Tag Archives: cake

Lemon Ricotta and Almond Cake

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Lemon and Almond Ricotta Cake || cityhippyfarmgirl

Lemon Almond and Ricotta Cake || cityhippyfarmgirl

If I’m lucky enough to get to 85 years old I’ll probably eat cake for breakfast.

Straight up. A big chunk of cake on my favourite plate and a extra large cup of chai on the side.

I was certainly encouraging for my grandmother to eat cake for breakfast on her birthday recently. Not just any cake but this one that I made for her. It’s got almonds, ricotta and low in sugar, with some careful thinking I would say this cake ticks quite a few boxes for a slight woman in her eighties and the first meal of the day.

It also happily ticked a few birthday cake boxes. The requirements were gluten free, low sugar, not chocolatey and not ‘eggy’. With the satisfying soft scent of lemon billowing done the hall, I’d say this simple cake was done and dusted, (and dusted with icing sugar that is.)

Lemon Almond Ricotta Cake || cityhippyfarmgirl

Lemon Almond and Ricotta Cake

150g softened butter

2/3 cup sugar

3 beaten eggs

zest of two lemons

200g almond meal

250g ricotta

icing sugar

Cream butter and sugar together. Add beaten eggs and zest of two lemons. Fold through almond meal and ricotta. Pour into a greased and lined springform pan. Bake at 180C for about 45-50 minutes or until golden and cooked through.

Sticky Ginger Ninja Cake

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sticky ginger ninja cake || cityhippyfarmgirl

Why I was experimenting with my recipes just a few hours before I was to present a dessert type dish to a bunch of unknown (and known) people, I’m really not sure.

Why not stick with a well worn recipe that I knew inside and out? (Well where’s the fun in that I say?) 

This recipe came out of the title really. I’d already named it before I had even made it. I knew I had pears to be used. I knew ginger is a winner with it, as I regularly make something similar. But sticky. I wanted it sticky. A little more flavoursome, and maybe just a little ninja-esque. (Well ninja rhyming with ginger, seemed close enough.)

I did also have lofty ideas of making a ninja’s face out of dusted icing sugar on each tiny square of cake, but sometimes even I have limits in complicating things just before we are due to go out.

sticky ginger ninja cake || cityhippyfarmgirl

Sticky Ginger Ninja Cake

150g sourdough starter

150g softened butter

150g brown sugar

2 tsp vanilla

2 tsp powdered ginger

2 beaten eggs

3 tbls molasses

250mls of pureed peeled and cored soft pears

150g self raising flour

75g wholemeal spelt flour

extra brown sugar to sprinkle on top

uncrystallised ginger pieces

Cream butter and sugar together. Then add vanilla, ginger, beaten eggs and molasses. Fold through pear puree, sourdough starter, wholemeal spelt and finally the self raising flour. Sprinkle the cake with extra brown sugar and press uncrystallised ginger pieces within the uncooked batter. Bake at 180C until golden and smells like a sticky ginger ninja kitchen.

sticky ginger ninja cake || cityhippyfarmgirl

chocolate and strawberries

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Chocolate and strawberries…

Strawberries and chocolate…

There is a lot to like with those combinations.

Lots of ideas, lots of variations to play with…. whatever you do though…don’t do anything like the very average cake I made. Good quality dark chocolate, check. Lovely tasty strawberries whizzed up to make a beautiful red mush, check. Combined together to make a cake that Little Monkey and I refused to eat, Monkey Boy ate very slowly and Mr Chocolate asked whether he had to finish it? Not a success…nope not at all.

Never mind, we still have strawberries and chocolate.

I also finally finished a crocheted hat in strawberry and chocolate colours. Still learning, still trialing, but now I can wear my funny lumpy warm efforts. Chocolate alpaca wool from my mums alpacas, spun by my mum, crocheted by me, and keeping my ears warm. Along with my fingerless gloves, (in strawberry and chocolate.) Lessons learnt…. alpaca wool is lovely and warm, it’s good to make stuff, and taking a picture of your hand and head is hard…quite hard.

Never mind, we still have strawberries and chocolate.


an unattractive tasty plum cake

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I knew in my mind the sort of cake I wanted to make. Not too sweet, using half plums, and perhaps a little almond meal in there. Could  I find a recipe within my collection that was even remotely like it, no. Not a whisker. I didn’t want to trawl the internet, so it was back to hack baking. I’m certainly no stranger there.

Springform pan greased and lined with parchment paper on the bottom. Cutting 5 plums in half, lining them up round side down and then sprinkled with a tablespoon of sugar.

In a mixing bowl add,

150gms softened butter

1 cup raw sugar (approx 140gms)

cream together, add

2 beaten eggs

1 tps cinnamon

1 cup natural yogurt (approx 250mls)

1 cup almond meal (approx 100gms)

1 cup s/r flour (approx 150gms)

Spoon mixture on top of plum halves and bake at 180C for approximately 1hour 15mins.

Now let’s address the elephant in the room. It doesn’t look pretty. It really doesn’t. I couldn’t photograph its prettier angle, as there was no prettier angle. The food stylist was clearly out for a long lunch. It is what it is, an unattractive tasty plum cake.

That’s ok though, these things happen in every day cooking.

* Edit. I forgot one litttttle thing. I flipped the cake. So the bottom is now on the top. If you would like to see how an unflipped cake looks, read on down in the comments and you will see Keri’s superb looking cake she made.

Cake eye

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Coming back from grocery shopping my youngest little monkey decided he would help put things away. Before anyone could stop him he had ‘put away’ 5 eggs. Cracked and leaking but still within their shells, I had to make something with them straight away. I couldn’t waste 5 whole eggs. But what to make?

Quiche?

Scrambled eggs?

Cake?…Well that didn’t need too long thinking about. Of course it had to be cake!

Now I had just come home with some blueberries, and all week I had had the taste for some simple vanilla cupcakes. ( I had the *cake eye you see) So why not combine the two?

A vanilla blueberry cake!

The monkeys were napping so I whipped it up. I think it had 5 minutes too long in the oven but still not bad for a made up first effort. I certainly liked the way it looked.

The two monkeys woke up and I thought I would vacuum the place, just another few years and I will be able to get the two of them  to do that for me- for a nominal amount of pocket money of course. However until then, it was me.

Happily vacuuming away and started thinking….hmm, wheres the little monkey? Its been a whole minute since I have seen him and its very quiet.

Vacuum…. too quiet…. vacuum….really should check on him….. vacuum…. oh its been 2 minutes, where is he?

I had just vacuumed everywhere but the kitchen so he had to be there.

And there, standing perched on top of his little monkey chair that he had pulled up along side of the bench. He had a prime position to pick all the best bits of the Vanilla Blueberry Cake into his sweet innocent mouth.

He had the *’cake eye’ and he had it bad. Looking casually around to me, ‘oh good mama, you were taking awhile, so I thought I would help my self to some of this delicious looking cake I found on the bench’.

* CAKE EYE– Where you have a taste for something for sweet. You can think of nothing else but cake and you will not be sated by anything else until you get it. A term coined by my dear husband, and is able to explain sooo much in just two little words…. Cake eye.