Reflections on ... Tomato Soup Cake

Further adventures in baking: on Sunday the boys were coming round, so I whipped up Tomato Soup Cake from B Dylan Hollis’ essential Baking Yesteryear cookbook (“the best recipes from the 1900s to the 1980s”). I know it sounds odd, but tomato soup cake was a housewife’s staple in the 50s, 60s and 70s (I remember my mother making it when I was a kid), it’s an extremely user-friendly recipe (I’ve made it twice now) and you can’t actually taste the tomato soup (it tastes primarily of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves). This is the third recipe I’ve made from Baking Yesteryear (I’ve already done peanut butter bread and date and walnut loaf – both excellent) and can verify Hollis never steers you wrong. (He suggests icing it with cream cheese frosting. I cheated by buying a tub from the store). Recommended!

Watch B Dylan Hollis break it down here.

Reflections on ... lemon and coconut muffins

 

I’ve been on a baking binge lately (and sadly, I have the waistline to prove it). My manager at work is running in the London Marathon soon and held a bake sale at the office to fundraise. I volunteered to contribute – and made these fool-proof old favourites: lemon and coconut cupcakes. (They make such a huge quantity of cupcakes I could “donate” some to the bake sale and keep most of them at home!). As a public service, here’s the recipe. 

250 grams softened unsalted butter (as in: the whole package!)

1 tablespoon grated lemon zest (I ignore that and just use the zest of the whole lemon without measuring)

1 cup caster sugar

3 eggs

2 ¾ cup of desiccated coconut (I ignore that and chuck in the whole package)

2 cups self-raising (NOT plain) flour

1 can coconut milk 

Preheat oven to 180-degrees 

Cream butter, lemon zest and sugar in large bowl with electric mixer until fluffy. 

Add and beat the three eggs one by one. Gradually alternate between mixing in the can of coconut milk and the flour until all combined. Finally, add the bag of desiccated coconut and combine. Spoon batter into lined muffin tin. It makes 24 muffins – a huge amount! Bake for approximately 45 – 50 minutes until the tops are pale gold, firm in the middle and a stick of spaghetti comes out clean. (That’s a Nigella Lawson tip: using spaghetti as a cake tester).