Foodporn Friday (1)

I’ve been meaning to blog about food for a while now because I absolutely love cooking and baking, but somehow it was never the right moment. Or, in some cases, I simply forgot to take pictures of whatever it was I created, and a post without pictures is a sad excuse for a blog post really.

But a few days ago I made one of my favourite recipes, so I just had to share it here. It’s a basic recipe for a lemon drizzle cake, but this time I slightly changed it by topping it with a lemon buttercream frosting and it turned out great!

It’s a gluten free cake, because my family and I are gluten intolerant, and if you use a butter substitute it can easily be made dairy free as well.

That looks a bit of alright, doesn’t it?

So, without further ado, the recipe for my lemon cake with lemon buttercream icing.

For the cake
55 grams butter, softened
150 grams sugar
2 eggs
the zest of 2 lemons
juice of 1 lemon
250 grams rice flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 teaspoon salt
180 ml milk

For the frosting
60 grams butter
250 grams icing sugar
1 tablespoon milk
15 ml lemon juice

Some lemon zest for decoration

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 180C.

Cream together the butter and sugar. I like to use an electric whisk to do this. Then add the eggs one by one and mix well. Mix in the lemon zest and juice and mix well again. After that add the dry ingredients and the milk. Whisk everything until it’s well combined, stopping every now and then to scrape the edges of the bowl. Continue to mix until you get a smooth, homogenous cake batter.

Grease a round baking tin and dust with a bit of rice flour. Pour the batter into the cake tin and spread it out evenly.

Bake in the centre of the pre-heated oven for around 25-30 minutes, but keep your eye on it. The cake’s done when a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Leave to cool on a wire rack, and don’t frost before the cake has completely cooled! This’ll take maybe an hour.

To make the frosting
 Cut the softened butter into cubes and place in a large mixing bowl. Sift in the icing sugar to avoid lumps. Add your milk and lemon juice and mix well with an electric whisk until it has a smooth and quite thick consistency. If it looks too runny, add a bit more icing sugar. You don’t want your frosting to drip off the cake.

So, once your cake has had plenty of time to cool, add the frosting and spread it out evenly over the cake. Decorate with a bit more lemon zest to make it look pretty 🙂

This cake is best eaten on the day, but will definitely keep for a few days if stored in an airtight container and kept somewhere cool.

Do you love baking? Share your favourite recipe below if you like. And if you decide to bake this cake please send me pictures, because I’d love to see your baking creations!

Baked Macaroni and Cheese

This is the lunch I cooked this afternoon. I was a bit nervous about it because I’d never made macaroni and cheese before, but the recipe sounded easy enough, and it turned out really great! The recipe I got from the lovely Karina over at Gluten-Free Goddess who has a knack for devising the most wonderful gluten-free recipes.

The full recipe can be found here at Gluten-Free Goddess, so I’ll just list the few changes that I made to it.

Instead of Cheddar cheese I used Emmental, and I didn’t have any cottage cheese so I used soft fresh goat’s cheese instead. Also I left out the addition of either dry sherry or white wine, simply because I didn’t have either. And lastly, I didn’t have any small cherry tomatoes so I used big grape tomatoes instead and chopped them into small pieces.

I didn’t have any ready-made gluten-free breadcrumbs either, so I used some leftover buckwheat crackers instead.

The end result was delicious, even if it doesn’t look all that great in the pictures (I need to work on my photographic skills when it comes to food).

But seriously, if you ever feel uninspired at that crucial moment when you need to whip up a quick dinner, just take a peek at Karina’s website. There’s something there for everyone, and her recipes not only accomodate a gluten-free diet, but a vegetarian and vegan lifestyle as well.

Christmas Cake

I know, I know, it’s January so we shouldn’t be talking about Christmas any longer. But I wanted to share with you my take on a traditional Christmas cake which I baked on Christmas Eve. It was based on the recipe by Mary Berry from the Great British Bake Off Masterclass (this links to the original recipe), but I changed it a bit to make it gluten-free.

I don’t remember exactly what I used for the filling and how much, but I threw a lot of raisins and sultanas, and different kinds of dried fruit together, and instead of soaking them in brandy (which I didn’t have), I soaked them in Armagnac for 3 days. I also used the zest of a lemon instead of an orange, simply because I didn’t have any.

The recipe also calls for mixed spice, which you can’t buy here in France, so I made my own mix:
2 tbsp cinnamon
2 tbsp nutmeg
2 tbsp ground mace
2 tbsp ground cloves
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tbsp ground ginger

For the cake base I used a traditional banana bread recipe, which I use for lots of cakes. What is nice about this is that there’s a lot less fat in it than in a normal cake, because a large part of the butter is replaced by mashed bananas. So instead of the 250 grams of butter that is used in the normal recipe, I only added about 125 grams, and 3 medium sized mashed bananas.

Apart from this I followed the normal recipe, only I didn’t cover it in royal icing. I used pink marzipan to cover the cake, and I thought it would be a shame to cover it again after that. In the end I’m glad I left it like that, because the cake was already incredibly sweet, and with the icing it would’ve been even worse. It was really tasty though, and I was very happy with the way it turned out, especially since it was my first try.

It is definitely true that this cake is best made a few days before it is eaten. I made it on Christmas Eve, and even though it tasted alright at the time, it tasted a lot better when I had another slice of it a few days later. I’ll definitely be baking this again next Christmas!

Oven roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes

Just a little something I whipped up for lunch this afternoon. I had two sweet potatoes left, and about a dozen really small normal potatoes. So I peeled and sliced them, and popped them in the oven for 40 minutes. And they were delicious (if I may say so myself).

What you need:

• a baking tray
• parchment paper
• potatoes and sweet potatoes
• smoked paprika powder
• dried thyme
• coarse sea salt
• ground black pepper
• few cloves of garlic
• olive oil

Put the parchment paper on the baking tray and spread the potatoes and sweet potatoes out on top. Add a few cloves of garlic. Sprinkle with olive oil, smoked paprika, thyme, sea salt, and black pepper.

Bake in a pre-heated oven for around 40 minutes. The first 20 minutes I put the oven on 150C, and after that I turned it up to 180C to make sure they potatoes turned a nice golden brown colour. We ate them with some cajun chicken fillets and a salad.

This is me

So my dear friend M just sent me a picture on Facebook, and she thought it was an accurate representation of what I’m like. And I have to admit that it’s kind of true.

 

Autumn has brought out this uncontrollable baking urge in me, and now that we’re getting closer to Christmas it’s only got worse.

Christmas treats

For weeks now I’ve been planning what I’m going to bake for Christmas. ‘Tis the season after all. I’ve been trying out various new recipes, to ensure that they’ll be perfect by the time it’s Christmas, because we don’t want any baking disasters at the very last minute. I’ll definitely be baking gingerbread and thumbprint cookies, both gluten-free of course. I’m afraid I will need to bake another batch of thumbprint cookies beforehand though, because presentation-wise they’re still a bit, how shall I put it? Rustical is probably the best way to describe it. They don’t look very attractive, but they taste great if I may say so myself. Apart from the cookies I’ll be baking a bread for Christmas morning, and I’m thinking about doing some sort of cake or pie as well. Perhaps a lemon meringue pie, or flourless chocolate cake.

My very first batch of gingerbread cookies.

These are the cookie cutters I ordered on Amazon. They should be here next week, and then I can make proper winter themed cookies. Can’t wait!

 

What will you be baking this Christmas?