Apple, maple and pecan bars

Posted on April 29, 2013 by hungryhinny

When I had to make cakes for a work meeting the other week, I knew straight away that coffee and caramelised white chocolate cupcakes would be on the menu, but choosing a second bake proved a little trickier.

The pony thought I should stick with something simple (read: chocolate) and a straw poll in the office put cheesecake in with a shout, but in the end I was swayed by the incredible looking maple, pear and pecan treacle tarts posted by the Little Loaf, and ended up adapting that recipe to make these bars.

I turned it into a traybake as I was a bit short on time and didn’t want to faff around lining individual tart tins, slightly altered the ratio of maple to golden syrup to keep the cost down, and swapped pear for apple, just because.

These bars actually made me quite nervous – I thought they were great but I really didn’t know how well they would go down with everyone else.

Luckily I needn’t have worried as they were a winner – the lunchers loved them and my boss even said they would be in his top 3 pick of everything I’ve ever baked, which is a pretty good endorsement!

I served them at room temperature, which was good as it was actually a rare sunny day, but I can only imagine how amazing they would be warm with a scoop of ice cream on a chilly autumn or winter evening… Definitely worth revisiting the recipe to try!

Apple, maple and pecan bars (adapted from The Little Loaf)

For the pastry:

65g butter
100g plain flour
30g icing sugar
1 medium egg yolk

For the filling:

35g butter
150g maple syrup
200g golden syrup
150g fresh breadcrumbs
1 granny smith apple (115g) grated
50g pecan nuts, roughly chopped

To make the pastry, beat the butter and sugar until well mixed, add the egg yolk and beat again, then finally add the flour and mix until just combined. Tip the mixture into a greased and lined 8×8″ square tin and press down with your fingertips – this is loads easier than rolling it out and a method I will definitely use more in the future!

Prick the base with a fork and chill in the freezer for 10 minutes while the oven pre-heats to 180 degrees, then bake for around 15 minutes or until lightly golden. Leave to cool while you make the filling.

Heat the butter, maple syrup and golden syrup until melted (you don’t need to bring it to the boil, just get everything nice and liquidy). Stir in the breadcrumbs, grated apple and chopped pecans, then spread in an even layer on top of the base.

Return to the oven and bake at 180 degrees for 20-25 minutes, or until set and just crisping up around the edges. Leave to cool before slicing into bars.

Hummingbird Cake

Posted on July 11, 2012 by hungryhinny

Last week, I went to another brilliant Cornwall Clandestine Cake Club, and have been terribly slack in posting about it – apologies!

Held at a gorgeous farmhouse near Tintagel, the Cornwall and North Cornwall branches of CCC came together for a 4th of July all-American spectacular. Just look at this spread of cakes – and that was before everyone had even arrived!

I decided to make a Hummingbird cake – apparently Southern Living magazine’s most requested recipe, so it must be a true American classic!

I was a bit worried someone else would do the same, but luckily they didn’t. For those of you who haven’t heard of or tried a Hummingbird cake, it’s basically a super-charged banana cake, with added pineapple, pecans, cinnamon and cream cheese icing – an inspired combination!

This is probably one of my favourite things I’ve baked recently, as all the elements just work really well together – the bananas taste delicious and make it smell heavenly when it’s baking, same for the cinnamon which I love in pretty much anything; the pineapple makes it extra-moist, the pecans add a nice texture contrast, and cream cheese icing is my all-time favourite frosting.

Hopefully everyone else who tried a bit liked it – I took a slice home with me at my boss’s request, and even his banana-hating son approved so it must have been pretty good!

Just in case the giant flag the pony made to go in my cake wasn’t enough to let people know what it was, I made a little hummingbird to go on top, although my lack of artistic skills may have just left everyone more confused…

Hummingbird Cake (adapted from Southern Living magazine)

360g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
400g sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
3 large eggs, beaten
250ml vegetable oil
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
200g can crushed pineapple
100g chopped pecans
450g chopped over-ripe bananas (3 large bananas)
500g cream cheese
250g butter
250g icing sugar

Start by greasing and lining four 7″ sandwich tins – I only have two so I baked in two batches. Sieve together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt, sugar and cinnamon into a large bowl. Whisk together the eggs, oil and vanilla and stir into the dry ingredients, until just combined. Fold in the banana, pineapple and pecans and stir to make sure they’re all distributed evenly, then divide the mixture between the pans and bake at 180 degrees for about 20-25 minutes, or until risen and springy to the touch.

For the icing, beat the butter to soften, then add the icing sugar and half the cream cheese. Using an electric mixer, beat for 3-5 minutes until light and fluffy and no lumps remain, then quickly add in the rest of the cream cheese and beat until just combined. Chill in the fridge until thick enough to spread.

To assemble the cake, level off each of the cake layers, then stack with a layer of cream cheese icing between each, and cover with the rest of the icing. Keep in the fridge until half an hour or so before serving.

Banoffee muffins

Posted on March 26, 2012 by hungryhinny

After seeing these delicious looking sticky toffee banoffee muffins on Tinned Tomatoes, it was really only a matter of time before I had a go at making them myself.

That time came around quickly, as I needed something I could bake that would survive an hour’s drive to a meeting and feed an office full of hungry people, and muffins seemed like the ideal solution.

I had a bit of a baking dilemma as the recipe doesn’t use any sugar, just a tin of caramel – I wasn’t sure if this was right and couldn’t decide whether to guess and add sugar or not – in the end I cautiously added 20g dark brown sugar just to ease my mind, although it really wasn’t necessary.

I think I mixed the caramel in a bit too well, as I didn’t really get melty pools of caramel as I was hoping, but I did get moist, sweet banana muffins that smelt AMAZING every time I opened the tin!

These muffins have also taught me the difference between muffins and cupcakes – the cases I used were most definitely cupcake cases, as I discovered when the recipe which was supposed to make 12 made 16 with quite a bit of overflowing batter, which led the friendly pony to call some of the less fortunate looking cakes “elephant man cupcakes”…

Thanks to Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes for posting the recipe – apart from the sugar I followed it exactly so you can see the original here.

Flour, sugar and dairy free chocolate fudge bites

Posted on March 12, 2012 by hungryhinny

My next door neighbour Jo has, for some reason I will never understand, given up flour, sugar and butter for lent. Insanity!

I didn’t really like the idea of going 40 days without taking her any baked goods, so when I saw these German chocolate fudge bites on Chocolate Covered Katie I knew instantly they would have to be made for Jo.

As well as being free of pretty much everything bad for you, they’re also incredible quick and easy to make, and use just four ingredients (possibly four of my favourite ingredients) AND are only 50 calories each!

Sounds too good to be true, but they really do work!

Flour, sugar and dairy free chocolate fudge bites (recipe adapted from Chocolate Covered Katie)

Makes 15 small bites

120g pitted dates
50g pecan nuts
2 tbsp cocoa powder, plus extra to coat
2tbsp desiccated coconut

Put all the ingredients into a food processor and blitz until everything is well-chopped and well-mixed. Transfer the mixture into a bowl and knead until it comes together. Roll out 15 small truffle-sized balls, and chill in the fridge for half an hour. Roll each bite in more cocoa powder before serving.

Chocolate and pecan crusted goat’s cheese

Posted on February 15, 2012 by hungryhinny

This post is a bit of an anomaly for the Hungry Hinny – an actual meal as opposed to a baked good!

But as the challenge set by Choclette for this month’s We Should Cocoa was to create something savoury and vegetarian using chocolate, I was happy to branch out.

The only savoury cooking I’ve done with chocolate in the past is using it in chilli, but I thought that was too obvious and set out to find something a bit different.

I stumbled across this recipe for warm encrusted goat’s cheese which used cacao nibs, which I figured would at least be interesting, if not actually nice, so I set about recreating it.

After a bit of reconnassaince on Twitter, I found a local shop which sold cacao nibs, but when I visited they only had 200g bags costing over £8, which I couldn’t really justify spending on an experiement, so the final version of this is definitely more ‘inspired by’ than an actual replication of the original…

I served the goat’s cheese on seeded panini breads with caramelised onions, a rocket salad and balsamic dressing, and I have to say I actually really liked it!

The pony wasn’t so keen on the crust, but then he doesn’t like pecans anyway so I wasn’t too surprised – it’s definitely worth giving it a go for something slightly different to do with chocolate!

Chocolate and pecan crusted goat’s cheese (adapted from All Chocolate):

(Serves 2 as a lunch)

2 x 65g packs of Gevrik Goat’s Cheese (other goat’s cheeses will work fine, but if you’re a strict veggie double check as some French ones aren’t suitable)
1 egg, beaten
50g pecan nuts
1tsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp black pepper

Use a food processor to quite finely chop the nuts, then add in the cocoa powder and black pepper. Cut each mini-log of cheese in half width-ways, so you have four rounds, then dip each in the beaten egg before coating with the nut mixture, then place on a baking tray. Bake at 180 degrees for 5-10 minutes, or until the coating is crisp and the cheese is just starting to ooze out.

To serve:

2 medium onions
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1tsp brown sugar
2 seeded paninis, or other breads
1 pack of rocket or other leafy salad

Heat a little oil in a frying pan then add the sliced onions. Cook slowly for about 15 minutes or until starting to turn golden, then add in 1tbsp balsamic vinegar and the brown sugar. Cook for another 10 minutes or so, until caramelised.

Heat the breads for about 5 minutes in the oven, then slice in half and top with the onions and goat’s cheese. Arrange on top of the salad and drizzle with the remaining balsamic vinegar.

Banoffee pie tarts

Posted on September 1, 2011 by hungryhinny

These banoffee pie tarts were a last minute addition to my barbecue cake line up, when I realised I would have double the amount of pastry I needed for the mini white chocolate and strawberry tarts.

I thought about what would go well with the pecans in the pastry, and although I’ve never tried it before decided that pecan, banana and caramel was bound to be a winner.

I totally made this the cheat way with a tin of caramel, but when you’ve got 5 sets of cakes to make in a day speed is important!

If these were any bigger I think they’d be a bit too sweet for my tastes, but in such little bite size portions they were just right!

Banoffee pie tarts (makes about 15):

1/2 quantity of pecan shortcrust pastry, recipe here
2 bananas
1 400g tin caramel (or dulce de leche if you want better quality!)
300ml double cream

Once the pastry is baked and cooled, add a heaped teaspoon of caramel into each case. Chop one of the bananas and place the pieces on top of the caramel. Lightly whip the cream then spoon a dollop onto the top of each tart, then top with another slice of banana. Ridiculously easy!

Chocolate Pecan Pie

Posted on May 2, 2011 by hungryhinny

I’ve eaten pecan pie once in my life, ever. It was when I was in my early teens, and I made the recipe for chocolate pecan pie from Joanna Farrow’s Chocolate cookbook.

Since then, it hasn’t been made, as my main cake eaters (first my dad, and then the aforementioned friendly pony) claimed to not like nuts, so it seemed a little greedy to make one that only I would eat.

I think the fact that I couldn’t make it made me build it up in my mind to be the nirvana of baking, the most delicious but unattainable dessert in existance.

Recently however, the friendly pony has started to come around on the nuts thing, and when asked to choose between chocolate pecan pie and nutella tart, surprisingly chose the pie.

However, after all these years of waiting, I have to say I was slightly disappointed. It had a perfectly good chocolate pastry, sticky chocolatey syrupy filling and crunchy pecans, but it was somehow just not quite as good as I remembered.

Still, at least my 10+ year craving for it has been satisfied and I can finally move on, to bigger and better baking!

Chocolate Pecan Pie, from Joanna Farrow’s ‘Chocolate’

Pastry Ingredients:

175g plain flour
25g cocoa powder
125g butter
50g caster sugar
2 egg yolks
cold water

Method:

Sift the flour and cocoa powder into a bowl with the butter, and rub together until it makes breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and egg yolks and mixx together, then slowly add water until it comes together as a dough
Chill in the fridge for half an hour (or 10 mins in the freezer) then roll out large enough to line a 25cm. Trim off any excess pastry, then chill for another half hour. Blind bake for 10 minutes at 200 degrees, then for 5 minutes normally (I have a rather novel way of doing this as I don’t have baking beans, forgot to take photos this time but will next time I blind bake).

Filling Ingredients:

175g caster sugar
150ml maple syrup
50g unsalted butter
3 tbsp cocoa powder
3 eggs
200g pecan nuts, roughly chopped