Day 13 - Fruit

I'm back!! I'm sorry for disappearing again, life caught up to me. I thought it would be only one day, but than a migraine knocked me out for another day.

So I have been making a list of everything I need to do. I am off work as of 3pm March 27, and I want to do a major cleaning of my house, car and Ricos tank. So I have my list, and will be slowly checking things off as I get them done, all while increasing my daily walk time. So I will keep everyone updated on how I do with this  I may need some motivation so I am counting on everyone to help me out.

So today is fruit, it took me forever to decide what one thing I wanted to do with fruit. So I went out and found a new recipe. It is a mixed berry cake. It is a nice light cake, not sweet even though it has a syrup drizzle, and looks gorgeous.

Mixed berry cake with vanilla bean syrup

Oven 350F

½ cup butter, softened

1 cup caster sugar

3 eggs

¾ cup plain flour

½ almond meal

1/3 cup sour cream

1½ cups frozen mixed berries

½ cup drained canned seeded black cherries

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a bundt pan well.

Beat butter and sugar in small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Transfer mixture to large bowl; stir in sifted flour, almond meal, sour cream, berries and cherries. Pour mixture into pan.

Bake cake about 40 minutes. Let stand in pan for 5 minutes; turn onto wire rack.

Make vanilla bean syrup; pour hot syrup over cake.

Vanilla bean syrup

Place the water and sugar in small saucepan. Split beans in half length ways; scrape seeds into pan then add pods. Stir over heat, with out boiling, until sugar dissolves. Simmer, uncovered, without stirring, 5 minutes. Discard pods.

Tips:
Caster sugar is fine sugar, not icing sugar. This sugar melts easier than regular granulated sugar. You can use regular sugar, or put it in a coffee grinder. I use my magic bullet. If you don't have vanilla beans, you and use 1 teaspoon for each vanilla bean.

Mix the sugar and butter till fluffy

Beat in the eggs one at a time

I prefer to put the berries in frozen so that the juices don`t change the colour of the cake

The cake does not rise very much, so short bundt pans are usable

I finally got to use my vanilla beans for cooking! I have been using them for home made vanilla extract so far. 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract = 1 vanilla bean

The seeds from inside the vanilla bean.

Simmer the water, sugar and vanilla together to create a syrup

The recipe makes a lot of syrup, you only need to drizzle a few tablespoons on. However, use as much as you wish.

Tips:

I put mine on a cake tier, however it would be best to put it on something that could go in the fridge until serving. This will help firm up the cake.

So these are not my favourite shoes. The first day I wore them, my toes were killing me, but I got so many compliments that I can`t stop wearing them.

Yay I got one of my posts finished, now on to the next one. Thank you all for sticking by me, and for the messages to hurry up. I will try not to let this happen again.

Happy Baking!

Sey