Making Hay and Baking Cakes

As previously mentioned, the East Lothian harvest is in full swing and you can see and hear the combine harvesters as they work late into the night, or even right through the night if the weather's good. Once the combine has done it's job, the cut straw that's been deposited on the field needs to be baled and collected for storage through the winter. I'm not quite sure why the straw is sometimes made into square bales or the giant, round 'shredded wheat' type ones. Perhaps it just depends on what kind of baling machine the farmer has at his disposal. This is the field at the bottom of the road as you come out of Dirleton and I expect that it won't be long until the stubble is ploughed over and the next crop is sown - possibly Winter barley or something similar.

Tomorrow is Bring-a-Cake-to-Work Day in Mrs C's office which meant that for Mr C, today was Bake-a-Cake-or-Two-So-That-Mrs C-Can-Take-A-Cake-to-Work-Tomorrow Day. The top one in the picture was an Espresso and Walnut Tray Bake which was quite easy to make and although I haven't tasted it, it looked pretty good. Click the link for the recipe. The other one took a bit more effort but I have tasted it this time (I made 'one for the chef' with the leftover mixture) and already it's become a favourite. I strongly recommend that you give it a try. It's a Muscovado Carrot Cake from the Sept 2011 edition of Olive Magazine. Carrot Cake isn't  usually my favourite but you can't really tell that there's any carrot in this. It's more like a fruit and nut cake. Yum! Go on, get baking - you know you want to.

Muscovado Carrot Cake:
300g Self Raising Flour
2 tsp Cinnamon
half tsp Baking Powder
100g Dark Muscovado Sugar
100g Light Muscovado Sugar
4 Eggs
250ml light, flavourless oil (eg Grapeseed or Rapeseed)
Zest of 1 Orange
2 medium sized carrots, finely grated
100g Pecans, roughly snapped into pieces
150g sultanas - preferably golden sultanas

Cream Cheese Frosting:
75g melted butter
2 tbsp Dark Muscovado Sugar
2 tbsp Golden Syrup
250g Soft cheese (eg Ricotta or Mascarpone)

Method:

• Heat the oven to 150C/Fan 130C/Gas 2
• Line a 22cm deep cake tin with baking parchment (although I used a deepish tray bake tin and made a thinner cake
• Sift the flour, cinnamon and baking powder into a large mixing bowl
• Stir in the sugars making sure all lumps are crushed
• Beat the eggs with the oil and orange zest then add the grated carrots to this liquid
• Add the pecand and sultanas to the flour, then add the oil/egg mixture and fold everything together
• Spoon the mixture into the baking tin and bake for 1hr 25mins or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tin.
• (Because I made a thinner cake, my baking time was only 40mins)
• For the frosting, beat the butter, sugar and syrup until soft, then beat in the cream cheese until you get a smooth mixture. Chill the mixture until it's thick but spreadable. Pipe in whorls or spread a thick layer on top of the cake