Pistachio & Lime Cakes

For my birthday last year I got the Pocket Bakery by Rose Prince as a present. It has a cute design and I love that it has photographs of the finished products. Some of the recipes are extremely detailed and quite intimidating for me - I often skip the pastry section! So far I've made some Carrot, Oat & Orange Muffins and Masala Chai Fruit Cakes, which is quite pitiful considering I've had the book for over a year. Ryan has been wanting to make Potato & Feta Bread for a few days so we decided to have a baking afternoon together in our tiny kitchen. I opted for these delicious sounding Pistachio & Lime Cakes which turned out really well. Below is my tweaked version of the recipe... I never bake by the book!

Pistachio & Lime Cakes

Ingredients/Equipment:

• Muffin/Cake tin
• 12 paper cases
• Mixing bowl and spoon

• 125ml milk
• 15ml fresh lime juice
• 60g butter
• 150g soft brown sugar
• Zest of 2 limes
• 2 eggs
• 50g of pistachios
• 50g ground almonds
• 275g self raising flour (for plain flour, add 4tsp of baking powder)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 220°C and prepare the limes and pistachios so that you can put them in the mixture when needed. I bought shelled pistachios so it took a while to shell them all and it was a challenge not to eat them! You can use a food processor to crush the nuts but I used a pestle and mortar.

Pour the milk into a jug and add the lime juice before setting to one side. This will thicken the milk slightly ready to add at the end.

Add the butter (in small chunks) and sugar to a big mixing bowl and cream together until it forms a paste-like texture. Then you can add the ready-prepared lime zest and beat in the eggs.

Next add the ground almonds and pistachios and mix before gradually adding the flour; don't forget the baking powder if you use plain flour like I did. You can also use white or wholemeal flour.

It's quite tough to mix at this point but try and combine the ingredients as best you can. Once mixed, you can pour in the milk and stir until you have a smooth cake batter.

Finally, spoon the mixture into the cake cases in your cake tin. I would suggest adding slightly more than you would for fairy cakes. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until they are starting to look golden on the top. You can test if cakes are ready by inserting a clean knife into one of the cakes, if it comes out without any mixture on, the cakes are done!

The original recipe also had a caramel topping that could be made using caramel jam and icing sugar. I wasn't even sure what caramel jam is so I opted not to top my cakes with anything. They are super delicious with really strong flavours - nutty and citrus all in one.

 Enjoy!!

For other tried and tested recipes from Away with the Fairies, follow the links below...

• Apple & Honey Cake and Red Thai Pork
• Three Ingrediet Nutella Brownies
• Banana and Nutella Swirl Muffins
• Grandad Davison's Ginger Biscuits

If you fancied making Ryan's Potato and Feta Bread, you can find the recipe here.

xxx

Hungry?

Last Sunday Ryan took me to see the YUMI community garden as he always talks about it and I am helping out with their street festival in York on Saturday 31st August. We were all talking about baking with vegetables, because Ryan had made his first ever beetroot brownies, and I was inspired to do some baking myself!

Apple Cake with Honey Icing 

This recipe is from Innocent Drink's cookbook that's full of really good stuff, Hungry? You can buy yourself a copy here :) I got this recipe back in second year and some of you might remember the beetroot brownies that I had a go at making; as well as egg frittata muffins and lentil curry it seems! Anyway, apple cake...

Ingredients:
250g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch of nutmeg
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
200ml olive oil (I used sunflower oil)
75g caster sugar
seeds from 1 vanilla pod (I used vanilla essence)
zest of 1 lemon
2 free range eggs
2 apples - peeled, cored and chopped

200g icing sugar
4 tablespoons of lemon juice
4 tablespoons of honey

How to:
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C/ 350 degrees F/Gas Mark 4. You'll need two 23cm cake tins, buttered and the bases lined with grease proof paper. (I made smaller individual cakes with a silicone tray)

Mix the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and backing powder in a bowl and set aside.

In a second bowl, whisk the oil, sugar, vanilla seeds and lemon zest. Now whisk in one of the eggs, followed by the apples, and mix again.

Start to add the flour bit by bit, whisking as you go, until you have a smooth batter. Leave to stand.

Seperate the second egg and keep the yolk for another time (if you want to). Put the egg white into a bowl and whisk until stiff peaks form (um what? I just did it until it was more foamy than runny). Carefully fold the whisked egg white into the batter. You want to be delicate here, to keep as much air in the mixture as possible.

Pour the mixture into the lined cake tins and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Once golden on top, allow to cool on a rack while you make the  icing.

Sieve the icing sugar into a mixing bowl and add the lemon juice bit by bit, followed by the honey. This is a loose icing that will dribble off the sides of your cake, so don't worry if it seems a little runny.

Once the cake is completely cool, dot a few holes across the top with a metal skewer and spoon the icing all over, allowing it to dribble down the sides of the cake.

Red Thai Pork

I picked up a book called 'Easy everday healthy' by Lesley Waters in TkMaxx last summer (you can buy it here) and to be honest I haven't really used it! So I decided to try out this recipe on Thursday night. Poor Ryan and Tom were my guinea pigs but it actually turned out okay after what felt like HOURS of stir frying on our rubbish induction hob.

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 red onion, peeled and finely chopped (watery eye alert)
225g of pork tenderloin
2 tablespoons Thai red curry paste
500g carton of passata
1 tablespoon of sugar
350g French beans, topped and tailed (I used spinach instead)
Freshly ground black pepper
Coriander or small basil leaves to garnish (naaaah, not that fancy)

How to:
Heat the olive oil in a large shallow pan (ha, good one induction hob), add the chopped red onion and cook over a gentle heat for 10 minutes until soft and golden.

Meanwhile, cut the pork into 5mm (1/4 inch) pieces. Turn up the heat under the pan to high, add the pork and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes until evenly coloured. (Again, induction hob fail... 20 minutes)

Stir in the Thai red curry paste and cook for 1 minutes. Pour in the passata and the sugar and stir well. Bring to the boil, lower the heat and gently simmer for 8 minutes.

Meanwhile, (if you want beans) blanch the French beans in boiling water for 1 minute, then drain and refresh under cold water; drain again and cut into short lengths. Add the beans to the curry and cook for a further 1 minute. (If you want spinach just add it to the curry and let it wilt)

(The fancy-pancy bit)

Season with pepper to taste. Scatter coriander or basil leaves over the curry and serve accompanied by Thair fragrant rice, and yoghurt if you like.