Sunday morning on the Portway
Sunday morning started quietly enough. I put on some warm clothes, it was only 6º C outside, bright and sunny. Harnessed the dogs, found a coat, jumped in the car, down the Portway, under the Suspension Bridge and down the Long Ashton bypass, parked up, clambered out of the car and waited on this bridge.
I haven’t made a cake for a while now but at the weekend I made a version of Dan Lepard’s stone fruit yoghurt cake from the Guardian recipes this time last year. I know Caroline makes this cake a lot – see her lovely summer version of this cake here. I had some dark skinned plums that hadn’t made it into the latest batch of plum preserves, and a little pot of mahlab, (obscure ingredient of desire sourced here) duck eggs which are great for cakes, and some yoghurt made with double cream (whistles and looks the other way).
I want to put it on record, that I’ve decided that I can make cake with pieces of fresh fruit in after all. The last time I attempted to make a cake with fresh fruit it went very wrong, have a look here:-
what can I say?
Using this recipe it came out like this:
Once it was cooked, we left it to cool for a bit and then turned it out. With great restraint left it to cool and then ate it with some more of the supersonic yoghurt. Yum. I really recommend treating yourself to double cream yoghurt once in a while. It comes out like a cross between clotted cream and creme fraiche. I might put some it in some scones next.
This cake made 8 glorious slices:
We had two test pieces the day it was made, and a further two pieces on Sunday afternoon for tea in the great outdoors, having burnt a few calories rambling in some fantastic woods in Gloucestershire.
Another two pieces were warmed up in the oven and then forgotten, thus evolving into an all together different sort of cake with a gorgeous crusty caramelised exterior which we had on Monday night; and the final two pieces a few nights ago with some extra cooked plums (microwaved with vanilla and cinnamon and a little sugar) and a little more cream yoghurt. School puddings were never like this….
Now it’s all gone.
To make divinely decadent yoghurt, or maybe what I made was creme fraiche? you take 200 grams of double cream, heat it gently till it just comes near the boil, allow to cool down, add two teaspoons of yoghurt and mix in and then leave to culture as you would any yoghurt you make at home. A perfect way to use up transform elderly cream that you forgot about in the fridge.
Yorkshire Dales: Creative commons courtesy of Chantrybee http://www.flickr.com/photos/chantrybee/2911840052/
This morning we are heading North to the Dales of Yorkshire for a baking get together at Martin’s Manor with some old and some new friends! I’m thinking about making sourdough croissants, pasteis de nata, Mick‘s chocolate brioche – can you see which way my thoughts are going…..?
On the way we are going to try and visit the loaf in Crich and say hi to Andy Aulda and hope to get a glimpse of the Viaduct at Ribblehead.
If you want to see what’s going on, you could try checking in on the Dales Dough Do and hopefully there’ll be some pics there over the next couple of days. Robinaccio has a new phone though and might post on his blog, so that will be worth checking too!
And we’ll be thinking of Rick at Mairs Bakehouse who hosted last year’s event where we had such a brilliant time making cottage loaves and stotties and all manner of fun breads.
Are you travelling somewhere this weekend?
Zeb Bakes 