Tree (cake) Revolution

It's February, so I'm ditching the new year's resolutions to cut down on the cake, and getting back to baking!

2011 is the UN International Year of the Forest and TREE AID is launching its Tree Revolution, which will see 1 million trees planted, protected and producing during the year, and millions of lives tranformed by the benefits of trees.

What this means for Tree Cakes is an opporunity to celebrate the bounty of trees, and to look for even more delicious tree recipes. I'm keen to find some 'grow your own' tree cake recipes, ones that use ingredients from your own garden or allotment (or someone else's!).

If you're already a keen gardener, I'd love to hear your suggestions of potential cake plants. If, like me, you're new to growing, you might be interested in TREE AID's partnership with Blackmoor Nurseries in the Tree Revolution. For any tree bought, you'll have the opportunity to donate to TREE AID, and Blackmoor will donate 10% of the purchase price.

So, what are you growing? I've got blueberry and blackcurrant bushes which I'm hoping will fruit!

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.

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!