Fig & Cherry Tea cake
16 February 2009
Thank you Christie
Cherry & Pistachio Tea cake
When we firsted started this blog, never in our wildest dream would we imagine ourselves still mucking around with this website. For me, the joy in blogging is having the opportunity to improve in my photo taking skills and subsequently share it with the readers, however the super dooper bonus is being in the company of food obsessed like minded people.
Throughout the last year, the awesome bloggers that we have met has inspired us to do better and more importantly motivated us to continue. Imagine our surprise when we found out the big cahoona Christie from Fig&Cherry actually considered us a good enough food blog to mention to Pru from Mint Partners, hence our invite to the exclusive Taste of Sydney Media Launch. How is it that amateur bloggers like us were actually invited to such a great event, that’s just awesome!
To show Christie our appreciation and to use up the 5 kgs of figs that grew from the fig tree at Howard’s house we would like to dedicate this cake to her. Any avid food blog reader will recognise Aran from Canelle et Vanille, her fantastic cooking skill combined with her ceativity makes her a force to be reckon with, thus obviously her website was the first stop for the perfect cherry cake recipe. I’m glad her site was the first stop because her post of the day with THE recipe was staring back at me.
Cherry & Pistachio Tea cake
My partner in crime and photographer for this baking session was Minh. Whilst making this cake, both Minh and I stared at each other fearing for the worst. The resulting batter was definitely a sight for sore eye, therefore I would like to warn that if you do plan on baking this cake, please disregard how the cake acually looks prior to baking because I assure you the outcome more than makes up for it.
I halved the quantity of the actual ingredients to achieve the following measurements:
85 gms of butter
75 gms of brown sugar
60 gms of caster sugar
Zest if half a lemon (which I did not have)
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence
1 egg
90 gms of buttermilk (Which I once again did not have, I instead substituted it with 90gms of milk mixed with 1/2 tablespoon of vinegar, let it sit for half an hour)
90 gms of plain flour
2 gms of baking powder
1.5 gms of salt (I used a pinch)
15 gms of chopped pistachios
40 gms of cherries (original recipe called for raspberries)
Whisk the butter, brown sugar, caster sugar and vanilla essence to a creamy mixture. Whilst mixing add the egg, then slowly add half of the prior mixed flour/salt/baking powder. Once well incorporated, slowly add half of the milk mixture. Finish off with the remainder of the flour mix and milk mixture. Slowly fold in the chopped pistchios and halved cherries.
Pour the batter into four ramekins, baking under preheated 180 degrees celsius fan forced oven for approximately 20 minutes or when a toothpick removed from the cake comes out clean.
1 cup of sugar
80 mls of cold water
1/2 tablespoon of white vinegar
Mix the ingredients in a saucepan and stir until dissolved under high heat. Once sugar has dissolved, allow the mixture to continue boiling, mixing occassionally. Keep your eyes on the toffee at all times as it can easily burn. Once the desired colouration is achieved, remove from heat and allow to sit until it thickens, thus easier to deal with.
Toffee
Caramelised Figs
Half a tablespoon of brown sugar
Half a tablespoon of caster sugar
4 figs (quartered)
Quartered Figs
Mix the sugar together, then liberally coat the quartered figs. Using a brulee torch, caramelise the sugar.
Blow torching figs
Finished Product- Thanks Christie
The outcome of this cake more than exceeded our expectations, it was very moist, not overly sweet, perfect served with whipped cream.
Thank you once again Christie for your recognition and Aran for your recipe.
shez
chocolatesuze
FFichiban
Christie @ fig&cherry
Jen
Chris
linda (author) || 
Arwen from Hoglet K
Y
yum! great looking cake and a very sweet tribute!
i’m so jealous that you have access to a fig tree too. I’ve been eating figs lately – they’re so good!
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