Tony Bakes

Baked Cinnamon Donuts

I’ve been in a baking frenzy last night and this morning. After having baked a great lemon syrup cake and a batch of chocolate fudge brownies for Rae to take to a get together tomorrow I was packing it when a recipe for Baked Cinnamon Donuts popped up in my twitter feed.

I guess when you’re on a roll…

You can find the recipe here http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/20358/baked+cinnamon+doughnuts. It’s dead easy, the only things being it’s time consuming with the two lots of resting and I’d suggest you don’t do an arms session at the gym a couple of hours beforehand if you intend to kneed the dough manually, but apart from requiring a bit of patience anybody can make them.

So how did they turn out?

Amazing. This plate lasted five minutes. They are light, fluffy and incredibly tasty without the heavy feeling you get from fried donuts. I baked the holes too – kids loved them as well.

Chocolate Porridge Cake

I was reading $120 Food Challenge the other day when this caught my eye – Chocolate Porridge Cake. As a very recent convert to porridge I thought it sounded intriguing so I gave it a go, and boy am I glad I did.

It turned out to be a dense, moist cake but with the lightest flavour. I’m guessing it’s the oats that make a small piece so filling. The recipe said to add your favourite chocolate icing, which was a bit of a problem as I’ve only made icing once before, for the Chocolate Gingerbread Cake so I rang mum. Mum gave me a rough guide to icing and away I went. I added one splash too much water but It worked out fine.

One thing I need to find is a deep 20cm cake tin, I think the excessive cracking came from the tin being too shallow.

Recipe from http://120dollarsfoodchallenge.com/2011/08/10/sweet-treats-chocolate-porridge-cake/

INGREDIENTS

1 cup rolled oats; 2 cups water; 125g butter; 4 tbsp cocoa; 1 ½ cups soft brown sugar; 1 tsp vanilla essence; 2 cups plain flour; 1 tsp baking powder; 1 tsp bicarbonate soda; pinch salt; 2 eggs, lightly beaten;

METHOD

Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease a round 20cm cake tin and line the base with baking paper. Set aside.

Place oats and water in a medium-sized saucepan and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring, until the oats soften and thicken, about ten minutes. Add the butter and stir well until the butter has melted and is well combined.

Stir through the cocoa, soft brown sugar and vanilla.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt and add alternatively with eggs to the mixture.

Pour the mixture into the prepared cake tin and smooth the top with the back of a spoon. Bake for 45 minutes or until the centre of the cake springs back when you press down on it.

When the cake is cool, ice with your favourite chocolate icing. The cake will keep well in a sealed container and as my friend tells it, keeps well in school lunch-boxes without disintegrating.

Sticky Chocolate Gingerbread Cake

It was Rob’s birthday this week and tradition demands a cake. The morning of his birthday I was flicking through The Age and found a recipe for Karen Martini’s Sticky Chocolate Gingerbread Cake. It looked suitably birthdayish and all I had to do was pick up some fresh ginger so away I went.

The result was pretty damn good, even if I do say so myself. Lots of spices with fresh ginger and ginger juice combined with a hint of lemon in the decadent icing made for a grown up chocolate cake, but one that a couple of the kids actually liked too.

It’s very much a special occasion cake as it’s so rich but it’s not too complex for a beginner like me.

I even manged my first attempt at icing.

The recipe from Good Food/The Age :

Ingredients

Gingerbread

180g unsalted butter

1 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

2 tbsp fresh ginger, finely grated

150g brown sugar

150g treacle

150g golden syrup

1 1/4 tsp baking soda

250ml milk

2 large eggs

280g plain flour

30g cocoa powder

150g chocolate chips

Icing

80g unsalted butter

4 tbsp cocoa powder

3 tsp fresh ginger juice – finely grate a piece of fresh ginger, about 8cm, and squeeze out the juice

25ml lemon juice

180g icing sugar

Method

1. Line a 30cmx20cm shallow baking tin with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees fan-forced or 180 degrees conventional.

2. In a large saucepan, melt the butter, add the spices, fresh ginger, sugar, treacle and golden syrup and warm through.

3. In a small bowl, dissolve the baking soda in a tablespoon of milk.

4. Crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk lightly. Whisk in butter and spice mix. Add baking soda and remaining milk, sift in the flour and cocoa and mix until smooth. Fold the chocolate chips through the batter.

5. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 40 minutes or until cooked – the cake will be springy to the touch.

6. For the icing, in a bowl over just-simmering water, heat the butter. Add the cocoa powder and the ginger and lemon juices, then whisk in the icing sugar until dissolved and homogenous.

7. Allow the cake to cool then lift from the tray. Ice and allow the icing to set before serving.

Back With Berry and Oat Muffins

I haven’t baked in ages, mainly because it’s not been great to have sweet things laying around while we try and get fit and keep weight down. Today, however, work was getting on top of me and the urge to do some baking to cheer me up became too strong.

I went back to what kicked off my baking late last year – quick, easy and healthy bran and oat muffins from The Healthy Food Guide.

Simply combine one and a half cups of self raising flour, sifted, one cup of rolled oats and half a cup of firmly packed brown sugar. Stir in a third of a cup of melted low fat margarine then add one egg whisked with one cup of milk. Stir in one and a quarter cups of mixed fresh or frozen berries.

Spoon the mix in to a greased muffin tray, you should get 12 muffins, and bake for about half an hour at 180 degrees.

Healthy and delicious.

Lemon Cheesecake – Take 1

I was flicking through taste.com.au and came across a lemon cheesecake recipe.

Now cheesecakes are always popular and lemon, I love lemon anything so I thought I’d give it a go.

As you can see it worked out okay. I know to make the crumbs for the sides and base a lot finer next time though. The sides need to be a bit thicker too but it tastes great, There was a serving suggestion of cream on the side; trust me, you don’t need it. Next time I may do 50/50 lime. I also need to work on making the sides more presentable. I’m happy for a first try, second will be even better.

Lemon Cheesecake

250gm Marie biscuits
150g butter, melted
500g cream cheese, softened – I used lite cream cheese
3/4 cup caster sugar
3 teaspoons of finely grated lemon rind
1/4 cup lemon juice

1) Heat the oven to 16 degrees or 140 if it’s fan forced. Grease a 20cm pan. A springform pan is ideal for cheesecakes.

2) Place the biscuits into a food processor and whizz around until chopped up well. Add the butter and keep on whizzing until they are well combined.

3) Press this mixture in to the pan. About a third should go on the the base, you can use a spoon to stop it sticking to your fingers as you press. Then start pressing the remainder in to the sides of the tin. I found a height of about 3cm was fine.

4) Beat the cream cheese, sugar and lemon rind. It should be smooth when you start adding the eggs 1 at a time, making sure the egg is combined well before adding the next. When all eggs have been added add the lemon juice and beat for a minute.

5) Poor the mixture in to the tin. Bake it in the oven for 50 minutes – the filling should be wobbly in the middle and firm around the edges. Allow it to cool in the oven with the door open a bit. Once cool place in the fridge, overnight is great but if you can’t wait try and give it four hours.

Honey Chocolate Cake

Tonight we have the Queen Of Cakes over for dinner so it’s a bit scary but I’ve tried to impress with a pretty yummy looking cake.

This is Margaret Fulton’s Honey Chocolate Cake – but what the title doesn’t tell you is that there’s a good whack of booze in there thanks to some dry sherry and rum. It’s my first ‘slice in half and fill with cream’ cake and Mel provided me hints and tips on the consistency of the cream and sawing the cake in half evenly.

I’m pretty happy with my first effort at this sort of cake.

Update

Man, that sherry is strong. I’d probably lessen the amount in the recipe below if you’d prefer a more subtle flavour.

Ingredients

185g butter, softened
185g lightly packed brown sugar
1/3 cup honey
2 eggs, beaten
3 teaspoons rum (I used white ’cause that’s all we had)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 tablespoons cocoa poweder
260g self raising flour
a pinch of salt
1/2 cup sweet sherry …hic…

1 cup of cream and some icing sugar for finishing.

Method

Heat the oven to 180

1) Sift the flour, cocoa and salt and set aside

2) Cream the sugar, honey and butter until it’s light and fluffy. Add the egg mixutre in thirds, makign sure it’s well mixed before adding the next lot. Add the rum and vanilla essence.

3) I then alternated folding in some of the flour, then folding in some sherry.

4) Once mixed put the mixture in to a greased and lined cake tin, mine was 21cm, then in to the oven for 50 to 60 minutes. Mine was ready in 30.

5) Cool for a few minutes in the tin before turning out on to a rack and letting cool completely before slicing in half and adding the whipped cream. Dust with icing sugar and enjoy.

Cinnamon Crinkles

I cooked these these this morning as a warm up for a serious cake baking attempt and they were well worth it. Light, crisp and just the right hint of cinnamon as you finish. Only problem with these type of biscuits is stopping at the one.

Ingredients

125g butter, softened
165g caster sugar, plus 2 tablespoons extra
1 egg
200g self raising flour
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

Method

1) Preheat the oven to 180

2) Cream the butter with the 165g of sugar. When it’s light and fluffy beat in the egg.

3) Add the sifted flour to the butter

4) Make marble sized balls of the mixture and roll them in the combined cinnamon/extra caster sugar. Line a baking tray with paper and push the balls out, leaving space between them.

5) They should be done in 10-12 minutes.

6) Cool them on a rack, they will be ready in next to no time.

My batch made 36.

Chocolate Fudge Cake

The other day Phee asked if I’d bake a cake for her birthday. Gulp. That’s pressure. I hunted through Margaret Fulton and found many cakes I wanted to make – most of them ginger – but when I saw the chocolate fudge cake I knew I’d found the one.

I haven’t made many cakes so it was a bit daunting. I’d always thought chocolate cakes would be more difficult and this one wasn’t a cake as such, it was more about the fudge center. It also involved beating eggs and folding them in without collapsing them – scary stuff for a beginner.

I made the cake and was a bit scared. It looked very cooked, not fudge like at all. I left it to cool and it began to sink, which in this case was a good sign, but it still looked a little too well done.

In the end I had nothing to worry about.

Dear god it was yummy. Nice and chewy on the outside, just as it should be, and deliciously moist and fudgy in the middle. Talk about rich, two small slivers was more than enough.

This one goes on the roster.

Fast Ed’s Coconut Bread

Last night I caught Fast Ed (really?) making his coconut bread on Better Homes and Gardens. You can see the video here, and is it just me or did they speed it up a bit?

It’s a simple as you can get.

Heat the oven to 180 degrees, butter and line a loaf tin.

Whisk together 1.5 cups of coconut milk (that’s close enough to a 400ml can), 2 large eggs and 75ml of vegetable oil.

Combine 1 cup of castor sugar, 2 cups of shredded coconut and 2.5 cups of self raising flour. Add this to the milk mix and beat well until it’s all combined. Lick the beaters.

Pour the batter in to the prepared tin and whack it in the oven for 50-55 minutes.

This one came out light, fluffy and packed full of coconut flavour. Tasted delicious with a bit of jam spread on it still warm from the oven.

Ginger Biscuits

My nana loved ginger, she’d always have a box of the candied version to have a nibble from. While I couldn’t come at that I did love ginger nut biscuits – as a kid I could literally eat a packet.

One of Rae’s requests the other other day was for something ginger so I decided on Margaret Fulton’s ginger biscuits – perhaps the simplest biscuit I have made but my god, they are good. This is the third batch (thanks to a request from Ren) and they won’t probably won’t last the evening.

There was an error in the recipe. It said to pre-heat the oven to 180 before and then, after five minutes, reduce the temperature to 180. I kept the starting temp at 180 and then after five dropped it to 150 and they worked fine.