Happy Birthday to… The Usual Saucepans

How much do you learn in a year? Quite a lot, it would appear.

Yes, having moved house twice, added a (some would say) ridiculous number of cookbooks and recipes to my collection, and splattered my camera and laptop in more cake batter than can surely be good for it, it’s been an eventful twelve months. It also means that The Usual Saucepans is a year old! It was a year ago today (Nov. 25th) that I posted two blog posts - Welcome and a Chocolate and Mango mousse, if you so care to know - and set out on a much-pondered culinary adventure. 365 days and 100 posts later, here we are.

I haven’t read that first post since, until today, and it’s surprisingly fitting. The pictures in it inlude cheese, cake, wine and G&T served in a pint glass. Quite an accurate summary of my ever-classy and sophisticated life. I also firmly stand by this sentence, which appears part way through: “If you object to the consumption of, or cooking with, booze, then you are in the wrong place, my friend”.

But in terms of what I’ve actually learnt, the most important is probably the confirmation that you never know anything. I’ve always known there are parts of my culinary skills that aren’t exactly up to scratch (anything involving a piping bag springs instantly to mind); but that doesn’t always matter - nobody is perfect, and there’s no shame in admitting it.

I’d like to think that my writing and photography skills have also taken a step or two forward. They are far from perfect, but in them I’ve found something I enjoy almost as much as much as cooking, sharing, eating and drinking - who knows, perhaps one day I’ll bring them all together full time. One can but dream.

Perhaps more important than all of those things, however, is the realisation of just how many other like-minded food-loving bloggers there are out there. And there are even more people reading food blogs. But as much as it is about the food (drink, etc.) food blogging is also about the people, and there are some pretty darn talented people on our little community. There are, of course, some utter crazy nutcases out there who make us all squirm with their misguided (and often plain wrong) opinions and advice (and the saddest part is that you probably can’t even see who you are); but on the whole, the food blogging community is full of wonderful, warm, exciting, caring, incredibly creative and talented people.

I’ve many hopes, dreams and aspirations for the future, but before getting ahead of myself, I’d like to know more about and meet more of the people who make food blogging so interactive; that is my hope for TUS year 2.

Now, no birthday should be without a cake, so it seems about time to get on to that. Let’s be honest, we’re all - at least partially - here for the food. As luck would have it I can tie this in nicely with one of my favourite blogging challenges - Random Recipes, from Dom at Belleau Kitchen. This month it’s back to being ‘themeless’, meaning it was a random book and a random page. In my case, it was book 9 on the shelf, which actually transpired not to be a book at all, but October’s edition of Delicious. magazine. I flicked through and stopped at a random page (actually, thinking about it now I’d flattened the magazine out on that page a couple of times already, so it was probably a little more likely to stop there). It was the recipe for the cake on the cover - a naked sponge, with apples, filling and a caramel.

Much as it sounded delicious (pun fully intended), I didn’t have any apples in the house and decided that it could do with a little tweaking (not twerking, as I accidentally typed there first time round. Thank goodness for editing). As it turned out I should not have medaled as it wasn’t the perfect cake I was after as my first ever attempt at caramel crystallised. Oh well, you can’t always win, and I’m not going to start hiding those flaws any time soon.

Either way it turned out to be delicious (yup, still intentional), so it’s time to raise a glass - or a slice of cake - to The Usual Saucepans’ first birthday and 100th post. I hope there will be many more years to come and that you will all be here to share them, but in the mean time thank you for reading and do let me know your thoughts on TUS. If you want more treats you can follow TUS on Facebook, but now let’s tuck in to a cinnamon sponge with caramelised pears and an amaretto caramel.

Pear & Cinnamon Cake with Amaretto Caramel

This recipe is loosely based on one found in the October issue of Delicious. it can also be found online here. The recipe has been adapted to use 12cm cake tins instead of 20cm, but just up the cooking time by 3 minutes if you are using the larger size and use 5 eggs (the other ingredients are proportional). It makes one three layer cake. I am yet to find out how long you can keep cake for, this one was no exception.

Ingredients

for the sponge:
3 eggs
300g self-raising flour
270g golden caster sugar
300g butter
2 tbsp semi-skimmed milk
2 tsp ground cinnamon

for the filling:
1/2 tub of mascarpone
2 tbsp icing sugar
3 conference pears
1 tbsp caster sugar

for the caramel:
50g butter
30g golden caster sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
2 tbsp amaretto (or more, if you measure in ‘sloshes’, like me)

Directions

Put the oven on to heat up to 170ºC and sort out your cake tins (mine are non-stick, springforms, so they don’t need a lot of prep).

Start by making the sponge - blending the sugar and butter together with a wooden spoon, making the mixture smooth and creamy. When it’s smooth, sieve in the flour and cinnamon before folding it in to the mixture. Crack the eggs in one-by-one and beat until everything is combined and the mixture is light and airy. Let it sit for a minute or two and then transfer into your cake tins, ensuring that they are level. Bake in the centre of the oven for about 16-18 minutes (or longer for larger cakes) until the cake is golden-brown and springy to the touch.

Once the cakes have fully cooled you can decorate them. For the pears, peal and core them, then cut in to slices lengthways - the thinner these are the faster they will cook and the easier they will be to coil up on the cake. Put them in a pan with a little water and set on a medium heat with the lid on. When they look like they are beginning to soften add the caster sugar for some light caramelisation.

In a bowl, stir your mascarpone with a spoon until it loosens a little, then add in the icing sugar to sweeten it. To assemble the cake, put one sponge on a plate, ensuring the flat side is facing upwards (if your sponges have domed a lot in the middle you might need to slice it off). Put a couple of tablespoons of the mascarpone mix on the top and use the back of the spoon to spread it out, leaving a slight gap at each edge, so it can spread further when the next layer is put on top without pouring down the edges. Add a few slices of pear for some flavour and then put the next layer of sponge on. Repeat the process.

On top of the third layer make a small pile of pear pieces, folding them over to make it look more decorative. Start the caramel by putting all the ingredients in a pan over a medium heat. Stir until it all melts and then continue stirring until it becomes a dark amber colour. Once ready, pour the contents of the pan over the top of the cake, so that it runs over the top and down the sides - do this quickly so you get a better covering that I did.

Leave the cake for an hour to make sure it is set and completely delicious. Get a knife and dig in.

Craig (101 Posts)

Edinburgh-dwelling, baking and food-obsessed, twenty-something adventure enthusiast. Runs on liberal amounts of coffee, cheese, cake and gin; bribable with same.