LEMON CURD LAYER CAKE

This cake is on the front cover of Delia Smith's book "Baking" and I remember very clearly the first time I tasted it, many years ago.  It's  a favourite of Nick's family and his youngest sister had made it for his mum's birthday tea.  

The recipe calls for home made lemon curd.  I have made lemon curd successfully in the past but on this occasion I used a jar of Bon Maman.  The curious thing is, Bon Maman is a French product but I have never found the lemon curd for sale anywhere in France, even though I do look for it in the confiture section of every supermarket.  Other lemon curds are available but are not quite as good so this time I brought some to France from the UK with me, which did seem a peculiar thing to do.  

The cake is made in two sandwich tins and each layer is then sliced into two.  This is not my favourite thing to do and gives me the collywobbles every time I even think about it.  What if I didn't make the cut evenly and the cake ended up all wonky?  Luckily on this occasion I had a sufficiently steady hand and it turned out straight, but I did need a bit of a lie down afterwards.  For that reason alone I have given it two stars in the faff factor.

It was easy to make, looked great on the tea table and tasted divine.  You can't really go wrong with a Delia Smith recipe and a cake with such a pedigree, Bon Maman product not withstanding, was bound to be a big hit.  It was lovely.

Ingredients

For the cake

zest of 1 lemon 

1 tblsp of lemon juice 

175g self raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

175g butter, at room temperature

175g golden caster sugar

3 eggs

For the filling

a jar of good quality lemon curd, shop bought or home made

For the icing

zest of 1 lemon, removed with a zester, not a grater, so as to get long, curly strips of peel

50g icing sugar

2-3 tsp lemon juice

Method

Preheat the oven to 170°C / 150° fan / gas mk3.  Grease two 20cm sandwich tins and line the base of each with baking paper.

Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl, add all the other cake ingredients and beat with an electric whisk until smooth and creamy.

Divide the mixture evenly between the two tins and level the tops.  Bake for around 35 minutes until done.  Remove to cool on a wire rack.

To make the icing, first remove the peel from the lemon for the decoration.

Sift the icing sugar into a bowl and add enough lemon juice to make a runny consistency.

When the cakes are completely cold, carefully slice each one in half using a sharp serrated knife.  Place one layer on a cake plate or stand and spread liberally with the lemon curd.

Repeat with another two layers then place the fourth layer on top.  Spread the icing on the top layer and decorate with the curly strips of lemon peel.

Cuts into 10-12 slices.

PRUNE AND CHOCOLATE MINI MUFFINS

For the afternoon tea in France a few weeks ago (see here) I made some mini muffins to a recipe by Delia Smith.  I spotted the recipe in one of her older cook books, simply called "Baking", when I was actually looking for something else - the lemon curd layer cake that's on the cover (and in the next post).

I wanted some little bite sized cakes to adorn the top layer of the cake stand and these sounded perfect for the job.  I haven't found the recipe anywhere on the internet but it does seem that chocolate, prune and Armagnac (or other alcohol) is a combo that Delia is quite fond of as she has other recipes such as for a cake, mini cakes and a chocolate log.  I can't fault it - they are a match made in heaven...well probably not quite that saintly, owing to the booze!

For the icing I used Lynn Hill's recipe for a chocolate glaze which you can see here although I only made a half quantity.  In the above picture it looks a bit dull because the cakes had been in the fridge for a while, but on the day of making it looked fabulous - dark and glossy.  I decorated my muffins with halved glacé cherries, chocolate raisins and chocolate vermicelli, but you can obviously use your imagination here.  

They were very rich, boozy and chocolatey!  The prunes gave a slightly fruity hint but I doubt anyone would have identified it as prune if they didn't already know.  (Prunes do have a bad press, owing to their 1950's health food connotations !)  Each one was a perfect little morsel.

I froze the leftover muffins to enjoy later and they were just as good.

Ingredients

For the muffins

50g Agen prunes, stoned

55ml Armagnac

150g plain flour

2 tblsp cocoa powder

1 dessertspoon baking powder  (a dessert spoon is about ⅔ of a tablespoon)

¼ tsp salt

1 large egg, beaten

40g golden caster sugar

120 ml milk

50g butter, melted and slightly cooled

50g plain chocolate drops

For the topping

100g dark chocolate, chopped

45g unsalted butter

glacé cherries, halved, chocolate raisins and chocolate vermicelli to decorate.

Method

Chop the prunes into small chunks and soak in the Armagnac overnight or for as long as you can.

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 180° fan / gas mk 6.  Put 24 mini muffin cases into a mini muffin tin.

Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt into a large bowl.

In another large bowl, mix together the beaten egg, sugar, milk and melted butter.

Sift the dry ingredients (again) into the wet mixture and fold them in quickly.  Then add the chocolate drops, prunes and Armagnace and mix briefly again.

Divide the mixture evenly between the muffin cases (about one heaped teaspoonful in each) and bake for 10 minutes.

Cool in the tin for 5 minutes before removing from the tin to cool completely on a wire rack.

To make the topping, melt the butter and chocolate together in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.  Stir frequently until smooth and allow to cool slightly before using.  Spread about a teaspoonful on the top of each muffin and decorate as you like.

Makes 24 mini muffins.

PINEAPPLE UPSIDE DOWN BUNDT CAKE

There has not been much baking going on chez nous the last few weeks.  My time has been devoted to crossing the channel there and back again in order to manage the care of my dad.  Sadly, a spell in our local hospital sent him spiraling into decline and he passed away on 2nd July.

One of the sad things about all this is that my brother missed out on his 60th birthday.  He was supposed to be spending it chez nous in France where we were intending to have a party.  Instead he spent it on his own, apart from visiting our dad in hospital.

For his 60th my brother had requested a pineapple upside down cake.  I make my cheat's version of an upside down cake which you can see here quite often and it's good.  However, the day before his Big Birthday, by which time all our plans had already gone awry,  I spotted this recipe on Marie Rayner's blog and thought to myself "now there's a thing" and vowed to make it at the first opportunity. 

The last few weeks have passed in a blur of activity and official rigmarole but by last weekend we had the chance to draw breath and the opportunity to finally celebrate my brother's 60th.  

This is a wonderful cake.  Easy to make and a delight to eat.  We enjoyed it following a bbq lunch in the glorious July sunshine.  

I didn't use my Nordic Ware Bundt tin as it's ginormous.  Instead I used a similar design, less sharp in profile of course, but it was perfect for the job.  Slices of tinned pineapple are cut in half and arranged in the bottom of the tin curved side down as in the picture above.  The finished cake then slipped out of the tin with barely a crumb left behind thanks to my usual cake release mixture (see here).  Magic !!

I didn't use all the liquid stated in the original ingredients because to me the mixture already looked the right consistency and even with the reduced amount it took quite a bit longer to cook.  It was plenty moist enough.  I have shown my amendments in the recipe below but please do refer to the original if you decide to make this fabulous cake.

Ingredients

For the topping

100g soft light brown sugar

60g butter, melted

8 tinned pineapple slices in juice, drained and reserve the juice

8 glacé cherries, rinsed

For the cake

350g plain flour

3 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

240g caster sugar

175g butter, softened (I used Sainsbury's Buttersoft spread)

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 medium eggs

75ml milk

75ml pineapple juice reserved from the can

Method

Grease a medium sized Bundt tin using your favourite method, making sure you reach into all the nooks and crannies.

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.

Mix together the brown sugar and butter for the topping and pour it evenly into the bottom of the tin.

Drain the pineapple slices and reserve the juice.  Cut each slice in half and place two halves rounded side down in the tin as shown in the picture above.  Place a rinsed glacé cherry in each of the spaces between.

Using a stand mixer or hand held beater, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.  Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding the vanilla extract.

Sift the flour, salt and baking powder together and blend one third into the mixture, alternating with the milk and pineapple juice.  I used only about half the quantity of liquid stated in the original recipe so add a little more to loosen the mixture if it seems too stiff.

Spoon the mixture into the tin carefully so as not to disturb the arrangement of the fruit.  Tap the tin on the worktop a few times to settle the mixture and dispel any air pockets.

Bake for 50-60 minutes until done.  This is about twenty minutes longer than stated in the original recipe so check after 40 just in case.

Leave the cooked cake to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

Cuts into at least 12 generous slices.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Woe betide that my brother's 60th birthday should forever be defined by a hospital visit on the day it was discovered that the staff had lost my poor dear father's dental plate, making it almost impossible for him to eat, talk properly, or even drink through a straw, therefore contributing to his rapid demise.  Let it be noted here that my respect for the medical and nursing professions are not what they were before they had him in their care for three weeks.  The level of neglect and indifference for someone who was elderly, frail, vulnerable, confused and completely dependent on them was callous to say the least.)

MIXED FRUIT CLAFOUTIS and some gadgets.

A clafoutis is one of my favourite desserts and the recipe I most often use for it (well I have only experimented with a couple of others) is this one from my friend Susan.

The traditional clafoutis would be cherry and another favourite of mine is apricot.  I looked in the fridge and found a few of each so I decided to put them together.  Why not!

It's important to have the right size of baking dish, not too shallow nor too deep. I find this 20cm Pyrex dish is just the right size for a single layer of fruit and the batter. 

The batter is simple to make and quite forgiving in terms of ingredients.  This time I had a tub of Elmlea single (which is largely buttermilk) and some whole milk.  I often add a sprinkling of flaked almonds which is not really traditional but we like it!

Another essential piece of kit is a cherry stoner.  Some say that the cherries should not be stoned because stones add flavour.  For me, spitting out cherry stones takes away some of the joy that is a clafoutis so I always stone them.  The problem is in finding a good cherry stoner that works.  I have had several that don’t, that have been a real pain to use and ended up in the bin.

So, having decided to make an apricot and cherry clafoutis, I went looking for my cherry stoner but the cupboard (drawer actually) was bare!  So I had to go and buy one.

First I headed to my absolute favourite shop, the hardware shop in the little town two miles away.  They have everything and what they don’t have they can get for you.  Sadly, the owner rummaged through boxes of ancient stock and was gutted to find that a cherry stoner was one of the few items they did not have!  

I couldn’t wait two days for their next trip to the wholesalers so I headed into the big town.  Actually to the retail park just on the outskirts of town, to Dunelm Mill.

On the way there I pondered how much our town has changed and how much I miss it.  It's now becoming a ghost town of charity shops and cheap clothing stores, the only decent shops left being M&S, Boots, Wilko and W H Smith’s.  I do wonder how much longer they will last, they must be hanging on by the skin of their teeth. 

Ours used to be a wonderful small market town. It had a BHS, Richard Shop, a small department store called Turner’s, with creaky floorboards and wrinkly carpet, a bigger furniture store, M&S*, Littlewoods, a myriad of independent shops and, best of all, the Co-op.  The Co-op was in a fabulous Tudor style timbered building, and you could buy everything there that you could possibly need, from beds to shoes and cosmetics. 

The household linens dept was wonderful, selling curtain fabrics, dress fabrics and a huge range of knitting wool.  The toy department was magnificent and best of all was the kitchenware department where you could buy absolutely everything.

When it closed some years ago I was so sad.  I knew a couple of the assistants, ladies whose whole careers had been working for the Co-op, and they said it was the internet that killed the shop.  People would go to the Co-op to choose something, ask the assistants for their advice based on years of product knowledge and experience, then go home and order it online.

Now these shoppers can no longer see what they’re actually ordering, they have to gamble that it’s something like the description on the website then send it back and wait for a refund.  Still, it keeps all those van drivers in a job and saves the online retailers from having to have too much capital in the bank, they use their customers money instead, hanging on to it for a couple of weeks before they send the refund!

Anyway, for £5 I bought the only cherry stoner that Dunelm had and, believe or not, it actually works -without smashing the cherry to bits or splattering juice everywhere!  The question is, would I have ordered it if I had seen it on the internet?  Probably not, as its bright pink colour makes it look more like a toy than a serious piece of kit!

Another gadget needed is a whisk.  Did you have one of these?  We did.  My mum used one for making pancake or Yorkshire pudding batter, and for whisking up Instant Whip.  It was one of the many things that vanished after she died.  Dad probably thought he would never use it so got rid of it, along with her cake tins and mixing bowl.  It never occurred to him that his daughter might like to have them.

I recently treated myself to one of these, having seen it recommended in a blog somewhere. It’s an Oxo Good Grips modern version of the old fashioned hand whisk and it’s brilliant for beating up batters, whisking up cream and anything for which the electric version seems a little over the top.  The business end comes apart and the bits go in the dishwasher too!

A clafoutis is nice served slightly warm or at room temperature, dusted with a little icing sugar if you like and with a dollop of cream or ice cream.  Or just plain, like this one.

(*I just discovered yesterday (27th June) that our M&S is moving from the town centre to a vacant building in a nearby retail park, one that was previously occupied by Debenhams.  This will happen in a few weeks' time.  It’s a good move for M&S as it’s a big, modern building and good news for shoppers as the parking is right outside and free. I will probably shop there more often as a result.  It’s very bad news for the town centre and the other shops as M&S is the only reason that many people go into town at all.)

Ingredients

50g plain flour

50g ground almonds

100g golden caster sugar

2 eggs

250 ml of liquid consisting cream, plain yoghurt and whole milk

a handful of apricots and cherries

a spoonful of flaked almonds

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Butter a suitable baking dish.

Use enough fruit to make a single layer in the bottom of the dish.  Remove the stones from the cherries and apricots and cut the apricots into quarters.

Put the flour, ground almonds, sugar, liquids and and eggs into a medium bowl and whisk until well combined.  Pour the mixture over the fruit and scatter flaked almonds over the top if you like.

Bake for 30-40 minutes until golden brown and firm.

Serve warm or at room temperature, dusted with icing sugar if you like and with a dollop of cream or ice cream.

Serves 6.

SCHOOL CAKE

I do remember having this as a pudding for school dinners - a sponge cake topped with jam and coconut, scooped in chunks from enormous baking trays.  It was served with pink custard usually once a week, maybe every two weeks at the most.  I loved it!  The dinners at my secondary school were excellent, especially the puddings! 

I first made it myself as part of my afternoon tea.  You can read about that here.  I used quite a large traybake tin which made a shallow sponge, easy to cut into tiny squares.

The squares looked the bees knees when topped with a fresh raspberry and tasted divine.  I took a box full of the leftovers to my knitting group where they were very popular.

I made the cake again for another event, cut into larger squares to be served as a dessert.  It was equally popular.  This recipe is definitely a keeper!  You can see the original here.

It's hard to resist such a dainty treat!

One thing I haven't done with it so far is to repeat the whole school experience and actually serve it with pink custard!  There's time yet!  

Ingredients

For the cake

225g baking spread

225g caster sugar

225g self raising flour

4 eggs

a splash of milk if needed

For the topping

a jar of raspberry jam

25g desiccated coconut

a small punnet of fresh raspberries (optional)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C / 160 fan / gas mk 4.  Grease and line the base of a traybake tin measuring roughly 30 x 18cm.

Put all the cake ingredients into a large bowl and whisk with an electric whisk until creamy and well combined.  Whisk in a splash of milk if it seems rather stiff.

Pour the mixture into the tin and spread out evenly, levelling the top.  Bake for 25-30 minutes until done.

Take the cake out of the oven.  Put about half of the jar of jam into a small bowl and stir to loosen it.  Spread this over the warm cake, making sure there are no bare patches.

Sprinkle the desiccated coconut over the jam in a thick dusting and leave to cool in the tin.

When cool mark the top into squares to be cut later or cut into squares of the required size straight away.

To decorate, cut a thin sliver from the flat end of each raspberry - this makes sure they stand pointy end up and don't wobble over.  Place one in the middle of each square and gently push it into the jam slightly so that it stays put.

Serves as many as you like, depending on the size of squares you want.

CHICKEN, LEEK AND POTATO SOUP (soup maker recipe)

 

One of the recipes I regularly cook for dinner, for ourselves or guests, is Rachel Allen's chicken open pot roast.  You can see it here and I first wrote about it here.

This time I had one portion left over.  1 chicken thigh, a few chunks of potato, a few slices of leek and a tablespoon, or thereabouts, of the delicious sauce.  So I decided to make a soup.  It was yummy!

It also shows how easy it can be to turn not very much in terms of leftovers into a tasty lunch for next to nothing.

Ingredients

1 cooked chicken thigh

a few chunks of cooked potato

a few slices of cooked leek

Any remaining sauce from the dish

1 medium potato

1 onion

1 large carrot

1 chicken stock pot

Method

Put the cooked veg into the soup maker.  Remove the meat from the bone of the chicken thigh, discard the skin, tear the meat into small pieces and add it to the veg.

Add the uncooked veg, peeled and cut into large chunks, enough to fill to the bottom line.

Add the stock pot and water to the top line.

Cook on smooth.

Makes four generous portions.

AFTERNOON TEA

With all the Queen's Jubilee celebrations for being on the throne for 70 years there has been much talk of street parties and afternoon teas.  In fact in our part of France friends held their own afternoon tea party to celebrate but unfortunately I was unable to attend.  I'm back home in the UK because my father is in hospital and his future care is again under debate.  

So instead I decided it was time I posted about the afternoon tea I held for a friend's birthday just a couple of months ago.  That was in France too.

I used my three tier glass cake stand which I acquired at a brocante a couple of years ago for just 2€.  It matches some dessert plates and a regular one tier cake stand that were also collected for next to nothing from brocantes over the years.  My best white tablecloth doesn't come out very often but with that and real cups and saucers the table looked the business, even if I say so myself! 

The bottom layer was a selection of sandwiches with the crusts cut off (of course!).  There were home made egg mayonnaise and rocket on brown bread, smoked salmon, cream cheese and cucumber on brown and smoked ham with tomato and cucumber on white.

You can see the recipe for egg mayonnaise here.  I have never seen cress for sale in France so opted for rocket instead.  It was a good substitute.

Being in France, the sliced bread available is not quite like in the UK.  Generally the texture is nice but it always seems to me to be slightly sweet.  We toyed with the idea of making our own bread but as it was only a few days after we had arrived and we were still dealing with all the usual problems of being away from the house for so long decided it was a step too far.

The middle layer was Victoria scones.  For such an important occasion I didn't trust myself to make ordinary scones, my success with those being variable.  The Victoria scones are easy to make from the Be-Ro book recipe and for me they work every time.  They looked cute on the stand although someone who saw the pictures on Facebook said they looked like fat rascals!  

I can't say I've ever eaten a fat rascal so wouldn't know but they sound like fun so will add them to my ever lengthening bucket list of thing to bake!  You can see the recipe for Victoria scones here or look it up in the Be-Ro book - it's in all the recent editions.

The top layer, the crowning glory, was of small cakes.  The raspberry sponges were cut from a traybake recipe for a jam and coconut sponge, otherwise known as "school cake" and which I have been hankering after making for some time!  I used a recipe on the Asda website which you can see here.  It is very quick and easy and the little squares looked very pretty when topped with fresh raspberries.  You can also see the recipe here.

The little chocolate cakes were to a recipe from one of the collection of slim volumes that Delia Smith put out many years ago called "Baking".  They are chocolate, prune and Armagnac mini muffins and I topped them with an excellent chocolate icing from Lynn Hill's website Traditional Home Baking.  You can see the icing recipe here and I added a few decorations including halved glacé cherries, halved chocolate covered raisins and choclate vermicelli.  They were delicious!

No afternoon tea would be complete without an actual slice of cake so for that I made a lemon layer cake filled with lemon curd to another Delia recipe from the same book.  You can see that here.  I didn't make my own lemon curd but used a Bon Maman jar which I brought over from the UK.  Bizarrely you can buy lemon curd in France but not the Bon Maman one!

I had never made this cake before but had eaten it several times as it's a family favourite of Nick's sisters.  It was easy to make and, of course, yummy!

Our birthday guests enjoyed the afternoon tea and so did we.  Being Americans they had only ever had afternoon tea a couple of times before when in London.  It was fun to make and fun to eat.  It does involve a lot of preparation and baking with all the different elements but it's well worth the effort.

You can see my lemon curd layer cake here.

The prune and chocolate mini muffins are here.

The little raspberry cakes are here.

The egg mayonnaise recipe is here.