Verdict: Quick and easy Kugelhopf

Mmmm. It's a very slightly sweet, fairly buttery bread. With sultanas in it. Nothing special you might think, and you'd be absolutely correct. But it is rather good. I think it'd go well with a glass of milk, or possibly a cup of coffee (of course, it'd go very well with a cup of tea, but I think you should have been assuming that). All in all, quite a pretty and pleasant thing, but not terribly special.

[Edit]Incidentally, I've just noticed, this is the 100th post - thanks for reading![/Edit]

A quick and easy Kugelhopf

I wasn't going to bake at all today, but Kenny put the idea into my head earlier and it just sort of stuck. But I'm moving this weekend, so it's got to be quite a quick and easy recipe. As you may recall, I bought a Bundt tin a while ago. It's not had nearly as much use as it deserves though, so I thought I'd bake a nice and easy Kugelhopf (Incidentally, does anyone know the difference between a Bundt tin and a Kugelhopf tin? As far as I know, they're basically the same, so if anyone knows, I'd be interested to find out!).

This is based on this recipe, but either I screwed up the conversion to sensible units, Kugelhopf is nothing like I think it is or the recipe is really quite rubbish. The recipe below is approximately what I did, which is very different from the recipe I was cribbing - my recipe is far from ideal I'm sure, but it should be good enough...

Quick and Easy Kugelhopf

Ingredients

• 500g Plain flour
• 1 sachet Fast-action dried yeast
• 40g Caster sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 240ml Milk
• 115g Butter (I only had 85g butter in stock, so I substituted the rest with olive oil)
• 75g Sultanas

Method

1. Mix the flour, yeast, sugar, eggs and milk into a dough.
2. Work in the butter.
3. Knead for a few minutes.
4. Knead in the sultanas.
5. Put into a well-greased Kugelhopf tin, cover and allow to rise for ~1hr.
6. Bake at 180C for ~50mins until the top (i.e. the base of the cake) is brown.
7. Remove from tin and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Here's the Kugelhopf ready for rising (middle of step 5).

And here it is after rising and ready for the oven (end of step 5).Out of the oven.Look, it came out of the tin!

Verdict: Pear and almond cake

Wonderful! This is a fantastic cake; the cake itself is lovely and moist and nicely sweet. The almond taste really comes through as well, which I hadn't been expecting. The pears are soft and sweet and taste lovely from the caramelising. But the juxtaposition of the two is really spectacular. I really love this cake - it looks beautiful, it tastes fantastic and it's moist enough that it really doesn't need to be served with anything (although I did serve it with custard, and that did work nicely). One of the best cakes I've baked so far I think!

Pear and almond cake

This is a cake that I've been intending to bake for aaaages. It's actually one of quite a long list of recipes I want to get around to trying but haven't found time actually to bake. Until now! The recipe is taken from here with a few very minor modifications.

Pear and Almond Cake
Ingredients
For the pears

• 2 Large pears
• 25g Butter
• 1tbsp Caster sugar

For the cake

• 150g Butter
• 125g Caster sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 1tsp Vanilla extract
• 75g Self-raising flour
• 75g Ground almonds
• 1tsp Ground cinnamon

Method

1. Peel and core the pears, then cut into quarters.
   
2. Heat the butter and sugar together in a large frying pan. When the butter is bubbling and the sugar has dissolved, add the pears and caramelise over a medium heat, turning occasionally.
3. Remove the pears from the pan and allow to cool. (I did this much the previous day and put the pears in tupperware in the fridge overnight).
4. Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy.
5. Beat the eggs and vanilla extract into the mixture.
6. Fold in the flour, ground almonds and cinnamon.
7. Pour the mixture into a lined baking tin. Arrange the pears on top.
8. Bake at 170C/Gas Mark 3 for 40-50 minutes.
9. Allow to cool for a few minutes before removing from the tin.

Here are the pear quarters just after being put into the pan (start of step 2).Now partway through and at the end of step 2. Quite a lovely change, isn't it?After staying in the fridge overnight, the pears have survived remarkably well!The batter's a bit thicker than normal cakes (I'm guessing this is because of the ground almonds - they'll release a lot of oil when baked). I'm also unconvinced that the proportions of pear to cake are correct; I'd already reduced the number of pears from 3 to 2. But anyway, here's the cake ready for the oven (end of step 7).And here it is again after baking. I think it looks really rather good!