A Hazelnut Quince Crumble Cake

And A Minor Cookbook Update - Extra Food Chat with Kath

Welcome to another edition of Extra Food Chat with Kath!

Happy Easter, I hope you are enjoying the long weekend.

I have finally got some baking done, after what feels like not enough time spent in the kitchen so far this year.

One of the recipes I made was this Hazelnut Quince Crumble Cake. I’ve had some ideas for hazelnut cakes lately, and after finally acquiring some hazelnut meal I decided that the poached quince sitting in the fridge from last year really needed to be used!

It was also a great excuse to make a crumble topped cake which I love, and test out this recipe again with some new variations. This Hazelnut Quince Cake is an adaptation of a crumble cake that will be in my currently a very much WIP cookbook.

I’m happy to say the changes I made work well, and this recipe is turning out to be a very versatile one. The recipe that will appear in my cookbook will use poached pears, but I have to say I much prefer poached quince. I know quince aren’t everyones thing, can be hard to find and take ages to cook, but I think they are really worth it.

This is the recipe I used to poach my quince last year, I am still waiting on finding some fresh quince in the shops this year. Hopefully I will find some soon!

You can use poached pears in this cake if you wish, or preserved/jarred pears, or other fruits like stone fruit, frozen berries etc. The combination of hazelnut and quince really makes this cake feel quite autumnal, however you can change it up to suit what you have or what season you are in.

I haven’t made much progress on my cookbook since I last updated you (what feels like ages ago!). I deliberately took a break over Christmas and that super hot period of Summer, then this year has started off as quite a stressful busy one and my time in the kitchen has been limited on all fronts. I actually feel like I’ve barely got started with anything this year, but I’m hoping that’s going to change now.

Autumn and Winter are much nicer times to bake, plus I am *hoping* the stressful things are over now, and I am starting to get a little of my senses of taste and smell back (finally!), which is making baking and eating more enjoyable, but also recipe testing, you know, like actually possible! Not being able to taste and smell has put such a dampener on things, to the point where new ideas for recipes weren’t happening, and my motivation for it all got to such a low point.

Hopefully things are turning a corner now, and more substantial progress and therefore updates on the cookbook will happen from now on. I hope your year got off to a better start than mine, and you’ve been able to spend time doing things you really like. If you are after a nice cake to make this long weekend, I highly recommend this Hazelnut Quince Crumble Cake!

Baking Beyond the Paywall: The edited and tested recipe for this Hazelnut Quince Crumble Cake is below for paid subscribers.

Paid subscribers to Extra Food Chat with Kath support my work and keep the ovens on at Kulinary HQ. Paid subscribers receive posts like these in full every time, and can also comment on this post, and ask me questions about the recipe (or anything else really!). The entire recipe archive is also available to paid subscribers - check out what’s been shared so far with paid subscribers here.