I can explain these lemon cakes in one sentence. One phrase, actually, and if you’re familiar with it, you’ll know exactly where this particular baking urge came from.
Six words: ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’.
It turns out that I'm a lot more suggestible than I thought. You know the weekday nights when you just want to marathon Supernatural, snuggle the cat and drink like, a whole bottle of cheap-ass wine? Well now, so do I. I don't even like wine much, but when I'm reading ‘A Storm of Swords’, after six hundred pages of 'wine with honey notes and piney scents, catching the light' and so on, I'm like, '...Shit, mate, better drink some wine.'
I'm up to 'A Dance with Dragons'. They're talking about cheese a lot. I've spent the morning googling vegan cheese making techniques and making lists of potential recipes to experiment with. Apparently if you stand in front of a mirror at midnight and say 'cheese' three times, I appear in your kitchen and start making cheese. And look, there's only so many times people can mention Sansa's love for lemon cakes - or, actually, pretty much everyone seems to love lemon cakes, you are speaking to my soul - before I need some freaking lemon cakes.
These are sweet and damp and soaked in lemon syrup. They're also vegan and gluten-free and scattered with crushed pistachios. My kitchen is a good place to be. People are very rarely beheaded and/or disemboweled and/or buried in the snow in my kitchen, so I already have the advantage on Westeros.
Little Lemon Cakes (Gluten Free)
60ml (1/4c.) vegetable oil
60g (1/3c.) white sugar
1 lemon
90g (scant 1c.) ground almonds
125g (4oz) cold mashed potato, yes really, trust me
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
for syrup:
4 tbsp white sugar
juice of 1 lemon (around 1/3c.)
optional handful of pistachios to scatter over
1. Heat oven to 180C. Mix the oil and sugar together thoroughly, then add in the zest of the lemon, and the juice of half. Fold in the almonds, potato, baking powder, and salt. I promise I'm not just bullshitting you with the potato thing, it makes it gluten-free and damp and holding-together, and you don't taste it. Spoon into cases - these are madeleine cases, I believe - and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes, until golden.
2. For the syrup, mix the sugar and lemon juice together thoroughly. Once the cakes are baked through, spoon it straight over them, letting it soak in. Allow to cool before eating, although I ate one warm and went into spasms of bliss.
these are seriously beautiful. and i love the potato addition!
ReplyDeleteThey look great! But I feel like I should not have to google. What in the world are you talking about? A TV show? A cult book series? NO IDEA.
ReplyDeleteOh man, I didn't think to link to the wiki page! haha. It's a book series by George R. R. Martin, which 'Game of Thrones' on HBO is adapted from. Sorry for my ambiguous geek references!
ReplyDeleteThese ARE beautiful. I need to go mash some potatoes! I just wonder if they come back to life in some river somewhere after I've eaten them? Well, more for me. :-)
ReplyDeleteIf you're looking for Vegan cheese, learn from the Master, er Mistress? Miyoko Schinner. Seriously I can't stop making her cheeses, they are SO easy and I use whatever nut or coconut base yogurt rather than soy where called for.
http://www.miyoko.com/ her book, Artisan Vegan Cheeses has been nominated for sainthood. Do books go to heaven?
I just made this recipe,it is really delicious,thank you (^-^)
ReplyDeleteThese are absolutely gorgeous!
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