Monday, November 10, 2008

Various little annoyances, but also cake

Today was the sort of day when things do not go right, but not in any grand and world-shaking way that you could be justified in moaning about. The house was cold in the morning. I have a hole coming in my favourite jeans. A blue bowl that I like has a crack in it. The trellis attached to the fence blew down in the wind, possibly taking my clematis with it (I haven't dared look to see how much damage it's done).

See? Nothing very major. But I was a bit fed up so I took myself out for a little windy walk and then made some baby bundt cakes. Sometimes you just need to do something different.

The bundt cakes were based on a recipe in How to be a Domestic Goddess, but I didn't have various ingredients, so here is my somewhat improvised version. You need a mixing bowl, something to melt butter in, a wooden spoon and some sort of muffin tin.

150g plain flour
About 25g caster sugar and 100g brown sugar
Half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
75g butter (or alternative), melted and cooled off a bit
Individual pot of plain skimmed-milk yoghurt (about 125ml)
2 eggs
Double handful of sultanas, soaked briefly in hot water
Lemon juice (instant squeezy)

Sift the flour, sugar and bicarb together in mixing bowl.

Combine eggs and yoghurt with butter and give them a mix. Make a well in the flour; pour and mix them in. Add the sultanas and a good squeeze of lemon juice (maybe a tablespoonful) and give it another mix. Divide it between the spaces in the tin and bake at 170 degrees (fan oven).

I have ring-shaped cake tins, and I find I get twelve cakes from the mixture and they take about fifteen to twenty minutes. It might be a bit longer or shorter if you're using full-size or mini muffin tins - fifteen minutes isn't very long to hang around, and they won't come to any harm if you take a peek at them.

Nigella ices hers; I didn't on this occasion. While I am not claiming these are health food, they aren't big or stodgy. If you make 12, they've got about 10g of sugar and 6g of fat each. And clearly a cake with a hole in the middle has fewer calories than one without a hole...

4 comments:

Loth said...

......but only if you only eat the hole! I can't claim to be so healthy. Second Born and I made brownies at the weekend and they were so squishy you virtually have to drink them. Which we did.

Unknown said...

It must be cake weather. I made pumpkin spice cupcakes this past week, with white chocolate chips in lieu of white chocolate icing. Yum.

Pam said...

Hope today went better.

Our boy got back safely, by the way, but this means he's not here any more. Alas.

K said...

The brownies sound good, as do the cupcakes. We like that sort of thing too, but we didn't have much in the way of exciting ingredients to hand!

Actually, between you you have managed to mention all three of our guinea pigs... Pumpkin, Cupcake and Brownie.

Hello, Mum. Have a virtual brownie. And a hug.