It’s been a while since I last posted a recipe! In fact, almost three years! I have been working on recipes in that time and now have a few to post. With the success of first my Ginger and Almond Muffins, then my Chocolate and Almond Muffins, I’ve been recreating some of my past cakes and muffins along the same …
Almond Cake
When I was young, I bought a recipe book titled “The Victorian Kitchen Book of Cakes and Cookies”. It contained a recipe for “Fine Almond Cake”. The cake looked delicious so I decided to try it. The recipe contained no baking powder nor did it call for self-raising flour. At the time, I wondered if neither of these were invented back then, …
Banana Cake
Sometimes a recipe happens because I don’t have the exact ingredient or amount of it that I would like. Such was the case with this Banana Cake. When initially creating the recipe, I decided to start with one cup of mashed banana. To my dismay, the only two ripe bananas that I had, mashed into just ¾ of a cup. In fact, …
Carrot Cake
I’m generally not a fan of eating the icing on cakes, but I am partial to cream cheese icing on carrot cake! The downside is that the cake then needs to be kept refrigerated because of the cream cheese. I usually take the cake out of the fridge about half an hour prior to serving as I find it more pleasant …
Hazelnut Coffee Cake
Since posting my recipe for Chocolate Almond Slice, I have been pondering the possibility of a cake that contains neither butter nor added oil. The result is this Hazelnut Coffee Cake in which moisture is provided by the oil in the hazelnuts. I should acknowledge my work colleagues who were (probably unsurprisingly!) more than happy to taste test each version of …
Sponge Cake
When my mother was growing up, her mother ran a home bakery in Napier. This is her sponge recipe that she used to make sponges and lamingtons. She would start baking in the early hours of the morning with only two small household ovens and no electric mixer at her disposal! The sponges and lamingtons were so popular that by …
Moist Madeira Cake
I use the word “moist” in the name of this cake because so many madeira cakes I have tasted over the years have been, in my view, heavy and dry! This one is light and moist, which is exactly how I like my cakes to be! I adapted it from a Butter Cake recipe, but since I use no butter …
Gingerbread
The first recipe in this post is gluten-free gingerbread. The original recipe (included at the end of this post) on which this one is based was given to me many years ago by the mother of one of my school friends. Often when I was at their place we would have hot gingerbread fresh from the oven smothered in butter. The melted …
Never-Fail Chocolate Cake
This chocolate cake recipe was given to me many years ago by one of my cousins. True to it’s title, I have never had a failure with it! The mixture is runnier than many cake batters but the baked result is light and fluffy. I have created a gluten-free version which I now bake more often than the original. (The …