Another day another cake

You might or might not be familiar with the Hummingbird cake. It's a great cake with really horrible frosting. The frosting is basically sugar and butter and as far as I have seen everybody scrapes it away from the cake. So yesterday I was home sick and as I found a bunch of bananas in my fridge I thought that I might try this cake with different filling.

Here's my recipe:
3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons vanilla powder
sift them all together. The original recipe also has 1 teaspoon cinnamon in it. But I'm not that big of fan so I just forgot it. Honestly.
Add 3 previously beaten eggs and 11/4 cups of vegetable oil. Stir.
Next:
Add 1 small can of crushed pineapples, drained
2 small or 1 big apple, chopped finely
4 chopped bananas (or 31/2 if your dog is also sitting beside you with pleading eyes. Mine loves bananas)
~1 cup some kind of chopped nuts or almonds. I had almonds at home but originally you are supposed to use the pecans.
Stir everything well together and spoon into 2 28 cm round cake pans. If you have only one pan this size you can bake them in the row too.
Bake in 180 degree C oven  for 25-35 minutes until a wooden pick comes out clean when you poke it into the cake. Cool in pans for 10 minutes then  take out onto a cooling rack.

The filling
This time I tried the custard cream filling. Tastes quite good. But I guess in the future I will try other possibilites too. Condensated milk comes to mind... Lemon cream... We'll see :)

Combine 200 ml coffee cream (10%) with 100 ml milk and cook over medium heat until bubbles are emerging around the edge of the pan.
Add 100 ml sugar and 1/4 teaspoons of salt and stir until fully dissolved.
Remove from the heat.

Separately combine 100 ml milk with 6 teaspoons of corn starch or potato starch. Whisk vigorously so that there remain no lumps. Whisk in 3 eggs.
Add the hot mixture into it in a thin stream, whisking all the time.
Return the mixture to the pan, bring to a boil and cook over low heat, constantly stirring until the cream thickens.
It takes about 6 minutes.
Remove from the stove and let cool.

When the cakes and the filling are both cooled down you spread the cream between the layers. I cut one layer in two horizontally, because they were quite uneven :) So I had 3 layers and I divided the custard between them.
On the top I melted some dark chockolate with coffee cream on low heat and spread it evenly. I also added some caramel sauce in nice swirls.

Now I had to name the cake... After all it's not the hummingbird cake anymore. Had to choose another bird. So, all the time I was baking there were several great tits peeking into my windows. Apparently they have good memory - we fed them during the last winter and although it yet not so cold outside they decided to warm up the relationship I guess. I'm not envious so I put a bird-feeding grease-seeds-ball outside and what's more - I decided to dedicate the cake to them.
So... enjoy the Great Tit Cake!

Yesterday I met the most compact dog I have ever seen. She was literally like an egg:  no nose to speak of and her tail was tightly twisted and placed against her backside. Marvellous. Not like our dog - all angular and with several salient parts. What a variety... Mother Nature is grand indeed!

I just sold a book on Ebay (my house is not big enough so I have to get rid of some books occasionally) and the buyer is from Philippines. That's a thing I never thought I'll do - sell a book to Philippines...
Isn't that amazing how connected and small the world is thanks to internet.

Homemade gourmet

I have this friend you see who is lately very-very fascinated with cooking - she has tons of tons cookbooks, all the seasonings, herbs, peppers etc you can imagine and lately she started to write a blog about her gastronomic triumphs. Which is quite interesting read now that she started to add her own comments, backstories and little funny remarks to the plain recipes. But to cut the long story short she kind of got me interested in cooking-writing too. The trouble is I hardly even follow any recipes. Usually I add garlic everywhere and pickles and lose some other ingredients and basically do all sorts of anarchistic things about the recipes given. Strangely most of the times the outcome is good, sometimes even great... so why not give it a try with some recipes.... I cannot call them actually recipes .. more like ideas, because everything tends to be approximate :)

Stuffed bell peppers.

Chop one medium onion, as finely as you like it. 4-10 gloves of garlic as well according to your taste and the strongness of the garlic (the difference between homegrown garlic and chinese garlic from the store is tremendous in my opinion). Fry them for a minute in a large frying pan in one tablespoon of oil (I like to use the leftover oil from canned sundried tomatos. It gives a nice taste). Add ~400 grams of minced meat (pork, beef, chicken - your choice) and ~ 100 gram finely cut ham. Bake, occasionally stirring, about 10 minutes on medium heat.
To this mixture you can add everything you like: capparis, chopped pickles, finely chopped carrots, chilly... let your fantasy fly.
I also added some tomato sauce, about half a cup and 4 tablespoons (~60 g) of cream cheese. Add some pepper, basil, salt, soy sauce, worchester sauce etc and heat everything for couple of more minutes.

Now take 3-5 bell peppers (3 if they are really big), cut them in half and clean out the seeds and membranes. Place them in a fitting baking pan. Fill the peppers with the mixture compressing with a spoon so that all the nooks are well filled. Cover the mixture with slice of cheese.
As the filling is already well cooked you can adjust the baking time depending how soft you like the peppers. I like when they are relatively crunchy so I keep them in 180 degree C oven about 20 minutes. If you like softer peppers you can cover the pan (with a aluminium foil if it does not have a lid) add some water to the base of the pan (2/3 cup will do) and bake them  ~40 minutes in 160 degree oven. In the end remove the cover so the cheese can turn a bit golden.
I know that usually the stuffing has some rice in it as well. I don't particulary like rice... so I excluded it. You can serve the peppers with rice on side. Or with potatoes. Or with salad. Or with some kind of gravy. No rules! Enjoy!

Reading "Death by Diamonds" by Annette Blair. Quite captivating read I have to say although I would get the general feeling better perhaps if I would have started from the book 1 in the series. Apparently it's the third book. Why cannot they write that kind of information clearly on the cover or at least on the title page? Anyhoo, I quite like the book. The characters are pleasant, there's some weird tension (I gather it would not be so weird if I had read the firts two books). Mysterious mystery is present as well. I'm halfway through and at the moment I think I wish to read the other books in the series as well. Let's see about it in the end though...

Later... Don't read if you are about to read this book! Spoilers!
I'm really disappointed. The story was a bit jumpy and the end was nothing I expected. The solution of the mystery was neither logical not smooth. 4 murderers?!? Isn't that a bit overkill? And two of them didn't have a motive, at all?
In my opinion in a good criminal story the ending should be like "of course, how didn't I see it, it's so logical and obvious"... Well this was more like "Whaaaat???" And althoug the characters were pleasant, in the end I didn't feel that I would like to know what happens to them next. Just don't care enough.

My family and other animals.

Yesterday evening our dog started yapping like a...erm... mad dog. Wary investigation outside revealed that the reason for this furious verbal abuse was a fox, a big one. Seeing that the dog is not able to protect our property (due mean human interference) our cat, our sweet cute little cat decided to do it herself. By chasing the fox. Thrice her size.... Apparently she still does not believe that she's just a cat, not a tiger.

Let's have cake

It appears that today is birthday of Stephanie Plum. As in Janet Evanovich books. And every proper fan should eat Boston cream pie. It's new to me... but I'll try. Searched the internet for recipes and baking there will be tonight. Let's find out if Stephanie has good taste in cakes.

The cake was made on saturday. Not very difficult to make, but to be honest I don't get why it's such a favourite. Quite boring actually. Just bisquit and plain custard. Oh well, at least pineapple-upside-down cake we have in common with Stephanie :)

Stephen Fry's "Mrs Fry's Diary" arrived yesterday from Bookdepository. What a marvellous internet-bookshop that is - the book is not even published (publishing date's supposed to be this friday, october 15th) but I already got it! From England! Almost a week earlier.
So I started reading in the car this morning on my way to work (I wasn't driving myself in case you're wondering) and discovered that the book is very much what I expected. Which is a good thing.
But I cannot help hearing this voice in my head... you know this quite healthy built woman, with a slightly bent nose from A Bit of Fry and Laurie. It's like she's telling the story... curious. Anyhoo, I'm still in january so I guess I'll have more to share later.