Apple breakfast pancake

 

Apple breakfast pancake

NOTE: more of a weekend breakfast as it is definitely not that quick to make due to all the measuring etc. Quite nice to mix it up from time to time but I personally haven’t quite figured out if the effort is worth it 😉

Like some of my other recipes, I found this on the mouthwatering website: ChocolatecoveredKatie

Ingredients (serves 1)

• 40 grams of white or spelt flour (could maybe use other types!)
• 11 grams of oats
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 2/3 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon of salt
• 1 tablespoon of sugar
• 60 grams of finely chopped apple (also chop up the leftovers and keep them separate! see step 4)
• 65 ml of milk of your choice (OR 75-80 ml if you choose to leave out the oil)
• 1 tablespoon (13 grams) of (coconut) oil
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

How to cook 

1. Combine all dry ingredients (top 6 on the list) before adding in the wet ingredients.
2. Mix but don’t over-mix (having said that.. I don’t know what that means exactly. First time I mixed with a fork but thought it was a bit chunky so gave it a quick whizz with the hand-mixer) Second time I only used a fork. Both times was perfectly fine!
3. Put the mixture in a warm/hot frying pan and cook it on a low setting (be patient! ;)). Turn carefully when golden brown. Note: I’m pretty lazy so just cook everything at once to make one big pancake. You could of course make a couple of small ones if you want!
4. Optional: in the mean time cook the apple you had left over in another pan with a bit of cinnamon. Make sure it gets nice and soft and when your pancake is almost done add in some honey (don’t do this too early as it might stick and burn to your pan).
5. When you pancake and cooked bits of apple are done, serve as pictured! 😀

The bake-off cake! Pistachio, lime and courgette cake.

Pistachio, lime and courgette cake.

BEWARE: this recipe is NOT HEALTHY WHATSOEVER. It is very yummy though 😉

Sooo… we started a bake-off at work a while back and even though I didn’t initially sign up, I couldn’t help but join in late. The cakes everyone makes are amazing and I thought I’d give it a go. I generally don’t really bake many things – too dangerous!

To try it out I made half of the recipe a couple of days early and amended a few things. However only after making the final one I found out that I put in waaay to much oil (I weighed it instead of measuring it… rookie mistake!). They were still super delicious btw but I would recommend trying to follow amount in the original recipe to start with!

I found a couple of recipes and went for an easy looking one that didn’t need a billion ingredients here. And used the recipe for the cream-cheese frosting I found elsewhere on the web (I have no idea where..)

Ingredients (1 cake, serves 10-ish people)

The cake

• 75ml of vegetable oil (is NOT equal to 75 grams ;))
• 125 grams of self-raising flour
• 40-ish grams of pistachio nuts
• 1,5 – 2 medium eggs
• 90 grams of caster sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
• 1/4 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
• 110 grams of coarsely grated courgettes

Cream cheese frosting

• 200 grams of full fat Philadelphia cream cheese
• 100 grams of icing sugar
• 0,5 – 1 lime (for juice and zest)
• 3 tbs pistachio nuts (or however many you need to cover the top nicely)

How to bake

1. Pre-heat the oven to about 180 degrees.
2. To prepare:
   – grease the tin and dust it with some flour
   – pulse/chop the pistachio nuts (I tried using my new food processor but found it made bits of it almost like dust while other bits hadn’t even been touched yet, so I prefer chopping them myself)
   – grate and weigh the courgettes
3. Whisk the oil, eggs, sugar and vanilla.
4. Sift the flour and bicarbonate of soda over the top and stir to combine.
5. Mix in the courgettes and pistachios. And add a bit of lime zest!
6. Transfer the mixture to the tin and  level the surface.
7. Bake the cake for about 35 minutes or until it is golden brown and a skewer comes out clean (I prefer to use the latter method).
8. Leave to cool in the tin for about 5 minutes then release it from the tin by sticking a knife in between the tin and the cake (gently!) and turning the tin upside down.
9. Turn your cake the right side up and let it cool on a rack.
10. While the cake is cooling down (this takes at least an hour – if you want to speed it up, slice the cake horizontally in half) start making the frosting.
11. Beat the cream cheese until smooth.
12. Add sieved icing sugar and stir in the lime to taste. (I used the juice of about half a lime and zest of at least half a lime to bring out the taste a bit more!)
13. If you have not done so yet: slice the cake horizontally and start spreading out the the cream cheese frosting on the bottom half. If needed: slice a bit off the top half as well to make it a bit more flat (I didn’t mind mine was still a bit domed after that but you might want to take the main bulk off like me. Makes applying the icing easier as well). Use about half of the mixture and spread it out evenly.
14. When done, put the other half of cake on top of it and use the remaining cream cheese frosting to ice the top.
15. Scatter the nuts on top (ideally just before serving to keep them crispy, but there is not a lof of harm in doing it a while before that).
16. Enjoy the sugar rush! 😉 

Additional notes

• I used way more pistachios than what was ‘prescribed’ in the original recipe so feel free to use less. I just really like a nutty cake 😀
• I won and am through to the next round! I do have to say, the competition was fierce as she made the British favourite; Scones with cream, jam and butter.