Category: Frugal food

Pickled baby peppers

I’ve had a glut of chillies and peppers this year, thanks – I’m assuming – to the unusually hot and sunny spring we had here in the UK. My tiny greenhouse is currently bursting with produce compared to how it’s done over recent years.

This glut of produce has lead to jars of pickles and chutneys, salsa, sugo/sauces as I’m sure many of you have made too, but here’s a method for pickling the baby peppers whole, with a mini ‘recipe’ further down for stuffing these with cream cheese (or similar).

I’ve used Mini Bell Mixed variety peppers I’ve grown myself for this, but there are many snack sized varieties you can grow such or buy, such as the more commonly used Pepperdew. You could also pickle ‘fat’ chilli varieties, such as Padron, and large bell peppers, but you’d need to chop these into chunks (and you won’t be able to stuff these later).

This set of instructions is for a 1 litre jar – multiply the volumes up for additional jars.

Equipment

  • Saucepan
  • Wooden spoon/spatula
  • 1 litre jar which closes water-tight, such as a clip top Kilner jar
  • Apple corer, knife, small spoon, scales

Ingredients

  • 600 ml clear pickling vinegar
  • 360-400 g of small peppers
  • 20 g salt
  • 60 g granulated sugar
  • 1 teaspoon of whole peppercorns
  • 3-5 chillies (I used three Thai chillies)

Method

  • Sterilise your jar – put it in a dishwasher on high heat, sterilise in a hot oven or use an infant sterilisation solution such as Milton fluid (follow the advice on the label). Full details on sterilisation in an oven can be found on my (very old – 2014 – but still good) lemon curd recipe post
  • Wash the peppers and either dry them with a clean tea towel or leave them to dry
  • Take take off the stalks and remove the pith and seeds from each pepper. My top tip for the EASIEST way to do this by far is to use an apple core to screw down over the stalk and into the pepper (stop before you come out the other side!). If there are any seeds or pith left, flick this out using the tail end of a teaspoon
  • Chop the chillies, removing any stalks. You can remove or keep the chilli seeds as you see fit (it doesn’t matter too much either way – it’s all just personal preference).
  • Warm the vinegar, sugar, salt, peppercorns in the saucepan. Stir until the sugar dissolves – you should not need to let it boil
  • Push all the cored peppers into the jar, with the holes facing upwards so that they will fill with liquid. Don’t push too hard or you’ll split the peppers; before they are pickled fully they are fairly easy to snap
  • Fill with the vinegar slowly. You may need to jiggle the jar or push the peppers down a little as you fill to get as much air out as possible
  • Close the lid and leave for 24 hours
  • After a day, open and push the peppers down a bit more into the vinegar as they will have softened a little in just those 24 hours. It’s likely that some weren’t fully submerged and this will ensure that they all get pickled (any peppers above the liquid level are at risk of going off)
  • If you can’t make all the peppers go under the level of the 600ml vinegar, top it up with a little extra plain distilled vinegar (no need to add any more spices and sugar etc)
  • Leave your peppers ideally for a full week until opening, but they will store for about 6-8 weeks (if all the peppers are fully submerged in the pickling liquid).

After a week they’re fine to use as you would any pickled peppers. Once opened best to store in the fridge and use within a fortnight.

Here’s how to go on to stuff them:

Cheese stuffed baby peppers

Equipment

  • Sieve or colander
  • Spoon and sharp knife
  • Piping bag (with or without large circular nozzle)
  • Bowl
  • and possibly: a sterilised jar up to 1 litre in capacity if you want to stuff them in advance of eating them. Please note though that they are best eaten soon after stuffing.

Ingredients – assumes you are stuffing ALL of the 1 litre jar of peppers (up to 30 peppers)

  • The pickled peppers
  • 500g of soft cheese*. Cream cheese, cottage cheese, brie, taleggio or similar are all good for this
  • 100 ml (approx) of extra virgin olive oil* (I used Filippo Berio Organic Olive Oil) Or use a flavoured oil, such as a chilli or garlic oil.

* If you are only stuffing a portion of the peppers: use about 100g of cheese and 20ml of olive oil for a quarter of the peppers. Scale as appropriate

Method

  • Take out the pickled chillies, shaking off the vinegar and place in a sieve or colander to drain
  • (You can re-use the pickling vinegar again once more, but only for short-term ‘fridge’ pickles. Do not reheat and use. For instance I have used it for a second batch of these peppers – then I’ve discarded it. If you are unsure, just discard)
  • If you are using a very runny cheese, it’s best to push it into a piping bag with a large nozzle and squirt the cheese into the pepper
  • If you are using a semi soft cheese, such as brie or taleggio or even a thicker cream cheese, scoop or cut teaspoon-sized portions of the cheese and push it into the peppers with the teaspoon
  • Place the stuffed peppers into a bowl and pour all the olive oil over them. make sure they are completely coated
  • You can now serve and eat straightaway – this is preferable

If you want to prep them a day in advance, pop the stuffed, oiled peppers into a new sterilised jar. Tip the oil left in the bottom of the bowl into the jar. Please note if you have a very cold fridge the olive oil can congeal – if this happens leave outside of the fridge for a couple of hours before eating

by Categories: Autumn, Food, Frugal food, Preserves & creams, Sides, VegetarianTags: , , , Leave a comment

Egg pasta dough – pasta all’uovo

I’ve shied away from writing a lot of pasta recipes and posts, apart from the What pasta tools do you really need parts one and two. Silly really. I thought when I started this website that I wanted to show that I had a breadth of food skills, not just the pasta and bread that I was most known for. I have been making pasta (and bread) by hand at home for over 30 years now, so I’m fairly experienced and perhaps I’m rather overdue writing more pasta posts and recipes!

I’ve adapted this post to give considerations and alternatives during this time of lockdown.

For me, pasta dough is less “recipe” and more “formula”. There are two basic formulas: one for egg dough and one for eggless (just flour and water). Both these then are adaptable for different flours, different amounts of egg/yolk, mixes of flours and other ingredients.

This post only focuses on an egg dough. This produces an elastic and high protein/gluten pasta. Use this as your basis to get used to making fresh egg pasta dough and then move on to create and experiment with variations. This dough can be stretched very thin while remaining strong, so it’s perfect for pasta ripiena (filled pasta such as like ravioli) or long ribbons and straw shapes (as they won’t tear or break under their own weight). In short, using an egg dough gives you a lot of options for making pasta at home.

An addition on 4th June: I’ve completed a YouTube video on making egg dough to accompany this recipe:

Notes on flour

You ideally* want to use an ultra-refined white (soft) wheat flour for this base egg dough recipe. You can go on to play around with different wheat species and gluten free flours later, but for the purposes of this ‘base formula’ we’re sticking to the fundamental recipe.

There are various methods of grading flour. Flours can be coarse grained (uses the wholegrain including bran from the wheat grain) to those that are very finely milled (only using the endosperm: the whitest, finest part of the grain). You need a finely milled flour for fine pasta – the finer the milling the smoother the pasta. I’ve planned a blog post on flour, which I hope to post soon.

In these times of lockdown and flour and egg shortages you can be adaptable. Yes, as mentioned *ideally you want to produce the best pasta which does call for finely milled flour, but you can make good pasta at home with plain flour or strong white bread flour. Plain flour will make slightly softer, limper pasta but cook it for a little less time. Bread flour is course and a bit chewy, but with a robust sauce you’ll barely notice.

It’s been relatively easy (up to the COVID-19 crisis when all flours now seem difficult to come by) to find flours labelled ‘Tipo 00’ in the UK. Even McDougall’s sells packets of 00 flour in high street supermarkets. See my resources page for links to online suppliers – Shipton Mill, Bakery Bits, Melbury and Appleton, Sous Chef and more all ship Italian flours.

Portion size

It all depends on the size of eggs you have available but try to use large eggs. Roughly 100g of flour = one main course portion.

  • 100g of flour + 1 large egg

Alternatively, if you have medium or small eggs:

  • 90-92g of flour + 1 medium egg
  • 100g of flour + 1 small egg + 1/2 egg yolk. This ratio makes sense when you are making for two or four people, such as 200g flour + 2 small eggs + 1 egg yolk

No eggs or few eggs? It’s been hard to get eggs hasn’t it? So a few tips on eggs in pasta for lockdown:

If you’ve got one or two eggs left and need to make more than two portions replace the missing eggs with 50g of water, that is for each 100g flour use 50g water instead of an egg. For example, you want to make 5 portions and have 2 eggs, use 500g of flour + 2 eggs + 150g water

I don’t really advise this but you ‘can’ make something with part white flour and part semolina flour with water but so note it’s best to let it air dry before using to stop it going gluey. It’s not that great and if you have some semolina flour its much better to make it wholly with that, which is semola dough (see below1). A way round using plain flour with no egg is to add gluten powder2. I’d advise you to not make just flour and water “pasta” (a famous chef has recently mooted this idea) as it’s really not good and has a tendency to dissolve. I did try making it to see – ugghhh. If you’re in that dire a food situation you’re contemplating plain flour + water dough, I’d say stop and make something else. You’re ruining the experience and taste of homemade pasta and you’ll put yourself off. Better to try and get hold of dried pasta, wait til you can get some eggs or make semola dough1. Or just leave off the pasta making and choose something else for a while.

1If you don’t have eggs the ideal things to do is make a semola/eggless pasta dough, typical of southern Italy and Liguria (I will write this up soon) as semola (fine durum wheat flour) has a high protein content which negates the need for eggs. This pasta is fabulous and is the basis of most dried pasta you can buy.

2Gluten powder can be purchased from online bakery suppliers, such as Bakery Bits (see my resource section).

Notes on amounts

I have to add here that 100g for a person is on the large side of what is a single serving – this is fine if the pasta is the majority part of a main meal or people are very hungry! It’s too much if there are a lot of other ingredients as well as the pasta, say for lasagne or spaghetti with meatballs. It’s certainly too much for a starter, so consider your total amounts. For me, about 90g per person is ideal for a main and about 65g for a starter.

Working the dough

It’s easiest to work with at least a 200g dough. Any less is really a lot of effort and time for a tiny amount of food – better to make more that you need and freeze half, see below3.

Pasta dough should be fairly hard work – you need your upper body strength when working by hand. If it’s too easy, there’s not enough flour in it. Likewise, if it’s really ridiculously tough then there’s not enough egg/liquid. To work the dough, transfer the whole force from your shoulder down through your arm to the heel of your hand into the dough. Be rough with it!

Unless you’ve mis-measured or your large egg is really extra-large, all the egg should mix with all the dough. Have you seen those pasta videos or instructions that say discard the extra flour?! There should be no extra flour: it should all mix in with enough force if you’ve weight and prepared properly.

Resting the dough

After kneading, cover the dough (linen cloth, cling film, beeswax wrap, bag etc) and put somewhere cool. It doesn’t have to be a fridge unless it’s a very hot, dry day. But do over all of it, if there are air gaps you’ll get a crust.

Rest for at least 30 minutes.

Making in advance

3 If you want to make egg pasta dough way in advance, then freeze your dough. This does deteriorate the dough a little (in comparison to using it just-made). I find it defrosts better if you cut up the dough into chunks, rather than freeze the large ball of dough. You can also make your pasta shapes and freeze them.

You can make it the day before and leave in the fridge (as it’s raw egg, then I don’t advice leaving it for longer than 24 hours).

Method

Make by hand and you’ll need to knead for up to 10 minutes. Stick the ingredients in a STURDY food processor and it will take but a couple of minutes. Please note do check your food processor manual before making pasta dough in it – most cannot cope with the density of pasta dough and may break!

For me, I always hand mix apart from a couple of highly coloured vegetables doughs which may stain my table. As you get more used to pasta making and stronger arms it will take less time – I can knead dough in just a few minutes now.

  1. Measure out the right amount of Tip 00 flour and tip onto a table
  2. Make a well in the middle, so it looks like a volcano crater
  3. Tip the eggs into the middle (you can crack them straight in here – I usually do as eggs are reliable nowadays – or you can crack them into a bowl first if you’re worried about adding a gone-off egg)
  1. Use the tips of you fingers with your lead hand, in a circular motion to mix the eggs gradually into the flour, working slowly outwards through the ring of flour – go anti clockwise if you are right handed and clockwise if you are left handed
  2. Steady the ring/crater of flour with your other hand, so that it doesn’t collapse and your egg runs off across the table
  3. Slowly incorporate the flour into the egg by dragging a little in from the ‘crater’ with each hand rotation
  1. Once the flour and egg have been combined, start kneading the dough
  1. The dough will naturally take up the correct amount of flour for the eggs you have – it shouldn’t leave any ‘spare’ flour on your work surface (though don’t panic if you really can’t work it all in. The reason for this may be a small egg or just not being used to working the dough hard enough)
  2. Should the flour be taken up very quickly by the egg (maybe larger than average eggs or you’re in high humidity etc), then flick a little more flour onto the table to continue kneading it in
  3. The dough should be difficult but not be very dry: it should not crack or crumble when kneading. It is tricky, but not impossible to add more liquid to a dry dough. The easiest way I’ve found to do this is to wet your hands (flick off the excess) and knead this in. Once tricky thing about this is if you are working on a slightly slippery surface it’s difficult to knead a dough with a wet exterior – working on wood helps this (the grain acts as a grip)
  4. A guide for dryness/stickiness of dough is that if you are going to use a pasta machine to produce sheets (sfoglie) it’s better to have a dryer dough and if you are making handmade shapes (such as orecchiette or trofie) then slightly more pliable is best
  5. Kneading pasta dough is much tougher than kneading bread dough but it s similar technique. To start with, the dough will be very tough to manipulate. If you find it too tricky, try putting the heel of your palm on the dough (as normal) but lean into the dough with the whole weight from your upper body by leaning in to it right from your shoulder, through your arm and down to your hand. As you knead the dough will become more elastic and easier to manipulate
  1. Knead with your palm to spread the dough out away from you, then roll the dough back with your other hand. Turn or flip over the dough and continue
  2. You will have to knead for about 10 minutes as someone new to pasta (although if you’re very strong you’re at an advantage and may be quicker). You’ll get faster as you get more practiced and stronger
  3. The dough is ready when it has a slightly shinier and smoother surface and is more easy to stretch and knead
  1. Another way to tell is by gently making an indentation in the dough surface with a finger – the dough will slowly spring back (though pasta dough never will fill in the indentation completely)
  2. Round the dough off into a ball and cover it – your choice of linen, wrap, a bag or whatever – just ensure that it’s covered or the surface will start to dry out and crack
  3. Any cool-ish, area out of the sun or the top of the fridge will be fine to rest your dough (though if your kitchen is very warm then it really should go in the fridge and, also please note the next point because of raw eggs)
  4. Leave the dough to rest for 30 minutes ideally. It can be left for a day in a fridge (don’t leave it out of the fridge longer than the 30 minutes because of the raw egg involved)
  5. After the dough is rested it’s ready to use in your preferred recipe

If you have a question for me please do leave one below, or a nice comment! Thank you


Instructions and visual steps on how to make egg pasta dough, including tips and help on creating pasta when ingredients are hard to come by

by Categories: Food, Frugal food, Italian, Kitchen tips & food advice, Pasta, Pasta information, TechniquesTags: , , , , , , , 6 Comments
pane bianco - copyright image Lynn Clark - inksugarspice

A week in the life of a loaf

You’ve handmade your beautiful, delicious loaf and although it may seem obvious what to do with it, I’ve written a week’s guide to what to do with your bread to get the most of it and to waste as little as possible (and hopefully nothing at all).

This post was started long before there was any thought of a pandemic that would keep us socially isolating and having to be very frugal with food. I’ve returned to this draft to finish it and ensure it is in keeping with the needs of lockdown cooking.

pane bianco - copyright image Lynn Clark - inksugarspice

Day one – eat a slice with a simple, extra quick curried soup – Veggie

This is a great store cupboard soup (although as I’ve chatted about in other recent posts, it sort of depends on how you stock your cupboards – not everyone keeps the same sort of things).

Finely chop a small red onion and fry off in some oil in a saucepan. Empty a tin of chopped (good quality) tomatoes in and add a tablespoon of curry paste (of your choice/preference such as balti, korma, tandoori etc). Stir until warmed through. Taste and add salt and pepper if required or a little more curry paste. Place in a bowl and add a dollop of Greek yogurt or creme fraiche and a handful of chopped coriander leaves (or parsley if you’re not a coriander fan). Eat with a slice of that bread, with or without butter

Day two – sandwiches or a Ploughman’s

My ideal* Ploughman’s platter: extra thick, ‘door stop’ slices of springy bread slathered in good butter, with: a chunk of mature Cheddar and a wedge of Double Gloucester cheeses; sliverskin pickled onions, a strong apple (something like a Russet or James Greave ideally, but a Granny Smith will do); slices of ham or Prosciutto/Bresaola; mouth-pukeringly-strong salt and vinegar crisps; a dollop of homemade tomato chutney; a few grapes; maybe some olives and some watercress. Oh and a pint of IPA, ideally.

*OK, so a Ploughman’s lunch originally would probably have been a chunk of plain bread, and just the cheese and apple. A Ploughman’s is a great frugal meal, not only is it a British/English poor man’s meal it lends itself to using up whatever you have in the fridge or cupboard. Use whatever cheese you have, what cured meats or hams, make your own chutneys to preserve your fruit and veg etc.

See my posts on preserves: https://inksugarspice.wordpress.com/category/preserves-creams/

white sourdough with random slashing - Nine top tips for bread slashing art www.inksugarspice.wordpress.com #recipe #baking #breadart @inksugarspice
White sourdough, with a minimal prove

Day three – ‘more than’ cheese on toast

Toast thick slices of your bread under a grill (ideally a sourdough but work with what you have!). For each slice, weigh out about 45-50g of grated extra strong or mature cheddar and mash together with a cheese triangle or a tablespoon of cream cheese. Chop up two large slices of peppered salami and a teeny drop of English mustard, though you can omit the mustard if you’re not fond. Mix together and spread onto the toasted slice of bread and grill under just browning at the edges. Obviously scale this up for however many slices you’re making.

Day four – bruschetta – Vegan

Toast mid-thick slices of bread on both sides. Chop up a handful of baby plum tomatoes, sprinkle with a little salt. Place them in a sieve and let this drain over a bowl. Once drained, tip the tomatoes into that bowl. Season the tomatoes with pepper and a little balsamic vinegar and mix it all together. Taste to see if the salt level is OK and add a little more if needed. Drizzle some extra virgin olive oil on the toast and rub a peeled clove of garlic over the bread. Spoon the tomato mix onto the slices of toast and serve.

Image of bruschetta, in this case tomatoes on toasted sourdough

Day five – Melba toast – Vegan/Veggie (depending on what’s in the bread you’ve made)

Sounds very posh, but it isn’t and very easy to make… Cut off about 8mm thick slices of bread. Cut off the crusts (and you can square off the toasts if you prefer). Toast the slices on both sides to a mid brown colour: don’t toast them too dark or they will not be easy to cut further without them shattering. While still warm, I lay a chopping board over the slices and weight it down with a bag or two of rice/sugar to flatten the toasts. When cool, retrieve the toasts and lay them flat, with a sharp serrated knife cut down the toast to create two slices – each of these slices will have a toasted side and an ‘internal’ side. I leave my Melba toasts like this but you can then toast this side too if you prefer. Also, some people don’t flatten the bread, I just think it makes them easier to slice. You can then cut them down into triangles or little rectangles/soldiers.

A lovely alternative to crackers or biscuits with cheese or dips, or as a side to soups or tapas. You can use sourdough for this – it entirely depends whether you mind having honey Melba toasts or not. Frankly I like sourdough Melba toast.

Day six – croutons – Vegan

Slice up 3-4 slices of sourdough into 1 cm cubes. Heat some olive oil in a frying pan and test the oil temperature by chucking in a small piece of sourdough – it should start sizzling if it’s hot enough. Tip in all the sourdough pieces and keep them moving as they fry (use two wooden spoons to ‘flip’ the croutons). When the croutons are nicely browned and crisp, take them off the heat and tip them into a bowl lined with a sheet of kitchen paper to catch the excess oil. Remove the kitchen paper and grind a teaspoon each of salt and pepper over them. Now toss the croutons with a teaspoon each of onion granules, garlic granules and sprinkle on a little chopped parsley.

Day seven – breadcrumbs: for savoury dishes such as gratin, escalope, buttermilk coated chicken, making sausages etc – or for sweet treats like treacle tarts (as below)

Other ideas for bread

Romesco sauce – this Spanish sauce is just intense and goes great with tapas, over potatoes or meats

Panzanella – a classic northern Italian ‘salad’ dish

Cinnamon toast – such a breakfast staple – children in particular love it

Birdfood – when all else fails, don’t put it in the bin, at least the birds will eat it. And, despite some publicity saying people shouldn’t feed bread to birds there has been a backlash on this: some birds are in danger of starving where they’ve relied on being fed bread and now that food supply has stopped. Also, unless it’s a) very rubbish bread and b) the only thing they eat it’s better to feed them than not.

Note: if you’ve made your bread yourself, especially bread with inclusions (seeds, nuts cheese, fruit, veggies etc), enriched bread (such as brioche or sticky buns – these are a particularly good option) or a sourdough it’s going to be infinitely better for them than a packaged, sliced loaf with little to nutritional value – that’s one of the reasons why you make your own for yourself isn’t it!?

Break the bread into small pieces, especially when feed smaller birds and when there are chicks. Slightly larger pieces are OK for ducks, geese swans etc. If the bread is very dry, wet it a little. If it’s plain bread ideally add in some other foods too – suet, nuts, seeds, chopped dried fruit etc. even cold scrambled egg, chopped cooked bits of bacon fat, even grated cheese.

Here’s what the RSPB has to say:

All types of bread can be digested by birds, but ideally it should only be just one component in a varied diet. Bread does not contain the necessary protein and fat birds need from their diet, and so it can act as an empty filler. Although bread isn’t harmful to birds, try not to offer it in large quantities, since its nutritional value is relatively low. A bird that is on a diet of predominantly, or only bread, can suffer from serious vitamin deficiencies, or starve.

Food left on the ground overnight can attract rats. Soaked bread is more easily ingested than stale dry bread, and brown bread is better than white. Crumbled bread is suitable in small quantities, but moisten if it is very dry. During the breeding season, make sure bread is crumbled into tiny pieces so that it is safer to eat. Dry chunks of bread will choke baby birds, and a chick on a diet of bread may not develop into a healthy fledgling.

Do leave a comment or a question below 💚

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by Categories: Baking, Bread, Bread information, Food, Frugal food, Ingredient information, Kitchen tips & food advice, LunchTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Pineapple upside down cake - ink sugar spice

Store cupboard pineapple upside down cake

Pineapple upside down cake - ink sugar spice

Of course, this cake only is a store cupboard staple if you actually have the ingredients stashed in your kitchen somewhere…

That said, I bet many people will have a rogue tin of pineapple and are more likely to have some olive oil to hand than butter, which is much more widely used in cake baking.

During these crazy times of lockdown baking, many people are finding it difficult to get hold of eggs and flour, which are non-negotiable for this recipe, so bookmark and come back to this recipe once the stocks replenish in the supermarket (and they will soon of course). However, the tin of pineapple could actually be a tin of peaches or orange segments or grapefruit… quite easily. The use of olive oil not only makes a lovely cake, it’s better for your heart and it’s been easier to get hold of olive oil more so than butter.

Normally a pineapple upside down cake is a “marvel” of 1970s bake presentation, with glace cherries in between whole rings of pineapple. Let’s be honest your mum or grandmother would probably have used tinned pineapple anyway.

It’s also a recipe that uses all that’s in the tin – don’t throw away the sugary-juice as that’s reduced down as a glaze.

Equipment

  • 20cm x 20cm square cake tin
  • Large bowl
  • Sieve or colander
  • Small saucepan
  • Hand held electric whisk, stand mixer or balloon whisk
  • Knife, chopping board, scales, large spoon
  • Baking paper and a little oil/butter/margarine to line the tin

Ingredients

  • Tin of pineapple pieces/chunks/rings, c 540g
  • 4 medium eggs (or 3 large eggs)
  • 195g soft brown or caster sugar
  • 275g plain flour
  • 195g olive oil – I used Filippo Berio Mild & Light for this
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder

Method

  • Prepare your cake tin by lining it with the baking paper (it’s easier to ‘stick’ if you grease the tin first with a little oil/buter/margerine)
  • Turn your oven on to 180C fan oven / 200C conventional oven
  • Drain the can of pineapple over your saucepan to catch the syrup
  • Place roughly 75% of the pineapple in the bottom of the cake tin, arranging it as you wish
  • Dice the remaining pineapple into small pieces
  • Whisk the oil and sugar together first in the bowl until it lightens a little in colour
  • Add the flour, baking powder and eggs and mix thoroughly
  • Finally add in the reserved chopped pineapple and stir this in gently, rather than vigorous whisking
  • Pour into the cake tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 45-50 minutes
  • Test the middle of the cake with a skewer: if it comes out clean it is baked, if there is a little wet cake mix still on it continue to bake for another 4-5 mins and test again
  • Leave the cake to cool in the tin
  • Now reduce the pineapple syrup by heating it over a medium-high flame. It should bubble a little but not be fully boiling on the heat (or it will brown). Reduce down until it is the consistency of a runny honey
  • Invert your cake out onto a plate or serving dish
  • Drizzle the warm syrup over the cake
  • You can eat while still fairly warm, or leave to cool fully. This is also lovely as a dessert with custard, cream or ice cream
  • Will last up to three days if kept in a lidded container
Pineapple upside down cake - ink sugar spice

by Categories: British, Cakes, Food, Frugal food, Fruit, Kitchen tips & food adviceTags: , , , , , , 2 Comments