krantz cake

Currently my absolute favourite cookbook is Jerusalem by Yotam Ottolenghi.  It's a beautiful book full of splendid recipes and fascinating pictures.  Everything savoury I've tried so far has been truely delicious so I was keen to try the chocolate krantz cake which is a yeasted cake. 

The only real problem I had was my dough wasn't rising fast enough in fridge and I needed to get some sleep so left it out in the warm for a little while to speed things along.  This meant that the dough was very soft and more difficult to work with.  Also, it meant I didn't get the twists quite as defined and even.

However, it worked. Quite a lot of faffing about a challenge, great fun making it, and really seriously tasty.

Recipe is quite long so here it is:

(click on recipe if you actually want to be able to read it)

chocolate krantz cake

I decided to make one chocolate krantz and one cinnamon so made half the chocolate filling and then the cinnamon filling as described.  Not really keen on walnuts -I always think they are a bit disappointing.  All that work trying to crack them open, most of them end up in tiny pieces (on the floor, on the dog, down your top) and when you do eventually get one of the little bastards out whole, they taste a bit musty.  I know, buy them really shelled but I still find those plump little nutty brains don't taste a nice as they say they're going to!  So I used almonds instead which I do like.  I think the combination of the almonds, cinnamon and syrup gives the loaf a taste and texture rather reminiscent of baklava.  Everyone who tried both actually said the cinnamon was the best.  One comment was 'seriously delicious'.

Thanks Mr Ottolenghi!

cinnamon krantz cake

geraniums are looking good too!

raspberry bakewell cake

Not so many cakes coming out of the kitchen lately.  Far too much gardening to do at this time of year but the arrival of the first raspberries and loganberries (apart from the odd ones I've been grazing on) has prompted a cake.  This one is from the BBC Good Food website.  They've got a bit of a thing going with raspberries at the moment so may be more to come.

140g ground almonds
* 140g butter, softened
140g golden caster sugar
140g self-raising flour
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
** 250g raspberries
2 tbsp flaked almonds
icing sugar, to serve



Pre-heat oven to 160c.  Cream together butter and sugar.  Beat in the eggs one by one then add the ground almonds, flour and vanilla.  Spoon half into a lined and greased 20cm loose-bottomed round tin, top with the raspberries keeping them about 15mm from the edge, then spoon the remainder over.  Sprinkle with flaked almonds and bake (well) for 50 minutes.

Allow to cool and dust with icing sugar.


* I used my trusty Stork once again.  I really should have shares in the company

** only had about 150g of raspberries and loganberries so added a couple of tablespoon of last year's blackcurrant jam to make up the fruitiness.  Seems to have worked out just fine.