Friday, June 1, 2012

A book club Treat




Book club was at my house this week. I love my book club. We've got a fantastic group of girls, we have lots of fun and read some great books. The latest book I read was "still alice" by Lisa Genova. What a fabulous book! I thoroughly recommend it if you haven't read it.

We have our book club at a different member's house every 6 or 8 weeks, and one of the highlights (other than the great company and great books) is supper. We have a book club of fabulous cooks, so supper is always a treat. This time I turned to Julie le Clerc's cake book. If you haven't seen this book, you should track it down. It's a wonderful collection of delicious cakes and all the recipes I have tried so far have worked perfectly (fingers crossed!). For book club I chose the rhubarb and coconut citrus syrup cake. I hadn't made it before, but it looked like a nice, easy recipe that I would be able to make quickly after work, while getting Harry his dinner.

This was the perfect cake in all regards. Super easy to make, sliced like a dream and absolutely delicious with a dollop of whipped cream. I imagine it would keep well - I didn't get the opportunity to find out as the next day my husband ate what wasn't eaten at book club.

The trick with syrup cakes is to pour a hot syrup over a cold cake or a cold syrup over a hot cake. I knew my cake was going to be warm when I poured the syrup over it, so I just made my syrup warm and decided to make it more of a drizzle than a syrup. I actually heated it in the microwave while my cake was cooking, warming it enough to dissolve the sugar, but not enough to make it really syrupy. I also didn't add as much water to the drizzle as the recipe said.

I will definitely make this cake again. You could use other fruits if you didn't like rhubarb - blueberries or raspberries would be great, as would plums.




Rhubarb and coconut cake with citrus drizzle (from Julie le Clerc's favourite cakes)

200g butter
1 c castor sugar
4 eggs
1 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 C coconut
350g rhubarb, sliced into 2cm pieces

- cream butter and sugar then add eggs, one at a time
- stir in flour and baking powder, then coconut and rhubarb
- spoon into a lined 22cm round cake tin and bake at 180c for 60-70 minutes
- when cold pour over the following hot syrup

Shredded zest and juice of two lemons and three limes
1 c sugar
1/2 c water

- combine ingredients in a small pot, stir over low heat until sugar has dissolved and then turn up heat and simmer for fine minutes until syrupy.

3 comments:

Lucy said...

Lovely to see you back blogging Tammy. I have missed your friendly posts on Foodlovers too. The Rhubarb & Coconut cake looks delicious! I have a birthday dinner to attend on Thursday and dessert is up to me, guess what I will be making! Just want to check that the rhubarb goes into the mix raw?
Keep up the fabulous blog!
Lucy.

Tammy said...

Hi Lucy. Thanks for your lovely comment. Yes the rhubarb is put in raw :) Tammy

Katrina said...

So glad to see you back blogging Tammy. Look forward to reading about your creations and getting some inspiration.
Katrina