rosemary wine cake with walnuts and raisins

I came across the recipe for rosemary wine cake with currants in a health magazine. As it is a health magazine, the recipes inside the magazine are supposed to be healthy. In the case of the rosemary wine cake, the recipe requires only 3 tablespoonfuls of butter.

I have modified the recipe slightly as I was not able to find some of the ingredients at the supermarket.

Not to worry, despite the modification in the recipe, the cake turned out fine. If, however, you would like the cake taste more moist, you can omit the inclusion of the crushed walnuts in the cake mixture. Personally, I am fine with the inclusion of the crushed walnuts in the cake mixture.

In fact, this cake turned out so well that when I brought the cake to a dinner on Saturday, 25 October 2008, many of us who ate the cake had a 2nd helping!

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups self-raising flour

1/2 cup plain flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

3 tbsp butter (softened)

3/4 cup castor sugar

1/2 cup peanut oil

1 tsp grated lemon zest

1 tsp vanilla essence

dash of ground cinnamon

1 cup raisins

1/4 cup crushed walnuts

2 tsp dried rosemary leaves

3/4 cup sweet dessert wine

Topping

2 tbsp fine sugar

1/2 cup crushed walnuts

Method

1. Grease a bundt pan with butter/margarine and dust with flour.

2. Sift the flour, salt and baking powder.

3. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter with the sugar.

4. Add the eggs, 1 at a time.

5. Add the oil, lemon zest, vanilla essence, ground cinnamon, raisins, crushed walnuts and rosemary leaves and mix well.

6. Stir in 1/2 of the flour mixture, then add 1/2 of the wine. Repeat using the remaining flour mixture and remaining wine, mixing just until smooth.

7. Pour the cake mixture into the prepared baking pan.

8. Sprinkle 1/2 of the fine sugar, then the crushed walnuts, then the remaining fine sugar.

9. Bake at 175 degrees celsius for 1 hour. The cake is done when a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.

10. Let the cake cool thoroughly in the baking pan. If you have greased the pan and dusted the pan with flour, you should be able to remove the cake easily. If you have difficulty removing the cake, place the baking pan on top of a hot towel for a few minutes - you should then be able to remove the cake from the pan.

Tips

1. As pre-packed crushed walnuts are not easily available in the supermarket, to crush the walnuts, you can either:-

(a) hit the walnuts (in the packet) with a rolling pin;

(b) use a walnut crusher (like what you see in the photograph below); or

(c) use a chopper/blender.

I prefer using a walnut crusher as the walnuts end up crushed but not ground. If you were to use a chopper/blender, the walnuts tend to end up ground. If you use a rolling pin, well, whether the walnuts end up crushed or ground depends on who you are thinking of as you are hitting the walnuts with the rolling pin.

2. If you do not have peanut oil, you can replace it with olive oil. The inclusion of oil makes the cake more moist. My aunt was the one who recommended using peanut oil instead of corn oil when baking cakes. I have found that peanut oil makes the cake very flavourful.

3. If you do not have sweet dessert wine, you can replace it with sweet red wine.

4. The cake goes well with a hot cup of coffee.