to any friends who weren't sick of it yet, before it just became too much of the same cake over and over, or the mixture managed to overflow the storage bowl and cause a mess. The mixture would be discarded, and the instructions filed away until the next time we were given a starter to try again.

Over the years, on rediscovering the archived instructions, I have restarted the culture from scratch a few times. These restarts have eventually suffered the same fates as the originals.

Over time - and especially over this last strange year - I have evolved how I manage the cake plant starter away from the original instructions. I have also added to my stock of recipes using the starter. So I am recording the details here, so I don't forget them once working from home stops being the norm.

Green Tomato Pie

Summer has turned to autumn. The days are getting shorter, and the tomato plants outside in the garden have stopped flowering. The remaining fruit is not ripening. So the plants have been cut down.

But what to do with all the unripe green tomatoes?

Previously, I have used these up in batches of Green Tomato Chutney.

But I have heard rumours that green tomatoes can be cooked much like apples into pies and cakes.

Google yielded this recipe. I made a few tweaks.

Persian-style Gluten Free Shortbread

So there's a bag of besan lurking in the cupboard that was bought for some long-forgotten experiment ages ago, and now needs using up.
Coincidentally, I had just rediscovered my copy of The Legendary Cuisine Of Persia, that had gotten buried in a pile of stuff.
So I was glad to spot the recipe for Nan-e Nokhodchi whilst leafing through - a simple shortbread made with besan, and flavoured with ground green cardamom.
I scaled the recipe up a bit from the rather small batch size in the book.

Peanut Butter Cookies

It's a damp drizzly day, and I found a half jar of nut butter in the cupboard that needed using up. So time to brighten things up with some sweet-salty Peanut Butter Cookies.

These are based on the recipe from The Kitchn, but mixed up a bit to match what was in the cupboard.

The Cofresh Sweet Chilli Caramel Peanuts are a recent find in the supermarket Ethnic Foods aisle. Very moreish, with just the right level of chilli hit to offset the caramel sweetness.

Hot Milk Cake with Pandan Kaya filling

So we went to Hoo Hing recently and as usual Random Things To Try somehow found their way into the trolley.

This time the things included a jar of Pandan Kaya, which turned out to be a thick custard-like spread made from eggs and coconut milk, flavoured with pandan leaf. My immediate thought on trying it was that it would make an excellent filling for a cake. Preferably a light plain sponge cake that would show off the filling's flavour without overpowering it.

This American Hot Milk Cake from Farmers Weekly sounded perfect, just needing a couple of tweaks.

I don't bother to keep self-raising flour AND plain flour, and of course when I looked in the cupboard there wasn't quite enough plain white flour left so it ended up being about 2/3 plain white flour and 1/3 chapathi flour.

Marzipan Cake

This is a rich almondy cake made with marzipan.

It is moist enough to not need any further icing or filling, and makes a good alternative to a traditional Christmas Cake if you are not into dried fruit.

I originally came across the recipe years ago on Amateur Gourmet.

Coconut, Almond and Courgette Cake

This is another cake based on one from Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache. I believe I may have already mentioned that whilst the recipes are good, I have a distinct antipathy towards the style of the book.

This is a minor variation on the Coconut Cake recipe, mainly inspired by not having quite enough dessicated coconut left in the cupboard.

Lucuma Ice Cream

So I bought a packet of Lucuma powder from the health food shop to see what it was and what it tasted like.

Turns out it is dried powdered fruit. Native to the Andes, it has a sort of caramel/vanilla type of flavour.

It also turns out that Lucuma Ice Cream is one of the most popular flavours of ice cream in Peru. I have no idea what the real thing made from fresh fruit is like, but this recipe for a custard-based icecream flavoured with the powder is pretty good!

Cherry Plum Ice Cream

This was thrown together in full-on experimental mode, in an effort to prove that cherry plums are good for more than just jam-making - so no measurements noted, I'm afraid.

* I stewed some cherry plums in the pressure cooker with a piece of cinnamon stick, and then rubbed them through a colander to puree them and remove the stones.

* I sweetened the plum puree until it tasted sweet enough warm.

* I chilled the plum puree thoroughly.

* In a jug I combined 3/4 pint of cold cherry plum puree, a slug of sloe gin, and 1/2 pint of whipping cream, and stirred to combine.

* On tasting, I decided the mixture was not quite sweet enough, so I then added a slug of runny honey and stirred to combine again.

* The resulting salmon-pink mixture went into the icecream maker to churn in the usual way.

Result - a litre tub of Cherry Plum Ice Cream now firming up in the freezer.


The extra leftover plum puree will end up mixed into cold custard to make a Cherry Plum Fool.

Marmalade (again)

The problem with my first recipe for making marmalade is that peeling and preparing the raw fruit throws up a lot of the volatile oils in the orange peel that I cannot stomach, leading to needing to round up a helper to do that bit for me.

This time I tried another method in which the fruit is poached whole so that the peel is already soft and cooked when it is chopped up, and doesn't therefore spray orange oils around the place.

Basboosa

I found a bottle of rose flavoured syrup for a few pence in the reduced to clear section in Tesco just before Xmas. It was perfect for this Lebanese cake, made with semolina and yoghurt, and soaked in a flavoured syrup.

It was quick and easy to make - but also quick and easy to eat! I didn't manage to get pictures before it was scoffed! The picture is of a later batch made another day.

Rhubarb and Vanilla Jam

The rhubarb plant in the garden is growing very enthusiastically! It looks like it now has 5 or 6 budding points on the crown, so it probably will need lifting and splitting into 2 or more plants in the autumn. I pulled a load of stalks from it, and pulled up a couple of raspberry shoots that were trying to invade its patch.

Rhubarb jam is easy to make and tends to set up very well. Rhubarb and Vanilla jam tastes like a fruitier version of the Rhubarb and Custard boiled sweets that we used to eat as kids.

As you can see from the jam colour, my rhubarb is one of the green and pink varieties that loses its colour when cooked. For a brighter pinker jam, try to get hold of one of the more strongly coloured varieties.

Chocolate Mint Loaf

It's been a while since I posted anything.

I've got into a rut, cooking from the same set of warming winter meals using the same winter fruit and veg each week. The impending spring weather and new season's produce should change things up a bit soon though.

This cake is also part of a rut, being yet another Empty Jar Generating Loaf Cake variant. I do make other kinds of cake too, honest!

Coconut Macaroons

Having made the Key Lime Cheesecake Pie yesterday, I had 3 egg whites sitting in a bowl waiting to be used up.

Time to bake some Coconut Macaroons.

Mince Pies

It's December, and mince pie baking season is in full swing.

When baking mince pies, I use a particular pastry recipe that I copied from my mother's cooking notebook, and that she had copied from my grandmother's notebook.

It makes the lightest melt-in-the-mouth mince pies you could ask for, but it is a bit tricky to work with...

Pumpkin Pie

It's just gone Hallowe'en, and I had bought two pumpkins - one to make into a lantern and one to bake pumpkin pie with.

The lantern went down a storm with the local kids, but I didn't have time to make pumpkin pie from the other one until today.

My cooking pumpkin was quite large, and I ended up getting two pies' worth of filling from it.

Empty Jar Generating Lemon Loaf Cake

If you have been making much in the way of homemade jam or pickles, you may well have hit the point where you have things you could jam or pickle, but a shortage of jars.

Once you have already hit on all your neighbours, co-workers, friends and family for their empty jars, then there are places that will happily sell you empty jamjars and lids - prices vary from over a quid each (!) down to about 37p if you are prepared to buy by the hundred.

Alternatively, you can wander into any branch of Tesco/Sainsburys/Asda and pick up jam jars with lids for a mere 22p or so each. The catch is that they come filled with a free helping of cheap lemon curd, which you will need to empty out first.

Just scooping it out and throwing it away just seems like ... an unnecessary waste. So some way of using up lots of lemon curd is needed.

Lemon Curd wine would seem a little ill-advised due to the egg content (though at least one person seems to have tried to do that).

And then I found this recipe for a Lemon Loaf Cake on a forum post.

Using up lemon curd at the rate of 1 jarful per loaf, this quick to mix loaf cake is perfect for when you need a few more empty jars in a hurry. The cake freezes well, perfect for later use as trifle sponge, or just to have a cake in the freezer for emergencies.

• 100g softened butter
• 75g sugar
• 175g Plain Flour
• 3 tsp Baking Powder
• 2 eggs
• 1 jar of cheap lemon curd

Grease a 2lb loaf tin and line with a strip of greaseproof paper.
Preheat the oven to 200C.
Measure all ingredients into a large bowl and whisk together with an electric whisk until it forms a light and fluffy cake batter.
Pour the mixture into the loaf tin, smooth out the top, and bake for 40-45 minutes until the loaf is golden on top and a skewer poked into the middle comes out clean.
Cool in the tin for a minute before turning out onto a wire rack and peeling off the paper. Let cool completely before slicing.

Update:

I have also tried making this as a lemon and ginger cake, adding 2 tsp ginger and 1tsp cinnamon to the mixture.

Update 2:

Replacing the jar of lemon curd with a jar of value marmalade, and replacing a couple of tbsp of flour with cocoa powder makes a decent chocolate orange loaf.

Update 3:

Though not quite in the original spirit of emptying a jar of cheap jam... I found Korean Honey Ginger Tea in the local Chinese Supermarket - it consists of finely grated candied root ginger in a sugar/honey syrup flavoured with cinnamon and yet more ginger. Substituting 450g for the jar of lemon curd yields a deliciously moist and fierily gingery cake!

Green Tomato Chutney

Last year I made what turned out to be an excellent Green Tomato Chutney, from a recipe I found in the DK Encyclopedia of Herbs, Spces and Flavourings, of all places. I made a few modifications to the recipe as I went along, in order to increase the spiciness, and to work around running out of some ingredients.

Of course, now I need to remember what I changed in order to recreate it this year - which is one reason for writing this blog - so I remember to record my experiments!


I think this is what I did last year - we'll find out once it's cooked!

Bramble and Apple Jam

It's time for the last autumn jam of the year.

We've been gathering brambles round the lake by work and freezing them down until there's enough for jam.

This year we've also picked some of the cooking apples from an old Bramley tree in the hedgerow, so all the fruit for this jam was free.

Mincemeat

I have an aversion to citrus - specifically orange peel. So I have never really eaten things that have candied peel in - which includes many traditional Xmas cakes.

However, one Xmas when I was growing up, Sainsburys decided to stock citrus (peel)-free mince pies. They tasted great - but they didn't stock them again, ever.

So, if I want to have mince pies for Xmas that I can eat, then I need to make my own mincemeat. Which means that I need to get round to making it in September to give time for the flavour to mature.

Fortunately, mincemeat is so easy that it really barely counts as cooking!