A Seasonal Favourite.....Cinnamon Swirl Cake

I was delighted to have my recipe for this cake featured in last weeks Southern Star newspaper in Nora Strong's column... it was also lovely to meet Nora and show her a little about our life here and all we are trying to do. 

So, for those of you who are not living locally here in West Cork here is another one of our favourite recipes for winter (and nearly anytime of the year! LOL) - we love Cinnamon Cake around here. It's a great warmer, tastes lovely and has anti-inflammatory properties that are supposed to be great for balancing blood sugar.

And, this recipe is so easy.....especially once you make it a couple of times and memorize it. Then, you can adapt it to nearly anything such as carrot cake (omit the cinnamon and brown sugar) add in 1/2 cup grated carrot and some spices such as cloves and allspice....Hmmm...that sounds nice too!

Nothing like a little piece of cake on a rainy afternoon along with a cup of dandelion coffee.....and to make it extra special, I make my own Bourbon vanilla extract which adds a lovely element to any baking. As well as my own eggs, our goat's milk and fresh yogurt. With all of this goodness, this cake can't be beat. 

Make your own at home and drop by my market stall for a slice.....

April Danann's Cinnamon Swirl Cake

Cake
3 1/2 cups flour
1 1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder (or a little more)
pinch salt
1 cup milk plus 3 tablespoons if needed
2 – 3 tablespoons yogurt
3 eggs
½ cup melted butter
1 tsp homemade vanilla extract if you have it

Swirl
1 cup butter (soft, not melted)
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons flour

Topping
½ cup powdered sugar
1 - 2 teaspoons goat's milk

To make the cake sift the dry ingredients together in a deep mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs together with milk, vanilla and yogurt. Add the wet ingredients to the dry flour mixture, mix well. Add the extra 3 tablespoons milk if batter too thick.

In the meantime, melt the butter over low heat – cool a little, then slowly add to the cake batter folding over until well blended. Scrape into a square, greased or lined baking tin (deep is better) until evenly spread over the bottom.

To make the cinnamon swirl place all ingredients into a bowl or small pot and mix well until it is thick and creamy looking. Spoon this carefully over top of the cake batter starting from each corner, working your way in – then using a knife, pull the cinnamon mixture throughout the batter.

Bake at 180C for about 30 to 35 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean at the centre of the cake. Let cool in tin. Before serving, mix together powdered sugar and milk into a thin icing and spoon overtop.

Cut into squares….enjoy with a herbal coffee!

April

Cinnamon Swirl Cake - available in my market stall Bantry & Skibbereen 

Roast Pheasant, Gravy & Haricot Beans

This dish doesn't look like much in the photo - but my children loved it! And it smelled so good...

At a loss for what to make one day (not really, but it sounds nice) I decided to try something a little different - we all like beans, we love sautéd vegetables and I actually had a roasted pheasant on hand. Something else I had - was a lovely gravy made from the meat.

I soaked and cooked the haricots, they are such a versatile bean and we don't eat enough of them. Perhaps because they are mostly associated with baked beans and that's all. However, they lend an earthy, full bodied flavour to any dish as well as make it that much more hearty.

Next I sautéd a few vegetables - onion, garlic, leek, grated carrot, broccoli etc. and added these to the beans. The gravy and meat were warmed up - all of this was added together to make a little stew. It was thickened because of the gravy...

Steaming hot - I just seasoned it with a little salt and pepper (there were lots of seasonings already in the roasted pheasant) and served it with some thick crusty herbed spelt bread. The children loved it - what I liked about it is that it was fully balanced - so simple yet tasty and filling.

I am planning on making this again - perhaps with a different meat, a different type of bean (maybe chickpeas) and sweet potato or something similar. This is endlessly versatile - and when spiced up, it's also warming and seasonal.

April

Beans are so versatile!

Pea Soup - with Smoked Haddock

Pea soup is something very familiar to me – I have made more then my share of huge pots of this lovely soup over the years – and all of them good in their own way.

It is also such an easy meal to make – basic in fact – but so ancient, wholesome and worthy of making again and again, especially during cold winter days. This is indeed a welcome meal at the end of the week.

Where I come from, in Newfoundland, this type of meal would have been made at the weekends, with salted beef usually and then some lovely dumplings cooked into the bubbling pot when the soup was ready to serve.

Of course my own recipe is a little different (go figure) because I don’t eat beef – but I have since discovered, there are so many other ways to make this dish. One of my favourite being with smoked fish of some kind.

I like it with a nice smoked haddock, but it can be made with anything you have on hand such as smoked salmon, smoked trout, or even oysters. The smoky flavour goes so well with the earthy flavour of the yellow split peas.

Perhaps, like nothing else.

To make pea soup first you need to soak your peas overnight in plenty of water. Then in the morning, place them on a slow boil in a large pot of water with a couple pieces of seaweed. I will use about 2 cups of peas for a 2 litre pot that is less then half full of water.

Next, once this is cooking start adding some ingredients – nearly anything will do. I like to add lots of carrots, turnip, sautéd onions, garlic, a sweet potato, a little celery, fennel, leek – what ever is around can go in the pot.

Then I add a heaping teaspoon each of cumin, turmeric, coriander – salt and pepper to taste and a little allspice or nutmeg. I have been known to also put in some (not much) celery seed, caraway, fennel and so forth as well. Just to give some rich flavours that go well with the peas.

In the meantime, this all cooks away in the pot until the peas become soft and the mixture starts to look creamy and soupy. On a low heat, cooking gently like this it could take up to 4 hours to get this desired consistency.

Once you have your soup ready – take off the heat and blend a little to mostly smooth out the peas, but with a few veggies still intact. Then add your boned, cooked smoked haddock.

Allow this to now sit in the very hot soup for more then an hour – actually this tastes far better the next day – and will be good even a few days later if kept in the fridge.

This soup is lovely served with any bread but we do like Socca or Rosemary Sea salt spelt bread to dip into this rich and tasty meal.

April

Pea soup - ready for haddock!

Thick, thick, thick..

The words thick, thick, thick have been going around in my head over the past 24 hours or so as I try to figure out how to get my jams to be a little thicker. I am trying all the usual means - well, you know, that means that I am attempting to make pectin myself!

Strain the cooked apples into a bowl

Last night I followed all the directions carefully on a website that was explaining how to make your own pectin for jams and jellies. Of course, I probably did not have the exact right kind of apple, however, all apples are supposed to contain some pectin - I did manage to produce a thickish syrup from the apples, which seemed to slightly thicken the jam I was making. However, I would have liked it a little bit more jammy.

Today, it is back to the drawing board - I asked around at the market in Skibbereen this morning as well, looking for unripe tart apples. No luck so far. So, I will try my hand at this again tonight with another batch of jams that I want to make this time using a different kind of apple.

Yesterday I used up the last of my raspberries to make raspberry kiwi jam - for something that has no sweetener whatsoever, it does taste really good. I am just not that happy with the consistency of it, but the rest of the family loved it (they ate it without complaint!).

So, that was yesterday, more jam (the cupboards are filling up) and today we are home again from the market with more fruit ready to be made into jams and preserves. However, this time I am going to do some experimenting with carrageenan, agar flakes and the homemade pectin to see what I can come up with.

I keep telling myself that as long as it is homemade (no recipe found yet for agar flakes) and wholesome, our bodies will appreciate the effort being made to remove any kind of processed foods from our diets.

And eventually, I will be more adept at all of this with my own recipes down to a T!

Well, today there is sun, so I am harvesting and drying some herbs from my garden, the entire house smells divine - pictures tomorrow.

April

Raspberries, Kiwi and Apple ready to cook into jam