Lemon Almond Cake

Almond-based cakes are great for us because they last so much longer than a normal sponge cake. I made this three days ago and it will be good for the rest of the week. A sponge cake just wouldn't do that.

I made this on a bit of a baking frenzy, as I was so pleased to have the oven back, so almost every meal this week has involved use of the oven, and I have baked most days. That's why teachers need such long holidays!

Lemon and Almond Cake (based on a recipe by Nigel Slater)

200g butter
200g demerara sugar
90g plain flour
90g ground almonds
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 lemon
4 large eggs

Line a loaf tin with baking parchment. Preheat the oven to 160C degrees.

Cream the butter with the demerara sugar. It takes a bit longer than with caster sugar, but demerara gives a more complex sweetness to the cake.
Mix together the flour, ground almonds and baking powder. Zest the lemon, and add the zest to the flour mixture.
Beat the eggs and add them to the butter and sugar. Fold in the flour with a metal spoon (you need to use a metal spoon as otherwise it will knock the air out).

Scrape the mixture into the tin and then bake for about 45 minutes. Sprinkle with demarara sugar when you take it out of the oven, and leave the cake in the tin to cool.

Kringel

Finally, I can bake again! After over 2 months, our oven has been fixed, and although the thermostat is still very dodgy (the oven is generally 50 degrees above what it should be) I have been able to indulge in my baking passion once more.

Having no oven has meant that I've missed the last two Fresh from the Oven challenges. This is the one for March, and seeing as though the oven was only fixed yesterday, I thought I'd blog about it quickly now.

Kringel is an Estonian bread, and can be made sweet (with chocolate) or savoury (with cheese). Due to my previous experiences with bread and chocolate (see this post), I went for the cheese option.

The dough was fine, no problems at all there, although I did just use one whole egg instead of two egg yolks - mostly because I didn't want the egg whites hanging around. The problem, as you will see from the photo, comes from the shaping. This is what it should look like:

And now for my attempt (remember I went for cheese, not chocolate):

Hmm. Not what was intended. Actually, I had to put it back in the oven after this photo was taken because it wasn't quite cooked!

The bread was quite tasty, and I definitely prefer cheese bread to chocolate bread... Choosing savoury over sweet is a very rare occurance!

Kringel

Ingredients (Makes 1 Loaf)

Dough
•40g fresh yeast
•1tbsp sugar
•250ml milk, lukewarm
•2 egg yolks
•50g butter, melted
•600-700g flour

Filing

•100g butter, softened
•3 handfuls of raisins
•10 tsp sugar

Topping

•150g dark chocolate (at least 50% cocoa solids)
•75g butter


Method:

Mix the yeast and sugar in a bowl. Add the lukewarm milk and egg yolks, then mix in the flour and melted butter and knead well. Shape the dough into a ball, cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave to rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 200°c/Gas 6. Dust your work surface with flour. Take the dough out of the bow, knock it back and roll out to a thickness of 1cm. Spread the softened butter evenly over the rolled sheet of pastry, then sprinkle with raisins and finally sugar.

Roll up the dough like a swiss roll and cut it in half with a sharp knife. Starting from the uncut end, plait the dough, lifting each half over the other in turn. Finally, shape the plaited bread into a B shape and transfer to a buttered baking tray. Bake for about 25 minutes or until golden.
In the meantime, prepare the chocolate topping by melting the chocolate and butter in a bowl over boiling water. Once out of the oven, let the bread cool down a bit, place on a serving plate and drizzle with chocolate sauce.
Cheese Kringel
To make a savoury version, leave out the raisins and sugar and sprinkle the Kringel with grated cheddar instead. Add more grated cheese on top instead of the chocolate sauce.