Lemon Yogurt Drizzle Cake

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The Sasa Special

I found this wonderful recipe for Lemon Cake on Sasasunakku blog. It's a lovely witty blog - with some great recipes, this is the first one I've tried and it was amazing. Thanks for letting me use your recipe on the blog Sasa. There is a large amount of yogurt in the cake - making it wonderfully moist, and relatively good for you! Hurray. I made it in some little ramekins - and they popped out small and cute. I followed her quantities and it made 5 large portions (I'm greedy!) I used Glenisk Greek yogurt, I doubt you can use low-fat yogurt, but don't take my word for it.

Thanks to the lovely Des Moriarty for the great pictures! Aren't they amazing?? We had a fun day of food photography over in my kitchen. Think we got some beautiful and delicious shots. Check out his other work here.

I'm putting my neck out here - but I think I prefer lemon cake to chocolate cake ..... what d'ya reckon?

Hazelnut Meringue with Apricot Filling

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Ah lovely background with mini - accordian and pack of fags!

Ingredients
6 egg white
12oz caster sugar
4 oz ground hazelnuts
6oz dried apricots soaked overnight in water
1 inch of cinnamon
Juice of two oranges
2 inch piece of orange rind
2 tablespoons of brown sugar
500 ml single or double cream
Extra hazelnuts for decorating - I used 18 - that was 1 oz!
3 cake tins - lightly oiled and lined with parchment on the bottom.

I started out by toasting the hazelnuts until golden - toast a few extra as you’ll eat a few. Pop them out of their skins and roughly blend them in a  blender, not forgetting to keep a few extra whole over to decorate the top of the dessert when done.

Separate out your eggs - being super careful not to allow any yolk in - otherwise your meringue will fail miserably. Also worth washing your utensils just before starting the meringue - as any dirt or grease could affect the fluffiness of your egg whites- leaving you with one flat meringue.

Put the 6 egg whites in a bowl / food processor with whisk attachment - and whisk until  they form soft peaks. Then slowly add in the caster sugar spoon by spoon. The whites should stay smooth and get a little glossy. Then fold in the ground hazelnuts gently with a metal spoon. 

Spoon the mixture into the tins and bake at the middle of the oven for 30 mins at Gas Mark 5.

Now make the apricot filling. Drain the apricots over a bowl. Add 4 tablespoons of the soaking liquid into the pan with the fruit cinnamon, brown sugar, orange peel and juice. Bring to a gentle simmer and let it bubble away for about 20 minutes until the apricots are breaking apart. Add more of the soaking liquid if it appears to be getting too dry..

Remove the meringues from the oven - they should have a light brown tinge. Leave to cool in the tins for 15 mins before turning them out onto a wrack to cool fully. Just before serving assemble the meringue - put one meringue with half of the apricot mixture and a third of the whipped cream. then another meringue followed by the rest of the apricot filling, more cream, meringue and then the rest of the cream and a few toasted hazelnuts. This dessert is pretty sweet - so if you prefer a less sugary dessert - I recommend you try something else - but for sugar junkies - this will be a tasty hit!

Mum's Chocolate Cake

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Cake is gonna get you!

Here's Cake-ie!

My mum has been making this cake ever since I can remember - I think she got the recipe from Martha down the road - but I'm claiming it for my mum. Any occasion of note which involved kids saw this cake getting whipped up. It's a moist and delicious and appears a lot more complex than the simple recipe that makes it. The secret ingredient is black treacle - I won't hide it from you! 

Ingredients

9oz Caster Sugar

9oz Self Raising Flour

9oz Butter

3 eggs

2 tablespoons of Cocoa Powder

1/2 teaspoon of Baking Powder

1 tablespoon of Black Treacle

A dash of milk

For the icing

5oz of Icing Sugar

1.5oz Cocoa Powder

2oz Caster Sugar

3 tablespoons Water

3 oz Butter

Preheat the oven to Gas mark 4/180oc, and grease 2 circular cake tins, and line the bottoms. I used cake tins that had a diameter of 10 inches.

Sift the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder together in a large bowl. Add in the softened butter, eggs, treacle and the milk. Blend them all together until very well mixed, add more milk if the mixture appears too chick. Spoon into the tins and bake at the centre of the oven for 40 mins. 

Meanwhile you can prepare the icing. Sift the icing sugar and the cocoa powder into a bowl. Place the caster sugar, water and butter in a small pan.

When the cake is cooked it should spring up from a gentle press down, or a skewer should come out clean when poked into the centre. Remove gently form tins and allow to cool.

To make the icing - melt together the contents of the pan and then mix into the icing sugar mixture. If the mixture is a little thick for spreading - just add the smallest dash of boiling water and that should loosen it out a small bit. Similarly if it's to runny you could sieve in some more icing sugar. Spread over and between the two cooled sponges and you're done.

Decorate with chocolates and marshmallows for kids - or give it a dusting of icing sugar or cocoa powder for the adults. You can also make this in a tray and slice out little squares. It looks a bit like a scary ominous monster in this photo I think! It's the cake for every chocolate cake moment

Pecan & Banana Loaf

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Bananas!

I used to play in a band - where I met my boyfriend and the lovely Jane and Andy. There was a song that had a strange stop in it - and the only way we could all come back in at the right time was for Jane to sing the word - Bananas! Then it became everyone's favourite part of the song - good memories!

Ingredients

6 oz softened butter 

6oz golden caster sugar 

3 eggs 

5oz of self raising flour 

3oz ground almonds 

½ tsp baking powder 

100ml/3.5 fl oz milk 

2 small really ripe bananas

2oz pecan nuts – chopped

Pre-heat your oven to 160c/Gas Mark 3. Grease and line a 2lb/900g loaf tin.

To make the loaf batter simply lob all the ingredients into your trusty vintage Kenwood Chef (Did I mention I was given a lovely old Kenwood Kitchen Chef from my parents friends?)

Whisk together until you get a lovely batter. Then lob this into your loaf tin.

Lob this into the oven for 45-50 minutes.

Then lob into your face – after a modest amount of cooling on a wrack. Yummy 

You could always add some icing or frosting if you like – but I thought this was perfectly sweet light and spongy – maybe next time another banana.

This picture is silly and I love it! It's Friday let's all be silly

Grilled Endive with Cumin & Lavendar Oil

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While wandering around the Temple Bar Food Market on Saturday, I browsing through a selection of oils, when I came across a small bottle of cumin oil. Cumin is one of my favourite spices, so I was intrigued immediately. The friendly guy running the store seemed pleased I'd picked it up - as they had just got it in as new stock. He had given it to some food critics to sample duriing the week and said they'd been impressed. If it's good enough for the critics well then. I was a little scared when he described it as medicinal, though he assured me it was fine for cooking.

I paired it with some grilled endive - and let the few drops I applied do the talking.

Ingredients

3 heads of Endive/Chicory

a drizzle of olive oil

Salt and Pepper

3 drops of cumin oil per piece of endive

3/4 teaspoon of dark brown sugar

Lay the head of endive on your grill pan - drizzle with olive oil, add the drop of cumin oil and season well. Sprinkle over a little sugar. Pop under a hot grill for 10 minutes, turning once, the heads should be a rich caremlised brown on the edges, soft through witha little bit left in the centre.

I served these with some leek and bread pudding, and topped with a poached egg - delicious! There was a camera emergency while I was trying to cook this causing me to over cook the egg - damn - was still good though. Recipe for leek bread pudding to follow - now I'm going to bed!

Crepe Suzette

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Nearly three weeks from Pancake Tuesday we bring you the second course of our Pancake Extravaganza 100% intentional I promise!

I don't usually recommend songs - but they sing about pancake batter! a cover of the White Stripes by the Golden Filter

Make the Crepes as follows (again, this is a recipe from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking)

Ingredients Pancake Batter

1/2 cup cold water
1/2 cup milk
2 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 Tablespoons melted butter
1 tbsp caster sugat 

1tbsp cointreau or Grand marinier

Mix all the ingredients together and whizz in a food processor (I used my trusty stick blender) refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Make the crepes: Get a heavy bottomed non-stick frying pan really hot and melt some butter in it, wipe the majority of the butter away with a wodge of kitchen paper. Do this between each pancake. This recipe should make about 12 pancakes.

Spoon about half a ladle full (depends on how thin you like them, but for crepes, the thinner the better) of the mixture into the hot pan and swirl around quickly until evenly coated. Place back on the heat and cook for 2 or 3 minutes until golden brown, then flip and cook for another minute or so on the other side until golden brown.

You can make the crepes up to 4 or 5 hours in advance. Don't refrigerate them. Just stack them up on a plate on on top of the other and they should be fine.

When you're ready to serve the dessert mix the following ingredients in a bowl: (this will make enough sauce for 8 pancakes so you can increase everything a little if you want to use up all 12 of your crepes from the recipe above)

Ingredients Crepe Suzette Sauce

Zest of 1 orange
Juice of 3 oranges
1 tbsp cointreau/grand marnier
1 tbsp caster sugar


Transfer half of this into your frying pan and heat it up until warm and slightly bubbling. Ad 1 oz butter and swirl so that it all melts in. Place a crepe in this sauce, and quickly flip it so it is coated on both sides. Then fold it in half and half again. Leave the folded crepe in the pan while you heat up and fold another 3 crepes so you have 4 in the pan at once. 

Then quickly add in 2 tbsps cointreau and set in on fire with a match. Stand well back as it will Whoosh up and look very impressive. Bring it to the table and serve.

If you wanted to serve all 8 crepes at once you could probably fold them in 8ths...

We had this by itself and it was gorgeous, but if you wanted to be extra extra decadent you could serve it with ice-cream or Chantilly for an added French touch.