inner pickle

Cake of Monday: Grandma's Sponge

 

We'll need a trip to Auntie Narelle and the return of my Dad to fact-check this, but I'm pretty certain this is it. This is the champion sponge. It's incredibly light, it's got flavour, and it's moist. It's everything you want in a sponge (if you take them as seriously as I do) and obviously I really need to get out more but heck this sponge is exciting. EXCITING. 

 

Thanks for all your input you lovely folk, particularly those who took the time to locate and email links. Auntie Narelle also located some of Grandma's recipes and copied and posted them to me, confirming the Fielder's Sponge suspicion. Does it really need a particular brand of cornflour? I don't know. I'll inevitably try it with a different brand because we buy in cornflour to make the Buena Vista Farm egg custard and it's not Fielder's. I went and bought the right stuff (our IGA stocked it) in honour of Grandma who was obviously brand loyal for a reason. (I hasten to say there is nothing at all sponsored about this post!! I'm not going to come over all Rolling's Reliable, I promise!! ... And if you get that reference we're soulmates for life you and I.) 

Anyway, it's delicious. As I made it, it rang bells. Oh YES. The triple sifting, I remember that. Actually, as I got to the end, I remembered why I stopped making sponge cakes in favour of other cakes all those years ago. It creates so many dishes! When you've got delightful butter cakes or orange cakes which have similar nuances and you've only got one bowl to wash up after, you've got to really really love the sponge to keep it on top of the list. 

I'll stop pursuing the sponge for now. Although I will make a trip to Auntie Narelle with one soon, and I'll make one for Dad when he gets back from tripping around the country. 

Maybe one day in the faraway future someone will turn up at my door with my Mum's passionfruit shortcake, a very long time after she'd last made it for me. Food is evocative. I'd cherish every bite. Because a cake is never just a cake, particularly when it's someone's signature. It's a sweet reminder of kitchen hours and bowl lickings and tea time treats. 

I hope you make this, and love it, and that someone else washes up. 

 

Grandma's Sponge (AKA Fielder's Famous Sponge Cake)

Ingredients 

3 eggs (separated) 

pinch salt 

¼ teaspoon vanilla essence 

½ cup castor sugar 

⅔ cup cornflour 

1 slightly rounded tablespoon plain flour 

1 level teaspoon baking powder 

Method 

Pre-heat oven to 190°C.  Grease, flour and line 2 x 20cm round cake tins with baking paper.

Beat egg whites with salt until soft peaks form. 

Gradually beat in sugar, a little at a time, then continue beating until stiff. 

Add egg yolks and vanilla essence, beat until combined. 

Sift together 3 times – cornflour, plain flour and baking powder, then add to egg mixture.  

Carefully and lightly fold mixture together using a wooden spoon or spatula. Do not stir. 

Divide batter evenly between two pans and bake 18-20 minutes. 

 

Notes: I didn't fill mine with cream as I had none handy, and just used jam. I was in a bit of a hurry to get out the door with Adam to pick up kids from school and continue onto Berry and Nowra to deliver boxes eggs to restaurants and pick up a hired ute to do the chicken run tomorrow (meat birds going to the abattoir). It's a racy script. The photo's were taken in a thirty second window and whacked into a container to placate hungry kids on the drive. I don't recall Grandma typically using fresh cream, and in the clipped-together recipes Auntie Narelle sent, there was a 'mock cream' recipe of 3oz butter + 3oz sugar + 1 tbsp hot water which is what I remember being her sponge filling.

I'll ask Dad, I'm sure he'll know. 

xxx

 

Cake of Monday: In Search of Grandma's Sponge

My Grandma on my Dad's side was a champion sponge cake maker. Not a Royal Easter Show-type champion, but a Berry Show regular First. A sponge beloved by all who ate it. And remembered today, for heaven's sake. Is there likely to be anything you make that people will remember thirty years after you're gone? It's a sponge cake I really really really want to find.

I don't remember making the sponge with my Grandma. She wasn't really a cooking-with-kids lady. The cake itself I remember though, it was pale and very very light. Sprinkled with icing sugar, filled with jam.

We don't have Grandma's recipe book here, you know, the hand-written one everyone's Gran had. But I have some of her handwritten recipes in amongst Mum's recipes.

I love the way she always signed things "Grandma" in inverted commas, including books she gave me that I now read to my kids. Like "Grandma" was an identity she wore particularly lightly, being Gladys, always, at heart. She was Geoffry's Gladys particularly. My Grandfather died before I was born, and she always missed him.

 

This sponge recipe excited me for a second, but you can see it's not Grandma's writing, and not Mum's either. Mum usually attributed recipes when she wrote them in her book.

I got distracted when I found this one, that's Nan's handwriting! I haven't seen that spidery script for years now. Nan would have turned 100 last week. Scones, mmmm. And so I stopped in my investigation and made a batch.

A batch that was inhaled by family and visiting friends so quickly that no photographic evidence of their existence remains. Pity. They were pretty. 

Then I found this. At the bottom of a scone recipe that wasn't Nan's which makes it likely to be Grandma's. Mum's handwriting, and she thinks this might be The Sponge. Oh my goodness the HOT WATER in the recipe. Yes, I remember the hot water! But it uses self-raising flour and my Auntie Narelle has always said that Grandma's recipe was based on cornflour. Still. I also looked up the Gerringong Mayflower Cookbook sponge - it's quite possible they asked Grandma for her recipe, hers was the best known at the time of publishing. It uses self-raising flour too! And hot water! This might be it!

And so I baked the one we think is Grandma's recipe. We gobbled it up over a couple of days. We agreed it was good, although it wasn't pale or incredibly light. It was actually pretty close to this one, previously blogged. 

I rang Auntie Narelle. She said she would remember it by taste and that she was virtually certain Grandma used the recipe from the side of the Fielder's cornflour box, if they still print a sponge recipe there? 

I said I'd find out, make a selection of sponges and bring them over for her to taste test. I think I better take Dad too. 

To be continued. 

POSSIBLY GRANDMA'S SPONGE

Ingredients:

4 eggs

6oz sugar

6 oz SR flour + half a tsp baking powder

3 tbls water

vanilla

Method (directly transcribed):

Beat whites, add sugar, beat in yolks. Add hot water to round sides of basin, then flour using plastic knife, slowly. 350-400°  15 mins. (I assume you add a tsp of vanilla at the end. Mum was obviously told this recipe without specific instructions? Or perhaps wrote it down assuming she'd never make it, much like I don't make her shortcake? Ah whatever. It's delicious fun figuring this out.)

xxx

 

Cake of Monday

 

I apologise. I didn't make a cake today.

Instead, I made 48 jars of jams and compotes to take to the Gerringong and Kiama Seaside markets this weekend. After all that jam I couldn't face cake baking. 

But because I'm dead keen on a cake date, I thought I'd start us off with a few of my favourites. 

If you click on the picture, you should link through to the recipe. 

Sometimes I forget I've been keeping this blog for a little while now, until I go looking for old cake recipes and stumble over tiny baby Ivys and little toddler Tillys. Tiny tidbits of our days that I would have inevitably forgotten unless I wrote them down here. 

So I'm very grateful that you are visiting, because if you didn't, I might not have kept on writing, and because I have I've got a written record of a whole lot of cake. Not to mention slices. And we haven't even started yet. 

Hooray for cake!

I hope you enjoy it too. 

xxx

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

banana devil muffins

No, not as in devilishly naughty. Laced with devil may care brandy? Nope. Not even a crack about wickedly excellently tasting. Couldn't tell you that. 

Because I HATE BANANAS. 

Kind of like I hate spiders. And the overwhelming smell of nasty chemically deodorant in a lift. And people who don't wave when you slow your car down to let them into your lane. And the cold wet drip down your neck of a wet showercap. 

Did I digress?

Oh, bananas. 

It's a sign of my undying love for my children that I regularly mash or peel that evil, evil fruit for them. 

They are my Achilles heel. Well, bananas and the dreadful habit I have of cutting my own fringe.

Have you ever noticed the complete absence of bananas from this blog? 

THERE'S A VERY GOOD REASON FOR THAT. 

I have whole friendships based on a deep shared hatred of bendy yellow fruit. 

So what's this recipe for then?

Sometimes I have to slow down on the consumption of baked goods. You know, if there's an iced coconut cake in the pantry, it just calls me. I cannot hear the apple in the fruit bowl, I cannot hear the hummus and carrot stick calling. I hear the chocolate brownie. The Anzac biscuit. The currant muffin. 

So every now and then I crack out these for the sake of my bum. And, er, because the rest of the family love them!

 

Banana muffins

Ingredients

1.5 cups mashed banana

half cup of oil

1 cup milk

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 tbsp maple syrup

2 cups self-raising flour

 

Method

In a jug, mix up the oil, milk, egg, vanilla and syrup. In a bowl, stir the mashed banana into the flour and pour the wet ingredients over. Mix well. 

Makes a dozen muffins, or two loafs, or a ring tin, or a nice sized 20cm cake. 

Bake in a moderate oven (170deg) for approx 25 minutes. 

 

Totally inedible of course, unless you're a banana eater and then I understand it's lovely. Moist, tasty, low fat, super easy. 

And if you leave the house while they're actually cooking the smell won't hang around your clothes. Just the damn kitchen. Pooey. Rotten stinking fruit. 

xxx

how not to cook lamingtons

It's Australia Day here today. For about a year Henry has constantly asked (when eating just about anything), 'is this Australian food? Can we eat it on Australia Day?'

I woke up with other things to do today but how could I not make lamingtons? Never made them before. Not only quintessentially Aussie, but country Aussie too. Am now (surely) aspiring country show entrant, so MUST make award-winning lamingtons!

I used this recipe. 

Not sure what I did wrong. 

But the resulting cake uncannily resembled a wettex.

Nothing like a cooking failure to wreck my mood. I dove straight back in though, and mixed up a batch using a recipe from this week's Good Living (in the Sydney Morning Herald.)

It was looking pretty good, although I wondered a bit about the "pour into pan" instruction as I spooned it in and smoothed it down. It was only once it had been in the oven for ten minutes that I remembered the eggs. Four of them. On the bench, not in the cake. 

Dear me. Two failures, one after the other. 

Adam said something encouraging like, how 'bout pavlova? It's idiot-proof, right? then got a slightly shocked look about him as he backed slowly out of the kitchen. 

Good Living had also printed a recipe for pavlova. Using four eggs. Which I had! (No butter left though - used my whole weeks' butter budget in two cakes I probably can't even use for trifle. Pfft.)

When it was cooling in the oven we packed up and went for a bit of an explore and onto the beach for an early dinner. Cooked by someone else.

For dessert:

And because I obviously should have handed the apron over today, I managed to beat the cream on top almost to butter. Am a culinary genius. 

A third attempt at lamingtons coming soon. 

Happy Australia Day! Did you make anything/eat anything special? 

And do you have a trusted lamington recipe I could have? Please?!

xxx

Recipe for utterly awesome chocolate cake

Er, am I allowed to say things like that?!

I'm not blowing my own trumpet. I didn't create this recipe, just tinkered with it a bit. 

It's Australia Day here tomorrow and while my mind is wandering to Lamingtons and Pavlova, here's one I made before the move which DAMN I wish I had a piece of right now to go with my cardboard boxes and my where-the-heck-should-this-live? routine. 

 

Like it? 

It's a thing of beauty, right? 

You know this blog is not about fancy food. If you want amazing looking food that's innovative and smart and genuinely talented go see Lemonpi or Mowie. Over here you get the down-home version. Usually triple tested, always photographed with a bunch of sticky fingers just outside the viewfinder.

Truly, this cake rocks. My friend Anne-Marie made it last year and I begged the recipe. It was, in turn, her friend Carol's recipe. I reduced the sugar and the oil and upped the cocoa and here we are.

A gloriously chocolately chocolate cake that doesn't need chocolate which is convenient because it's a lot harder to snack on a box of cocoa in the pantry, than on a block of 70%. Or budget cooking chocolate.

Everything that looks good at three in the afternoon. 

 

Utterly Awesome Chocolate Cake 

Ingredients:

1½ cups sugar

¾ cup oil 

2 eggs

1 cup (hot) coffee

1 cup milk

2 cups plain flour

1 cup cocoa

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

2 tsp bicarb soda

 

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 165 degrees celcius.

Mix together:  sugar, oil, eggs, coffee and milk. 

Sift together: flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder, bicarb soda. 

Add dry ingredients to wet mix and beat well. 

Pour into cake tin (I make 2 x 20cm pans, the recipe suggests this or one large tin or three loaf tins.)

Bake for approx 35 mins on fan forced, (longer on regular oven.)

 

For the chocolate cream I used:

2 tbsp soft butter

2½ cups icing sugar

½ cup cocoa. 

Mix well and spread onto cold cakes. 

 

(With abject apologies to Fran if she's still sipping vegetable soup and trying to look away.)

xxx

 

 

Simple Butter Cake recipe

We had another birthday cake here today. 

The first one, on the actual birthday, didn't include her best friend.  So we made another one. 

Any excuse for butter cream.

 

Amidst story-reading (all by himself, gulp), and crafting, we all made a butter cake. 

That's what I love most about this cake. It can be made by a four year old (with a six year old who can read a recipe card.)

 

 

Simple Butter Cake

125g butter, softened

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 cups self-raising flour (or all-purpose and add 4 tsp baking powder)

1 cup milk

 

Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and beat. Add one cup flour and mix. Then half a cup of milk. Then the other cup of flour. Then the other half cup of milk.

Cook on 180 deg C for approx 25 mins. 

I baked this one in two 20cm tins for 20 mins only. But it makes one larger cake or ring tin or bundt or cupcakes or whatever you fancy!

It's a recipe you need to memorise. It's so quick to make and as cakes go, foolproof. Or four-year-old proof. 

This recipe works with gluten-free flour too, if you need to. 

 

Butter Cream

100g butter, softened

2.5 cups icing sugar

1 tblsp milk

food colouring, a few drops. 

 

To make icing, I actually don't tend to use pure icing sugar. I don't use enough of it, it goes hard and lumpy in the pantry. Too much sifting required. I tend to buy "icing mixture" (sold right next to the icing sugar) which has 96% sugar and the rest is tapioca starch which keeps the sugar very soft and super easy to use. No hard lumps to beat out. 

For the butter cream, mix the butter and the sugar well then add the milk. Add the colouring last and blend evenly. 

Spreads best on a cold cake with a metal butter knife.

Best eaten with friends. And licked off fingers. Life's too short not to eat cake. 

xxx

 

 

looking for my mojo

I'm sure it's around here somewhere. 

Hello? ... Mojo?

Dammit I need it. And totally do not have it. 

Right when it's all systems go, I seem to have hit the wall. Which could have something to do with about four weeks of religiously interrupted sleep (not just the six month old I must add. We could be running a good Catholic establishment here - up for Compline, Matins, Lauds. There's a bit of invoking the Lord's name on Adam's part which I guess might disqualify us.) 

Two. Weeks. Left.

As I am perennially guilty of burying fairly major news at the bottom of posts, may I refer you to the bottom of the previous post on Emily and the Wiggles?

Yep, we're moving to a distant green hill.

And seriously, I'm not kidding about the tiled orange bench top. You wait. 

But after catering Christmas and keeping up the energy through a gorgeous celebratory New Year with friends, we seem to have ground to a halt. Well, I say "we" but actually I can smell the chemical not-home-made cleaner which Adam has just attacked the oven with. Plus he de-spidered all the outdoor furniture today ready to move it. And he has a Master List. And a clipboard. 

Obviously, notwithstanding my lethargy, I'm in good hands. Lucky!

Meanwhile, shall we have cake?

Here's one I made earlier. For Tilly's last day of daycare, actually. She wanted to take cupcakes, but has a couple of severely allergic kids in her class. So the cook gave me her "allergy-free" cake recipe and actually it's pretty good! 

I fiddled with it a bit and reduced the sugar, but it rises well and tastes like cake. (Doesn't have the heart of a good butter and eggs cake, but sometimes you need something different.)

Egg-free, dairy-free and you could easily sub in gluten-free flour, which I didn't need to for this group. 

I made vanilla ones (above) for daycare but was pretty impressed with the simplicity of the recipe so made a chocolate batch for the next gathering of kids at my place to see how they went down. Quickly! Enthusiastically! 

 

 

Egg-free, dairy-free Cupcakes.  

INGREDIENTS
3 cups self-raising flour

2 cups warm water

1.5 cups sugar 

Half cup vegetable oil

1 tsp white vinegar

1 tsp vanilla extract (don't use imitation if you're making these for really sensitive kids)

 

METHOD

Prepare cupcake tins -either butter and flour them or use cases. My mix makes (weirdly) 23.

Combine all the ingredients together and whisk well until smooth then pour into pans. 

Bake at 160C (or 150 fan forced) until cooked and golden (approx 12 mins).

ICING: I mixed pure icing sugar and water to a paste and just piped it from a ziplock bag with the corner cut off. 

 

Right. Maybe my mojo is at the bottom of a cup of camomile tea. Better be somewhere. There is a giant bookcase waiting to be culled by 25% tonight. Yep, much smaller house, no built-in bookshelves. Adam is standing next to me with a determined look and a big box. 

P.S. If you find my mojo, please send it home? I'll send you back cupcakes with grins?

xxx 

the family fruitcake

How did fruitcake become a byword for twit?

I'd really like to know. 

There is nothing stupid about a good slice of fruitcake. Perfect with a cup of tea. In fact, a small gathering of Reading Between the Wines members tonight polished it off with a selection of herbal tea, coffee and shiraz. It's the cake for every mood. 

And THIS one. This one is Special. 

This is an adaptation of my Mum's recipe the origin of which was Diabetes Australia Magazine I think, but I'm not sure. 

It has no fat in it, and only the sugar from the fruit. So it's kind of a noble cake. 

Plus, it's AWESOME.

Don't take my word for it, make it. Truly. It's so quick. And delicious. 

Obviously it doesn't have the depth or the longevity of a good rich fruit cake (and rest assured there'll be one of those appearing here in the next four weeks) but did you see my earlier point about noble? 

And awesome?

 

AWESOME FRUIT CAKE

Ingredients:

1kg dried fruit

1 cup pitted prunes, chopped

1 big teaspoon mixed spice

2 cups pear juice

2 cups self raising flour

 

Method:

Soak all the fruit and the spice in the juice for at least four hours, or overnight if you've timed it right.  

Then stir through the flour. 

Bake for approx 1 and three quarter hours at 150 degrees in a 20cm square pan (or a smaller pan for a higher cake. I know you don't need me to spell this out. You're smart.)

That's it. 

Enjoy. 

Mum's recipe calls for one and a half cups of prune juice and a quarter cup of orange juice, so you could always try that. I like pear. And I have multiple family members who are allergic to orange juice.

Next time I make this I'm adding nuts. 

Because if you're going to be fruity you might as well go nuts. 

Right?

xxx

Gluten-free orange and almond cake

It's rare for me to seek out a gluten-free recipe. I am a dedicated full wheat bread baker (and eater.) Pasta, too. And pizza. You could in fact call me Fiona Gluten Walmsley. 

I'm baking for a school cake stall this weekend though, and apparently the gluten-free options are big sellers.

I also coincidentally happened to flick past SBS's Food Safari last week and saw these fabulous Jewish ladies making orange and almond cake. A quick web search found the recipe. 6 EGGS?!!! That's way more than my baking budget allows per cake. Besides I just can't seem to follow instructions. 

Here's my version.

Orange and Almond Cake

based on this recipe by Batia Slater

Ingredients:

2 oranges

4 eggs

200g (1 cup) raw sugar (or use white - I ran out)

200g almond meal

1 tsp baking powder

 

Method:

Wash the oranges and cover them with water (skin and all) in a saucepan and boil for 1.5 hours. Set aside to cool. 

Preheat oven to 190°. 

Crack your eggs into a big bowl. Use a slender blender if you have one, and whizz. Or whisk. Add the sugar and whizz. Put the whole oranges into the bowl and whizz with the slender blender. If you don't have a hand blender, you'll need to process them in a food processor. Or normal blender. If you live in an Amish community and have no electric kitchen gizmos whatsoever, then bash up the oranges, taking out your frustration with these people who insist on posting recipes requiring equipment for heavens sake. Then chop as finely as you possibly can.

After the oranges and eggs and sugar are all beautifully combined, stir in the almond meal and baking powder.

That's it.

Too easy.

Pour into a 20cm round springform tin if you have one. Or not. It's not going to fail if you bake it in a ring tin. It might not work in cupcake tins but knock yourself out. 

Mine took 45 mins. 

Henry has decided it's his favourite cake in the known universe so I might have to knock out a 3-egg version, will let you know.

I don't think I've ever been as happy in my whole life as I am right now. And I'm not entirely referring to that empy plate. 

Hope you're feeling awesome today.

xxx