A friend and I have just started a cooking evening course, mostly because it’s quite fun and we might just learn something along the way. These two recipes are from that, with a couple of Dav style twists of course.

Vanilla pods can be hard to find and they’re certainly expensive. I’m lucky enough to have a couple of delis in town that sell pods that aren’t as dried and tired as the supermarket ones from the major brands of spice merchants. A fresh pod is one that flexes when you bend it in half, it shouldn’t snap. Some places are now starting to sell small jars of vanilla paste, which is better than vanilla extract because you still get the nice flecks of the seeds. A small jar is 4-5 pounds and one teaspoon is equivalent to 1 pod.

Gelatine is something that varies over time. Apparently, 1 sheet of gelatine used be enough to set 125ml, or 1/4 pint, or liquid, but some brands are more effective than others. I used 6 of Supercook’s sheets because that’s all the supermarket sells and it came out far too rubbery and my spoon nearly bounced off my forehead. Let them set slowly in the fridge over several hours. Whilst you can set them in an hour using the freezer, that makes them even more rubbery.

Ingredients

Serves 5, depending upon the size of your ramekins

200ml coconut milk, light or full fat is fine.
300ml double cream
5 gelatine leaves
75g palm sugar
1 vanilla pod
2 tbsp sugar cane rum

2 1/2 passion fruits
1 ripe mango
1 lime
2 tsp fresh mint
2 tbsp ginger syrup (think stem ginger jars)

Method

Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for at least 5 minutes, until they’re soft.

Whilst they’re soaking, put the coconut milk, cream, sugar, the vanilla seeds and the pod itself into a pan and heat through until the sugar’s dissolved. Let it cool, discard the vanilla pod and mix in the rum.

Put the gelatine into the cream mix and stir until it’s dissolved.

Pour into your individual moulds and let it cool to room temperature before leaving it to set in the fridge.

To make up the mango salsa, finely dice the mango, halve and scoop out the passion fruit seeds and mix it together with the lime zest, a very small squeeze of the juice, the ginger syrup and the finely chopped mint. Give the salsa half an hour for the flavours to infuse.

To get the panacottas out of their ramekins, I put them in the steam from a boiling kettle for 20 seconds before turning them out. You might make a bit of a creamy mess from melting the outside layer, but you can wipe that up for presentation.

To serve, spoon the salsa back into the passion fruit halves and put a small sprig of mint in the top of each panacotta.

Tropical Panacotta

I fancied my hand at making a lighter fruitcake for the easter weekend, one that wouldn’t be as wintery as a traditional christmas cake. I couldn’t find a single recipe that I liked the look of, so this is one I made up. It’s another slow baker but it can come out a bit dry, next time I’d definately soak the dried fruit overnight in brandy. I found the results to be most satisfying, especially over a cup of tea in the afternoon.

Ingredients

175g unsalted butter
175g sugar
3 eggs
250g self raising flour
25g oats
25g ground almonds
1 lemon
300g mixed dried fruit (better quality raisins are noticably better)
2 teaspoons mixed spice

2 tablespoons apricot jam or elderflower jelly to glaze
1 block of marzipan to cover and decorate

Ingredients

Method

Preheat your oven to 160C if it’s a fan, 180 if not.
Prepare your cake tin with a double layer of parchment

Cream together the butter and sugar with an electric whisk for a couple of minutes until they’re pale and light. Whisk in the lemon juice and zest along with the rest of the dry ingredients just until they’re all mixed through. Fold in the dried fruit.

Batter

Pour the batter into the tin and bake it for 20 minutes at 160C, before turning it down to 140C for another 60 minutes. Keep checking it every 10 minutes after that to see if it’s cooked. It’s done when the centre springs back when you touch it, or when a skewer comes out clean from the centre.

The edges of the cake will also just start to pull away from the edges of the tin. If it’s shrunk more than a mm or so, then it’s over cooked and you should have done it slower

Just pulled away from the edge of the tin

Leave it to cool for 20 minutes before turning it out to cool completely

Once it’s cool, roll out the marzipan so that it’s just wide enough to cover the cake. I didn’t quite have enough so mine was too thin. Aim for a good 3 or 4 mm thickness on top.

To stick the marzipan to the cake, take a small saucepan and melt two tablespoons of apricot jam or something similar. I used some of my 2008 vintage elderflower and ginger jelly which worked really well. Once it’s fluid, use a pastry brush to thinly glaze the entire cake.

Cooled cake

add a melted glaze

Makes a shiny glazed cake

Then roll over the marzipan, trim the bottom to fit the cake and use any remaining to decorate the top with little balls. I won’t enter into the discussion for how many balls one should have, theologically speaking.

Light easter fruit cake

I’ve been brushing up on my ‘big cake’ baking recently, I find it a bit tricky to get just right and, well, everybody likes cake. I took this recipe from this month’s Olive Magazine, but being me, I couldn’t quite leave well alone. On first glance, the idea of baking a lump of marzipan into it seemed like a recipe for having a lot of raw cake batter in the middle, but the slow cooking meant that it melted nicely. It met with unanimous critical approval so I’ll be doing it again. The magazine suggested that it serves 8 but we got 15 good sized portions out of it. I used a standard circular cake tin, but a loaf or square tin would work too.

Cherry and Almond Cake

Serves at least 12

Ingredients

225g unsalted butter
250g whole glace cherries, soaked overnight in 3 tablespoons of Kirsch or another Eau de Vie
225g self raising flour
150g marzipan
225g sugar
115g ground almonds
1 lemon
4 eggs
Icing Sugar

Ingredients

Method

Preheat the oven to 150C if it’s fan assisted, 170C if not.

Prepare your tin with a double layer of parchment. I used a circular tin with removable base and used some geometry to cut two circles of parchment from the roll, cut a rough square, carefully fold it into a triangle then hold the point in the middle of the tin and trim the edge so it unfolds into a kind of circle.

Roll out the marzipan between the two parchment circles so that it’s half a centimetre away from the edge

Cake batter, rolled marzipan, soaked cherries and lined tin

Zest the lemon and cream it with the butter and sugar with an electric whisk for a few minutes until it’s pale and light. Whisk in the eggs, almonds, flour and the juice of half the lemon.

Now for the messy part, assembling it.
Place half of the batter in the bottom of your tin. Take about 100g of the cherries and arrange them in a circular pattern across the batter, these will support the layer of marzipan that you put on top next. Try to avoid too many air gaps. Put another 100g of cherries on top of the marzipan in a wider circular pattern (so that you get one or two per slice) and fill up with the rest of the batter.

Assembled cake, I didn't quite get all the top cherry layer under the batter

Bake it for 50 minutes and then keep checking it every 10 minutes to see if it’s done. Mine took 80 minutes, but that was about 10 minutes too long. It’s done when the middle of the cake springs back when you touch it and when a skewer comes out clean (give or take the gooey marzipan)

Leave it to cool for 20 minutes before turning it out of the tin to cool completely.

Baked

Iced

I iced mine by mixing about 100g of icing sugar with the left over cherry syrup and kirsch and about a tablespoon of cold water so that the icing just coated the back of the spoon. I then topped it with sliced cherries.

Cherry and Almond Cake