I will return to making this cake again and add more photos.

Yesterday I wanted to make a cake for Bikerboy’s birthday weekend and one of his favourite cakes is Carrot Cake but he also loves pineapple which reminded me there are recipes somewhere in my books for Passion Cake containing pineapple, some of the recipes also contain carrot and some don’t.  I had less than an hour to put together a recipe and bake, no time to look through books, my first call was to twitter to see if anyone had a carrot cake recipe I could adapt and the lovely Baking Barrister did here.  

I need to write down this recipe before I forget because right now it only exists on a scrap piece of paper and knowing how I am I will lose it, then spend an hour looking for it before realising I threw it away along with other papers when I was going through a mad clearing up whirlwind thing.

And just in case I haven’t made it clear this recipe was a winner, a keeper as they say, the man of the house says even better today.  Yesterday we had it while warm with Coconut & Lime ice-cream an ideal pairing, so yes a frosting of some kind with those flavours would finish it off perfectly.

Spelt, Carrot, Pineapple, Allspice Cake

The notes on the side are for me to remember for next time

Line the bottom and sides of 20cm (8inch) cake tin.  Preheat oven to 180C / 350F / gas 4

  • 250g white spelt flour (must also try normal flour)
  • 150g grated carrots (grate them fine because they float in the batter better and evenly distributed)
  • 225g crushed pineapple (don’t be tempted to finish the tin or will make batter too heavy)
  • 170g light muscovado sugar
  • 175ml sunflower oil or other flavourless one (next time cut back oil bit & make it up with pineapple juice)
  • 4 eggs, beat lightly with fork until well mixed
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
  • 1 teaspoon of ground Allspice
  • 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
  • and nearly forgot a scant of raisins about 50g 

Mix all the ingredients together.  Put into tin and bake for 40 min.

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I made this salad for my lunch today.  I was reminded yesterday reading Carl’s post on his vegetarian haggis how good aduki beans are, they’re the puy lentil of the bean world for me.  They’re flavoursome, the taste reminds me of black-eye beans/peas and being so small they give you a lovely texture and if that’s not enough they cook incredibly quickly, these today were cooked in less than 20 mins.  

When cooking dried beans I’ll cook the whole packet and then store half of it in the freezer until another day.  Here I dressed them while warm in a vinaigrette (while warm they’ll soak up the dressing) but why not add a couple tablespoons of creamy ranch dressing instead, Monica has finally posted her recipe here.

[click to continue…]

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Something Missing in the Fabulous Baker Brothers Chocolate Cake Recipe

January 22, 2012
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I made this cake after seeing it on the Channel 4 programme The Fabulous Baker Brothers presented by Tom and Henry, the recipe is here.  It seemed a straight forward flourless chocolate cake, there are quite a few recipes out there including this one on my blog here.  What intrigued me was the end result of [...]

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I want to make allergy kid a cake.  I’ve made allergy kid cakes in the past and if you have various allergies this is a good blog, Eggless Baking, but the recipes for cake which don’t have egg will have things like nuts or soya.  The recipes that don’t have any ingredient on her allergy-intolerant [...]

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I made this loaf using some of Felin Ganol’s amaretto semolina for the first time yesterday.  I was expecting a slightly textured crumb, perhaps similar to the Khorasan loaf  but instead was pleased to find a soft mouth-feel crumb as you do with wholemeal, only this is lighter. To give you some idea of the [...]

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Why Start A Food Blog? And Can You Make Money Out Of It? Part II

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This post is following on from Part I here. Blog Envy & The Godivala Syndrome If you want to start one, do it, it’s free, make it your own but be prepared to put the hours in if you want it to have a certain regularity, it really does not feed itself. I’ve had moments [...]

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Why Start A Food Blog? And Can You Make Money Out Of It? Part I

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Why?  Because you want to. And the next answer is no, you can’t make money out of a food blog, or to be more precise, you can’t make a living directly.  Not as things are, whether it will change or not, that I don’t know. I’ve been blogging for just over 2 years and in [...]

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Learning Curve During 2011

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I thought it would be a good idea to do a recap of my blog’s year, but rather than talk about recipes I go through and highlight what I’ve learnt through my posts.   Starting at the beginning of the year : Stoping Ice-cream Becoming Too Hard Blog Post Here Recipes which contains a lot of [...]

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Christmas Day 2011

December 26, 2011
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Today, boxing day, is the real Christmas day for a mum with small kids I think.  I get to do this, catch up with favourite blogs, look through my new cookery books and have some time to read. This year’s Christmas was all about the 4 year old, the perfect age for the magic of [...]

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This is Gregoire’s Banana dessert from his Never Skip Dessert  book, which is unfortunately out of print!  Easy tart to make and made from ingredients usually in the house; butter, flour, sugar and bananas. The first time I made it was last weekend for Emily  and husband Andrew, it was a hit.  I baked it [...]

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After writing my last post on Low Protein Flours Make Great Bread, It’s All About the Flour I said I would write in detail how I made my loaves using Anne Parry’s Amaretto white flour from her watermill in Wales.  A flour currently being sold as All Purpose because of its low protein content, 10.5%. [...]

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Low Protein Flours Make Great Bread, It’s All About the Flour

November 24, 2011
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Anne Parry owner of Felin Ganol watermill told me about this stoneground white flour she had, a single variety called Amaretto that was low in protein 10.5%.  This flour is being sold as an All Purpose flour but she thought it had a great flavour.  I couldn’t wait to try it.  I did and love [...]

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