Flopsy's Krot Cake

It's fairly 'artisanal' looking but it's tasty!

This is another post, except this time a REAL recipe, for my colleague and dear friend, Flopsy. Flopsy is a big fan of carrot cake (or Krot cake as he refers to it by text message) and sometimes we get a factory-made version which is fairly good in the supermarket on the corner for an afternoon treat. However, it's a little dry and a little commercial tasting, as well as being overly sweet. I happened to mention to Foxy one day that my Sam makes an excellent carrot cake and that it was always one of my favourites as a little girl and from that day on, he pestered me for the recipe until he took it upon himself to write to Sam and ask for it. (My memory is like that of a goldfish so I kept forgetting.) Sam dutifully sent it off, as mothers always do, and Flopsy set about making the cake. The result was rather good for a first attempt, though a little thin because he just did it in one layer, in a small tin, rather than doubling it or doing it in a deep baking tray. The cake itself was yummy, but he made a fatal error with the icing on the top. He used granulated brown sugar to make the buttercream, resulting in what he himself described as a rather 'sandy' topping, which I have never let him live down as it was quite hilarious at the time: a sandy, underweight Krot cake which was nevertheless very tasty.

Ever since this carrot cake episode, he has been asking me to make one and I have been rotten and not delivered on my promises several times over. Finally, this Wednesday, I got around to doing it. This is a cake I actually tried out last week on a friend in muffin form, minus the carrots. The flavours were nice so for Flopsy's cake I decided to base it on that and just add carrots and bake it in cake tins. Worked okay!

Carrot Cake

For the cake:

200g wholemeal flour
200g soft dark brown sugar
200g unsalted butter
1-2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp épices pour pain d'épices (I think in England/U.S. this would be All Spice)
2 tbsp maple syrup
2 big handfuls chopped walnuts
2 big handfuls of sultanas or soft big raisins
2-3 big handfuls of grated carrot
3 medium eggs
1-2 tbsp crème fraîche

For the filling:

100g unsalted butter, softened
150g icing sugar
zest of half a large orange

Beat the orange zest into the butter, slowly adding the icing sugar until you have a thick, creamy filling.

Preheat your oven to 200°C and grease two round 7" cake tins and line them with baking parchment.

In a saucepan and on a gentle hear, melt the butter with the sugar, stirring continuously with a wooden spoon until you have a brown liquid. Add the maple syrup, the walnuts, the sultanas/raisins and the carrots and stir well. Leave to soak for 5-10 minutes. In a large mixing bowl, put the flour, the baking powder, the cinnamon and the spice and mix together. Once the sugar/butter etc mixture has soaked a little, add it to the dry ingredients and stir in well, with a metal spoon. Add the three eggs, stir in, then add the crème fraîche and stir that in too.

Make sure that you have really stirred the mixture well so that the walnuts/sultanas/carrots are evenly distributed throughout. Split the mixture between the two baking tins and sprinkle a little soft brown sugar over the top of each before putting in the oven for 30 minutes.

Leave the cakes to cool on a wire rack. Once cooled, spread the filling over the bottom of one and place the other on top. The cake's ready!

Lasagne

This is the England home version, made in a real dish, cooked in a real oven and served on a real table...

...and this is the Paris Fairy version, fairy dish, fairy oven, fairy table!

I have finally, FINALLY, plucked up the energy to get back to my blog. The last few weeks I have been so tired that even the thought of taking my shoes off when I get home was almost enough to make me want to cry, mostly thanks to the ever-increasing concoction of medication I take for unimportant reasons I won't bore you with. However, I'm getting used to the new combination and despite my hair which was once thick and healthy becoming limp, dull and a lot thinner (and my house looking like I've emptied out a hairbrush all over it) I'm feeling almost normal again, therefore ready to cook. A friend of mine came to see me the other evening (yes, even once I had cooked, it still took me quite some time to bother to write about it) and requested lasagne and chocolate cake and given that I was in the mood for some high-carb, high-calorie food myself, I was more than happy to oblige. I decided to make her my Conversion Lasagne. There's a reason behind the weird name: my brother's girlfriend has only eaten poultry and sometimes bacon since childhood. The very thought of red meat or such delights as pork and crackling absolutely disgusted her and various attempts on my brother's behalf to tempt her with steak or sausage or other such morsels were in vain. My brother, Jack on the other hand, is a meat-fiend. He would be quite happy if you just served up an entire cow for lunch and left him to it. That would be his idea of heaven.

A couple of years ago, during the Christmas holidays, we were all at home, including Helen and we were having a birthday dinner for my elder brother, Edward. Edward is also a big meat lover but almost more than that, he's a pasta lover. He asked for lasagne and as I had offered to cook that evening to give my mother a rest from all of her spectacular Christmas efforts, I set about making one. I had never really made one before but it looked easy enough and I saw this as my opportunity to sneak in as much cheese as possible into a main meal. Too much cheese = rarely a bad thing. The finished product was a bubbling, juicy effort which, though I say it myself, looked delicious. Helen ate fish that evening and though I'm a huge fish fan, I have to say it looked pretty humble next to lasagne. Apparently, she thought so too. These last two years or so, she has begun eating other meats again. She enjoys steak, bolognese and pork and regularly eats and prepares them all (much to Jack's delight.) The last time I was home, we were talking about the fact that she eats meat now and she said 'Well you know it all started with that lasagne you made for Edward's birthday that time. It looked so delicious and I was so jealous that you were all eating it that it made me think I'd like to try real meat again.' So that's the story behind the name.

Lasagne (for 2 people like me or 4 normal people)

You will need:

400g ground beef
6-8 lasagne sheets
1 batch of tomato sauce (made with 3 chopped mushrooms this time)
Bechamel sauce (see below)
125 grams mozzarella, sliced
125 grams grated comté
150 grams grated gruyère
75 grams parmesan shavings


For the Bechamel sauce:

500 ml semi-skimmed milk
75 grams butter
3-4 tbsps plain flour, sifted
pinch of salt

Heat the milk and butter together in a pan over a medium heat being careful not to burn the milk. Add a pinch of salt and then slowly add the flour, spoon by spoon, stirring with a wooden spoon as you do so. Keep stirring as the sauce heats up and becomes thicker, until you get a thick but still liquid consistency. If you see that the sauce is not thick enough after a few minutes, slowly add a little more flour until it as as thick as you would like. It should still be pourable. Leave the sauce to cool on the side.

For the meat sauce:

Follow the instructions for tomato sauce but just after sautéeing the shallots, add in the ground beef and brown it before continuing with the rest of the sauce. Cover and leave to simmer for at least an hour until the sauce is thick and glossy. Once finished, leave it to cool.

Assembling the lasagne:

Take an oven dish roughly in the region of 20cm by 15cm and of a good depth. Spread a layer of bechamel sauce along the bottom followed by a layer of meat sauce on top of that. Cover with sheets of lasagne then begin again with bechamel sauce and meat sauce. This time however, sprinkle a covering of grated comté (laveing a little aside) over the meat before layering again with lasagne. Bechamel, meat again, then a layer of gruyère (leaving a little aside) and lasagne sheets. Bechamel, meat again, then the remaining comté and gruyère, topped with sliced mozzarella then sprinkled heavily with parmesan shavings.

Bake at 200°C for 30-40 minutes until you can easily put a knife through the pasta and the cheese is browned and bubbling.

You can continue with as many layers as you like, depending on the depth of your dish and pretty much add the cheese wherever you want it (but not on the bottom layer, to avoid burning), this is just how I like to make it because this way you get a nice cheesy topping. Don't make your bechamel layers too thick or it will overwhelm the other ingredients. Adapt ingredients measurements according to taste or size of your lasagne!

The civilised version...

...The Fairy version! But it tastes just as good!