Chocolate Brazil Nut Cake
From my favourite baking book, this is an amazing recipe. It's flourless, with ground brazil nuts replacing the flour, and made with whipped egg whites. It's as light as a feather more like a giant squidgy chocolate brownie than a cake (in fact you could bake it in a square tin and cut it up into brownies).
Lemon Drizzle Cake
This one is a BBC Good Food recipe, and it's an absolute classic. Unbelievably easy to make (especially if you have an electric whisk), it's deliciously fresh and zingy-tasting and really moist from the lemon and sugar syrup. It keeps well too because of the syrup. I've made this several times, twice for Alastair and once for the office and it's been received rapturously every time.
Vanilla Slices
Another BBC Good Food recipe. Divinely decadent, especially the sweet almond-flaked pastry - and ignore what the recipe says, it's not tricky at all. I used half of the custard mixture to make slices and the other half to make little ramekins of stewed rhubarb topped with custard. Rhubarb and custard - a match made in heaven!
Cream Slices
A variation! Pastry made as above, with jam and whipped cream sweetened with icing sugar and vanilla essence (Chantilly cream to use its proper name) in the middle.
My fan oven is very fierce, and I'd never made a decent meringue prior to some serious practice the other weekend - I always cooked the meringue for the length of time and at the temperature it said in the recipe, and the outside would brown but the inside remained foamy (yuk). I finally conquered my culinary nemisis the other weekend by cooking the beastie for about twice as long as it said in the recipe (with a tin-foil hat on from when it started to brown) on the very lowest heat, and letting it dry out in the oven overnight. It went all crispy on the outside and toffee-y in the middle - bliss. And, even better I picked up a tip from my favourite baking book that means I never actually need to use a recipe for meringue ever again - all you do is weigh your egg whites and use exactly the same amount of caster sugar!
Chocolate Fudge Cake
I made this for a friend and never even tasted it - how's that for willpower (although it wouldn't have been quite as good a gift with a slice taken out!).
Focaccia
I have ventured into the world of bread-making! I'd never baked with yeast before - if you haven't either then flatbreads are the place to start, as you don't need to worry about it rising. I made this for Alastair and it was absolutely delicious (from The Book).
And finally...I have to show you this.
Not pretty, but man did it taste good! I did a beast of a run on Sunday morning and rewarded myself with this - it was divine! Pancake recipe from The Book - I need to practice my pancake presentation skills. It'll be a hardship....
On the subject of food cooked by other people, I have to tell you about an amazing meal I had a couple of weekends ago. I went to see my godson William and his mummy and daddy over in Manchester. Sarah is a brilliant cook and created us the most incredible Moroccan feast on Saturday night. The first course was green lentil soup which was spicy and delicious and which was served with wedges of fresh lime which lifted the whole dish and really made all the flavours zing. The main course was lamb and olive tagine which was rich, slightly and perfectly salty from the olives and preserved lemons, cous cous and a delicious sticky-sweet aubergine jam. The absolute highlight was the pudding though - M'hanncha or The Snake as we called it, it was basically a long sausage of home-made marzipan flavoured with rose-water and cinammon, wrapped in filo pastry and coiled in a circle. It is traditionally placed in the middle of the table so that the diners can help themselves. Which we did, many many times! It was one of the most delicious desserts I've ever tasted, and I'm currently officially obsessed with Moroccan food. All the recipes were from this book which went straight on my Amazon wish list!
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