Saturday 18 January 2014

Er.... Long Time no Post!

You might think we don't cook or eat here at Finca La Reina - so NOT TRUE!  But huge apologies for not updating and not posting recipes in more timely a fashion.  I have been cooking and I have been taking photographs of food, but then one thing leads to another and days and then weeks go by and I don't write the post and finally I am not sure if I remember what it was I photographed!

Suffice to say... I plan to do better from now on.  I am thinking that I might have to update how I arrange the recipes so that you can find stuff easier... but then we do try to eat seasonally so perhaps I should simply label the food by the month along with some stuff that I do all year round like eggy things.  With four hens in full production we have a lot of eggs.

So... my first post of 2014 is going to be a Treacle Loaf.


January is cold and wet here in Extremadura and so we have the estuffa (wood burning fire) going every evening and sometimes during the day too.  Ours has a little oven on the top - the temperature guage on it isn't very accurate and controlling the fire is not easy but I am very proud of my first attempt at a cake in it.

Treacle Loaf

4oz wholemeal flour
4oz plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
2oz castor sugar
3oz sultanas
1oz butter
1tbsp black treacle
1tbsp golden syrup
1/4 pint milk

Sieve the flours together and add the baking powder, sugar and sultanas.  melt the butter and mix with the treacle and syrup then add to the dry ingredients along with the milk until you have a stiff dropping consistency.  Spoon into a 1lb loaf tin and bake in the oven for 45 to 55 minutes.  The temperature should have been 160C.  It's anybodies guess what I baked it at... certainly around 125C to start with and then towards the end it was alot more than 160C.


Given the vagaries of the oven I reckon it turned out pretty well.  At 45 minutes in I checked it and it wasn't ready but then at 55 minutes in it was ready but burned at the back and when I turned it out of the tin the bottom was very dark too!


It makes sense that the back and the bottom of the oven are the hottest parts so perhaps I will have to turn cakes half way through baking and lining the tins might help protect the base.  Anyway, I am still declaring this one a success since it tasted absolutely delicious!  Very rich and treacly and old fashioned but in spite of being over done it was still moist in the middle so I think this recipe will have to go into the Book of Favourites for doing again in the future.

 

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