Brown food, a call for recipes... and a giveaway

Brown food (excluding anything chocolate) rarely looks appealing when I take its photo. When I say "brown food" I mean things like bran muffins and loaves: everyday, easy to throw together, baking that's lovely with a cup of tea but doesn't make you go "wow! I really want to make that". In a word...uninspiring!

This "no-chop date and orange loaf" is one of those recipes - simple, quick to make with ingredients you already have and tastes better than it looks! The recipe is from "Now You're Cooking" a sweet little cookbook put together by the Destitute Children's Home Pokhara Charitable Trust as a fundraiser for a children's home in Nepal. The Trust is run by a dedicated bunch of Wellingtonians and funds raised from the sale of this cookbook have gone towards really practical things to make life easier in the home - like a microwave - as well as the day-to-day running of the home and education for the children living there.

The first cookbook, released two Christmases ago, was so successful the Trust is putting together another one in time for Christmas 2011. So here's your opportunity to be come a published food writer and contribute to a great little book! The Trust is looking for recipes (especially desserts) to compile into a second cookbook - recipes of the tried-and-true variety - things you love to make and eat yourself. Send your favourites to Linda: dchpokhara@gmail.com

I bought several copies of the first book for Christmas gifts - at a very reasonable $10 they were the perfect little gift - and have ended up with an extra copy so it's up for grabs! Leave a comment about your favourite "brown food" (stuff that doesn't look pretty but tastes delicious!) and I'll make the draw in a week's time. Anyone is welcome to leave a comment & contribute a recipe for the next book but the giveaway is only open to NZ residents.

This loaf contains a modest 50g of butter - good news in these times of high dairy prices - and also helpfully suggests you can swap the butter for four level tablespoons of oil. The recipe says the addition of an orange lifts this loaf a cut above a plain date loaf, I didn't have an orange so made it without and it was still delicious.

No-chop date & orange loaf (contributed by Virginia)

225g pitted dates

Juice of an orange, made up to half a cup with water

50g butter (or 4 TBSP oil)

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 cup milk (or soy milk)

1/2 cup raw sugar (or could use white)

1 beaten egg

1 cup plain flour

1 cup wholemeal flour

2 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

1/2 cup broken walnuts

Turn the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Put the whole dates, rind and 1/2 cup of liquid into a pot. Bring to boil and cook for a few minutes. Stir in the butter until melted and leave to cool a bit.

Mix the baking soda into the milk. Beat the egg and sugar together in a large bowl. Add both the milk/baking soda to the egg/sugar mix and stir in the dates. Sift in the dry ingredients (throw in the wholemeal bits left in the sieve from the wholemeal flour. Stir gently to just mix.

Pour into a lined loaf tine and bake for one hour. Test by poking in a skewer: if it comes out clean the loaf is cooked.

The recipe suggests serving plain when fresh and buttered as it get a bit older. This is good advice but I couldn't resist a little butter on a slice when it was still warm from the oven.

thursday baking - date and orange muffins

This week's post comes courtesy of Jessica...

I quite like the trick of using whole oranges in baking. Some recipes call for the oranges to be boiled first, but here, two oranges are thrown straight into the food processor and blended up with the other ingredients.

These muffins have quite a different texture from what I usually associate with muffins. They were very moist and cakey, almost like friands. I think the inclusion of the orange skin made the muffins slightly bitter, but in a good way, so they really needed the dates as little bursts of sweetness. My husband, on the other hand, thought they could have done with more sugar, but then he has a very sweet tooth! This recipe also makes A LOT of muffins (or maybe I just made mine quite small). The recipe says it makes 24, but I got 28, and as I only have one muffin tin, this meant the whole baking process took a while as I waited for the muffins to cool before removing them and putting the next batch in the oven. It's lucky that they do freeze well!

Date & Orange Muffins - Annabelle White

2 oranges
2 large eggs
200g butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 Cup pitted dates, roughly chopped
400g natural yoghurt
a little lemon juice
3/4 Cup sugar
3 Cups standard flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Grease two 12-hole muffin pans.

Blend the whole oranges in the food processor--skin, seeds, everything! Add the eggs and melted butter. Whirl the mixture around, but do not over-process. Place it in a large bowl with the dates.

Mix the yoghurt, lemon juice and sugar together in a bowl. Sift the dry ingredients into another bowl. Add the yoghurt mixture and the dry ingredients to the orange mixture, alternating small amounts of each. Just blend with the lightest movement--do not over-mix. Place 2 tablespoons of batter in each hole of the prepared muffin pans.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the muffins comes out clean. Cool in the pans for 5 minutes and then cool on a wire rack. The muffins keep for 2-3 days in an airtight container. These muffins also freeze well.

thursday baking - cappuccino date slice

Thursday baking this week was made by Mum, who has been making this yummy slice for years. It's like a coffee (flavoured) cake with dates in it, and being a melt and mix, one bowl recipe it is very quick and easy to put together. The dates tend to sink to the bottom; I'm not sure how to avoid this, as flouring the dates first tends to result in pesky bits of uncooked flour getting trapped in their crevices, not so nice! Maybe we could try chopping them a bit smaller. It's quite sweet so is nice cut into smallish pieces, Mum took it to a morning tea so this batch was bite size.

Cappuccino date slice - Jo Seagar - Week 23

Slice

2 eggs
1 c brown sugar
180g butter, melted
1/2 c milk
2 tbsp coffee and chicory essence (avail in the coffee section of supermarkets)
1 c dates, chopped
1 1/2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder

Coffee Icing

2 c icing sugar
1 tbsp coffee essence
25g butter, melted
boiling water

Preheat oven to 150c. Line a 20 x 30cm slice tray with baking paper.

Beat the eggs in a large bowl or cake mixer, add the other ingredients and mix well to combine. Spread into the tin and bake for 30-35 minutes until firm in the centre. Cool in the tin.

To make the icing beat all ingredients together with enough boiling water to form a smooth, glossy icing. When cold cut into 30 slices. This can also be frozen.

Thursday baking: spiced date cake

As we bake our way through A Treasury of New Zealand Baking

This dense, spicy cake is almost like sticky date pudding but with cream cheese icing instead of toffee sauce. I didn't have much mixed spice so added some extra cinnamon, ginger and cloves. I was also short on caster sugar so used a mix of caster and brown sugars. A dusting of icing sugar or (as suggested in the recipe) lemon icing would make a lighter alternative to cream cheese icing.

I'd make this cake again, but probably not until we've got through some of the other date recipes in the book. A Treasury of New Zealand Baking seems to have more than it's fair share of recipes featuring dates, including two cakes quite similar to this spiced date cake.

The recipe says the un-iced cake will keep for 4 days in an air-tight container but as I iced the whole thing so it needed to be eaten within a couple of days. I made it on Sunday and took the rest into work for morning tea on Monday. There was already an enormous carrot cake in honour of a birthday so I put the date cake in the fridge for morning tea the following day. When I opened the fridge the next morning there was one lonely slice left on the plate! I hope whoever ate it enjoyed it!


Spiced date cake - Catherine Bell (Week 13)

250g pitted dates, roughly chopped
1 tsp baking soda
125ml boiling water
110g butter
110g caster sugar
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
1 egg
150g flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp mixed spice

icing
50g cream cheese
50g butter
100g icing sugar
finely grated zest of 1/2 lemon

Place dates and baking soda in a bowl and pour over boiling water, soak for 30 minutes and cool.

Cream butter, sugar and lemon zest in a food processor until pale. Add egg and beat well.

Combine flour, baking powder and mixed spice and tip them into a food processor, with the dates & liquid and pulse until just combined.

Pour into greased & lined 20cm cake tin and bake for about 45 minutes (or until cake is golden and a skewer inserted into centre of cake comes out clean. Cool in tin for 5 minutes and then turn out onto cooling rack.

To make icing, beat all ingredients until white and fluffy. Spread icing over cooled cake and dust with cinnamon.