Baking Advent Calendar

Lying in bed last night I suddenly decided that what the world is missing is a baking advent calendar. I’m sure that until a few years ago advent calendars were only ever filled with chocolates but now there seems to be multiple versions of them. Someone has bought me one with a different cheese behind each door. Another that I was sorely tempted to buy for myself contained 24 different bottle’s of beer, many of them one off Christmas brews. In hindsight perhaps I should have got it. Beer and cheese every evening in December would have been rather good. I’ve also seen them with beauty products, perfumes and toys, but never with baked good. So what I thought I’d do for the rest of December is try and share a bake a day on here. I can’t promise that they will all have been produced on the day but they will all be something that has come out of my kitchen. I’ll also try to share recipes and to give a bit of background to what I’ve been baking.

For day one I’m going to start with the cake that I made yesterday. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my partners mother having suffered a minor stroke and how she is living with us until she’s well enough to go home. One of the results of this is that I’m under strict instructions to keep an eye on how much sugar and cream I use. Not a bad thing I know but it does mean that quite a few of my favourites are off limits at the moment. One cookbook definitely coming into it’s own is Natural-Baking-Healthier-Recipes-Guilt-Free This is a fascinating book that is full of reduced sugar recipes and well worth the greatly reduced price that Amazon currently have it at. Don’t let the references to Health and Guilt Free in the title put you off. These are serious bakes  with serious flavour. 

The recipe that I picked to make yesterday was Blueberry Cake. This recipe does require you to make jam & apple puree but if you already have some in the fridge you could skip these steps.

Ingredients

Jam

100g blueberries

20g muscovado sugar

Apple puree

1 apple

1tsp Vanilla extract

pinch of ground cinnamon

Cake

100g hazelnuts

4 eggs

70g muscovado sugar

100ml sunflower oil

100g apple puree

! tsp vanilla extract

160g wholemeal spelt flour

2tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

100ml almond milk

double cream*

100g blueberries

Method

For the jam put the blueberries and sugar in a saucepan. Bring to the boil and then lower the heat to a simmer. Stir occasionally until the liquid has the consistency of jam. Remove from the heat and cool.

For the apple puree put the ingredients along with 50ml of water in a saucepan. Bring to the boil and let simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool.

Heat the oven to gas mark 4.5.

Toast the hazelnuts in a dry pan. Leave to cool then finely grind them.

Beat the eggs and sugar with en electric whisk until a pale cream colour. Add the oil, puree and vanilla and stir.

In a separate bowl mix the flour, ground hazelnuts, salt and baking powder. Then add this to the egg mixture in batches, alternating with the almond milk.

Grease two 20cm cake tins and split the cake mixture between them. Place in the heated oven and bake for 25 minutes.

For the filling whip the cream and then fold the blueberry jam through it.

Put one of the cakes on a plate and spread cream on it followed by half the blueberries. Place the other cake on top and finish off with the rest of the cream and blueberries.

* If you’re looking to remove fresh cream completely the book contains a recipe for making the filling using coconut cream. I couldn’t do that as the coconut cream requires 24 hours in the fridge beforehand and I only decided on the day that i was making this cake.