Guest Post By The Halal Gourmet: The Trial of the Tarte Tatin

Today I'm delighted to be bringing you a guest post by Umm Haneefah also known as The Halal Gourmet  who specialises in French cuisine within the limits of Allah i.e. no pork, wine etc.

Cooking up classy dishes like confit de canard salad and encouraging a sophisticated palate in the fussiest of eaters - children, with her squid cucumber lime muffins you will find something for everyone and then some.
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What started out as delicious dalliance in the thick of apple season, with loads of butter and sugar, became an emotional rollercoaster that turned into a trial from Allaah, Azza wa Jal (The Mighty & Majestic).

Tarte Tatin: the Upside-Down Apple Cake that nearly turned my life upside down.

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Lemon Drizzle Scones

Fresh and zingy lemon drizzle scones filled with mascarpone and strawberry jam.

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Photos Of My Caramel & Coffee Layer Cake

As-Salaamu Alaykum,

We all make mistakes now and then and here is just one of my many.

Caramel, no matter how many times you make it you take your eye off the ball and think oh i've simmered it for as long as the recipe stated it will thicken more whilst it cools in the fridge WRONG if it's not thick now it won't be after 2 hours in the fridge!

This time i used an unusual recipe that called for evaporated milk, i've used condensed milk before to make a caramel back in my school days when i made millionaires shortbread but never evaporated and here's why - it takes what seems like forever to thicken. Next time i make this particular caramel i plan to use my trusted sugar thermometer in sha Allah it's never failed me yet.

So when you make caramel buttercream with thin caramel guess what happens, it tastes like butter not caramel! 

The coffee flavoured cake still tasted real good but to enjoy it i had to scrape a ton of butter buttercream off the surface first.

Unlike me, when you follow astral's recipe ( use a sugar/candy thermometer for the caramel or at least wait until it's thick / how you perceive caramel to be) i'm optimistic you will get a delicious tasting cake inside and out! (if your not big on frosting half the frosting recipe to fill and top the cake)

UPDATE:  buttercream tastes less butter and more caramel a day later, the flavours get chance to meld together and you get a nice contrast of bitter coffee and sweet sweet caramel. I would still cut down on the frosting next time or only serve this cake in very small portions.

Guest Post from La Tour de Force: Chocolate & Cinnamon Baked Donuts

As-Salaamu Alaykum,

Ramadhan is less than a week away, excited? anxious? me too. 

Now, who doesn't like doughnuts? I especially enjoy one at breakfast alongside a strong cup of tea.

Here are some beauties baked by the lovely Aiza from La Tour de Force who kindly accepted my invitation to guest post on the blog. 

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Chai Spiced Chocolate & Tahini Pancakes

As-Salaamu Alaykum

Today I'm guest posting over at umm imran, Anisa's blog Passing Through This Life. Check it out here

Strawberry Cake

As-Salaamu Alaykum,

Spring, Summer = Strawberries! I don't really get the urge to eat strawberries any other time....does strawberry cheesecake count?

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Swiss / Jelly Roll

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'Angel' Food Cake With Lemon Curd #GBBO

As-Salaamu Alaykum,

Angel food cake with lemon curd is a must bake from this years series of The Great British Bake Off

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Victoria Sandwich Sponge Cake Revisited!

As-Salam Alaikum / Greetings Dear Reader,

Today I'm revisiting an old favourite of mine, the Victoria sandwich sponge cake which was named after Queen Victoria, who favoured a slice of the sponge cake with her afternoon tea.

To make this British Classic Cake I adapted Mary Berry's Recipe.

I used both apricot (dh favourite) and strawberry jam (my favourite) plus the optional whipped cream to fill my 22.5cm cake (original recipe makes a deeper sponge cake using a 20 cm cake tin) . 

Both self raising flour and baking powder are used to create an extremely light and tender sponge cake. I used the creaming method of making the sponge batter which gave yet even more lightness but feel free to follow Mary Berry's all in one method and you will still get an oh so soft sponge cake, it will be hard to resist taking an extra slice!

Victoria Sandwich Sponge Cake

Makes 1 x 22.5cm Cake

Ingredients

For the Cake

225g caster sugar (preferably Golden), plus extra for dusting the finished cake                                                                                      

225g softened/room temperature unsalted butter

4 large eggs, room temperature

225g self-raising flour

2tsp baking powder

For the Filling

8tbsp of your favourite jam, I used 4tbsp each of apricot and strawberry

300ml double cream, whipped (optional and can be substituted with buttercream icing)

Method

Preheat the oven to 160C Fan/180C/ 350F. Weigh all ingredients. Sieve flour and baking powder together, set aside. Cream butter and sugar together for about 5mins until light and fluffy.

Add eggs, one by one beating well after each addition, sift in your flour/baking powder, mix until well combined, don't over mix! .

Spoon the cake batter into your tin and smooth out with palette knife or the back of a spoon, make a slight indentation in the centre, this will ensure the top doesn't dome too much.  Bake on middle shelf of oven for 35 mins (I use an electric fan oven so you may need to adjust cooking time according to your type of oven) until a cocktail stick comes out clean or the centre springs back when pressed gently with a finger.

Remove from oven, place on cooling rack and leave to cool for 5 minutes, the cake should have started to shrink and come away from the sides so proceed to remove from your cake tin (I used silicone bake ware which makes this process a lot easier) place cake on cooling rack and leave to cool completely.

Slice cake in 2, put the flat bottom to the side, this will become the top of your cake. Spread Jam liberally over your other cake half. Whip double cream, I piped my cream on top of the jam layer using a regular circular tip and then smoothed it out using a palette knife but if your not worried about the jam and the cream mixing together or oozing out of the cake, spread the whip cream on top of the jam layer using a spoon / knife.

Place the remaining sponge cake layer on top and dust with caster sugar.

If you filled your Victoria sandwich sponge cake with whipped cream then it's essential to keep it chilled in the fridge until you are ready to take your first slice, I promise it won't be your last.

*Post updated from 13th May 2012

Chocolate Covered Lemon Cake

As-Salamu Alaikum,

No denying I enjoy eating my fair share of cake but what I like just as much is making/baking it.

I find making and baking a cake very therapeutic and satisfying for the soul, every baker whether home or professional I'm sure feels the same.

This cake came from having an urge to bake cake (it happens often) but only having 150grams unsalted butter left in the house, lemons and a bar of plain chocolate cake covering and so my chocolate covered lemon cake was born and shortly after devoured.

You can't beat a buttery, soft, zesty cake with a chocolate 'shell' for extra self-indulgence!

I'm no stranger to the combination of chocolate and lemon together, I recently made chocolate lemon cupcakes and was bowled over by how well they work together BUT feel free to swap the lemon for an orange and you can have a chocolate covered orange cake or if you like cupcakes try my most popular viewed chocolate orange cupcakes instead.

Chocolate Covered Lemon Cake

Makes a 1x 20cm cake

Ingredients

150 grams unsalted butter or margarine, room temperature (take it out of the fridge the night before)

150 grams caster sugar

Zest of 1 lemon

3 eggs, medium or large

1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice

150 grams self-raising flour

Covering & Decoration

150grams plain chocolate, melted

Sprinkles (optional)

Method

Pre-heat oven to 350F/180C/160C (Fan)/Gas Mark 4 and place your oven rack in the centre.

Line the bottom of a  loose based 20cm round cake pan, grease and flour the sides.

Place butter, sugar and lemon zest in a large bowl, cream together until light and fluffy.

Add eggs one at a time, making sure each egg is fully incorporated before adding the next. If you notice the mixture curdling you can add a tablespoon of your self-raising flour to stabilize the mix.

Add lemon juice then sieve in self-raising flour, fold in until your mixture is homogeneous.

Pour cake mixture into cake pan and level using a palette knife. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until a cake tester comes out with clean or with a few dry crumbs clinging to it.

Remove cake from oven and place on cooling rack. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, run a knife around the edges then loosen the collar on your loose based pan and remove it, leave on base place on cooling rack to cool completely then remove base and baking paper.

Place cake on serving plate, you may wish to level it but I didn't. Melt your chocolate in a heat proof bowl inside microwave on 30seconds bursts until full melted. Pour chocolate over cake and leave it to cool slightly before decorating with sprinkles. Leave chocolate to cool and set before taking a slice, if you can resist!

Note If I were to make this cake again, I would add some lemon zest to the top of the cake after pouring on the melted chocolate, just to give it that bit of extra zing! I did add lemon sugar crystals on half the cake (husband doesn't like sprinkles so I try to please everyone lol) but they didn't give so much lemon flavour as I hoped.

My First Chiffon Cake - Peppermint Chocolate

As-Salam Alaykum,

As with all firsts it didn't go according to plan and I've learnt another valuable baking lesson, more on that in a tick, first what is a chiffon cake?

Chiffon Cakes are also known as Mayonnaise Cakes as they contain oil, water and eggs unlike Angel Cake which are made using no fat and can be rather dry Chiffon retains  it's moisture which in my book means they are better.

They are made by first whisking oil, egg yolks and water together, sifting cake flour and sugar into the oil mix and beating for 1 minute at high speed.

To give the cake it's light airy texture the egg whites are whisked separately to stiff peaks with more sugar i.e. a meringue then slowly folded into the first, denser oil/flour mixture.

Valuable Lesson - Fold meringue into the oil/flour mixture in 4-6 stages not in 2!

I didn't fold my meringue into the oil/flour mixture well enough, thinking I would knock all the air out of the cake if I folded in the flour in many stages I tried to do it quicker in 2 but it didn't work when I poured the batter into my silicone cake pans there was still quite a lot of the denser oil/flour mixture at the bottom of the mixing bowl which I scraped out and put into the center of one of the pans and gave it a quick stir in hoping for the best!

As I made two cakes the one you see below ended up being more dense in 'spots' where the batter hadn't been mixed / folded in properly Alhamdulillah it was still edible just not worthy of being frosted so I sprinkled it with icing sugar and put it to one side for second best bites.

Chiffon Cakes usually are baked in tube/Bundt pans as this helps the cake rise evenly and as they tend to sink once removed from the oven they are baked in ungreased/floured sided  pans and inverted (onto such things as the bottom of a flower pot) upon removal from the oven and left to cool totally inside the pan.

I haven't got any tube pans (they are on my long shopping list) so I resorted to my round silicone pans and still inverted them, onto a cooling rack lined with baking paper however, as silicone is non stick they started to slide out and stick to the baking paper, ooops! So I do recommend you use metal cake pans for chiffon cakes. It wasn't such a disaster after all, as once the cakes had cooled completely and been unmoulded from the silicone pans I peeled off the baking paper without causing too much damage to the surface of the cakes and kept those sides face down :)

The need to make the buttercream icing green and blue for this cake apart from it being peppermint flavoured of course, was that my 4year old son asked me for a green monster cake.

He got a green and blue frosted chocolate cake without a monster in site (depending on how you view this cake that is lol) I intended the blue to be a rose in the center, but I used an unfamiliar open star tip (not the wilton 1M which is my favourite for piping roses) and ended up going for a swirly circle?!

Next time I make this cake, I will dare to slice the fluffy pillow in 2 and fill it with a lighter buttercream, say Italian meringue or even whipped cream would go well as the cake is so delicate it deserves a filling to match.

Here is my cake recipe, using self raising flour instead of the more traditional cake flour.

The cakes flavour and the texture (lots of air holes) reminded me of a mint aero chocolate bar!

Peppermint Chocolate Chiffon Cake(s)

Adapted from Chiffon Cake Recipe found in the book, The Professional Pastry Chef by Bo Friberg.

Recipe makes 2 x 23cm cakes but the recipe can easily be divided by 2 to make only 1 cake. I highly recommend you make just 1 cake if like me, it is your first time baking this type of  sponge cake. Folding in a 4 egg white meringue will be much easier than one made using 8.

Ingredients

2/3 Cup (160ml) Vegetable Oil (I used sunflower)

8 Egg Yolks

1 Cup (250ml) Water, room temperature

1 Tablespoon Peppermint Oil

336 Grams Self Raising Flour

85 Grams Cocoa Powder

400 Grams Caster Sugar, divided (see method)

8 Egg Whites

Method

Pre-Heat Oven to 375F/190C /170C (fan)

Beat Egg Yolks, Oil, Peppermint Oil together and stir in water.

Sift Flour, Cocoa & 130 Grams sugar into egg yolk mixture and mix in. Beat mixture at high speed for 1 minute (2 if doing by hand with a spoon - it's hard work!) and set aside.

In a separate grease free bowl whip your egg whites at high speed (I recommend using a stand mixer with the whisk attachment or an electric hand whisk) until frothy then gradually add 270 Grams sugar and continue to whisk until stiff peak stage.

Fold Meringue into your cake batter in 4-6 stages, I used a tablespoon to do this but ideally you need a bigger metal spoon or a rubber spatula.

Divide final cake mixture equally between your 2 cake pans and bake in the center of your oven for 25-30minutes or until the center springs back slightly when pressed with a finger.

Remove from oven and invert pans onto a cooling rack and allow to cool.

Fill and decorate your cake with your favourite icing, whipped double cream, jam, layer of fruit etc..

What's Cooking?

Asalam Alaykum Sisters & Hello readers,
Here are a few photos of food i've cooked/baked in my home this week Masha'Allah

Doubara - Algerian Chickpea Soup

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Egg Free Golden Syrup Cake

Salam Alaikum & Hello Friends,
When your free do check out my guest post over at the lovely blog Karima's Crafts

Carob Fudge Cake With Coconut Carob Icing

What is carob you ask? well if my research serves me correctly it's the fruit / pod from the carob tree which is a species of flowering evergreen shrub or tree in the pea family.

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'Southern' Sweet Potatoe Bread

Potatoe VS Potato? I guess really i should have labelled my photos with 'Potato' as it's an american recipe.

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Ramadan Mubarak & Lemon Lime Drizzle Cake

Ramadan Mubarak to all my Muslim readers & hello to you all,

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Top Tip Tuesday: How to frost/ice a cake like a pro!

(photo taken from the daily meal)
I found this short little video how to frost a cake like a pro, hope it will be of use to you and me, once I get a cake decorating turntable that is, do you have one?

Mint Chocolate Madeleines

Earlier this week i mentioned my trouble baking Madeleines, it's not that I haven't made them before but well i was out of practice and had forgotten which recipe I previously used. 

This is one of the reasons I started to blog so I would have a log of all my favourite baking recipes without having to search in cupboards and draws for that printed recipe you know you had but it's not in there now, dilemma.

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Free From Friday - Date & Cinnamon Cake (Egg Free)

Salam Alaikum sisters & Hi to all my readers,



This delicious date and cinnamon cake is anything but dry, which is what most of us associate with egg free cakes/biscuits.



The dates are the secret in this cake as they add sticky sweetness, which also means the cake remains moist and rest assured it won't be around long enough to dry out. 



The pink fondant was purely to give it a bit of umph! even the best tasting cake can look unappealing being one shade of brown! Next time i make this tasty treat i won't be adding the fondant unless a request comes from dh or son for blue or green fondant lol because seriously the flavour speaks for itself.



Recipe adapted from Treat & Trick

Makes: 1 x 20cm round cake

which is around 6-10 servings depending on how you ration sweet goods in your household



Ingredients

1.5 cup self-raising flour

1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 cup water

1 cap full of rose water (optional)

60g  butter

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 cup chopped dry dates

1 tsp cinnamon



Method

1. Preheat oven 180C/160C (Fan)/350F/Gas Mark 4, grease and flour a 20cm spring form baking pan.


2. Sieve flour, baking powder and cinnamon together in a medium size bowl


3. Place water, butter and dates in a saucepan. Heat the mixture on medium heat until butter has melted. Turn off heat then add rose water, if using.


4. Stir in brown sugar, stir well until it dissolves, while still warm mix in the rest of your dry ingredients from step 2, combine until well incorporated.


5. Pour the batter into prepared pan and bake for 22-25 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.


6. Let sit in the pan for 10-20 minutes, transfer onto rack to cool

If you want to go ahead and decorate your cake as i did, you will need



250-300grams fondant icing sugar

10-15ml cold water

X amount of food colouring OPTIONAL (depends what shade you want to achieve and type of colouring your using, i used a colour paste so a little bit went a loooong bright way!)

Handful of flaked almond (can toast these but i forgot) to scatter on top of the fondant

1. Place fondat icing sugar in a pan with 10ml water along with food colouring (go steady, remember you can always add more but you can't take away!)


2. Turn on heat to low and stir together until the icing is a thick consistency that still runs off the spoon.


3. Pour onto the center of your cake and watch as the icing glides over and sometimes down the sides of your cake.


4. Whilst the fondant hasn't set scatter flaked almonds on top.

Enjoy!

Giant Lemon Cupcake - First Attempt

This was my first attempt at a GIANT lemon cupcake. It didn't all go according to plan but i'm sure there will be a next time to perfect my cupcake creation, maybe EID inshaAllah.

So here is what went wrong:-

•  I undercooked the top of the giant cupcake even i tested it with a scewer and it came out clean! This was evident when i tried releasing it from the silicone mould, it didn't come out in one piece and was mushy in the center.


• The filling insert that fits on top of the base popped up at one side during the baking process, result - filling cavity wasn't directly in the center/ uneven border.

Next time i must remember to:-

•  Bake the top/lid of the cupcake for an extra 5 minutes and leave it to cool 80% in the mould before releasing.


• Make sure the filling insert is properly secured on top of  the base before baking.

I kinda used this cake as a canvas to practice my buttercream roses using the wilton 1M tip, they would have looked more 3D/ realistic if piped onto the lid, inshaAllah some other time (sighs)

I would prefer the filling insert to be deeper so that the cake to filling ratio would be more balanced however all in all this oversized, zesty, lemon cupcake filled with whipped cream and a layer of sliced strawberries was really tasty you know i would say that, as i'm a sucker for anything using my favourite coloured fruit.

The recipe for the cake & buttercream can be found here, i used about 150ml whipped double cream and 4 small strawberries, sliced for the filling.