quince and nut cake

quince and nut cake

• 27 May 2013

Autumn has finally hit Sydney with a couple of wet and miserable days. You can tell because people have been searching my blog for recipes for hearty food like lamb shank soup (I just made a batch myself) and lemon delicious pudding. Once I get my act into gear I'll start posting some more wintery recipes.

I poached another batch of quince last weekend and decided to make a quince and nut cake from Stephanie Alexander's book, The Cook's Companion. I made the cake to soften the blow of returning to work.



I altered the recipe a teeny tiny bit by leaving out the allspice and adding some yoghurt to thin out the batter. I also toasted the pecans for 10 minutes before breaking them up a bit because toasted pecans have so much more flavour.



The quince tinted the cake batter a very pretty pale pink. This cake is a melt and mix cake and I'm not a huge fan of that method. The batter was really thick hence the addition of the yoghurt cos no-one likes a dry cake. I was a teensy bit anxious as to how the cake would turn out.



Here's the recipe for you adapted from The Cooks Companion
Ingredients
375 g plain flour 
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
2 heaped teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 cup (125 g) roughly chopped pecans
2 cups poached quince, mashed
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
250 g unsalted butter, melted and cooled completely
½ cup yoghurt (optional)
Icing sugar and cream, to serve.

Method
Line the base of a 23 cm spring form pan with baking paper. Grease and flour the tin. Preheat the oven to 180°C. 

Sift the flour, soda and cinnamon together in a bowl. Stir in the nuts.  In a large bowl, stir together the quince and the sugar. Whisk the eggs into the cooled butter and then gently stir this into the quince mixture. Add in the flour mixture and mix until combined. If the mixture seems too dry, add the yoghurt until the desired consistency is achieved.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin then bake for 55-65 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Cool the cake in the tin. When cool, unmould the cake and sprinkle with icing sugar before serving.



The gang seemed to enjoy the cake and I'll certainly make it again. Next time I'll cream the butter and sugar first (I just prefer the texture) and I'm going to use grated apple instead of quince. I think it would make a nice winter dessert topped with ice cream or a big dollop of cream, or both.

I survived my first week back at work but only just. My poor immune system couldn't cope with all those hospital bugs and after only 2 days back at work I caught a cold so I've spent all weekend coughing and spluttering. I must have been missed though because my workmates gave me a huge bunch of flowers.

I hope your weekend was a bit better than mine.

Bye for now,

Jillian