…
Typically Tropical Bundt© Cake
When you’ve been sent some bottles of refreshing Grace Foods Aloe Drink to try and you want explore what you can do with it, apart from enjoy drinking it, then what else can you do, except make a deliciously moist and tasty cake?
Well, this is exactly what happened recently and exactly what I did. So, read on, get your apron on, your ingredients out and enjoy some time in the kitchen before tucking into a slice (or two) of this deliciously moist cake.
Cake:
- 85g Unsalted butter
- 180g Caster sugar
- 2 medium sized eggs
- 1tsp Nielsen Massey Vanilla Extract
- 60ml Coconut milk
- 30ml Farringtons Yellow Mellow Rapeseed oil
- 180ml Mango purée
- 190g Plain flour
- ¼tsp Salt
- ½tsp Bi-carbonate of soda
- ½tsp Baking powder
Glaze:
- 50g Caster sugar
- 60ml Grace Mango flavoured Aloe Refresh Aloe Vera Drink
Icing:
- 2½tsp Grace Mango flavoured Aloe Refresh Aloe Vera Drink
- 100g Icing sugar
- ½tsp Mango purée
- Heat the oven to 160ºC (140º Fan).
- Butter and flour a 6 cup Bundt© tin. I used the Nordicware Anniversary tin that you can find on Amazon.
- In a stand mixer, or using an electric whisk, cream the butter and sugar for 4-5 minutes until light and fluffy.
- Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until fully combined.
- Add the vanilla extract, coconut milk, rapeseed oil and 120ml of the mango purée and beat thoroughly for 4-5 minutes on a medium speed until it has increased in volume and is creamy.
- In a separate bowl, sieve together the flour, salt, bi-carbonate of soda and baking powder.
- Mix half of the flour into the wet mixture until just combined.
- Add the remaining 60ml of the mango purée and fold together.
- Fold in the final half of the flour gently.
- Pour the mixture into your Bundt© tin and smooth the surface level.
- Bake for 65-70 minutes until the cake has just started to shrink from the edges of the tin and a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the thickest part of the cake.
- Allow to cook in the tin for 5 minutes, whilst you make the glaze.
- In a small saucepan, heat the caster sugar and Aloe Vera Drink until boiling, then reduce the heat to a rolling boil and the syrup has reduced by half.
- Using your skewer, make a series of small holes in the flat surface of the cake and slowly spoon half of the glaze over the cake, allowing it to soak in fully.
- Invert the tin onto a wire cooking rack and prick the top with your skewer all over then, gently and slowly spoon the other half of your glaze over the top of the cake, again allowing it to soak in fully.
- Leave the cake to cool completely.
- Mix together the Aloe Vera Drink and mango purée, then sieve the the icing sugar into it, mixing thoroughly until you get a thickish icing.
- Gently pour the icing over the top of the cake, allowing it to drizzle down the outside edge and into the centre hollow.
You can find mango purée and coconut milk in the international food aisle of your local supermarket. I tend to use my Kenwood Major Titanium stand mixer to make cakes in if it involves beating the mixture for several minutes as it leaves me to get on with setting up the next stage of my preparation. If it’s something that only needs a very quick mix, then I use my Kenwood K-Mix hand mixer instead.
Grace Foods sent me some bottles of their Aloe Refresh Aloe Vera Drinks to sample. I was under no obligation to develop any recipes or provide a review of their products in return for these drinks.
Rosewater, Pistachio, Cranberry, Blueberry & White Chocolate Oat Cookies
Wow! That’s a mouthful of a recipe title for sure! However, it does tell you exactly what’s in the cookies I made, doesn’t it?
Inspired by the original recipe by the finalist of the Great British Bake Off, Holly Bell, which is incredibly versatile and can easily be altered, depending on your mood and fancy. Last night, I decided to go a little Persian with some wonderfully fragrant Nielsen Massey Rosewater, some delicious green pistachios from Sainsbury’s, along with some cranberry & blueberry mix which I’d bought from Holland and Barratt and some creamy chunks of Callebeaut white chocolate. The recipe made about 21 cookies (I forgot to count before we started eating them, still slightly warm from the oven, sorry!)
- 250g Butter, room temperature
- 150g Soft brown sugar
- 1½tsp Nielsen Massey Rosewater
- 150g Self Raising flour
- 230g Quaker Porridge Oats
- 100g Cranberry & Blueberry mix
- 100g White chocolate chunks
- 100g Pistachios, chopped
- Preheat your oven to 160ºC.
- Line your baking sheets with parchment paper (I used 4 baking sheets and baked them in pairs).
- Cream the butter and sugar, along with the rosewater until light and fluffy. (I was watching The Fall on BBC iPlayer as I was baking, can you tell?!) It’s much easier to use a hand mixer when creaming your butter and sugar, and I use my Kenwood K-Mix one.
- Add in the flour and oats and stir to combine fully.
- Gently stir in the cranberries, blueberries, chocolate chunks and chopped pistachios.
- Take out plum sized balls (I used a level table spoon measure for my cookies).
- Place the cookies on to your baking tray and flatten them out roughly to about 1cm thick. You need to leave about 2cm between them to allow them to spread a little.
- Bake for 16 minutes.
- The cookies will still be soft when you remove them from the oven, so allow them to cool on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes.
- Remove the cookies to a cooling tray and leave until cold.
- Store in an airtight container, but you won’t be able to resist them for too long!
This recipe uses Nielsen Massey rosewater which had previously been sent to me as a gift, along with other vanillas and flavourings.
Review – Patak Chicken Tikka Masala
In a hurry? No time to cook from scratch? Need a quick and tasty dinner cooked straight from the freezer? Yes, sometimes we all do!
Although I’m not normally one to buy ready meals, sometimes we all have to make sure dinner is on the table quickly if we’re in a rush, and the other night was no exception. As I was late in from work, and rushing to get out the door again, it called for me to have a ‘quick on draw’ dinner. Luckily, Patak’s had sent me one of their new range of frozen Chicken Tikka Masala ready meals to review so I could get this out of the freezer, into the microwave and on the table in a matter of only 10 minutes, which was hardly time to get changed and ready to go out again!
The packaging says it’s medium strength, however I personally think it was quite mild. The chicken was lean and stayed succulent in a generous portion of sauce and the pilau rice stayed in individual grains and not a gloopy lump of stodge. The smell was so tantalising that my husband appeared and miraculously managed to have a fork in his hand to dig in and share my dinner; the cheeky boy!
As the mother of a son at Uni, I think this would also make a perfect freezer filler for him during study time when the books are calling and there is less time for him to cook his own curry from scratch.
At 550 Calories per pack, it’s possibly a little higher than I would normally eat, however the saturated fat at 3.4g made it a less of a guilt and more of a pleasure and much more of reasonable calorific intake than a take away curry would. I’d certainly buy a couple of these as quick stand by dinners for my freezer.
Thanks to Patak’s PR company for arranging to send me a sample to review.