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Foraging recipes – blackberry and rhubarb cake

Delicious Rhubarb Cake Recipe

I make this rhubarb cake quite regularly, it’s delicious, and made even more special when the rhubarb has been harvested from your own garden. Rhubarb is a great fruit to grow, it comes back every year (see TEDx talk below) – for years – with little or no effort it seems!

We picked blackberries locally this year too, so much spring rain has made the blackberries big and juicy – we’ve frozen some of them and used a handful for this recipe too – they are optional, however I like the added colour and tartness they bring.

We made this last week as a birthday cake, eventually finished with a flourish of icing sugar and a birthday candle.

Martyn from LagomChef gave me a top tip, to weigh the eggs – so if the eggs weigh 200g, you use 200g of butter, and the same for flour and sugar… funnily enough, four eggs did indeed weigh exactly bang on 200g!

Ingredients:

  • 200g (7oz) softened butter, plus extra for greasing
  • 200g (7oz) caster sugar, plus 3 tablespoons for the topping
  • 4 medium free-range eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 200g (7oz) ground almonds
  • 200g (7oz) self-raising flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder (if you don’t have any baking powder, use lemon juice and bicarb of soda)*
  • 300g (10½oz) young, slender rhubarb, trimmed and cut on an angle into 2cm (¾in) chunks
  • optional – a handful of fresh blackberries

Method:

  1. Prepare the Oven and Tin:
    Preheat your oven to 180°C (160°C Fan)/Gas 4. Grease a 23cm (9in) cake tin with butter, and line the base with baking paper.
  2. Make the Batter:
    In a food mixer or processor, combine the butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla or almond extract, ground almonds, self-raising flour, and baking powder. Mix until the batter is smooth and thick.
  3. Wash and cut the rhubarb into diagonal chunks, toss them in a light coating of flour so that they don’t SINK to the bottom of the cake when baking.
  4. Assemble the Cake:
    Pour the cake batter into the prepared tin. If using blackberries, sprinkle a handful of them across the top of the batter. Arrange the rhubarb pieces on top, pressing them gently into the batter. Sprinkle the reserved 3 tablespoons of sugar over the rhubarb.
  5. Bake:
    Bake the cake for approximately 1 hour 15 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. If the cake starts to brown too quickly, cover it with foil during baking.
  6. Cool and Serve:
    Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 20 minutes before turning it out onto a wire rack. This cake can be enjoyed warm or cold. When it’s cool, sprinkle with icing sugar. And I serve with crème fraîche.

Recipe Tips:

  • For best results, let the butter soften at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before using, or gently soften it in the microwave (but don’t let it melt).
  • This cake will stay fresh for up to 3 days, and it can be frozen if wrapped tightly in foil.

*To substitute 1 teaspoon of baking powder: Combine 1/4 teaspoon baking soda with 1/2 teaspoon white vinegar or 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice.

If you enjoyed this, you’ll love a lemon and poppy seed cake too: https://incredibusy.com/lemon-and-poppy-seed-cake-recipe/

baking, cooking, cooking with kids

Lemon drizzle cake with ground almonds

lemon drizzle cakeWhat’s your favourite cake in your house? Ours has to be lemon drizzle cake…

we’ve have the recipe scribbled down on a piece of paper, shoved in the cake section of Delia’s cookbook, for years… Quite fortunate it’s our favourite cake really, as we sort of OVER-ORDERED the lemons on our Ocado delivery on Friday, and ended up with 12 lemons, yes, TWELVE lemons… oops!

So we wanted to share the recipe with you, and tbh, it makes it easier to find if we write it up on KidsChaos, as we just google ourselves ‘ kids chaos lemon drizzle’… 🙂

Admittedly this recipe doesn’t use all twelve lemons, however we make two lemon drizzle cakes at the same time as it disappears pretty quickly here, and we like to have it in our packed lunches in the week, in place of shop-bought snack bars (so just half the quantities if you only have a 1 litre loaf tin)

Lemon Drizzle Cake Ingredients:

350g caster sugar
350g butter, softened
4 unwaxed lemons
6 eggs
200g self-raising flour
150g ground almonds
A drop or two of milk
200g demerara sugar

Lemon Drizzle Cake Instructions:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/160C fan. Grease and line two loaf tins with greaseproof paper. Beat together the caster sugar, butter, and the finely grated zest of two lemons until light and fluffy. Add a pinch of salt and beat in the eggs, one at a time.

2. Sieve the flour and fold in, then add the ground almonds (not essential, particularly if anyone has a nut allergy!). Add a tiny amount of milk to ensure the mixture has a dropping consistency, then pour into your lined tins. Bake in the oven for about 50-55 minutes, until your knife pulls out dry when you test it. Leave it in the tin for now….

3. Mix together the lemon zest, and juice of the lemons with your demerara sugar, then prod holes all over the top of the lemon drizzle cakes and pour over the lemon drizzle, so that it runs into all of the little holes.
4. Allow the lemon drizzle cakes to cool in the loaf tins before turning out.

honeycomb with chocolate fondueFor more delicious #cookingwithkids fun try our honeycomb recipe golden syrup pictured here…

Oh, and I’m on twitter.com/MoreKidsChaos too… Instagram is my new favourite thing, Erm, and funnily enough on Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x Like it? Pin it!

If you enjoyed this, check out an updated version with poppy seeds over on incredibusy.com

baking, cooking with kids

A great way of diverting your old jam jars or mason jars from the recycling, is to re-use them at least once… we use ours as drinking glasses, which the kids LOVE… encouraging them to make smoothies to share with the family – a great way of using up excess fruit and sneaking in your five a day!

A not-so-healthy option are cookies…Cookies you say? in a jam jar? uh? Well yes!
KidsChaosCookiesInAJar

These make excellent gifts, and are great for keeping in the cupboard, for when the baking urge takes you, and you’re short of time…

You will need (for four jam jars):

265g self raising flour
115g porridge oats
175g granulated sugar
1 and a half teaspoon baking powder
85g organic Fairtrade chocolate (optional, I just think it makes a nice looking layer in the jar!)
150g chopped nuts (we used almonds – again for another layer, visually)
80g demerera sugar
and a handful of raisins, if your child can bear them! (ours got taken out by 8yo…)

So, dividing each ingredient carefully across each jar, layer them up one at a time, so it creates a layered effect (like the coloured sands we used to have as kids!) make sure the jars are packed tight with ingredients.

THEN – when you’re ready to bake, today, or some time in the future, pour the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl, and simply mix in melted 265g butter (that’s 66g if you are just making up one jar of cookies!) and three heaped tablespoons of golden syrup (and that’s a flat tablespoon for just one jar) together, to a consistency which you can spoon in balls onto a greased baking tray…(I have to admit, you may have to add a bit of flour if the mixture looks a bit to sloppy to ‘spoon’).

Give the ‘balls’ space on the baking tray(s) otherwise they all melt into each other in the oven… bake at 180 degrees, for 10 minutes…they should look something like this, enjoy! >>KidsChaosCookiesInAJaronaplate

So, as you know, I’m on a weekly panel of crafty So-and-So-s invited to ‘hang-out’ on Google+ by the every lovely Maggy Woodley at Red Ted Art. This week this was hosted by Maggy AND Netmums.

KidsChaosCookiesInAJarNetMumsI hung out on Google+ for a bit of a vlog…(click the screengrab to watch!) with some craft buddies to share these holiday fun ideas, hosted by the aforementioned ever lovely Maggy from Red Ted Art who has pulled all of these together in a *Mason Jar* post. Also present were Kath from KnittyMummy, Anthea with her Kids’ art keepsakes and butterflies, Liz and her fab matches in a jar for camping! Pop back later for more links soon.

Oh, by the way, I’m also on twitter.com/MoreKidsChaos too… Erm, and funnily enough on Google+, Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x Like it? Pin it!

Ali also writes over on AGreenerLifeforus.com
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For more Cooking with Kids recipes, join my community over on Google+ here.

baking, cooking, create, halloween, kids

Chaos writes:

So, I normally leave any unnecessary “decorated” cake making to neighbours (!) – saving my skills for special occasions such as Birthdays, and um, Birthdays.

So, chancing upon some amazingly simple cupcakes today, in our local cafe – the Gooseberry Bush, I thought I’d share these with those of you who can’t make it to Wimbledon in the next few days!

Be inspired, be VERY inspired! x