These past few days we've had some wild winter weather here at Struan Farm. High winds, heavy rain, chilly temperatures. Definitely indoor weather! Here's a video I took of the Douglas fir trees swaying in the winds for our Instagram page.... for some reason Typepad won't let me post a video directly on my blog.
So I've busied myself shelling walnuts, shelling walnuts, shelling walnuts, and with a bit of baking.
First cab off the rank on the baking front was a lovely "Almond and Tamarillo Cake" from the NZ Herald's weekly "Bite" supplement. It sounded and ended up being quite delicious. Not one of those sick-y sweet cakes, rather the sort of moist, flavourful cake we prefer.
I do need to tell you a few things about the recipe though. It isn't well written and contains a few errors. The ingredient list references vanilla, which then isn't mentioned in the instructions, while salt is mentioned in the instructions, but not in the ingredient list. And there's a fair amount of confusion on many readers' parts about the orange. Half of the orange (zest and juice) is put into the cake, the other half orange into the topping. The instructions don't say zest and juice for the topping, rather just 1/2 orange, but that's what I also put into the topping. The cake itself is made with almond butter (I used Pic's, which worked really well). Then the topping calls for "butter." Most people would query if they also meant almond butter, making the recipe dairy free. I used normal butter for the topping, which made more sense to me. And since we liked the cake the way I made it, we'll stick with what I did. It's good served with either a bit of yogurt or ice cream, but conceivably is moist enough to eat without either of those if you feel like depriving yourself of dairy products.
Second cab off the rank was an improvised "Syrian Seven Spice Damson Bread Pudding" for Sunday night dinner with visiting farmstay guests/friends. I used a big bag of leftover croissants I had in the freezer, cut and buttered them then slathered on my Syrian Seven Spice damson jam. I then tore the buttered and jammed croissants into big chunks, putting those into a buttered rectangular baking dish. For the custard I combined 1 cup each of cream and whole milk, four eggs, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 1 tsp vanilla extract, and 1/2 tsp of the Syrian Spice Mix for extra flavour. Once this was whisked I poured the custard over the croissants in the baking dish, making sure everything was soaked, and then let everything absorb for 20 minutes before baking at 180C for 50-55 minutes.
It was wonderful. This can be served with ice cream, whipped cream or yogurt.
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