Autumnal Apple Cupcakes

With the change in seasons, there are hundreds of fallen apples on the ground around Bristol. Just outside our office in fact, we have a small public open space that is planted with cherry and apple trees. In the spring the trees were laden with blossom. The birds were first to the cherries, but luckily they have not been so interested in the apples. Inspired by the abundance of fruit, we’d like to share with you our recipe for 12 cupcakes.


Ingredients

½ tsp apple cider vinegar
150ml soya milk
100ml maple syrup
75ml vegetable oil
200g plain flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¾ tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
¼ tsp salt
200g grated apple


Topping (for extra tree ingredient points)

chopped mixed nuts (almonds and walnuts)
50g chocolate chips
3tbsp soya cream


Directions

1. Preheat oven to 175 deg C. Line muffin tray with paper cases.
2. Mix the soya milk and apple cider vinegar in a large bowl; allow to sit for a few minutes to separate.
3. Beat in the maple syrup and oil.
4. Sift in the flour, baking power, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Mix until smooth and then stir in the apple
5. Fill the cases about two-thirds full.
6. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, remove from oven and place cakes on wire rack to cool.

For the ganache topping

1. Gently heat the soya cream to near boiling.
2. Remove from the heat and stir in the chocolate chips.
3. Leave for 10 minutes to cool then decorate the cooled cupcakes.
4. Sprinkle with chopped nuts (optional).

Tree ingredients: apple, maple, cinnamon, chocolate, almonds and walnuts


We’d love to try your favourite tree cake recipe, please email it to info@treeaid.org.uk


Please do remember to check with landowners before foraging for fruit and nuts!

Apple and Hazelnut Cake

So, we are beginning to enter the season where trees are just about ready to burst into fruit, walking around I keep seeing apples forming and nuts just beginning to take shape. Given this I thought it would be ideal to offer you a recipe appropriate to this time of year, so here is a Apple and Hazelnut cake for you to try.


Hazelnut trees are very common in the UK, however you'll be hardpressed to get your hands on any before the squirrals do! But maybe you'll be lucky enough to forage your own hazelnuts, if not I have had more success foraging for apples, once you know where a good tree is you can go back until the seasons over.


There are 4 tree ingredients in this recipe, Hazelnuts, Apples, Lemon and Cinnamon. I would like to thank London Liberty Girl for the use of this recipe.


Ingredients

450g apples you can use cookers such as Bramleys or any eaters
Juice of half a lemon
225g butter
175g caster sugar
50g soft brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence — do not substitute flavouring. Better to use nothing.
3 eggs
225g self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
30g ground hazelnuts


Directions

• Preheat oven to 180°C or 350F, gas mark 4
  

• Grease 8inch cake tin.

• Peel, core & chop the apples into small chunks. To stop them going brown, squeeze the lemon juice over.

• Put the butter and both sugars into the mixing bowl, and cream together. You are aiming for a light & fluffy start to the process.

• Add the vanilla essence, and then one egg at a time, along with a spoonful of flour, to avoid the mixture curdling.

• Then add the rest of the flour a heaping spoonful at a time, followed by the rest of the dry ingredients: cinnamon, ground hazelnuts & baking powder

• Add the apple pieces to the mix. Fold them all together. Don’t worry if the mixture is stiffer than you would want in normal cake. You need it like that as the apples will leach their juice during baking. Mix really well so the apple is distributed throughout the cake batter.

• Pour the mixture into the lined cake tin

• Pop in oven for 45 minutes. You may find that the top browns very quickly, so try adding a piece of paper over the top of the cake at this point and then cook for a further 15 minutes for an hour total.

• Test the cake for done-ness at 45 minutes with a skewer. If the cake is cooked, the skewer will come out clean. Test in several places around the centre of the cake because if you hit a piece of apple the skewer will come out pretty clean giving a false positive so to speak. If there is any hint of batter on the skewer it needs more cooking.

• When you think the cake is done, remove the tin from the oven, leave on an airing rack to cool.

• Sift icing sugar over the top to finish and enjoy eating.

Guava Cake

Guava Psidium guajeva is a small tree native to Mexico, Central America and northern Southern America, but are now grown throughout the tropics and in some subtropical regions too. The fruits have high vitamin A and C content and have a high quantity of pectin, this means they are particularly good for making jams and preserves. Guava paste is like a thick jam but with less added sugar and a great ingredient for cooking and baking.

Guava is one of the trees that are being planted through TREE AIDs work. In Northern Ghana, the community Nurseries and Woodlots Project in Kandema enables the local community to grow trees such as guava to help reduce deforestation. This is done by giving people the skills to grow the trees from seed in nursuries and then transplant them into woodlots, the species grown include Guava, Cashew and Mango. Guavas provide fruit for food and sale and wood for fuel and encouraging these trees to be cultivated sustainably improves the soils fertility.

Here is a recipe for you that contains guava paste, you can use guava jam but if you do this then use less sugar than the recipe tells you, otherwise it'll be too sweet! You should be able to get hold of Guava paste from any health food shop or international market, but I'm not sure if your average supermarket will stock it.


Tree Ingredients include Guava. This recipe was kindly donated by, CDKitchen.

Ingredients

170 g butter
230g sugar
460g flour
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
280g guava paste

Directions

• Preheat oven to 180 C, 350 F or gas mark 4.

• Cream butter. Add sugar little by little.

• Add eggs one by one, followed by vanilla.

• Sift flour together with baking soda and salt. Mix with the sugar/egg mixture.

• Pour half the batter in a greased square (8x8) cake pan. Cut the guava paste in slices and use the slices to cover all the batter. Pour the rest of the batter on top of the guava slices.

• Place in oven and bake for 45-60 minutes. Check cake for doneness (an inserted toothpick comes out clean) as oven temperatures varies.
  

We want your recipes...

So this week TREE AID are asking you for your tree cake recipes. We would love to try your favorite cake recipe or your experiments with tree ingredients. I have been defining tree ingredient as anything that comes from a tree, be it fruit, nut, seed or bark.

In the TREE AID office the fundraising team have a book club every fortnight. The team comes together to read about fundraising and to discuss and reflect on the fundraising initiatives and techniques used within the charity. As part of this a member of the team volunteers to bake a cake using tree ingredients. So send us your recipes and we'll have a go at baking them and I'll let everyone know how its going on the blog.

I only volunteer in the office one day a week, so will only receive your emails and recipes then, but I am very much looking forward to seeing what scrumptious cakes your going to suggest!

Please send your recipes to treeaidvolunteer@treeaid.org.uk

Bees and Trees: A Honey Cake

So although honey isn't directly a tree ingredient, blossom from fruit trees is so vital for the bees to make the honey I wanted to include it as a tree ingredient anyway. The mutually beneficial relationship between bees and trees is really quite beautiful and is nature working at its best. The trees rely on bees for pollination and as a reward the bees get the nectar from the flowers to produce their food; the honey.

As part of TREE AIDS work there are projects that focus on bee keeping and the planting of malliferous (honey producing) trees. In Burkina Faso as part of TREE AIDS work people are also tought how to build bee hives as well planting trees that are particularly good for bees, one of these being the Mango Tree. Projects like this one are really helpful in a number of ways, they are beneficial for the regeneration of land and increase biodiversity through the tree planting. Honey production also helps to create sustainable income generation for communities and honey becomes available for domestic use too.

Here's a recipe for you to try that is from a website called CDKitchen and looks absolutely delicious! Tree Ingredients include Cinnamon which comes from the bark of a tree, Cloves, Coffee and indirectly Honey.

Ingredients

560g cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
3 large eggs
230ml or 225g honey
230g sugar
230ml vegetable oil
120ml cup brewed coffee
60ml cup water

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 F, gas mark 4 and generously grease pan.
  
• Into a large bowl sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, and cloves.


• In a small bowl lightly beat eggs. Make a well in center of flour mixture and add eggs with remaining ingredients, whisking until combined well.


• Pour batter into pan and bake for about 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
  


• Leave to cool on a wire rack.

Lemon Drizzle Cake

Here is a lovely recipe for a beautiful lemon drizzle cake. This is from another blog called Marias Menu which is a popular food blog with simple, tasty and traditional recipes and this recipe is definitely one to try if you are a fan of lemons.



Lemons are our one tree ingredient in this recipe. The lemon tree is an evergreen tree, originally native to Asia, although now more associated with Mediterranean countries.

Ingredients

125 gm Butter
175 gm Caster Sugar
2 large Eggs
175 gm Self-raising flour
50 gm Granulated Sugar
2 preferably unwaxed Lemons

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 180 degree.
  


• Lightly oil and line the base of an 18 cm/7 inch square cake tin with baking paper.


• In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until soft and fluffy. Beat the eggs, then gradually add a little of the egg to the creamed mixture, adding 1 tablespoon of flour after each addition.


• Finely grate the rind from one of the lemons and stir into the creamed mixture, beating well until smooth. Squeeze the juice from the lemon, strain, then stir into the mixture.


• Spoon into the prepared tin, level the surface and bake in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes.


• Mix the zest of the last lemon with 25 gm of the granulated sugar and reserve.
  


• Squeeze the juice of that lemon into a saucepan. Add the rest of the granulated sugar to the lemon juice and heat gently, stirring occasionally. When the sugar has dissolved simmer gently for 3-4 minutes until syrupy.


• With a fine skewer prick the cake all over. Sprinkle the lemon zest and sugar over the top of the cake, drizzle over the syrup and leave to cool in the tin.
  


• Cut the cake into squares and serve.

Cacao Pudding

This is more of a pudding than a cake but I absolutely love this recipe, its very rich and like nothing I've ever tasted before. It's main ingredient is cacao, which is very simply ground up cocoa beans and nothing else.

This simple recipe was given to me by a friend, the taste of the cacao is quite intense and very different from chocolate because of it being in it's simplest form. You can get cacao from most health food shops, it tends to come in two forms, ground up or in nibs. For this recipe use the ground up stuff, and if you like quite bitter tastes the nibs are good to munch on! But it can be rather an acquired taste.



There are two tree ingredients in this one, Cacao and Coconut. The picture above shows the cocoa pod growing directly from the trunk (Photo taken by Fev August 2003). The Agave Syrup used in this recipe is a natural sweetener that is mainly used in raw food cooking or as a substitute for honey. It comes from the Agave plant which is commercially produced in Mexico.

Ingredients

250g ground cacao
1 tin of coconut milk
half a bar of coconut cream
4-5 tbsp agave syrup
some chopped nuts and dried fruit (optional)

Directions

• Put the coconut milk in a pan and heat gently, add about half a bar of coconut cream to this and stir until its melted.

• Add the ground cacao and stir until its all mixed in.

• Take it off the heat and add the agave syrup, this can be done to taste if you prefer it sweeter add more!
  

• Add your favorite chopped nuts and fruit, goji berries go really well in it, but you can just use anything you find in your cupboard really.
  

• Pour into small tubs and place in the fridge, it is also nice to thinly slice up some banana and us it as a topping.
  

• After a couple of hours the mixture will set, and its ready to eat, enjoy.
  

Kate's Tip: The agave syrup is quite expensive and a bit of a luxury item and can be replaced with just sugar or any type of alternative sweetener desired.

Easy Vegan Banana Bread

This is great one for when you find those bananas at the bottom of your fruit bowl going all black and squishy and it's personally one of my favorite types of cake. Not only is it moist and tasty but it is also really easy to make vegan without compromising the taste.

Now this is something I was unsure of before writing this, someone told me Bananas didn't grow on trees! However I always presumed they did. In fact the banana is the fruit of a herbaceous flowering plant. They are often mistaken for trees, as I have always done, but the stem (what I always mistook for its trunk!) actually dies every year after fruiting.

So really I shouldn't be writing about Banana's as they are not actually a tree ingredient, however I think it is worth doing in order to share this information and they just make really great cakes too!

The photograph shows Luc Doho with his banana tree on a TREE AID project in Mali.

This recipe was inspired and slightly modified from its original form from a website called recipes for vegans.

This recipe has two tree ingredients; apple and cinnamon (and of course the banana - which I'm not counting).

Ingredients

400g self raising flour
100g dairy free margarine
200g sultanas
2 large very ripe bananas, mashed
2 tspn Cinnamon
250ml soya milk
2 tspn cider vinegar

Directions

• Preheat the oven to gas mark 7.
  
• Combine the flour, cinnamon and margarine in a bowl and mix together with your fingers until it has a breadcrumb like consistency.
  
• Wash the sultanas in hot water to rehydrate them. Drain and allow to cool and then add to the mix.
  
• Add banana and stir.
  
• Mix the Apple Cider vinegar in with the soya milk before hand and then slowly add the soya milk 100ml at a time until you have a fairly runny mixture that is still sticking together.
  
• Put into a bread tin that has been greased and put in the hot oven for 20 minutes. To see if it is cooked all the way through, poke with a knife or skewer, if it comes out clean its done.
  
• Once cool slice up and spread with margarine.

Emma’s Tip: The apple cider vinegar and soya milk mixture works as a great substitute for eggs, and also try adding a little sugar to this recipe if you have a sweeter tooth!

Fig and Date Ricotta Cake

This week I have come by some exciting news for all you keen bakers out there. The BBC are running a new series and are looking for amateur bakers across the country to take part. The new series will be called The Great British Bake Off, you can find out more on the BBC website.

So we better get practicing with our baking skills. This week I have a delicious recipe for you from the TREE AID Cake Bake recipe booklet. This recipe is for a fig and date ricotta cake adapted from the Ricotta Cake in Antony Worrall Thompson’s ‘The Sweet Life’, and ‘GL Diet’, published by Kyle Cathie Ltd which you can buy in our bookshop. In this cake there are 5 tree ingredients; figs, dates, oranges, lemons and pine nuts.



Recipe

• Preheat the oven to 180ºC/356ºF or Gas Mark 4. Grease an 8 inch cake tin sparingly with vegetable oil.

• Place 250g (8 oz) of soft unsalted butter and 250g (8 oz) caster sugar in a large mixing bowl and, using a wooden spoon, cream until pale and fluffy.
  
  
• Separate 8 egg yolks into the mixture, one by one, beating well between each addition.

• Place the finely grated zest of 2 oranges and 3 lemons, into a separate mixing bowl and add 125g (5 oz) lightly roasted pine nuts, 200g (7 oz) of chopped dried dates, 200 g (7 oz) chopped dried figs and 275g (9 oz) ricotta and mix well together.
  
  
• Fold the butter and egg mix into the ricotta mixture and sift 75g (3 oz) plain fl our into this mix and combine.

• In a large bowl, using a whisk beat 2 of the egg whites into soft peaks. Fold in one large spoonful of egg whites into the ricotta mix. Once this is well mixed, carefully fold in the remainder, ensuring that you do not lose too much of the air.

• Pour the mixture into the greased cake tin and bake for about 45 minutes or until the tip of a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean.

• While the cake is cooling, put 125g (5 oz) sugar and 142ml (5 fl oz) water into a small saucepan over a medium heat and reduce. Add two sprigs of fresh rosemary and infuse.

• Spike the cooled cake all over with a fork and dribble with the rosemary syrup.

• Garnish with 25g (1 oz) of toasted pine nuts and the thin slices of a dried fig (fresh if you can get it) and sprigs of rosemary.

Antony’s tip: For diabetics substitute 100g (4 oz) of caster sugar for 4 tbsp of Splenda granulated sweetener.

So happy baking and enjoy.

Vegan Coconut Cupcakes and Climate Change

These coconut cupcakes were made by one of our TREE AID colleagues, the recipe was inspired by the cookbook "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World?" by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero which you can buy from our bookshop. It makes me happy to put up a vegan recipe as most people think once you cut down on diary and animal products you are restricted to only eating lentils and salad. However, there are loads of ways of making amazing cakes suitable for the vegan diet!

Veganism or simply reducing the amount of diary is a great way of cutting down your carbon footprint. In fact, a vegetarian who eats lots of diary can have a bigger carbon footprint than a meat-eater. We shouldn't be too harsh on restricting our lifestyles, but being aware of how our lifestyles contribute to climate change is really important. This is even more poignant when we realise that the people who are most affected by climate change are those which have contributed the least.

So try this vegan cupcake recipe and see if cakes can taste just as good dairy free! The recipe below is slightly modified from the cookbook to how our colleague, Lynne, at TREE AID made them. There are 4 tree ingredients, coconut, papaya, cocoa, and almond.






Ingredients

230g all purpose flour
75g cocoa powder
1 ½ tspn baking powder
¼ tspn salt
4tbsp coconut oil/ vegetable oil works just as well
240ml coconut milk
175g granulated sugar
1 tspn vanilla extract
2 tspn coconut extract/almond extract
115g unsweetened shredded coconut

Recipe

• preheat oven to gas mark 4 or 180 degree
  
  
• in a medium bowl, sift together flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt.
  
  
• Melt the coconut oil in a small saucepan over a very low heat. Once melted, turn the heat off but leave it in the pan on the stove so that it stays warm and does not solidify.
  
  
• In a separate medium bowl mix together coconut milk, sugar, vanilla, and coconut extract. Stir in the melted coconut oil. Add the flour mixture in batches, beating well after each addition. Mix until smooth, then fold in the shredded coconut.
  
  
• Fill cupcake liners two-thirds full. Bake for 24-26 mins. Transfer to a wire rack and cool completely.
  
  
  For Topping:
  
  Lynne simply melted vegan chocolate over the top mixed with a small amount of water and topped them with chunks of dried papaya. Delicious!
  
  Lynne's Tip: Use extra coconut milk for a more intense flavour.

The Mango Tree

This week I thought I would look at Mangos, Mango trees are used in many of TREE AID'S projects in West Africa and when we are lucky enough to lay our hands on them are delicious fruits. They are not quite as nice here as they are when you get them freshly harvested in Africa, because they are picked a bit too early so they don't ripen too fast as they make the long haul flight over to the UK. However, Mangos are beautiful when ripe, very nutritious and as you will see below go very well in cakes too. Also, if you are aware of how far your fruits come from you can appreciate and enjoy them all the more!

The Mango tree (Mangifera indica) is ideal for warm dry climates such as those in the African Sahel and offers a source of nutrients and income. They are full of vitamin C, A and B, the flowers are used to treat asthma and the leaves and bark are ingredients in malaria treatments. The fresh mangos are sold at markets and dried mango provides out of season income.

As part of TREE AID'S Projects Mango trees are being used in the Village Tree Enterprise programme. This is based in Northern Ghana and Burkina Faso where the climate is much dryer than more southerly areas and as most communities there rely on farming as a source of income this makes peoples livelihoods extremely vulnerable, especially to the impacts of climate change. The communities involved in the project plant many types of tree, including mango, in order to gain the economic benefits from the produce. Look on our website to find out more about TREEAID'S projects.

Most of the Mango trees planted are not grown from seed but grafted. Grafting is where you take two varieties of tree and put them together combining the properties of each variety. This means you can graft branches from a high yielding plant onto the root stock of a very hardy plant so you'll get a tree which will survive the dry climate well yet still produce lots of fruit. Although this may seem somewhat unnatural it is how most fruit trees are grown and ensures healthier plants with higher yield of fruit.

Recipe

Mango and Macadmia Cake

So now you know lots about the Mango tree I've got a great recipe for you to try out. This one is also taken from the TREE AID cake bake recipe book, and was adapted for TREE AID by Raymond Blanc. This recipe has 5 tree ingredients, Mangos, Oranges, Macadamia Nuts, Cherrys (Kirsch) and Oak (rum barrels).

• Preheat the oven to 180°C/ 350 °F or Gas Mark 4.



• Melt 25g (1 oz) of butter and brush the inside of a 23cm /9” x 10cm/4” Kougelhopf mould with a light coating of this and dust with 50g (2 oz) of plain flour. Shake to remove any excess and put to one side.



• Chop 200g (8 oz) of dried mango and 150g (6 oz) of macadamia nuts.



• Heat five tbsp of dark rum and three tbsp of water in a saucepan to just under a simmer. DO NOT BOIL. Put to one side and soak the chopped mango in this.



• Grate the zest of one orange on a grater.Put 230 ml (8 fl oz) of milk in a small saucepan and warm (20°C/68°F).



• In a large bowl add 500g (20 oz) of plain fl our, 100g (4 oz) of caster sugar and a tbsp of dried yeast. Mix together and make a well in the centre.



• Add the warm milk, orange zest and 4 medium eggs and mix well.



• Add 6 pinches of salt and mix in 250g (9 oz) of unsalted butter, a third at a time.



• Finally, mix in the soaked mango and chopped nuts and fill the mould 2/3rds of the way up.
  
  
• Cover with a tea towel for 1 ½ hours until the mixture reaches ¾ of the way up the mould.



• Cook in the preheated oven for 25 mins. Insert a skewer into the middle of the cake. If it comes out clean, de-mould the cake and place back in the oven for 10 minutes to colour the outside.



• Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a pastry rack.



• Sprinkle with Kirsch and dust with icing sugar.
  
  

Raymond’s tip: Two loaf tins (26cm/10” by 9cm/3.5”) will work instead of a Kougelhopf mould.

Chestnut and Chocolate Truffle Cake

I thought I would start this blog off by posting a recipe from TREE AID’S Cake Bake Recipe Book, it’s adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s cookbook ‘The River Cottage Year’. This chesnut and chocolate truffle cake looks amazing, and has two delicious cake ingredients; chocolate and sweet chestnuts. You can buy the books listed in my blog at the TREE AID bookshop.

Recipe

• Preheat the oven to 170°C/325°F or Gas Mark 3 and grease and line an 20cm/8” cake tin.
• Melt 250g (10 oz) of dark chocolate and 250g (10 oz) of unsalted butter together in a pan over a very gentle heat.
• In another pan, heat 250g (10 oz) of peeled cooked chestnuts (tinned if you like) with 250ml (10 fl oz) of milk until just boiling, then mash thoroughly with a potato masher (or process to a rough purée in a food processor).
• Separate 4 eggs, put the yolks in one bowl and the whites in another bowl.
• Mix the yolks with 125g (5 oz) of caster sugar.
• Stir in the chocolate mixture and the chestnut purée until you have a smooth, blended batter.
• Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold them carefully into the batter.
• Transfer the mixture into the greased, lined cake tin and bake for 25–30 minutes, until it is just set but still has a slight wobble.

If you want to serve the cake warm, leave to cool a little, then release the tin and slice carefully – it will be very soft and moussey. Or leave to go cold, when it will have set firm.

Hugh’s tip: It can be served with double cream, especially when warm, but it is also delicious unadulterated.

Now, whilst you’re enjoying this cake I think it is important for us to consider where the ingredients come from.

Sweet Chestnuts

Sweet Chestnuts originate from Asia Minor and south eastern Europe but now grow widely throughout Europe. Chestnuts can be harvested in October time and if you look carefully you can harvest them yourself. This makes an even more satisfying cake when you cook and eat them! You can identify Sweet Chestnuts by using the Woodland Trust's British Tree Identification site which will assist your foraging.

Chocolate

Cocoa has a much longer journey until it reaches your salivating mouth! and unless you travel quite a distance you won't be doing the foraging yourself. However, cocoa does grow on a tree, in fact it looks rather peculiar the way it grows in little pods hanging directly off the trunk.

For many years now West Africa has been one of the largest producers of Cocoa as our demand for chocolate continues, with Ghana producing more than 20% of the worlds production alone. In addition with the growth of the Fairtrade market increasing it is making it easier to buy chocolate that is fairly traded and I recommend that when making this delicious chocolate cake you strive to cook with Fairtrade chocolate. Especially as we are currently in Fairtrade Fortnight, which runs from 22nd February until 7th March, promoting the use of Fairtrade products. Also, I think we can gain a fuller appreciation of our food by making a link with what we eat and where our food comes from, even though this is usually lost in our ever globalising world.