Seasonal baking

This month has been all about baking! While the weather is cold, there’s nothing better than a comforting slice of a delicious cake. I’ve been going through a series of my favourite recipes, including various chocolaty incarnations, coffee and walnut, sticky toffee sponge and a (quite sharp) lemon drizzle. But I’m getting a little tired of these standard – albeit delicious – offerings and want something new.

But where to start gathering inspiration? Thankfully I was given the chance to have an indulgent chat with baking guru Lilly Vanilli to get some insight into how she creates her delicious and unusual recipes, plus who her food heroes are. Here’s the interview, plus a recipe completely inspired by her.

Anna-Marie: Has your upbringing in Saudi Arabia and travels across the world influenced the flavours you use?

Lilly Vanilli: Yes definitely, I always adapt what I’m baking depending on what’s in season locally and the exciting thing about my current projects (bakeries in Abu Dhabi & India) is the incredible array of new flavours and ingredients I get to experiment and work with. Some of those I can bring back with me (like the spices).

AM: You’re well known for your unique flavour combinations – do you have any current favourites?
LV: Seasonal produce is generally the starting point for any menu/recipe I put together. Over the colder monthsI’m loving sweet potato, parsnip & beetroot for cakes as well as apple& rosemary. You can also look to the store cupboard more for spices & I generally make everything with warmer, heartier flavours and more booze!

AM: There’s a generation of young bakers looking to you as inspiration, but do you have any food heroes?
LV: I have lots of food heroes past and present; I always look to Antoine Careme, the godfather of the pièces montée (grad-scale edible centrepieces). I’m currently starting a new off shoot project with the architect & designer Jordan Hodgson (http://jordanhodgson.com/) with the working title Fierce Montée – in which we create stunning edible centrepieces which look to the past for inspiration but are recreated in a very modern style. Using techniques such as 3D printing, for example.

AM: What snippet of advice would you give to others who want to – as you did – turn their passion for baking in to a business?
LV: Focus you time, money and energy on becoming the best you can be in what you want to do. Find your niche that way. Put all you resources into this rather than focusing on PR/marketing/packaging/press. If you do enough of a good thing these things will take care of themselves. There are free tools like social media and word of mouth to support you once you’ve got something worth talking about.

 

AM: Finally, what are you working on at the moment?
LV: I've been working with Cadbury Crispello to create a simple but visually stunning dinner party piece. The idea was to re-invent the traditional croquembouche, creating a fully edible tower. The idea came about because Cadbury Crispello pieces are easy to build with - shaped like little chocolate bricks, but the wafer and mousse centre is actually very light so they stack nicely.

 

Recipe of the month

Taking Lilly’s ideas around seasonality and spice into account, I’ve made this great walnut and beetroot cake – which was originally a carrot cake. It’s delicious, moist and very sweet!

Ingredients

· 450g flour

· 2 tsps baking powder

· 300ml sunflower or rapeseed oil

· 1 tsp ground nutmeg

· 1 tsp cinnamon

· 150g light brown sugar

· 125g muscavado sugar

· 150g chopped walnuts

· 350g cooked and grated beetroot

· 3 large eggs

 

Icing & decoration

· 225g mascarpone

· 100g icing sugar

· 2 tsp lemon juice

· Natural red food colouring

· Large handful of walnut halves

Grease and line an 18cm cake tin and preheat the oven to 180C.

 
Sift together the flour, baking powder and spices. Next, add the sugar to the dry mix before adding the oil, combine. Add the eggs one-by-on whilst stirring. Next add the beetroot and chopped walnuts, and stir together. The mixture is very thick – so don’t be alarmed! Pour into the tin and bake for an hour.

Place the cooked cake onto a wire rack. While you wait for it to cool, make the icing. You simply need to mix the ingredients (bar the walnuts) together until you have a smooth and shiny consistency.

Once is have completely cooled, cut the cake into two rounds. Generously ice the top of one and sandwich together before icing the top and sides of the cake with a palette knife. Decorate with the walnuts round the outside edge of the cake.