Friday 21 September 2012

Madhouse Nutty Jam Sandwich Crumble with Organic Village Hazelnuts


Today the Madhouse Mini-testers came home from school and wanted to make a cake. Now usually, I'd have said that I was tired after a day at work or it was too late and we'd do it at the weekend but, probably because today was the day of the funeral for the 16-year-old pupil from my school who was killed last Friday and I've been pondering making every second count, I thought well, why not? I looked through the cupboards for inspiration and we actually invented a new recipe, which was good fun !


Quite some time ago, I reviewed some Pomegranate Juice from Organic Village but I never got around to using or reviewing the selection of nuts and dried fruit that they sent through. Well, today we decided to use their Organic Roasted Hazelnuts as a central ingredient for our totally invented recipe !


After eating a handful each (even the Madhouse Mini-testers loved them - they often aren't keen on nuts because they find them too "bitty"), I told Juliette to crush them with a rolling pin, which she did with unbridled enthusiasm !


We made a kind of cake batter/crumble mix, (flying by the seat of our pants and making it all up as we went along!) by mixing 250g melted margarine with 200g flour, a generous handful of porridge oats, 100g sugar, 2 eggs and the crushed hazelnuts.


To give it a nice zing, we added a generous glug of Steenbergs Organic Orange Extract.


I was pleasantly surprised to see that this mixed to an almost nutty breadlike consistency.


Because I mentioned that it looked like bread dough, Juliette jokily said we could make a jam sandwich cake. Well, why not ? (My new mantra, I think !) We used half of the dough to line a cake tin. (I really must buy a cake tin - I actually used half of a foil-line roasting tin !).


Our secret ingredient - a jar of French granny's homemade plum jam. (Prune is French for plum, not prune ... which is pruneau !)


After spreading jam all over the pastry base, the Madhouse Mini-testers had great fun flinging spoonfuls of the remaining batter on top. The idea was to cover the jam while leaving gaps for it to bubble up through. 


A quick sprinkle of icing sugar and it was off to the oven for 20 minutes (at 180°).


Juliette licked the bowl (I've stopped stressing too much over raw eggs - it never did me any harm as a kid !) while it was cooking.


Half pie, half crumble - or a baked jam sandwich according to Juliette !


I loved the combination of crunchy nuts and sweet jam, but I think it could have done with a sprinkle of crunchy Demerera sugar at the end, or a scoop of vanilla ice cream or dollop of custard maybe.

Not bad at all but definitely a work in progress so let me know if you have any ideas of how to make it even better !

The Crazy Kitchen

Disclosure : I received a selection of products from Organic Village, including the hazelnuts that we used in this recipe.

Other blogposts you may be interested in :

1 comment:

  1. Licking the bowl is always the best bit, never had problems with raw eggs in the cake mix. Love all the photos, and your recipe sounds fun! Way to go!

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...