Raspberry & Almond Butter Blondies

Since deciding to tackle the size of my backside, I've adopted the Six Million Dollar Man's tagline and with every meal and journey I make at the moment, I'm seeking to make everything stronger, better & faster.

Trips to the supermarket are being done on the bike, not by car, (very slow) runs in the park have replaced a slow walk to the local town centre and a lot more thought is going into everything that I eat.  All this is being done with the zeal of the newly converted and I imagine my enthusiasm will subside in a few months.

But for now, if I feel like eating some nuts as a snack, I start thinking, 'what's the best nut I can eat to get the most from my snack?  Potatoes have been replaced with sweet potatoes or lentils.  I'm only eating meat once a week on average and when I do, it's the nicest piece of pork or beef I can buy, divided up so I get two meals from it.  I've had to make an extreme cutback on the amount of sugar I eat and specifically, the amount of cake I eat.

With the above in mind, I've been looking everywhere for ideas on how to make cake, but better.

I hate low-fat, or light versions of food that do a poor, tasteless impression of the original product.  A company launched 'healthy' cupcakes in the UK a couple of years ago, which were greeted with derision because they were awful and expensive. The common (and sensible) reaction was, why would I eat three crap cakes, when I could have one delicious cake for the same amount of calories and fat?

So to be clear, I'm not seeking low-calorie cake - low calorie is not automatically healthier. However, if I can swap out some of the butter in a cake for almond butter, which is still quite high-calorie, but has less saturated fat and still get a cake that tastes amazing and has me reaching for a second slice, then I'm going to do it.

These blondies are happy to stay in an airtight tin for about 5 days and benefit from 2 days maturing.  They also freeze well (what I've done to avoid eating them all in the space of three days).

Raspberry & Almond Butter Blondies
(adapted from a recipe by Rachel Allen)
Makes 12

Ingredients
100 grams plain white flour
50 grams wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
120 grams unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for greasing tin
130 grams almond butter
175 grams light brown soft sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
75 grams white chocolate, chopped
90 grams frozen raspberries

Method
1. Remove the raspberries from the freezer, chop any large ones in half and leave to thaw slightly while preparing the batter.
2. Grease and line a 23" round Springform cake tin (alternatively, use a 20" square tin).
3. Preheat the oven to 170C (150C fan-assisted) and arrange racks so your cake tin will be placed right in the middle of the oven.
4. Sift the flours and baking powder into a medium bowl and set aside.
5. Using a large bowl, cream together the unsalted butter and almond butter, until well-mixed and soft (it will be quite a runny batter at this point). Add the sugar, egg, vanilla extract and a tablespoon of the flour mixture (this will prevent curdling) and beat slowly, until well-mixed.
6. Add the rest of the flour mixture and the chopped chocolate and mix with a spoon or spatula until well-mixed and all flour has been absorbed. The mixture will be a dough, not a batter.
7. Fold in the raspberries.  Do not worry if they break up slightly.
8. Place the dough into the cake tin, pressing out with a spatula or spoon, so it is spread evenly (it doesn't need to go right up to the edge of the tin, it will spread out further in the oven).
9. Place in the middle of the oven. The total advised cooking time is 25-30 minutes. Test the middle of the cake at the 20-minute mark with a skewer.  You want a slightly squidgy finish, so the cake is ready when the skewer comes out with some cooked batter on it, . If the batter is still wet and uncooked, continue to bake and check at further 5-minute intervals, up to the 30 minute mark, until the desired texture is achieved.
10. Remove from the oven and cool in the tin, on a rack, before removing and slicing.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

Google Reader to Close: How to Stay Subscribed to Blogs

Google have announced that they are closing their RSS feed subscription service, Google Reader, on 1 July 2013.

There has been considerable backlash online about this, but the general consensus is that Google have done this in order to push people into using Google Plus, so it's unlikely that they'll reverse the decision.

Any readers of this blog who have subscribed prior to March 2013, will have probably done so using Google Reader. If so, you will lose your connection to this site (and any others you're connected to via Reader) after 1 July.

I'd hate to see you go, so I have now updated the subscription options, so you can subscribe via email. I would encourage any new visitors who want to stay in touch, to do so using this service.

Alternatively, you can continue to receive posts via RSS by exporting your Google Reader account subscriptions to another RSS service. I strongly recommend Feedly, who anticipated this problem some time ago and have a 'one-click' export service which will transfer all your Reader subscriptions, provided you export everything before 1 July. It took me under 2 minutes to export my subscriptions.

LifeHacker have produced a good article explaining the best alternatives available, which you can find on their website.

TechCrunch and others are predicting that FeedBurner will be next on Google's hitlist.  I'm not keen on FeedBurner anyway, so I am looking into alternative RSS feed providers and will post an update when I've found one.


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A Very Long Sabbatical

As I've recently committed to reducing my sugar intake to the recommended daily amount, in a bid to stop falling asleep at 4 p.m. and get rid of some excess pounds that have attached themselves to me, it's unlikely that I'm going to be baking up a storm any time soon.

I have lots of drafted posts which only consist of a title, which is to say that I have lots of baking ideas ready to try out.  I'll be doing this for social occasions where cake is required, so there will be the odd post here and there.

In the meantime, I'd like to direct you to the following sites, where cake-a-plenty can be found.

An American Cupcake In London. Prolific posts from Kelly, who always creates something fun and delicious.

Delicious, Delicious, Delicious. Self-effacing, funny posts from Mr. P., who also 'gives good photo' and produces cakes that wouldn't look out of place in your fanciest afternoon tea.

Gobble Monkey. No baking and Gobble Monkey is retired (although a new post popped up recently), but his archived reviews of British sweets are unfailingly funny (I was convinced Gobble Monkey was actually Stuart Heritage, until he posted a photo of himself).

Teen Baker. Lucy posts quite a lot of traditional British baked goods and always manages to bring her own twist on whatever she makes. I really enjoy her writing style, too; she doesn't use words like 'unctuous', just clean, simple descriptions of what she's baked and why she baked it.

Vanilla Frost Cakes. I must confess to a slight bias on this one, as I know Lucy, but her sugarcraft skills never fail to impress and it's good to see her skills being recognised, as her baking business continues to grow.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

Marble Bundt Cake

I needed a cake to serve over Christmas that wasn't too rich, or too sweet. Just something to stave off the sugar cravings and to serve with coffee.

I don't know why Bundt cakes aren't more popular in the UK. Using a Bundt tin is such an easy way to make an impression and there seem to be a worrying amount of people who think that you've sculpted the cake yourself, on presenting it. The best known brand of tin is produced by Nordic Ware. As Bundts are a US concoction, the best way to discern the volume of batter which any tin can take, is to check how many cups it holds.  The standard tin seems to take ten cups, but there are variations on this, so look out.

It is absolutely essential that you thoroughly grease and flour every nook and cranny of your chosen tin, before adding the batter. If you fail to do so, you can wave goodbye to your chances of getting the cake out of the tin intact. I use Wilton Cooking Spray for this and sieve in the flour (and some cocoa in this case), before giving the tin a sharp bang over the bin, to get rid of the excess flour. Using sour cream in this makes for a good, dense crumb.  

Speculoos Spiced Apple Cake

Lotus Biscuits are the only reason for being nice to your hairdresser.

I am joking, of course; they are not the only reason.  If you are not nice to your hairdresser, they will pretend to listen to you and understand that you definitely just want a trim. They will then get 'distracted', cut three inches off, then make out that this was what you told them that you wanted.

But back to Lotus biscuits.  These are the only brand of speculoos biscuits that you can widely buy in the UK and they are delicious.  In certain hairdressing chains, you get a single wrapped Lotus biscuit with your coffee.  You eat this, then ask for another one. Then, when the receptionist goes to get you another one, you call them back and tell them that they may as well just grab a handful of biscuits, as you are hypoglycemic and can't sit in one position for more than 15 minutes without going into a coma.

Speculoos biscuits are a lovely, short biscuit, from the Netherlands, that taste of spiced brown butter. A few months ago, I learned from I Heart Cupcakes that there is such a thing as speculoos spread, or paste. Which reminds me:

Pulla Bread

I've been feeling very sluggish and lazy over the past couple of weeks. Baking and cooking has given way to picking at leftovers, or plumping for cheese and crackers for tea, rather than standing at a stove.

In an attempt to jump start my brain and body, I've joined a gym. My local leisure centre has just been refurbished and in addition to treadmills etc., has a good pool and 'health suite', i.e. sauna and steam room.

Three guesses where most of my time's being spent. My frizzier-than-usual hair should be your first clue.



Anyway, in what is probably one of the clumsiest segues in history, on we go to my other Nordic indulgence this month.

Pulla is a Finnish bread which traditionally gets served up at Christmas. It is meant to be sweet, light and laced with cardamom. I imagined it to be extremely good with coffee.

My Perfect Autumn Cake: Blackberry & Apple Crumble Cake

When I was little, I used to go foraging for blackberries in the hedges by Kneller Hall. Kneller Hall is home to the Royal Military School of Music, so you can often see the recruits on parade practice inside the grounds. There is something instrinsically funny to me about the sound of brass, so this is always a joy to watch.

Even more frequently, if you are a cyclist or walker on the local river towpaths, you can enjoy almost being knocked down the riverbank by a pack of recruits, out on a run in full combat gear. I exaggerate, of course. The men and women who reside at Kneller Hall are exemplary specimens of the human race, who would never point and laugh at a cyclist who'd fallen off their bike.

Oh. Apart from the ones who told 9-year old me, upon finding me scrummaging through the aforementioned blackberry hedges, that if I climbed into the grounds again, I'd be shot on sight.

I was too scared to even walk past the grounds for years after that.