Tiger Cake (Marble Cake)

Tiger Cake is one of the cakes I have been baking as long as I remember, since I was 10 years old or even younger. Traditionally the dark stripes / marble patterns have been made by adding chocolate to one part of the cake mixture. Nowadays there are many variations, for example one with salty licorice - which I will try as soon as I get hold on proper Finnish salty licorice...

Tiger Cake

300 g butter
4 dl / 1½ cups granulated sugar
4 eggs
6 dl / 2 1/3 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1½ dl / ½ cup cream

100 g dark chocolate
3 tbsp cocoa powder

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees C (350 F) and grease and flour (I use dried breadcrumbs) a 2-litre fluted ring cake pan.
2. Combine flour and baking powder in a bowl.
3. Cream together butter and sugar.
4. Mix in eggs.
5. Add the dry ingredients together and the cream and mix well.
6. Melt the chocolate. 
7. Take about 1/3 of the cake mixture and fold in the melted chocolate and sieve in the cocoa powder.
8. Fill the cake pan with the plain and chocolate cake mixtures alternately to get the 'tiger stripes'. If you want to create a proper marble effect take a skewer and swirl it around the mixture in the pan.
9. Bake the cake 50-60 minutes in the oven and let cool on a rack before removing from the pan.

Lime Cheesecake

This low-calorie Lime Cheesecake is light and fluffy. Lime gives it a taste of summer and fun. This cake is definitely worth a try! Don't feel guilty if you eat the whole cake at once - as you can always make a new one. If you buy own-brand digestive cookies and cream cheese this treat is an affordable one, too.

Lime Cheesecake

Crust:
150g Digestive cookies, crumbed
75g butter, melted

Filling:
300g Philadelphia Light Cream Cheese (or equivalent, I use quite often more affordable cream cheese brands of Lidl, Tesco or Aldi)
1,5dl / 2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla sugar
6 gelatine leaves
juice of 2 limes
3 egg whites

Decoration:
zest of 1 lime, grated

1. Mix the digestive cookie crumbs and melted butter.  Press the mixture into the bottom of a loose base cake pan, base covered with baking parchment. Let the crust cool and rest in the fridge while you make the filling.
2. Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for 5 minutes.
3. Mix the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla sugar.
4. Heat up the lime juice and melt the soaked gelatine leaves in the hot juice and pour the smooth liquid into the cheese mixture. Mix well.
5. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them very gently into the cheese mixture trying to keep it ‘airy’.
6. Pour the filling on the crust and chill in the fridge for at least four hours until firm.
7. Remove the firm cake from the pan very, very carefully on a serving plate and decorate it with grated lime zest.
8. Enjoy!

Lemony Peach Cake

Lemony Peachcake by Donna Hay has been one of my favourite recipies for a few years. Like many other favourites, this one was also published in the Irish Times Magazine. Then suddenly the recipe was not available in their archives any more but I was happy to find it and reunite with it at the Donna Hay website!

https://www.donnahay.com.au/recipes/sweets/cakes/lemony-peach-cake

Spicy Banana Cake

Oven mittens and paper napkins from Kilkenny Shop. Design by Ulster Weavers.

This is The Cake you can nearly always find in our house. We keep buying bananas regularly but then not eating them as regularly as we should so we end up having overripe bananas in the fruit basket. And the easíest place to dump them into has become a cake, this cake!

Spicy Banana Cake

150 g soft butter
2 dl / 3/4 cup granulated sugar
0.5 dl / 1/4 cup soft brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3-4 soft (overripe) bananas, mashed
1 dl / 1/2 cup corn flour
4 dl / 1½ cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bread soda
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees C (350 F) and grease and flour (I use dried breadcrumbs) a 1,5-2-litre fluted ring cake pan.
2. Combine flour, baking powder, bread soda and spices in a bowl.
3. Cream together butter and both sugars.
4. Mix in eggs and vanilla extract.
5. Add the dry ingredients together with the mashed bananas and mix well.
6. Pour into the pan and bake about 1 h in 175 degrees C.
7. Let cool completely before cutting into slices.

Optional:
*Sprinkle with icing sugar.
*Enjoy with vanilla ice cream and butterscotch syrup
*Make muffins instead of cake - baking time in 175 C about 20 minutes