Bake.Nuts.

Remember the Victorian sponge in my first post and the apple version? I attempted it today for a little get-together. Yummy. It’s way way better than the previous version of an apple cake that I tried. Much less oil. Wait, NO oil. And the apple juice leaks out from the apples to give the whole cake this really good apple taste. Yum.
My only regret is forgetting to take a photo with the apples falling out.

Apple Cake

What on earth is a Parkin? I had no clue either. My second morning at the Age Concern cafe and she kindly tells me to pick something from the recipe book. I’ve never heard of this one and she hasn’t baked one before so we decided to give it a go. It turned out quite well – the recipe book must be quite reliable. The sweet smell of the baking Parkin brought people running into the kitchen. Haha!

This is what Wiki says:

Parkin is a moist and sticky ginger cake made in Northern England, primarily in Yorkshire. It is traditionally eaten on Bonfire Night, but is also enjoyed year-round. The principal ingredients of parkin are flour, oatmeal, black treacle (Molasses), fat (traditionally lard, but modern recipes use butter or margarine), and ginger. The name is sometimes given as perkin.

Oooo.. Bonfire night is coming! I hear the firecrackers going off at night set by pesky kids.

I don’t think it’s going to be the kind of thing that I would like to eat though. Oatmeal and treacle? Hmmmmm. Here it is anyway.

Parkin

Recipe

I baked a remarkably well set of brownies today for the Freshers’ Welcome. This is a tried and tested (several times) recipe and almost always works out well. I seem to always bake for more than the required time though – up to 45 mins. This gives me hard, crunchy sides and a moist centre. I’ll have to experiment more for the perfect texture.

Quick and Fudgey Brownies

4 oz. Unsweetened Baking Choc, broken

3/4 cup butter

2 cups sugar (I find this a tad too much, unless you like very sweet stuff)

3 eggs

1.5 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup nuts (optional)

Heat oven to 180 degrees. Grease 13×9x2 inch baking pan. Place chocolate and butter in large microwave-sclae bowl. Microwave at HIGH for 1.5-2 mins or until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth when stirred (I tend to stop it at 15-30 sec intervals to stir it. Lesson learnt after several cases of burnt chocolate) Add sugar; stir with spoon until well blended. Add eggs and vanilla; mix well. Add flour and nuts, stir until well blended. Spread into prepared pan. Bake for 30 – 35min or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out almost clean. Cool completely in pan on a wire rack.

Makes about 24 brownies.

I woke up in the morning – grumpy, and generally wondering if this is really a good idea. Still, obligations are obligations and I trudged into town for my first baking session. After a necessary induction talk, I was ushered into the kitchen to attempt my first ever – Sugarless fruit cake. Well. It’s not really something I would like to eat, which explains why I’ve never made something like that before. But if it sells… *shrug* I would post the recipe, but I have promptly forgotten it. It did turn out well though.

Sugarless Fruit cake

Then A, a jolly, motherly lady got me started on a Victorian sponge cake – with extra coconut. Aha! Now that’s what I’d be interested in. Then I had to make another one 3.5 times bigger. Well.

Coconut sponge

Pity I didn’t get a chance to try them though. It would have been nice to see how they tasted. I do hope I didn’t poison anyone and they sell well. So there!

And so begins my foray as a volunteer baker in Newcastle.

Coconut sponge

Sponge cake

4 oz. Butter

4 oz. Caster Sugar

2 eggs

1 tspn vanilla extract

4 oz. Self rising flour

Beat sugar and butter until light and fluffy and pale in colour. Add vanilla. Add whole eggs one by one, adding a tbsp of flour with each one. Mix. Add remaining flour and mix with a metal spoon. Bake at about 180 degrees for 20-30mins until done.

Alterations

Coconut – add 2 oz. of dessicated coconut and 1 tbpn of milk

Apple – cut and core apples, place them at the bottom of the tray and pile the mixture on.