Sweet Success: Celebrating young talent

 

Honey and Orange Cake.

Being a Yorkshire lass, born and bred, ‘awesome’ is not a word which frequently forms part of my vocabulary but I could use it to describe the week I spent 15 years ago in San Francisco at the University of California, Berkeley Haas school of Business.

 

It was there I met a baking aficionado from Canada who, like me, was inspired by her grandmother’s cookery. She gave me an interesting recipe for Honey and Orange Cake.

 

I haven’t made this cake for a few years now but I’d been asked to provide a ‘little cake’ for a musical recital event I attended recently. The charity organising the event supports young musicians from all over the world, in particular through the inspiration of Feliz Mendelssohn Barthold. The recital was given by a talented young 18-year old violinist from Albania, whom the charity had been pleased to support. Another ‘awesome’ event where we were entranced by the musicality of the young musician. It seemed right to add my Honey and Orange Cake to the wonderful buffet provided by the hosts.

 

Here’s the recipe :

What you need

6oz (175g) butter or margarine

6 level tbsps honey

2 tbsps castor sugar

Finely grated rind of 2 oranges

3 eggs

8 oz (or 8 heaped tbsps) plain flour (sieved)

3 level tsps baking powder

Pinch of salt

1 tbsp orange juice

How to bake

Cream the butter, honey and sugar thoroughly. Add the grated orange rind. Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a little flour with each egg. Fold in the remaining flour and orange juice. Put into 2 x 7 inch (18 cm) cake tins lined with greaseproof paper. Bake in a moderate oven Mark 3, 325F, 160-170C for approximately 30 minutes.

 

Meryl says : I decorated my cake with a simple butter cream icing in the middle, dried oranges, a sprig of rosemary and a dusting of icing sugar on top. Everyone said it looked and tasted awesome!

From Canada to San Francisco to London, with all its honey goodness, this recipe has travelled across the continents. Long may its sweet success continue!  This is a shorter version of an article I wrote for Yorkshire Bylines.

Our French cousin … Le Pain d’ épices

 

It was a holiday in Alsace that I first came across Pain d’épices. This translates as ‘spiced bread’ but it has no yeast and doesn’t require kneading so perhaps we would call it a ‘spiced loaf’ rather than ‘bread’. It’s full of spices from ginger, nutmeg, cloves, star anise to cardamon or cinnamon with orange and lemon zest often added. The most important ingredient of all is honey which give the pain d’epice its characteristic taste and smell. It’s also made with rye flour, although some recipes suggest a mixture of rye and wholewheat flour.

I watched the baker making this Pain d’épices on a street in one of those pretty Alsace villages. The aroma in the street was drawing in the customers. I asked how it was made and, it was no surprise that his was a secret recipe. I did find our hotel owner happy to give me her own family recipe when we returned later in the day. She said that it was a tradition to eat a slice of ‘Pain d’épices’ in the cold weather after coming back from school with a mug of ‘chocolat chaud’.

What you need

250g honey

50g soft dark brown sugar

125g rye flour

125g wholewheat flour

20g baking powder

2 tbps mixture of  

ground ginger, mixed spice, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, star anise

2 eggs

 170 ml milk to mix

How to bake

Preheat the oven 180C/Mark 4.

Heat the honey and sugar in a pan gently, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Remove from the heat.

Mix the flours, baking powder, and spices in a bowl, adding the honey mixture gradually to make a soft dough.

Beat the eggs and milk together until smooth and then add to the other mixture to make a batter.

Pour this into a lined 1 kg loaf tin and place in the oven. Bake for approximately 45 minutes until a cake skewer comes out clean. 

Meryl says : This is a very simple recipe to bake. There are versions of this across France from Dijon to Reims, each with a slightly different twist in the ingredients such as local types of honey or more of a particular spice - the Reims version has more cinnamon in the mixture.  In some ways, there are close links to our own Gingerbread, Parkin and Wheaten Bread recipes. It’s on my list of lovely warming bakes which are perfect for cool autumn days. 

Bon Appétit!