Gluten Free Orange and Almond Cake

 Yesterday was a bit of a disaster, I cut my finger of the edge of a corn beef tin.  My middle finger of the right hand, the one you put a thimble on, the one which is really useful when you are knitting.  How did I do it?  Well... we now keep all our clean recycling in a big swing bin in the utility room, and I just delved in to find a small pot to put my waste oil in to put in the bin, without looking too carefully, and key presto, a cut nearly to the bone...so much blood, and so difficult to open a plaster!  Lesson: put all cut edged tins in the outside recycling straight away!

Before that I had failed to separate three eggs properly, and hence scrambled egg for breakfast this morning.  Thankfully I always separate each egg in a small bowl before putting them into the main whisking bowl.  With 6 eggs to separate I did have a bad day, but thankfully had enough eggs spare to make this gluten free cake from the National Trust Simply Baking by Sybil Kapoor.

In principle I felt it was a good recipe and was to be the first of the gluten free bakes yesterday, before the cut finger put paid to further baking!  Today a few knitting friends:  Linda, Janice, Roni, Katherine, and Diane,  came round and I love to have all the bakes suitable for all of us, but we had to be satisfied with just one cake.  By the end of the morning, we had all enjoyed the cake, coffee, tea etc., and had mastered some of the techniques on the Maluka Scarf which I am cascading down!  Roni brought a project which she has nearly finished, and which will be the basis of a new group workshop hopefully.

The only question I had when I read the recipe for the Orange Almond Cake, was whether one cake really needed 4 teaspoons baking powder.  I don't really like that taste of baking powder.  I had already cooked the fruit in the pressure cooker, but found one recipe which just cut up the whole fruit into bits and poached them in a pan.  So much easier than the 2 hours or so if you did not have a pressure cooker.  As usual I did some further research and found several recipes on line which used only one or two teaspoons of baking powder.

Don't worry if you are not going to make the cake, all I want to note, is that I think I must have used every mixing bowl, and thank goodness I had washed up before the encounter with the corned beef tin!
Here is the revised and altered recipe to Serve 10 to 12 portions.

For a 23 cm spring from tin, with bottom and sides lined with baking parchment to 2 cm higher than the tin.

Preheat the oven to 180 C Gas Mark 5

2 wax free oranges about 400 grams
5 medium eggs
190g golden caster sugar
190g ground almonds
1 tsp gluten free baking powder
some flaked almonds to scatter

A little icing sugar to sieve over the cooled cake just before serving.

Poach the oranges, cut up in a little water, till very tender.    Watch and add a little water if required, but not too much, as when the fruit is drained, you will need to reduce the liquid to a couple of tablespoons.  Or use the pressure cooker. Whiz the fruit and liquid together, and leave to cool.  When cool mix in the almonds and baking powder.

I chose to vary the technique to incorporate as much air as possible, in that I whisked up the whites, first in my second biggest bowl,  using half of the sugar, adding a spoonful at a time till used up, then whisked for a further minutes or so.

In a separate but larger bowl, whisk up the eggs yolks with the other half of the sugar till the thick ribbon stage.

Let down the orange and almond mixutre with about a quarter of the egg yolk mixture, then folded into the rest of the egg yolk mixture into the orange and almond gently.

Now fold in about a quarter of egg white mixture into the egg yolk, fruit and almond mixture, then when a little 'slacker', the rest of the egg white mixture can be folded in very gently to keep in as much air as possible.

Gently fill the cake tin, smoothing the surface, then scatter over some flaked almonds.

Cover the cake with a piece of baking parchment with a hole the size of a large coin in the middle, and transfer it to the oven quickly.  After 45 minutes in the oven, check the cake, if very pale remove the top paper and cook for a little longer.  To test if the cake is ready check with a skewer.  It may take up to an hour to cook through depending on the oven.

Cool in the tin, but on a cooling rack.  When cold, remove from the tin to a severing dish.  Dust with a little sieved icing sugar.  This cake is best stored in the fridge, but allow the cake to come to room temperature for the best flavour.

You could make smaller cakes but the baking time will alter of course, and I suggest lowering the oven temperature.

It was delicious and very light, and if we had this with a little goat's cream, as I ran out of time to fetch some cow's cream for the girls.  If serving for a dessert, I would serve with mascarpone and some orange curd.  It is even better the next day!

Visit to Waddesson

We had arranged several weeks ago to meet me with our dearly beloveds, and had decided a joint visit to Waddesdon.  We had picked this National Trust Property as it was about equidistant from our homes, and none of us had visited before.

D and I arrived in time to join the first group of house visitors.  After parking the car, we decided to jump on the bus ferrying visitors to the house, as it was pouring with rain.  There is so much to see and enjoy in the house, and we were made to feel very welcome, and given various leaflets.  Its definitely somewhere I would want to go again.

Here are some of the details which I enjoyed on this first visit, and which I took pictures of...

Gainsborough The Pink Boy

Large indoor garden with ferns etc

Don't worry about the broken china we'll stick it together..

Detail from a door frame

Trimmed Ivy detail

We were a little on tenterhooks, as we had to put the phone to silent, plus there were pockets where we got no reception.  We had agreed to be in touch once we arrived!  This may seem quite straightforward for some, but I rarely have my mobile on.  Anyway we completed the house, and then we got the phone call.  It was lunch time by then, and being under the weather, and in view of the poor weather too, we had decided to have lunch at the Property, and luckily had booked a table.  The lunch was delicious.

As we went outside the rain stopped, and Izzi wanted to have a go on the equipment in the adventure park.  At the stables

We  viewed  the superb mosaic from Lod, together with an exhibition of some of the artifacts in the Rothchild collections.

Just some of the collection

 then beyond the formal parterre

there were rolly polys.

So much care and attention to the parterre and displays

 Small plants make up pictures

 Just how do they trim this?

 The Tropical Mound

 Leading to the Aviary

The special light feature at the  aviary had Izzi enthralled

The Aviary was well stocked with interesting plants and birds too.

We arrived in the rain and left in the sunshine

Then to finish there was home make cake, cupcakes made by Izzi and Mum, and drinks in the carpark, before we said our au revoires.

Autumn has arrived

There are several things that tell me, and hence I feel to my core that Summer is Over.  It is now too dim and cool for us to have week day breakfasts in the conservatory, starting this Monday, and since the weather has turned the cups of tea on the Patio when Hubby returns from work are probably not going to last for long even if the sun comes out, as soon, the clocks will change and it will be too dark!

I've been poorly for the last few weeks with a bug, which seems impossible to shift.  I have had bouts of energy, well enough to do the usual things, but then I have had to rest.  This has not been helped by the underlying sadness of having had to get rid of our two pears trees and plum tree due to disease.  I've contacted the RHS and been told there are no controls available to the amateur.  I do not think the exceedingly wet spell we have had helped, yes there were some before the drought.

After clearing and having a good dig around, incorporating manure etc, I am reluctant to replant with new trees or shrubs.  I shall divide perennials up and replant the areas.  I feel the bones of the garden have been lost.  I have a couple of shrubs growing in tubs, and have positioned them in the gaps to ease the eye.

What is great about having a local nursery, and also having a great owner, is that if you ask you often get.  Let me explain:  I have been looking for a Controlled release fertilizer which I mix up with my potting compost for my succulents, and other plants in pots.  At one time the better outlets used to carry Osmocote, but that is not now the case locally.  Anyway last week I got an email only days after asking Sara at Hintons about this, to say it had arrived.

Not only did I get the Osmocote,  a big tub of feed for my roses next year, but also some plants!  That cheered me up.

I bought some Sweet Williams, which I have never grown before, but I wanted some flowers to cheer me up this coming spring, and I hope I shall have some good stems for my posies.

A quick walk around the shrubs at the nursery, and one really stood out for me.  I bought it just because I loved the puckered deep maroon leaves.  I decided I would plant it up into a bigger pot, and it could ballet round the garden filling gaps in differing places during the seasons.  I knew nothing about the plant, but somewhere at the back of my mind I felt I had already 'bonded' with it, before I saw it.

Lophomyrtus x ralphii 'Black Pearl'

As soon as I got home, I looked it up, and was intrigued to find that it was part of the Myrtle group.  Plants which start with Luma, lophomyrtus, Ugni and Myrtus are part of this group.  In the mediteranean we have seen tree sized specimens, as well as on Tresco on the Isles of Scilly, where I could not resist stroking their amazing bark.

Just before going out to plant up the new tub, I was having a drink, and leafing through some back issues of 'The Garden', as I do if I sit in the conservatory with a cuppa.  There it was:  the article called Royal and Ancient in July 2014.  I remember reading the article which had helped me to identify my  Luma Apiculata Glanleam Gold.  The back issues slide very nicely out of site, beneath the bottom shelf of the Console in the conservatory.

I am delighted with my new shrub, and have planted it in a larger tub, together with some rooted cutting of Parahebe lyallii, which  is a very pretty low shrubby plant with pretty small white flowers.  In between  I pushed in some little winter aconite tubers.  I have a couple of winter aconites somewhere in the garden and looking for them during the first months of the year along with the snowdrops, pulls me back into the garden on sunny days.  For now the pot is by the patio window where I hope the squirrels won't venture to dig up the tubers.

I first acquired the little Parahebe by asking for some cuttings around 20 years ago, and since then have propagated them every few years, and so they have moved around with me.  This August when I was trimming back the plants, I put a few cutting in a pot, and all of them took.  D loves plants with little flowers and he always notes this one in the garden.

Radishes and how to prepare them

I heard someone, I think it was Pippa Greenwood on the Gardening Program  on the radio say they did not like radishes.  Well here we do like radishes.  As I can no longer eat tomatoes, they add that certain redness to salads, a crunch too, and a good contrast with other flavours.  Usually we get the small round red ones, but our favourite is the French Breakfast Radish which I used to grow when I had an allotment.  We are lucky to be able to get rather good radishes nearly all year round, thanks to clever producers.  When I used to grow them, once the first lot were used up subsequent sowings usually grew much hotter and sometimes woody, I think they need some shade and lots of water.

We have been getting them from Waitrose, but our local market on Thursdays is also now carrying them.  At the market, the bunches are bigger less well washed, not packaged, but really fresh with great looking greens attached, and not as dear.  I usually go up there early, and have all the vegetables which usually get sold out quickly put by for me, under the bench in my cloth bags in the shade.
The French Breakfast radishes are one of the vegetables which are soon sold out.

A couple of weeks back I picked some up at the Farm Shop by the National Trust Entrance to Charlecote.  They looked nice and fresh, even less washed, so got some ready for the Monday Packed Lunch....those that I sent all came back, as there was half a maggot in the first one!  I tried the rest, cutting them up, and they all ended up in the bin.  We were teetering on the verge of not liking radishes any more.

Last week's batch from the market have to date been perfect, but just in case, today's packed lunch for hubby, had the radishes cut into florets, giving a rather retro look..on a roast beef, potato salad, cress, chick pea and chutney salad.

At least preparing them in this way gives me the chance to check the whole radish for maggots, and to see if they are woody or lack luster, as its difficult to weigh up a radish just from its 'coat'.

A recent flavour combination which came up trumps was a mixed salad of iceberg, sliced pear dipped in lemon juice, sliced radishes, and cress, with grilled walnuts and walnut oil.  We had this on the side with a Pasta Dish.

Friends bearing fruit

This morning Penny arrived with a few quince which she and Q picked from their tree.  I shall be spending the next few days researching special things, hopefully different types of preserves from previous years.  She even gave me her largest one! 591 grams...