Coconut lime cake

There are some flavours that seem to just be perfect companions for each other, such as tomatoes and basil and lamb and mint, and in my opinion coconut and lime.  So when I saw this recipe for pina colada cake at bountifulkitchen.com I decided to swap out the pineapple filling for a lime curd.

Apart from the filling and the frosting I stuck exactly to the recipe after all it was a winner at the Ohio State Fair. Though I did not have any coconut extract, so had to leave it out, but actually it had a strong coconut flavour any way.


Cake:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups coconut milk
1 1/2 teaspoons coconut extract
5 egg whites (keep the yolks for the filling)

Mix flour, baking powder in a bowl and set aside. Place the butter in a mixing bowl and beat on medium speed with a mixer for 1 minute. Add sugar and beat for another minute. Add coconut milk and coconut extract to butter mixture. Gradually add flour mixture into the butter mixture and beat for 2 minutes.

In another bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.

Fold the egg whites into the batter and mix until all ingredients are incorporated.

Grease and line two 8-inch cake pans with parchment paper and divide batter evenly between them.

Chocolate molten centre cakes

Part of the joy of the annual girls weekend for me, is fulfilling my friends visions of food.  This year Hugette mentioned that she wanted chocolate molten centred cakes for her birthday dinner, so that is what I made.  I am afraid due to low light the pictures are not as good as they could be, but this was really easy and worth every minute.

The recipe I found was from Anna Olsen on the food network I liked the idea of placing a ball of ganache in the centre of each cake rather than timing to under cook it so the middle was still runny.  I have to say it worked like a charm. This recipe is for 4 cakes so I had to double it and then it made 12 the size of a large muffin tin.


Ganache
1/4 cup whipping cream
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped, chocolate chips

Molten Cakes
1/2 cup butter, cut into pieces
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped, or chocolate chips
2 large whole eggs
2 large egg yolks
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons of flour
icing sugar, for dusting (not done but it would have looked nice)
Assembly



For the ganache, heat the cream until it just begins to simmer and then pour this over the chopped chocolate. Let this sit a minute, then gently stir until the chocolate has fully melted and the ganache is smooth.

Parkin

A good friend in England who I have known nearly all my life was asking for my Mothers Parkin recipe she remembered how good it was.  It was something that I had not thought of in a long time but I too remember my Mothers parkin fondly, but I could not find the recipe.

But the other day when I was looking for something else,  (which I probably did not find) I came across a small notebook with my Mothers handwriting in it.  I think it was the recipes that she took from her Mother when she got married in the very early 1950's.  What a treasure, and lo behold in it was the recipe for Parkin.

I looked Parkin up on Wikipedia and this is what it said. Parkin or Perkin is a soft cake traditionally made of oatmeal and molasses,^[1] which originated in Northern England. Often associated with Yorkshire, particularly the Leeds area.  My Mother grew up in Tingly a small town very close to Leeds in Yorkshire, so Wikipedia seems to be very accurate in both the source and the ingredients.