Tuesday 20 September 2016

Curd cheese cake - #GameOnCooks


I used to watch a lot of cooking shows in the days before children. I would run home after work to watch Ready Steady Cook, does anyone even remember it? Later, when Eddie was a baby, I was quite addicted to Come Dine with Me, though I haven't watched it in the last couple of years.
GBBO attracts over 10 million viewers per episode every week, and though I have an occasional peek at it, I'm not the biggest fan.
When I read the research conducted by Lurpak that the average Brit spends more than five hours a week consuming food culture and cooking for just four hours, I thought, that's not me then, I don't watch TV much these days. But then if you add up the time I spend reading foodie blogs and cook books, and visiting Instagram and Pinterest, it could easily be more than five hours per week for me.
Though in my "defense" I must say I do a lot of cooking, definitely more than four hours per week, at least a double of that.
To encourage us to do more cooking, Lurpak has started a new Game On, Cooks campaign. It's challenging Brits to turn their screens off and ovens on. Their motto is "You're not a cook until you cook".

I love baking, so for this challenge I have picked a simple cake recipe.
It is based on a family favourite - ricotta cake - but this time I used a curd cheese rather than ricotta. And it was a great success.


Curd cheese cake
Ingredients:
zest of  1 orange, grated
3 eggs
200g caster sugar
200g curd cheese
1tsp baking powder
300g self-raising flour
100g butter, melted
1tsp vanilla bean paste

Grate the zest of 1 orange in a deep mixing bowl.
Beat in the eggs with the caster sugar, add curd cheese, baking powder, flour, vanilla bean paste and melted butter and mix well.
The cake batter is quite thick. Spoon it carefully in a well oiled cake tin. Put the bundt cake tin in an oven preheated to 180C for 45+ minutes (depending on the size of the bundt tin). Check with a wooden toothpick if it's ready. You might need to lower the temperature and bake it for another 10 minutes, until the skewer comes clean.
Sprinkle some icing sugar on the top.
Serve warm or cold. It will keep well for a couple of days, wrapped in foil.


You can swap the ingredients: curd cheese for ricotta, orange zest for lemon zest or even clementine.
I used Lurpak unsalted butter in this recipe, but any good quality butter will do.


Disclosure: I received a supermarket voucher to buy the ingredients to take part in the campaign.


4 comments:

  1. Great cake...! and fun initiative

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    Replies
    1. Thank you Fede! It's probably the easiest cake to make, but tastes really good

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  2. Lovely cake old fashioned taste, with moist crumb, the curd gives special texture.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, Antonia! Curd or ricotta both work well in this recipe.

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