Strawberry Cream Cheese Tray Bake

A long weekend without cake?! No. So I went to get strawberries on Monday. I had some cream cheese left in my fridge that I needed to use up soon and I had this recipe here in mind. It's originally made with plums which sounds just as delicious, but I thought that cream cheese and strawberries always are a good combination. Mixed berries might also be a nice idea. I really like this cake - just fits for the beginning of summer. Wonderful flavour and really moist. It keeps well in the fridge and it's almost better after a day or two.

Recipe
(adapted from Technicolor Kitchen)

 200g cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons sugar
3 eggs
175g unsalted butter, softened
175g light brown sugar, packed
210g all purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
generous pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
400g strawberries, halved or chopped into quarters, depending on size

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Butter a 28x18cm shallow baking pan, line with parchment paper. (I doubled the recipe above and used a tray double this size)

In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese with an electric mixer until soft and creamy. Add the vanilla bean paste or extract and the 3 tablespoons of sugar and beat until smooth. Set aside.

Place the eggs, butter, brown sugar, flour, baking powder, salt and vanilla in a separate bowl. Beat for about 2 minutes with an electric mixer until pale and creamy.

Spread half of the cake batter mixture onto the base of the prepared pan, then dollop half of the cream cheese mixture over it, spreading an uneven swirl through the base mixture. Scatter with half of the strawberries. Spoon the remaining cake batter on top and dot with the rest of the cream cheese. Scatter with the remaining strawberries. Put in the oven and bake for about 45 minutes until risen and just firm to touch – when cooked, the surface of this tray bake should feel just firm to the touch, it will firm up if it cools; if overbaked, it will lose its moist texture.

It is really moist in the middle, so if you want  to cut it into nice squares, leave to cool in the pan first (maybe even in the fridge overnight) before cutting it into pieces.

Mushroom Tart

We found it! The perfect shortcrust recipe. Until now, I have always made shortcrust by hand. Rubbing the cold butter into the flour is rather strenuous for my hands and I was never fully content with the results I got. Either the dough was a bit too firm or too crumbly which made it more difficult to roll it out. The recipe below advises to make the dough with a food processor which I have never done before. We were delighted with the result! A super-smooth dough which is rather easy to roll out. The filling of this tart is easy to make and not too heavy. If you like mushrooms, this tart is going to be a winner! Goes well with a salad. Perfect for a light summer dinner.

Recipe
(from Elle à Table N°82)

Pâte Brisée (Shortcrust)
250g flour
1 egg
150g butter, cold
2 pinches of salt
1 teaspoon sugar
6 tablespoons cold milk

Put the flour, sugar, salt and the butter, cut into small cubes, into a food processor and mix on high speed. Then, add the egg and the milk and mix again until all is well incorporated. If the dough is too liquid, add a bit of flour. Then, transfer your dough onto a floured surface, knead shortly with your hands and form into a ball. Flatten a little and wrap in cling film. Put in the refrigerator for at least half an hour.

Mushroom Filling and assembling the Tart:
500g mushrooms (champignons, we took about 350g champignons and 150g oyster mushrooms)
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoons olive oil
20g butter
a pinch of cayenne pepper
1 heaped tablespoon of crème fraiche
1 handful of spinach leaves
125g ricotta
ground pepper

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line a tart tin (about 25cm diameter) with parchment paper or grease well.

If your mushrooms are dirty, clean them by brushing them, you should not wash them with water, they will get soaky. Cut them in quarters. Heat up the olive oil and the butter in a large frying pan, add the mushrooms and fry them for about 5 to 10 minutes or so. In the meantime, you can cut your dough in two halves. Roll out the first one and place into your tart tin. Perforate the dough with a fork. Transfer the mushrooms into a bowl. Add the flour, crème fraiche, ricotta, spices and the spinach leaves and mix well. Pour into your tart tin. Then, roll out the second half of the dough into a disc and place onto your tart. Cut it crosswise in the middle with a knife so that the steam may evaporate. You can also pull open the wedges of dough so that you get a bigger hole in the middle (see picture below). I think, the tart lookes really nice like that. However, you can also only make one disc of shortcrust and leave out the second one to cover the tart.

Bake for about 40-50 minutes, until the dough is golden brown.

Madeleines with Raspberries and Lemon Curd

Every time I tell myself that I probably have enough cookbooks as it is and that I should stop myself from ordering any new ones, I stumble over a book that I really REALLY need to have. I could not resist when I discovered Rachel Khoo's lovely little Paris Kitchen. It is a collection of typical French recipes with a simple approach and Rachel's own twist. You should check out her BBC series, she is so adorable! Alex and I were intrigued by this recipe here. Time to use my beloved madeleine pan again! The warm flavour of those madeleines and the sourly sweetness of the raspberry and the lemon curd go together really well. And don't they look cute?! We think they are a real treat... best eaten right after baking when they are still warm.

Recipe 
(from Rachel Khoo's gorgeous The Little Paris Kitchen)

for 20-24 madeleines:
3 eggs
130g sugar
200g flour
10g baking powder
grated zest of one lemon
20g honey
60ml milk
200g butter, melted and cooled
a punnet of raspberries
icing sugar, for dusting

for the lemon curd - we were to lazy to make it ouselves, so we used store-bought... 
grated zest and juice of one lemon
a pinch of salt
40g sugar
45g butter
2 egg yolks

Beat the eggs with the sugar until pale and frothy. Measure the flour and baking powder into a separate bowl and add the lemon zest. Mix the honey and the milk with the cool butter, then add to the eggs. In two batches, fold in the flour. Cover and leave to rest in the fridge for a few hours or over night.

In the meantime, you could make the lemon curd. Put the lemon zest and juice, salt, sugar and butter into a small bowl and heat gently until the sugar and the butter have melted. Remove from the heat. Whisk the egg yolks in a bowl, then add to the pan and whisk vigourosly. Return the pan to a low heat and whisk constantly as the curd starts to thicken. Don't stop whisking or the eggs will curdle (if the curd starts to boil, take off the heat). Once the curd thickens and releases a bubble or two, remove from the heat and pass through a sieve into a bowl. Place cling film directly over the curd and refridgerate for at least an hour, preferably over night.

Once you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 190°C. Butter and flour a 12-shell madeleine tin. Put the lemon curd into a piping bag fitted with a small, pointed nozzle and place in the fridge.

Put a heaped tablespoon of batter into each madeleine shell and press a raspberry deep into the batter. Bake for 5 minutes, turn the oven off for 1 minute (the madeleines will get their signature peaks), then turn the oven on to 160°C and bake for further 5 minutes - ours took a bit longer.

Transfer the madeleines to a wire rack and leave for a few minutes until cool enough to handle. Meanwhile, wash and dry the tin, then repeat the baking as for the first batch. While the second batch is baking, pop the piping nozzle into the mound in each baked madeleine and squirt in a teaspoon's worth of lemon curd. Repeat with the second batch, then dust with icing sugar and serve right away...

Fusilli with Ham and Cream

Here comes another one of these no-fuss pasta dishes I just love. It's done in no time. The sauce can be prepared while your pasta is cooking. I like the addition of goat's cheese and green olives to this simple ham and cream sauce - gives it a salty twist. With the addition of different herbs and a bit of peperoncino, the flavour becomes more interesting. 

Recipe
(Original in German: here)

Ingredients for 3 persons

300g Fusilli (or other pasta)
150g cooked han, cut into streaks
3dlcream
1 tbsp creamy goat's cheese
6-8 green olives, chopped
fresh herbs (rosemary, sage, thyme, ...), chopped
2tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
1/2 tbsp chili pepper, chopped
3/4 tsp, vegetablestock
salt, pepper, groundnutmeg
grated parmesan or pecorino cheese, for serving

Pour the pasta into salted boiliing water and cook al dente. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large frying pan. Add the garlic, but take it out again before it gets brown. Now, add the ham streaks and fry. Add the chili und the chopped herbs. As soon as the chili begins to smell, add cream and vegetable stock. Bring to a boil, then, reduce the heat and add the goat's cheese. Stir until it's melted. Add the olives and season your sauce according to taste. Set your sauce aside. When your pasta is ready, drain it and add to the sauce. Serve with some grated parmesan or pecorino cheese.

Sticky Lemon Poppy Seed Cake

My mother and her boyfriend Wolfgang came over yesterday. They brought two boxes full of plants and herbs for my balcony. My mum really has a talent when it comes to gardening and decorating and she turned my balcony into a green and cosy spot again. I had prepared a cake which we enjoyed with a cup of coffee out on my balcony after we were done with our spring-cleaning. The interesting thing about this cake is the addition of ground rolled oats which sounds somewhat strange at first but totally works in the end. Flavour-wise it's like a typical lemon cake but a tad more... hm, let's say fuller or "rustic" which, I think, is due to the oats. The texture of this cake is wonderfully moist and sticky. A perfect cake to go with your afternoon tea or coffee.

Recipe
(from the lovely Technicolor Kitchen. Patricia's got it from the fabulous "Short and Sweet" by Dan Lepard... just can't go wrong with a Dan Lepard recipe!)

224g sugar

127g butter, softened

100ml canola oil

finely grated zest of 3 lemons

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

60ml hot water

250g all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

pinch of salt

75g rolled oats, finely ground in a food processor

3 tablespoons poppy seeds

Syrup:

150g sugar

100ml lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Butter a 20cm square cake pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.

Using an electric mixer, beat the sugar with the butter, oil and lemon zest until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Add the vanilla extract. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together in a medium bowl. Whisk the hot water into the egg mixture until smooth, then fold in sifted ingredients, the oats and the poppy seeds. Pour into the prepared pan, and smooth the top. Bake for 50 minutes, or until golden and a skewer comes out clean. With my oven, it took 35 minutes only, so you might want to keep an eye on your cake after half an hour or so...

As soon as the cake is out of the oven, make the syrup: heat the sugar with the lemon juice until dissolved, poke a skewer deep into the cake dozens of times, then spoon all the syrup over the top. Cool completely in the pan over a wire rack.

Et voilà... les éclairs!

Éclairs are the kind of thing I didn't really consider making at home. I imagined it to be a rather complicated. Alors, vous savez quoi?! It's not! It's a bit more time consuming than other pastry and it's probably still not something I would recommend to people who claim that they are not so experienced with baking, but if you are, you can definitely give these a try! Alex, who came up with the idea of making éclairs in the first place, and I where delighted with the outcome of our choux-pastry-experiment. It is not as difficult to make as you might imagine. You could also assemble the baked shells with a savoury filling - for a party buffet for instance. But I, of course, prefer the sweet version... the pastry cream is to die for... the recipe below is great and you can use this cream for other purposes as well. It's hard to stop oneself from eating it straight from the mixing bowl anyway. Usually, éclairs come with a glaze which we left out because we were too keen on eating them right away without any further delay. They were delicious... not many of them were left.
 

Vanilla Pastry Cream
(from the lovely Tartine by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson)

500ml whole milk
1/2 vanilla bean
1/4 tsp salt
3-4 tbsp cornstarch
115g sugar
2 large eggs
55g butter

Have a bowl ready for cooling the pastry cream with a fine-mesh sieve resting in the rim.

Pour the milk into a heavy saucepan. Split the vanilla bean half lengthwise and use the tip of a sharp knife to scrape th seeds from the pod halves into the milk. Add the salt, place over medium-high heat and bring just almost to the boil, stirring occasionally. Make sure that that the milk does not burn on the bottom of the pan.

Meanwhile, in a mixing bowl, whisk together the cornstarch and the sugar. If you want to have a firmer pastry cream, use the larger amount of cornstarch. Add the eggs and whisk until smooth.

When the milk is ready, slowly ladle about one third of the hot milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Pour the egg-milk mixture back into the hot milk and continue whisking over medium heat until the custard is as thick as lightly whipped cream, about 2 minutes. In order for the cornstarch to cook and thicken fully, the mixture must come just to the boiling point. Don't let it boil vigorously, however. Remove from the heat and immediately pour through a sieve into the bowl. Let cool for 10 minutes, stir occasionally to release the heat and prevent a skin from forming on the top.

Cut the butter into 1-tablespoon pieces and whisk them into the pastry cream, 1 tablespoon at a time, always whisking until smooth before the next tablespoon.

To cool the cream, cover the bowl with cling film, pressing it directly onto the top of the cream to prevent a skin from forming on the surface.

The cream will keep for about 5 days in the refridgerator if well covered.

La pâte à choux
(from: Ginette Mathiot - Je sais faire la pâtisserie, a good basic choux pastry recipe in German is also available here)

2.5dl water (we used half milk, half water)
a pinch of salt
20g icing sugar
80g butter, cut into pieces
150g flour
4-5 eggs

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Line two baking trays with parchment paper.

Pour the water into a heavy saucepan. Add salt, sugar and the butter and place over medium heat until the butter melts and the mixtrue comes to a full boil. Add the flour all at once, stirring vigorously with a wooden spoon. Keep stirring until the mixture has formed a smooth mass and pulls away from the sides of the pan and some moisture has evaporated (about 3 minutes).

Take the pan away from the heat, transfer the dough into a large mixing bowl. Using a mixer, add the eggs one at a time and mix on medium-high speed, incorporating each egg before adding the next. When all eggs are incorporated, the mixture will be thick, smooth and shiny.

Transfer the dough into a pastry bag with a 1cm plain tip (we used a smaller one with toothed tip, worked fine). Pipe out fingers of about 7cm onto your prepared baking trays. It depends on how large you want your eclairs to be, keep in mind that the fingers will be about three times larger after baking than before.

Bake on the lower half of the oven until they are puffed and are starting to show some color, about 10-15 minutes, depending on their size. Then, take them out of the oven and let them cool on a wire rack. You can easily freeze these baked shells if you don't want to use all at once.


Assembling the eclairs:

When your pastry shells have cooled down, cut them open on the sides with scissors. Pour your pastry cream into a piping bag and fill the pastry shells. Alternatively, you could also split them in half with a knife and spoon the pastry cream into the bottoms and then replace the tops.

Oatmeal Cookies with Cardamom

Here comes another batch of cookies I made for Mother's Day. These are cookies that I like to eat as a little snack during the day rather than as a dessert. They are little energy boosters with their high amount of rolled oats and the raisins. The oatmeal-raisin-combo makes them crunchy and chewy at the same time and the spices give them a nice flavour.

Recipe
(Original in German here)

175 g butter, soft
225 g brown sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar
1 pinch of salt
1egg
1 tsp cinnamon
1tsp ground cardamom
100g flour
½ tsp baking powder
350g rolled oats (I used about 200g porridge oats and 150g coarser ones)
125g raisins (the recipe sais chopped, I left them whole)


Preheat the oven to 180°C and line two baking trays with parchment paper.

In a bowl, beat butter until smooth. Add sugar, vanilla sugar and salt and mix. Add the egg und beat until you have a smooth and pale batter. In another bowl, mix flour, baking powder and spices. Sift to the other batter. Add rolleds oats and raisins and mix well.

With two teaspoons scoop out small balls of the dough (about the size of a walnut) and place onto your baking tray. Flatten a little with your hand. Bake for about 13-17 minutes. DON'T overbake them, mine are rather soft after 13 minutes or so, but they will get pretty firm when cooling down!

I ended up with about 50 cookies. Store them in an airtight container.

 

Florentines

Today, I wanted to surprise my mum and my grandma with a batch of homemade cookies. Florentines seemed to be just the thing for Mother's Day. They're in fact not that hard to make and they are such a cute present.

Recipe
(slightly adapted from: delicious days) 

100g heavy cream
1 tbsp honey
75g brown sugar
2 tbsp vanilla sugar
30g butter
40g dried apricots (the original said cranberries)
100-125g slivered almonds
1-2 tbsp chopped pistachios (optional)
1-2 tbsp chooped pecans (my addition)
30-40g all-purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 200°C . Line two baking trays with parchment paper.

Melt heavy cream, honey, sugar, vanilla sugar and butter in a pan, then let simmer gently for at least 5 minutes over medium heat.

Meanwhile finely chop the dried fruit. Remove the hot cream-sugar mix from the stove and stir in the fruits as well as slivered almonds and chopped pistachios. Finally, add as much sieved flour as necessary until the mix gets pretty firm. The almonds should stay mostly whole.

Place little heaps of the mix on the baking trays and leave plenty of space in between - the cookies will spread. Nicky advices that if you prefer your florentines rather soft, leave them as are, the almonds in the center won’t take on much color and will stay chewy, while the edges will caramelize. If you prefer your florentines thin and crisp, you should flatten them carefully with wet fingers or the back of a greased spoon, so they can brown and spread more evenly. I recommend seeing the first tray as a kind of test run, afterwards you can better evaluate, how much the dough spreads and which variation you like best.

Bake on middle level for 8 to 10 minutes or until the cookies have reached the desired golden brown color. Make sure, that they don’t burn around the edges! Remove from the oven and pull the parchment paper onto a cold baking try (don’t burn yourself!), then let cool off completely. Store in an airtight container (use parchment paper or similar to keep the layers separate, otherwise they will stick together easily), they taste best within the first week.

Tartlets - Dark Chocolate vs. Banana and Hazelnut

There was still sweet pastry left from this baking session. You can easily freeze sweet pastry, so you can make a big amount of it at once and keep any leftovers for another time. Ever since I started making shortcrust myself, I don't really like the store-bought pastry anymore. Last weekend was all about Ottolenghi tartlets. I still can't make up my mind which filling I like better... chocolate or banana-hazelnut... both extremely delicious...

Pre-baked Tartlet Cases

The recipe for the sweet pastry is the same as in this post.

330g plain flour
100g icing sugar
grated zest of 1/2 a lemon
1/4 teaspoon salt
180g cold butter, cut into small cubes
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons cold water

Put the flour, icing sugar, lemon zest and salt in a bowl and add the butter. Rub it in with your hands (or do it with a mixer or food processor). Mix until you get a coarse breadcrumb consistency, make sure that there are no large lumps of butter left.

Add the egg yolk and water and mix just until the dough comes together. Don't mix longer than necessary. Maybe you need a tiny amount of extra water.

Remove the dough from the mixing bowl and knead lightly for a few seconds only. Shape it into a smooth disc (5-6cm thick). Wrap in cling film and chill until ready to use. The pastry keeps in the fridge for about a week and at least a month in the freezer.

Grease you tartlet tins with butter. Since I don't really have tartlet tins, I used aluminium tins that I bought at our grocery store Migros, these are of about 10cm diameter. I imagine you could try and use a muffin tin.

Roll out your dough (2-3mm thick) and cut out circles with a pastry cutter or the rim of a bowl. Line your tartlet cases with the dough and put them in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 150°C. Line each pastry case with a circle of parchment paper and full up with rice or dry beans. Place in the oven and bake blind for about 20 - 25 minutes. They should take a golden-brown color. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.

Fillings: 

Banana and Hazelnut (for 6 pre-baked tartlet cases)

45g unskinned hazelnuts (or you can just use store-bought ground hazelnuts)
90g butter
100g icing sugar
40g plain flour
2 egg whites
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
50g mashed banana
2 tsp lemon juice
6 pre-baked tartlet cases

Heat the oven to 150°C. Scatter the hazelnuts in an oven tray and roast for twelve minutes. Remove and let cool down.

While you wait for the nuts, make some burnt butter. Put the butter in a medium pan and cook over moderate heat. After a few minutes, it should start to darken and smell nutty. Take off the heat and leave to cool slightly.

Set aside 10g of the nuts. Put the rest in a food processor, together with 70g of the icing sugar. Work to a fine powder, then add the flour. Pulse together to mix. Add the egg whites and work the machine very briefly, just to mix them in. Repeat with the vanilla and the butter. It is important to stop the machine as soon as the ingredients are incorporated.

Mix the mashed banana with the lemon juice and the remaining icing sugar. Spoon about two teaspoons of this mixture into each pre-baked tart case. Top with the hazelnut batter. It should come to within 2-3mm of the top. Place in the oven and bake for 20-22 minutes, until the hazelnut filling is completely set. You can check this with a skewer. Remove the tarts from the oven and cool slightly, then remove from the tins.

You can brush these with heated apricot jam, decorate them with chocolate glaze, top it with crushed hazelnuts or dust them with icing sugar... whatever you feel like.

Dark Chococlate (for 6 pre-baked tartlet cases)

150g dark chocolate
100g unsalted butter, diced
1 egg
1 egg-yolk
30g sugar
60g raspberry jam (we used apricot jam), optional
6 pre-baked tartlet cases
cocoa powder for dusting

Preheat the oven to 170°C. Put the chocolate and butter in a bowl, set it over a pan of simmering water and leave to melt. Whisk the egg and yolk with the sugar until thick and pale yellow, then fold this into the melted chocolate.

If you use them jam, put a spoonful in the base of each tartlet case. Fill them up with the chocolate mix; it should reach right up to the rim. Place in the oven and bake for 5 minutes. Cool a little, then remove the tartlets from their tins and allow them to cool down completely (if you can...).

Lightly dust with cocoa powder and serve at room temperature.

Chocolate Buttermilk Cake

It's Moni's birthday today! She is definitely the most hard working member of our team. She deserves some cake! When I asked her what I should bring along for her today, she immediately wished for Trish's Caramel and Oat Slices. They are her favourites. Of course, I made these for her. But I also wanted to bake her a birthday cake. I will tell you a secret, though: this cake caused me some sorrows. I almost ruined it twice... First, I almost let the surface burn in the oven and then, the whole thing broke apart when I transferred it from the wire rack to the plate... Well, the taste is what counts and I even think the crack doesn't look so bad. I'm very happy with the result now. It's all you wish for in a chocolate cake.

Recipe
(from: Bea Vo - Tea with Bea)

225g dark chocolate (I used 125g 69% and 100g 78%), broken into pea-sized pieces
65g cocoa powder
175g butter
4 eggs
300g sugar
175g flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
235ml buttermilk

For the glaze:
125ml cream
125 dark chocolate, grated or broken into small pieces

Preheat the oven to 170°C. Line a 24cm diameter springform pan with parchment paper and grease with butter. (Bea suggest that you can also bake it in two 18cm diameter springform pans.)

Put the chocolate and cocoa powder in a large, heatproof bowl. Melt the butter in a sauce-pan over medium heat. When it has melted, pour over the chocolate and cocoa and stir until this is all melted and smooth.

In another bowl, whisk together eggs and sugar. Pour this into the chocolate mixture and mix until well combined.

Put the flour, baking soda and salt in a large mixing bowl, sift twice. Add one third of the flour mixture to the chocolate mixture and mix until well incorporated. Add half the buttermilk and mix until just combined. Repeat with another third of the flour and the other half of the buttermilk. Finally, add the last third of flour mixture and mix until thorougly combined.

Pour the mixture into your prepared springform pan. Bake for about 35-40 minutes. A skewer inserted into the middle of the cake should come out clean. Mine was still pretty soft in the middle after 45 minutes, but I took it out of the oven anyway to prevent it from turning black in the surface. It sunk in the middle after cooling down.

For the glaze: Bring 125ml cream to the boil in a small saucepan. Remove from the heat, stir in chocolate and whisk until it has melted and the mixture is smooth. Spread over your cake and decorate.

Apple Bundt Cake

Today, it's exactly 2 years ago since I started this blog. It has become one of my dearest hobbies... browsing through recipes, baking, styling, photographing, sorting out pictures and putting it all together for my blog. And, needless to say, eating it after that, preferably together with my friends. That makes my day. It is still one of my greatest joys to bring along cakes, cookies and other sweet treats for the people I love. This cake here was meant as a thank-you-gift for my friends at work. It's also because of them that I am currently so happy with my new job. We have such a great time at our office. And if we have a bad day once in a while, Evelyn, Françoise and I still have our "group therapy" sessions ;-) - and cake of course!

Recipe
(slightly adapted from here)

butter and breadcrumbs, for the buttering the bundt tin
icing sugar, for dusting
100g raisins
125g butter, soft
125g sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar/1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs
a pinch of salt
300g flour
0.5 sachet baking powder
1dl apple juice
0.25 teaspoon cinnamon
0.25 teaspoon ground ginger
a handful of chopped pecan nuts
2 apples

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Butter a bundt tin, sprinkle with breadcrumbs and put in the fridge. Soak the raisins in hot water.

In a bowl, beat butter, sugar and vanilla sugar until light and smooth. Add the eggs, one by one. Add the salt. Mix flour and baking powder and add with the apple juice the cinnamon and ginger.

Peel the apples, cut into quarters, then into slices. Drain the raisins, dry a little with a piece of kitchen towel and dust with a little flour. Add to the cake batter together with the apples and the pecans. Fill the batter into your repared cake tin and bake for about an hour (in my case, it took about 50 minutes). Let rest in the cake tin until cooled, then turn upside down onto a plate. Dust with icing sugar.

This cake keeps up to about 5 days if wrapped in foil and stored in a cool place.