Apple ginger cake: for when the birthday cake has to survive a backpack

Multi-layered, icing-filled constructions do not survive well in a rucksack (I've tried), and besides which, most people actually do not like them so much as simpler, less sweet confections. However, I firmly believe that birthday cakes are absolutely necessary, no matter how old the person and wherever you are going to celebrate.

Cakes which stay fresh or even improve after a couple of days sitting are best - anything containing muscovado sugar, treacle, spices or fruit is a good bet, as are those with a syrup dowsing. Some stalwarts of my touring birthday cake repertoire are Smitten Kitchen's lemon cake (I adore this, but it is rather labour-intensive), Nigella's dense dark chocolate loaf from How to be a Domestic Goddess and for speedy crowd pleasing, brownies (though these don't last well for more than a day or two).

Gingerbread travels well, but for something a bit more interesting and celebratory, this is more cake-like and stuffed with apples and sweet-spicy lumps of crystallised ginger. I made for my friend A for his birthday, on which his activity of choice was freeriding in Flumserberg. We had fresh tracks almost the whole day, it went from overcast to cloudless blue skies by midday and there was snow flowing up over my thighs and even into my face as we descended. It was fantastic. We ate sandwiches on the lift rather than stop, but the cake was treated with a little more ceremony: eaten outside a small hut at Fursch obtained by a bootpack and a descent out of the back of the resort from the Leist, with tea and sun and mountain views, before being towed back to the resort behind a skidoo. In the words of A: it's as fun as it sounds!


Adapted liberally from Allora Andiamo, who got it from Marguerite Patten

Ingredients:
110g butter
50g black treacle
120g golden syrup
90g light muscovado sugar
20g dark muscovado sugar
2 tbsp water
75g crystallised ginger (I used the dry type, the stuff in syrup would work too, but drain it well first)
2 medium apples (preferably a more sour variety)
225g plain flour
2.5 tsp ground ginger
0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
4 tbsp milk
1 egg

Pre-heat oven to 150 degrees Celcius. Line base and sides of a 20cm round, high sided cake tin (springform would be ideal, but I don't have one) with baking paper.

Put butter, sugars, syrups and water in a saucepan and heat gently until butter is melted and sugar dissolved. Meanwhile, chop ginger into tiny (about half a centimetre) dice. Peel, core and chop apples. I cut each quarter lengthways into 3 pieces and then chopped into about half to one centimetre pieces.

Mix flour and ginger in a bowl. Add the warmed liquid to the flour and stir together.

Separately, mix bicarbonate of soda and 1 tbsp of milk together, then add to the batter. Rinse out the saucepan with the rest of the milk and stir into the rest. Beat in the egg. Add the apple and crystallised ginger chunks and stir just until combined.

Pour into the lined tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 1.5 hours, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Cover the top with foil if it starts to colour too much.

Leave to cool in the tin on a wire rack. Wrap well in foil if you want to keep it for a couple of days before eating. It will stay moist and even improve.

Savoy Spaghetti (aka waistline rescue)

Not one for adventure, but for when you suddenly find that your power-to-weight ratio is plummeting. Say for example, you've replaced after work indoor climbing sessions with German classes. Or the ski touring season just hasn't happened yet, despite it being March already. Or both. 

And it's delicious too! (Assuming you like cabbage). So no reason really to wait until you're feeling both fat and hungry.

Ingredients:

Savoy (or other tasty) cabbage leaves: enough to heapingly fill a pasta bowl when shredded but still raw

0.5 - 1 tsp butter

Finely grated parmesan: about 20g

Black pepper

Cut any thick stems out of the cabbage leaves then shred very finely - I'm talking strands not much more than 1mm wide. You're trying to make something that when cooked you can twirl around a fork like pale green spaghetti.

Put just enough water in a saucepan to cover the bottom and add a pinch of salt and the cabbage. Cook with a lid on until cabbage is soft. Give it a stir once or twice during cooking, bringing the bottom layer to the top, to make sure the strands cook evenly.

Warm your pasta bowl or plate (this cools down strangely quickly).

Once cooked strain out excess water, transfer to warmed bowl and stir in the butter. Use enough that the cabbage is slightly lubricated and doesn't totally stick together. Fold in the grated parmesan, season very lightly with a grind of black pepper and eat. 

Alternatives: use truffle oil in place of the butter. Or after straining cabbage return to the pan with the butter and a few chili flakes and heat gently, stirring to distribute the spice throughout.

Less conducive to weight loss, but also good: sauté a few finely sliced mushrooms in the butter before adding to the cabbage. 

Müesli bars for ski touring

I assumed the title "Cookie Monster" in my second ski season, when I took a huge box of Guetzli (Christmas cookies) along on a ski day with my cycling group, in a desperate attempt to get rid of them. A colleague had invited me to join her and friends at a cookie-baking session, which resulted in literally hundreds of cookies of half a dozen varieties. Even divided up between the participants, there were a lot. I pulled this box out halfway through the morning, and then repeatedly each time we took the lift, and by the end of the day I had only the new nickname by which to remember them.

By the following winter, I was more into ski touring, whenever the opportunity presented itself. After a few occasions of suddenly getting extremely tired or cold, I realised that my standard snacks were a rather poor choice for fairly intense exercise in a cold environment. The sugar hit of the brownies or cookies wore off too quickly. So I started taking these, which have rather more substance and the added bonus of being robust enough to survive even a multi-day tour.

Delicious, long lasting energy 

Ingredients:

85g butter

90 ml (= 6 tablespoons) golden syrup

100g granulated sugar

150g dried cranberries

110g mixed cereal flakes

75g rolled oats

35g rolled oats, ground to a flour in a food processor / blender / well-cleaned out coffee grinder (if no grinder is available, see notes below)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon or grating of nutmeg (optional, I often don't spice them)

150g almonds, roughly chopped (some big pieces, some small)

70g pumpkin seeds

70g sunflower seeds

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line a 20cm x 20cm pan with baking paper.

Put the butter in a large saucepan with the syrup and heat gently until butter is all melted. Stir in the sugar and cranberries and heat for another minute or two. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Tip into the lined baking pan and press down firmly (try using the bottom of a glass if the mixture is sticking too much to your hands or the spoon).

Bake for about 30 minutes. They should be  little brown around the edges and on the top. Stand the pan on a cooling rack and leave until cold -  this is important as they will still be soft when you take them out of the oven, and will break if you try to remove from the pan too soon.

When cold, remove from the pan and use a bread knife to cut into 16 squares. 8 of these will fit perfectly, wrapped in a plastic freezer bag, inside a pair of Dynafit 100mm crampons and will fuel several hundred metres of ascent, depending on your greed and speed.

Notes: The combination of fruit, nuts and seeds can be varied to include whatever you like: sultanas, raisins, dried apricots, dried mango, apple rings, hazelnuts, brazil nuts, pecans, pistachios (not salted), other seeds, coconut flakes, crystallised ginger (in small quantities, skip the cinnamon), … In total they should weigh 350g - 450g. Large pieces (brazil nuts, pecans, dried apricots, apple rings) should be chopped up first to about sultana-size. Dried fruit should be added first to the butter-syrup mix and cooked  with than for a minute or two (as the cranberries are above). If you don’t have a processor or blender to grind the oats to a flour, either just use them whole or replace with ground almonds or hazelnuts. The bars will crumble a bit more easily, but still taste as good. You can also replace the mixed cereal flakes (CH: e.g. Coop 5-Korn-Flocken) with plain oats.

In the Cookieschutz and ready to go