Carrot cake with walnuts and marscapone icing

Have you ever had a craving for cake, and desperately want to give in, but talk yourself out of it because there are healthier things to eat, and all that sugar's not good for your teeth? And then there's the bother of finding the right cake pans at the back of the cupboard, and they'll likely need a wash, and you'll have to let the butter soften first, and bring the eggs to room temperature...and oh, it's all a lot of bother isn't it?

But then, if you're like me, your mind goes to carrot cake, because that's quite healthy, isn't it? I mean, it's bloody well got vegetables right inside it, so that's like eating a cake that's full of all kinds of goodness, not to mention being a boon for your eyesight. And it's chock full of walnuts too, and aren't they like cancer fighting nuts or something? I mean how could I not make this cake for the sake of my future well -being and ocular soundess!

Actually, the real impetus for making this cake is because I read about it in another food blog, written by the wife of Giles Coren. He's a well-known restaurant critic in the UK, but I like him best for his work on a show called Supersizers, which looks at cuisine in different eras of history. If you can find it on the Food Netwwork or online, I urge you to give it a look. It's really one of the cleverest shows ever, thanks to the witty banter between the two hosts. (And not to take away any credit from Coren's wife, who herself is a very good, and quite funny, writer as well.)

So the blog find spurred me into action, not only because it was cleverly written, but because I also adore Nigel Slater, the cake's creator, his writing and his recipes. This recipe is from his book Tender, which is full of mouth-watering vegetable-based treats. I think I would like for Nigel to live in my house and turn my backyard into a lovely vegetable garden like the one he cooks from year round in England. Er, I suppose that might be a bit of a challenge living in Ottawa, but he could try.

Anyway, on to the cake.....

Start by separating out three eggs.

I had to buy some sunflower oil especially for this recipe. I've never bought it before and had to seek it out at a Birkenstock-wearing-hippy-frequented-incense-smelling natural food store.

Grate your carrots and weigh them. British recipes are fun because you have to use kitchen scales and do math (okay, so the math bit's not that much fun).

Measure the walnuts too. You can see my measurements aren't exact, but I don't think a gram or two difference matters all that much.

Beat everything together until it turns this appetizing brown-ish barf colour.

And fold in the egg whites.

Place in a pan. The recipe calls for two 8-inch cake pans, but I couldnt' find/don't have any, so I made do with one 9-inch springform pan.

I ended up cutting my 9-inch cake in half to form layers, between which I spread the cream cheese/marscapone icing. This was my first time ever making cream cheese icing and I have to say it is a dangerous thing. I could eat marscapone straight from the tub. But I didn't. Well maybe just a spoonful, but that's it. I swear.

And this is the cake's top view. I omitted the orange zest from the icing, and it was still very tasty.

Overall, this cake wasn't quite as moist as I'd hoped it would be, but it is quite good. I'm sure you'll like it, especially if you're a fan of walnuts, as they make a plentiful appearance in this cake.

A carrot cake with a frosting of mascarpone and orange by Nigel Slater

For the cake

3 eggs
250g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch salt
200 ml sunflower oil
25og light muscovado sugar
150g carrots
juice of half a lemon
150g walnuts, roughly chopped

For the frosting

250g mascarpone cheese
200g Philadelphia
150g icing sugar
grated zest of half an orange
some whole walnut halves

1 Set the oven to 180C. Butter 2 x 22cm cake tins and line each bottom with a disc of baking parchment

2 Separate the eggs. Sift together the flour, bicarb of soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.

3 Beat the oil and sugar in a food mixer until well-creamed then introduce the egg yolks one by one. Grate the carrots into the mixture, add the lemon juice and walnuts and stir. At this point, the sunflower oil will float to the top of the mixture and look gross. Don't worry, this is normal.

4 Fold the flour into this mixture. I did this by hand, but Nige says do it in the mixer.

5 Beat the egg whites until stiff and then fold into the mixture with a metal spoon.

6 Divide the mixture between your tins and bake for 45 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean-ish ... because this is supposed to be quite a sticky cake, except it didn't turn out that way for me.

7 To make the frosting, beat the mascarpone, Philly and icing sugar together in a mixer until smooth and creamy. You stand a better chance of this happening if the cheeses are at room temperature when you start. Stir in the orange zest. Splash some in between your cakes to sandwich together and the rest on the top and on the sides. Decorate with walnut halves.

Eat a large slice and your optometrist will thank you.

Flashback....

..... to the summer. This is a recipe I made on a hot day in August when zucchinis were plentiful and the humidty was high. I forgot all about it until I found the pictures on my camera. Kinda tells you what an impression the recipe had, huh?

I won't lie and say this recipe will be a knockout, but if you're looking for something to do with a fridge full of zucchini (or heck, even two) then this is one suggestion. Unfortunately, they didn't turn out to be the crisp, crunchy bites I was hoping for, but maybe I'm used to the ones served in restaurants that are basically deep fried and full of oil. These babies will be healthier for you, no doubt, but you still might crave the fuller-fat version. Each to her own, right?

Anyway, now that I've done a stellar sales job, keen to see how it all comes together? Let's go!



Start with two zucchinis and gets to gratin'.

Next you need to drain the grated zucchini in order to extract the water. I place it all in a colander lined with cheesecloth and wrung it out. It's amazing how much liquid comes out.

Once everything is as dry as possible, add to a bowl, along with a grated carrot, some chopped mint, corriander seed, a bit of onion, a clove of chopped garlic, and some lemon zest. Toss in few spoonfuls of flour too, and season with salt and pepper.

Beat two eggs lightly and mix into the batter.

Fry them up in a shallow bit of olive oil until crispy and brown on both sides.

And then they'll look like this. Chop some more mint and mix with some yoghurt to make a dipping sauce. Best eaten hot, but I had several cold the next day and they were pretty passable.

Recipe confession time: I originally thought I used a Nigel Slater recipe for these, but I've just tried to find something online and came up empty. So, could be Nigel Slater, or some other source, but really, the basics are listed above, and you can substitute to your likes and tastes (I think a bit of aged cheddar would go nicely!).

*serves me right for posting this three months after I made it :(

Blue cheese pizza with pears and arugula

Who says pizza has to include tomato sauce and mozzarella? Not me. Besides, if you go that route, you're stuck with the leftover can of pizza sauce that will just grow mould as it sits in your fridge. Much better to stock up on some pears and blue cheese and get at it!

This recipe comes from Chatelaine which has undergone a bit of a makeover of late (or should I say the latest makeover in the past five years). Now it resembles the old Wish magazine -- which I loved -- and which isn't a coincidence, as the former Wish editor is now at the helm of Chatelaine. Anyway, if you haven't picked up a copy in a while, it's worth a look.

But back to the pizza....

Start with your pears and slice 'em up. Actually, you start a few hours earlier by making the crust, which will have suitably risen by this point...

...until it looks like this. At which point you spread with olive oil and sprinkle with cayenne.

Then comes the assembly. A layer of arugula, followed by the pears and blue cheese. More olive oil to make it shiny.

And into the oven it goes until it looks like this. This is really tasty, and while the crust is a bit of a bother compared to my usual recipe, it was really good.

Blue cheese pizza with pears and arugula
From Chatelaine, October 2010 edition

Ingredients

3 tbsp whipping cream (35%)
4 tsp grainy Dijon mustard
2 tsp regular Dijon mustard
1 1/2 tsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp honey
2 firm but ripe Bosc pears
extra virgin olive oil
1 recipe pizza dough
1 pinch cayenne pepper
3 cups argula, plus more for garnish
114 g blue cheese, crumbled

1.Preheat oven to 500F. Place a large baking sheet in the oven and heat for 45 min.

2.Whisk cream with mustards, lemon juice and honey in a medium bowl. Reserve. Cut pears into 1/4-in. slices and toss with 1 tsp olive oil to coat.

3.Cut dough into 2 portions. Roll 1 out into an oval and place on a sheet of parchment paper. Trim parchment so it’s just wider than dough. Brush dough with olive oil. Sprinkle with cayenne. Top with half of arugula and drizzle with more olive oil. Top with half of pear slices and half of blue cheese.

4.Remove hot baking sheet from oven and quickly transfer pizza and parchment paper onto it. Bake until edges are golden and crisp, 12 to 15 min. Transfer to a platter and garnish with additional arugula if you wish. Repeat with remaining pizza. Serve with mustard sauce.

Andalusian chicken-noodle soup with chickpeas

You wouldn't know it from the past couple of balmy days, but fall really is here, and that means soup weather!

This soup is the very definition of a meal in a bowl, and it would be the perfect thing to warm you up after a few hours of leaf raking, which is what I forsee in my future this weekend. I've made this soup twice now, and neither time did I have the required sherry. I think the first time I tried to cheat a bit with some red wine vinegar, but it was a poor substitute I'm sure. So go on and splurge for some sherry if you give this a try.

Start by poaching your chicken in the stock and herbs. I used bone on chicken breasts both time, because I think they have more flavour. I did remove the skin prior to poaching though.

Then cook your sausage and add in the veggies. One time I used a fresh chiorizo sausgage, which I removed from the casing and cooked just like ground meat. The second attempt at this soup used some of the chopped chured sausage. Can't say I had a preference, as both were pretty good.

While the vegetables are softening, you shred your chicken. This recipe yields a lot of meat, which helps to make it hearty.

Then add the broth back to the pot, cook your noodles, and toss in the meat, chickpeas and parsley. Almost ready to serve!

Serve in a warm bowl alongside some homemade biscuits and you've got yourself a pretty satisfying dinner.

Andalusian chicken-noodle soup with chickpeas (From Food & Drink Autumn 2010)

8 cups homemade or low sodium chicken stock
2 bone in chicken breasts, skin removed
2 bay leaves
1 leafy spring of flat leaf parsley
2 tbsp olive oil
4 oz (125g) cooked sweet or hot chorizo sausage, diced
1 onion, finely chopped
1 medium carrot, diced
1 medium potato, peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp sweet smoked paprika
½ c dry sherry
2 oz spaghetti, broken into 2-inch pieces
½ tsp each salt and freshly ground pepper
1 can (540 ml) chickpeas drained and rinsed
½ c finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

1. In large saucepan, combine stock, chicken breasts, bay leaves and parsley sprig. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, partially covered, for 20 minutes or until chicken breasts are no longer pink inside. With a slotted spoon, remove chicken breasts from stock and set aside to cool slightly.

2. When chicken breasts are cool enough to handle, remove meat from bones and shred meat finely. Set aside.

3. In large Dutch oven, heat oil over medium heat. Add chorizo and cook stirring for 3 to 5 minutes or until chorizo starts to brown and renders some of its fat. Add onion, carrot and potato. Cook, stirring for 5 to 7 minutes or until onion is softened but not brown. Add garlic and paprika. Cook stirring for one minute or until fragrant.

4. Add sherry. Bring to a boil, stirring to scrape up any browned bits from bottom of pot. Boil for 2 minutes or until sherry has almost evaporated.

5. Strain stock into Dutch oven, bring to a boil over high heat. Add spaghetti, salt and pepper. Reduce heat to medium-low, simmer partially covered for 8 to 10 minutes or until potato and spaghetti are tender.

6. Stir in reserved chicken meat and chickpeas. Simmer, uncovered, over medium-high heat for 2 minutes for flavours to blend; stir in parsley. Taste and add more salt and pepper if necessary. Ladle into warm soup bowls.

Serves 6 to 8

Chocolate Guinness birthday cake

I like birthday cakes. I like making them and I like getting them. I can still remember a butterfly cake my mum made for one of my birthdays years ago (I don’t remember the age, but I’m sure we’re talking single digits). It may have required a special pan, or just some fancy cutting, but the cake was complete with butterfly body and wings, which were colourfully decorated in candy and icing. I think there were licorice antennae too. It may not have won any Martha Stewart awards for finesse, but it was pretty fancy for Lakefield in the seventies. And hey, that was the era before Martha Stewart, so her opinion didn’t matter anyway.

There’s something cheering about a homemade birthday cake, even if it has a sloping top and the icing isn’t quite perfectly spread. Cakes made from scratch don’t look as pretty as their bakery-shop cousins, but that’s kind of the point, right? When someone goes to the trouble to mix up carefully selected ingredients, gently pours batter into pans, then frets as the cake rises and the edges brown, it means they’ve thought about you, and they’ve put time and effort into creating something that’s essentially meant to celebrate you.

That’s why I was happy to be able to make a birthday cake for my dad in September. I chose a Guinness chocolate cake for the occasion. The cake is a nice combination of chocolate — and yes beer — that results in a dense and damp concoction. This is not your light and fluffy Duncan Hines cake. And best of all, it’s remarkably simple to make. Or is the best part the leftover Guinness? Either way, win win.

Crack open a can and get started...

Melt the beer and butter in a pan.

And measure out your cocoa.

Mix up the eggs and sour cream (or yoghurt as I substituted).

Mix all together until you get this gooey mess.

And here's the baked cake. It's really moist -- and quite heavy too!

And here's the birthday guy enjoying the cake, with the world's most pathetic candle ever on top!

But this slice is looking a bit better with some raspberries and cream. Bake one for your next birthday!

Chocolate Guinness cake
from Nigella Lawson's Feast

•250ml Guinness
•250g unsalted butter
•75g cocoa
•400g caster sugar
•1 x 142ml pot sour cream
•2 eggs
•1 tablespoon real vanilla extract
•275g plain flour
•2 1/2teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

1.Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C, and butter and line a 23cm springform tin.

2.Pour the Guinness into a large wide saucepan, add the butter - in spoons or slices - and heat until the butter's melted, at which time you should whisk in the cocoa and sugar. Beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and then pour into the brown, buttery, beery pan and finally whisk in the flour and bicarb.

3.Pour the cake batter into the greased and lined tin and bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Leave to cool completely in the tin on a cooling rack, as it is quite a damp cake.

Memories of the Danube

I know, I know. I've been a terrible, lousy blogger of late. And it's not that I haven't been cooking either, because I have. It's just the writing about it part that I need to improve on.

So there are some cooking updates to come, I promise. But in the meantime, I'm so sad to hear about the toxic spill in Hungary. Apparently all that red sludge is making its way to the Danube. I was in Hungary exactly a year ago, and got to see the Danube in all its shimmering glory. It's heartbreaking to think of it in a less than pristine state.

Here's how the river looked this time last year. Nice, huh?

In other news, here's a story I wrote recently about the rules of engagement in social media, and another about the business of blogging. Because you know I'm getting rich from this one!

Swiss chard gratin with grain mustard

What a difference a few weeks make!

Last time I checked in, it was in the middle of another bloody heatwave and I was complaining bitterly about being hot and sweaty.

Well, now it's fall and the nights are blissfully cool. I've even had to turn the furnace on once already. Quite a change indeed!

In addition to the weather change, I've been busy job hunting and interviewing, finishing up my current gig, fighting grafitti and moles in my yard, and starting my class at the Gonk. It's been hectic, but I have found some time to do some cooking in between all the craziness.

One of my favourite dishes in the past while has been this chard gratin. I've sung the praises of this vegetable on this blog before, but prepared in the gratin style with some mustardy cream is definitely a winner.

The recipe comes from Nigel Slater's Tender, which is full of gorgeous vegetable recipes. I look forward to trying more of them as the cold weather continues.

Start by chopping the chard and separating the stems from the leaves.

Blanche the veggies in hot, salted water, beginning with the stalks first. Cook until just tender, then drain and add to a buttered 9x13" baking dish. The leaves get blanched next, but they'll take just a few seconds until they're wilted and ready.

Pour the cream mixture over top and sprinkle with a handful of parmesan cheese.

This is how it looks after being in the oven for half an hour or so. It's goes all bubbly and smells incredible. The cheese crisps up on top and forms a crusty top, which is in essence, what a gratin is. You'll want to grab a spoon and dig right in -- trust me.

This is a really, really good side dish, and I would be tempted to eat this all by itself for supper, and would do so quite happily.

Swiss chard gratin with grain mustard (from Nigel Slater's Tender)

*I'm recreating this recipe from memory as I can't be bothered to go upstairs and get the book

500g chard (this is one or two bunches, depending on size)

400 ml heavy cream (I used slightly less, and I think you could substitute part of the cream with milk and it would still be fine)

a generous tablespoon of grain mustard

a little butter for the dish

salt and pepper to taste

generous handful of grated Parmesan cheese

Set the oven at 180C/gas mark 4/375C.

Remove the leaves from the chard. Keep them separate. Cut the stalks into short, manageable lengths then cook them in boiling, salted water. They should be almost tender in about 5 minutes. Drain them thoroughly and add to your buttered dish. Do the same with the leaves, but cut the cooking time considerably.

Stir the mustard into the cream, and season with a little salt and black pepper and pour over the vegetables. You may find that the cream won't quite cover the chard, but no matter. Sprinkle with a handful of cheese and bake until golden, bubbly and inviting.