COOKBOOKS GALORE

On my friend Phil's lovely blog, As Strong as Soup, [ http://asstrongassoup.blogspot.com ]   he writes about Nonnettes and using honey. I haven't tried his recipe yet, but my Polish dil also gave me her  recipe for a Polish Honey cake. Every time I visit a farmer's market I always buy a jar of local honey, so have plenty to use in both recipes. I decided that I needed a large cake to take to a meeting yesterday, so made the Polish honey cake. It's called Piernik in Polish. There seem to be many varying recipes for this cake, but they all contain a mixture of ground spices. The recipe said to use a 22cm tin, but I don't have one this size, so used a 23 cm tin and it turned out fine. 500g plain flour, 2 tspn baking powder, 1/2 tspn ginger, 1/2 tspn cinnamon, 1/2 tspn cloves. 1/2 tspn allspice, grated zest of 1/2 orange, 25g chopped walnuts, 25g seedless raisins, 25g chopped figs, 300g honey, 90g caster sugar, 90g butter, 4 egg yolks, 2 tspn instant coffee dissol...

My lovely Polish neighbour and I enjoy making cakes together. I tasted a Polish gingerbread cake at her house recently, so thought I'd find a recipe and make one too. I had a look online, but some didn't seem to be authentic, some had strange ingredients, so in the end I used a mixture of several recipes, taking what I thought were good bits from each! The cake contains a mix of spices - ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, so I mixed together what I thought would give the cake a good spicy taste, without it being overpowering. Some of the cakes in the recipes were cut in half and filled with plum jam, some were iced with chocolate, so it seems as if there's as many variations with this cake as there are with some traditional British cakes. Preheat oven 180C/gas4           grease a 900g loaf tin The recipe is very easy - you melt 170g light brown sugar with 75g butter, 170g honey and 2 tbspn strong coffee granules[ I used Azera Espresso] in a pan...

I keep buying sweet potatoes and  forgetting about them, so decided to use them up in a cake. I had a look online, but thought most were too fussy for me. This one came from the book I've mentioned before, 'Cakes Mom Used to Make'.  It doesn't have an author, as it's recipes from different people. It makes a big 3-layer cake, but as I was making it for a largish family get together, this was fine. The nuisance part was that you needed 3 x 23cm cake tins. I have 2, so borrowed the other one from my neighbour. Preheat oven 200C/gas6 Prick 2 medium or 1 large sweet potato [about 350g], put on a baking tray and bake for about an hour till they're soft. Take them out and cool for a bit. When they're cool, you can peel and chop them and purée in a blender.  Turn the oven down to 180C/gas4. Grease the 3 cake tins and line the bottoms. Sift together 320g plain flour with 90g of cornflour, then add 3 tspn baking powder, 11/2 tspn cinnamon, 1/2 tspn nutmeg and ...

We've been eating sweet potatoes for some time, but have never tried them in a cake. I wanted to make something different last week to take to OH's family get together, so decided to make a sweet potato cake. There are lots of recipes and ideas on the net, but many, as is usual with American cakes, had so much sugar.  I played around with a few recipes, tweaking this and that, and tried this one out first as muffins. It we didn't like them, the birds could have an early Easter present! They certainly tasted different, but pleasantly different, so decided to make the cake.  Lots of the recipes I looked at had a marshmallow frosting or some other sickly stuff. This one is one I've used many times since being given it by an American neighbour - it's not too sweet, and I love cinnamon! The first thing you need to do is to roast 2-3 medium sweet potatoes in oven 190C/gas5 for 45 mins or so till soft. Cool. You could cook them a couple of days before and keep them in...

A quick post, as the recipe is online. Another good recipe for a teabread - just fancied making one to have with a cuppa.  I changed a few things in the recipe - I used 'Quatre Epices', a French spice mix which has cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger, and the cloves and nutmeg give the cake a lovely spicy musky  flavour. I also used dark muscovado sugar as I didn't have any of the light. There's marmalade in it and I used a thick cut, but cut the pieces of peel into small bits. The wholemeal flour makes it quite a dense cake, but the flavours are great, and we enjoyed a slice with some butter. I think if I made it again, I would use part wholemeal and part white flour for a better texture. At least the fruit didn't sink to the bottom this time!  This is the recipe, on the Baking Mad site.                                             http://...