Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

Oh blessed pound cake recipe, is there no end to your possibilities?

Here’s my latest attempt, a caramel cake with browned butter frosting. I baked it in a Wilton bundt pan, but given that the frosting was quite stiff and the batter reasonably sticky, it probably would have worked better in a 20cm (8″) springform pan.

Cake batter:

• 250g (8oz) unsalted butter
• 250g (8oz) dark brown sugar
• 175g (5½oz) self raising flour
• 75g (2½oz) blanched almond meal
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used homemade)
• 4 large (59g) free range eggs

Icing:

• 100g (3½oz) unsalted butter
• 150g (5¼oz) icing sugar mixture (confectioner’s sugar)
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Please have a look at our original food processor pound cake post here.

1. Have all the ingredients at room temperature before starting.  Preheat the oven to 160C (320F) with fan. Spray a 10-cup bundt pan was oil, or grease and line a 20cm (8″) round springform tin.

2. Using a coarse sieve, sift together the almond meal and flour.

3. In the large bowl of the food processor, pulse together the butter and sugar until well combined and light in colour.  Scrape down the bowl.

4. Add the vanilla extract, followed by the eggs one at a time. Continue pulsing to combine. Add a spoonful of the flour mixture each time (if required) to stop the batter from curdling.  Then add the remaining flour and almond meal, pulsing until just combined (do not overmix).

5. Scrape the batter into the prepared tin. If using the bundt pan, bake for about 50 minutes; the springform tin will probably take about an hour (start checking at the 50 minute mark). The cake is cooked when it has shrunken in from the sides slightly, and a cake tester inserted into the thickest part of the cake comes out cleanly. Allow to rest in the tin for 10 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool completely.

6. Icing: In a medium sized saucepan, melt the butter over a medium heat until it browns – be careful not to burn it.  Allow to cool.  Sift the icing sugar mixture, then gradually whisk it into the butter to form a thick frosting. Whisk in the vanilla extract.  Add more icing sugar if needed.  Spread the frosting over the cake and allow to set before serving.

I wanted to take a pretty picture of the whole cake for you, but this is what it looked like when I got up the next morning…

And here’s a close-up of the frosting – I love the specks of browned butter in it!

I am a fairly conventional cook.

I usually start with a recipe, and either make it as written, or customise it to suit my own tastes.  I suspect most homecooks probably work on a similar basis.

That’s not the way my husband cooks.

Pete doesn’t take a turn in the kitchen very often, but when he does, the result is almost always sublime.  He rarely uses a recipe, but instead creates dishes in an organic, instinctive way – adding a pinch of this, a dash of that – until he gets exactly the result he’s after.  I’m always in awe of the way he layers flavours in a dish – something that I’ve never been particularly adept at doing.

Tonight’s dinner was a good example.  I’d taken a container each of shredded (cooked) beef brisket and beef stock from the freezer earlier in the evening. From the garden, we brought in a fat carrot and a perennial leek.

I watched as Pete gently sauteed the ingredients, added the spices, ran outside to harvest mint and parsley, and tasted – constantly.  He must have sampled the dish over a dozen times as it cooked, adjusting the seasoning, adding more lime juice to balance out the flavours, reducing the sauce until it was just right. Interestingly, he didn’t add garlic – which I do almost automatically with savoury dishes – as he didn’t feel it was right for this recipe.

As he continued on his merry way, I scribbled the ingredients out on the white board.  I’m listing them here, or we’ll  never get to be able to replicate this delicious meal. Quantities are estimates only, as everything (literally) was added to taste!

• one skinny leek
• one medium onion
• one fat carrot
• one seeded serano chilli
• a little red wine
• a tablespoon of olive oil
• 100g unsalted butter
• salt
• pepper
• a takeaway container of cooked beef brisket
• one tin of kidney beans, drained
• one tin of butter beans, drained
• one tin of chopped Italian tomatoes (we like the Mutti brand)
• a small takeaway container of homemade beef stock
• two dessertspoons of homemade plum sauce
• two teaspoons of Herbie’s Mexican Spice mix
• two teaspoons of sweet paprika
• juice of approximately 1½ Tahitian limes, plus the rind of half a lime
• continental parsley
• spearmint

I wish I could cook like this, but whenever I try, things usually end up tasting quite strange. It seems to be an inherent ability – my friends the Spice Girl and Choclette both seem to have it as well – as, I suspect, do most great chefs.

What about you? Do you tend to follow a recipe, or are you an intuitive cook like my Pete?