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.