Sunday bakes - ‘My grandma could have taken Mary Berry’ Zuppa Inglese cake

This was a cake that my Dad told me my grandma used to make, but as far as I could see there wasn’t a recipe of the exact method she used out there so I decided to put one up.

This isn’t an elegant looking cake but it sure is impressive!

Ingredients

Sponge

360g unsalted stork

360g caster sugar

6 eggs

360g self-raising flour

400grams of dried fruit

100ml marsala

Crème Patissiere

500ml full fat milk

1 vanilla pod

6 egg yolks

4.5oz caster sugar

2oz plain flour

Italian meringue

6 egg whites

12oz caster sugar

9tbsp water

Method

First make your sponge by whisking the butter and sugar together until fluffy then beat in the eggs one by one. Sift in the flour and stir in lightly. Butter your cake tins, you will need 6 sponges each the same size so you may need to re-use your tins and cook in batches. Divide the sponge mix into 6 even parts and spread very evenly in the cake tins, it will be thin. As the mixture is so thin the cooking time will be short, in my oven it was 15 minutes at 180, but yours may differ so please take care and watch your sponge carefully.

Leave your sponges to cool on a rack. 

Crème Patissiere

In a large saucepan heat the milk with the split vanilla pod. Whisk up the sugar, flour and eggs in a large bowl. Take out the vanilla pod and pour the milk into the bowl a little at a time, mixing thoroughly each time. Once combined pour the mixture back in to the saucepan and heat, stir the mixture constantly while it thickens so avoid lumps and then remove from the heat.

Once the sponges are cooled brush them with the marsala, layering up several times to allow a fair amount to soak into the sponge. 

Layer up the sponge with the crème pat and the dried fruit, covering each sponge in crème pat and then dried fruit, be generous with both. 

Once you have layered them all up set to one side and make the Italian meringue.

Whisk up the egg whites into stiff peaks.

Put the sugar and water in a saucepan and heat until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is boiling aggressively.

Pour the sugar syrup into the egg whites in a thin stream whisking constantly. This is not really easy to do with a single pair of hands and a manual hand whisk, but if I, the clumsiest person in Surrey, can do it I’m sure everyone else can. Keep whisking until the meringue has cooled and looks glossy.

Coat the cake in the meringue and bake in the oven for 15 minutes until the outside is crisp and bronzed. 

This cake looks a bit like a snow heap, although I’m sure there would be a way to dress up the meringue, but it tastes incredible and is a pretty impressive cake to roll out on special occasions. 

White walls and frames to be filled

Today was the day that my ex and I finally exchanged possessions. Always a depressing task muddled in with a great big spoonful of awkward, but in all honesty it actually went really well and it was nice to catch up and hear how the other was doing. Sadly one of the possessions to go was my collection of antique maps (ok not technically mine because I bought them as a gift) which formed a gallery wall in my bedroom. This has now left me with a gallery wall of blank frames. At first look it was sad, bland and empty, but the longer I looked (and I’m not going to lie I was assisted by some cheery songs and the amusing anecdotes of my girlfriends burning their ex’s things) the more I saw that it was in fact a metaphor for new beginnings. Instead of a wall dedicated to documenting travels past I can now slowly begin to fill it with new discoveries full of colour making me feel uplifted. The empty frames just adventures still to come, promise rather than memory.

In that spirit I’ve made a list of some of the loveliest prints I’ve found to adorn my waiting walls. 

 Deluge - Morgan Doyle

 Silent Lake - Morgan Doyle

Postprint No.8 - 'Posto recondito' - Roy Willingham

 

 Untitled - Max Bode

 Vertical challenge I - Jennifer Jokhoo

My Heart a Wounded Crow – Sarah Gillespie

Chitra Merchant - Night IV ( This is actually already in my living room)

  
Tulip Mania I - Rachel Levitas

 Urban Fox I - Rachel Levitas

Central Park - Bella Foster

Sunday bakes - 'cure my cold' crumble

Very belated Happy New Year to you all.

Last year was a long and tiring year and Turner and I are exhausted!

In addition I have a horrid cold so I’m afraid I've been really lax with the blog and my Sunday baking. But my decorations are down and a year of bad luck has been avoided. So, as we say every year, next year will be better. 

 

Number one on the 2015 agenda is shaking this cold, which actually works quite well for number two, being healthy. It’s citrus fruits and vitamin C all round, starting with oranges and grapefruits and lemon tea.

So for today’s Sunday bake I am doing a fruit crumble from the piles of frozen berries in my freezer.

It doesn’t sound very glamorous but it is honestly delicious. 

Ingredients

1 mug of raw oats

1 tbsp of glace ginger

2 tbsp sliced raw almonds

2 tbsp cinnamon

2 tsp honey

175grams frozen cherries

175grams frozen raspberries

½ an eating apple

100ml diet ginger beer

Method

Spread the oats, almonds, ginger, cinnamon and honey on a baking tray and roast in the oven on a low heat until the oats are golden brown. 

Put the berries into a saucepan with the diet ginger beer and cook on a low heat until the liquid starts to turn into a syrup and then add the apple, sliced. Cook until the apple is a little softened but still has a little bite.

The topping will have gone crispy where the honey pooled and you can snap the topping into crunchy fragments. Sprinkle the topping over the fruit and eat while it is still hot.

I’m not going to say it’s a ‘healthy’ dessert because sugar is still sugar but it’s a healthier dessert, full of fruit and oats.