Savoury cake a la mode de St. Aignan

What do you cook given half a pack of Emmental and some allumettes de jambon (bacon "matchsticks") approaching their "use by" date? I had already marked Ken Broadhurst's Cheesy bacon olive loaf as a favourite to try soon, having noted that it was one gigantic muffin and therefore reasonably straightforward.*

Just a big muffin

All I had to do was translate the ingredients from US measures into metric.

This is what I came up with.

A total of about 400g assorted tasty goodies (selected from cooked bacon lardons, diced ham, cooked chicken, cheese cut into 1cm cubes, cooked and diced sweet pepper, quartered pitted olives, chopped walnuts, peas, or what have you... according to the contents of your fridge / freezer)
450g plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder/bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
a pinch of cayenne
1 egg
250ml natural yoghurt (two 125g pots )
125ml milk
125ml crème fraiche
3tbsp olive oil

My tasty goodies were 80 - 120g each bacon, cheese (Emmental), olives (black and green), and bottled red pepper (one pepper, dried with kitchen towel and cubed). I dry-fried the bacon allumettes in a small frying pan until they gave up a lot of their fat and started to go brown, then let them cool. The whole lot went in the mixture, and I reduced the oil a little. Instead of olive oil I used Fruitée et Noix oil produced by Vigean, a local product which is a blend of colza and walnut oil. This is somewhat lighter than olive and a golden colour rather than green, so my loaf crumb was a slightly different shade. I also used North African-style lait fermenté which is made from skimmed milk, instead of the milk and crème fraiche. The lactic acid in the yoghurt and the lait fermenté combined with the baking powder to produce a well-risen light loaf.

*the standard muffin method: assemble the dry ingredients in a large bowl, and mix thoroughly (this includes the tasty goodies). Assemble the wet ingredients in another bowl, and stir well. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and mix the two just to combine them - do not overmix. Half fill your chosen moulds (greased or lined) and bake at 180°C until well risen and the top is golden brown.

Colourful and tasty!

We made two loaves using paper liners in aluminium moulds [left over from a couple of UK ready roasts], and the papers peeled away with no fighting back. This can definitely come again - it rose beautifully and tastes excellent, with lots of appetising colours. We have a sheet with six miniature loaf moulds and we'll try that - excellent for a picnic or a dinner party starter.

Many thanks to Ken for his inspirational posts, food-related or otherwise. Thanks also to Jean for the gift of "Good Old-Fashioned Cakes" which has an extremely practical conversion chart.

For a further post about savoury muffins, see this recipe from a St Hubert (margarine) pack.