Back of the Cupboard Banqueting – November

We are back!

In fairness we have been back since August, I just wanted to make a big entrance!

I truly hope that everyone is holding up well in these ever-changing times. The resilience of highlanders is always awe inspiring.

Just a quick update on what’s been happening in the catering world of HLH. We have successfully opened the new Café Botanics at the entrance to the Inverness Botanic Gardens and are having a wonderful time using poor dad humour and puns to keep bringing people through the door. Our BOO-tanics Halloween event and BEAR-tanics teddy bear picnic being prime examples.

This new era has moved me out of my usual savoury cooking comfort zone into the world of baking. And, after a few Bambi like steps and epic cake fails, I have found my feet! Far from being a master but myself and my new kitchen colleague Steven are really beginning to enjoy putting our new creativity to work, and very much hope that you will all come along at some point to sample our wares?

The new partnership with the very hard-working gardeners at the Botanic Gardens has already become quite fruitful (see what I did there!) We are enjoying the constant feed of ingredients lovingly grown right on our doorstep for the making of soups (fresh kale and herbs) sandwiches (tomatoes straight off the vine and the freshest of salad leaves) and now baking too with scones (fresh apples from the garden for a special apple and cinnamon scone) and todays recipe for a beautifully moist and flavour-some pineapple cake! That’s right. They have grown a fresh pineapple in Inverness!!!

I know we cannot all enjoy pineapples fresh from our gardens, but I can give you the recipe for an amazing Pineapple cake that only requires 5 ingredients! And is so versatile. You can top it with a cream cheese icing, a drizzle of sweet pineapple juice, or an easy made pineapple jam.

Easy Pineapple Cake

195g Sugar

250g Plain Flour

2 tsp Baking Powder

2x 435g tins of pineapple chunks in juice

2 Eggs

• Pre heat your oven to 175c and grease a Loaf cake pan
• Combine the sugar, flour and baking powder in a mixing bowl and add 1 full in of pineapple chunks with the juice plus 100ml of juice from the other tin (you can use the remaining pineapple and juice to mix with sugar and boil down to a jam or to drizzle over the cake once it is out of the oven, putting a few chunks through a cream cheese icing is also amazing!)
• Beat in the eggs until everything is well mixed then pop it into the middle of the oven and bake for between 25-35mins. Keep an eye on it after 25mins until you can poke it with a toothpick, and it comes out clean. Do not over bake or it will be dry and tasteless… trust me!
• Remove from the pan and leave to cool, then decorate as you see fit, or just gather around and devour it!

I hope you all get a chance to experiment with this recipe and enjoy a great cake! More to come soon as we move towards Christmas.

Stay safe, and make good choices 

Chef Ben.