More cupcakes............

My cake boxes arrived yesterday so today I managed to get some cakes made and now I'm hoping to give them out for free along with some business cards. Lots of people have told me not to give anything away for free but then again others have told me the opposite. I'm hoping my little bit of generosity will inspire others to be a bit generous in return and order lots of cakes. Obviously I hope they like them and buy them to devour them. The more the merrier.

So a few photos.

I made sticky toffee cupcakes with golden syrup frosting and marzipan strawberries ( i would usually put real strawberries on but i didnt have any!)

Lemon cupcakes with lemon frosting and crunchy lemon sprinkles.

Carrot cakes with vanilla frosting and marzipan carrots.

Vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting and sprinkles.

Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting and chocolate vermicelli.

Fingers crossed for a good response.

Hot hot hot.........

.......It's another lovely, warm day and what better to refresh oneself than with a delicious, cooling, ice cream. This is a really easy and delicious ice cream that is made without a custard base. It has just three ingredients and takes literally minutes to prepare and if you have an ice cream machine about 20 minutes to freeze.

Lemon curd Ice cream is beautifully creamy and delicately perfumed. You can make your own lemon curd if you wish or you can simply buy a jar from the supermarket.

This makes approximately 500 ml. 340g jar lemon curd, 284ml double cream juice and zest of 1 lemon.

Lightly whip the double cream then mix in the lemon curd and the zest and juice of the lemon.

Mix well and then churn in an ice cream maker. Freeze or devour.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy........

Lemon curd is one of my favourites, it is so easy to make I remember making it when I was about 7 years old. If you did fancy making your own there are a few methods to making it but I find this the quickest and best although you have to be careful not to cook the eggs and make it curdle.
You can make it as tart or sweet as you like, just mess about with the quantities of sugar and lemon juice.

Makes approximately 1 small jar
180ml fresh lemon juice
zest of 3 lemons
150g caster sugar
3 eggs
115g unsalted butter

In a saucepan, combine the lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, eggs, and butter. Heat the mix slowly, cooking it gently over a medium heat until it begins to thicken and the whisk leaves marks in the curd. Remove the curd from the heat and place it in a strerilized jar. Keep it in the fridge.

Too much greek yoghurt......

I bought a load of greek yoghurt yesterday, it was reduced and really cheap. I love it with lots of honey drizzled on top, but I had no honey and decided to make a cake. This is an experiment, a cross between a lemon polenta cake and an orange blossom and yoghurt cake.

The orange blossom cake is a pound like cake that is soaked in a sugar syrup, making it moist and delicious. The lemon polenta cake is pretty much the same kind of thing. Obviously the ingredients differ.

The orange blossom and yoghurt cake recipe I found calls for flour, sugar, eggs, oil, greek yoghurt, lemon zest and ground almonds in the mix. Having no almonds I decided to replace them with polenta. I followed the rest of the recipe and I'm glad to say that the cake turned out beautifully. Really moist and zingy with a delicate hint of cardamon.

This makes a 9inch cake

200g self-raising flour , sifted
100g polenta
150g caster sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder

2 large eggs, beaten with a fork
250g Greek yogurt
150ml sunflower oil
1 zested lemon

FOR THE ORANGE SYRUP
150ml water
175g caster sugar
1 orange juiced and 2 strips of zest
½ juiced lemon

5 crushed cardamom pods
1 tablespoon orange flower water
icing sugar and crème fraîche or Greek yoghurt, to serve

Heat the oven to 180ªC/fan 160°C/gas 4.

Butter or oil a 9 inch spring-form tin.

Put all the dry ingredients for the cake in a bowl with a good pinch of salt.

Put all the rest of the ingredients in and stir with a wooden spoon, gradually incorporating the wet ingredients.

Spoon into the tin and bake for 40 minutes. A skewer pushed into the middle of the cake should come out clean, if not give it a little longer.

Meanwhile make the syrup. Put the water, sugar, rind, citrus juices and cardamom into a saucepan. Heat gently, stirring to help the sugar dissolve.

Cool then strain and add the orange flower water.

Leave the cooked cake for 5 minutes to cool in the tin, then pierce all over with a skewer and, while the cake is still warm, slowly pour over the syrup. Leave to soak in.

Serve with crème fraîche, yoghurt or cream.

This is a really quick and easy cake to make. You can just use lemon or orange rather than both if you prefer.

Strawberries......not just at Wimbledon......

Today at the market they were selling off strawberries for 50p a punnet!
A little bit of information now:
Did you know the British strawberry season runs from late May to early September. When buying strawberries you should look for plump, shiny, tender berries, with a good, bright colour and a sweet aroma, preferably with their leafy green calyx and stalk still attached. If you're buying a punnet, check that the underside isn't stained - that means the lower level of berries has been crushed. Also, large strawberries tend to have a higher water content, so are less tasty and sweet, so go for small to medium-sized ones.

A great and different dessert using strawberries is this. It is a fruity version of Tiramisù using strawberries. It is a lovely summery pudding and looks and tastes stunning. Unlike original Tiramisù this doesn’t contain the coffee pick me up but the zingy, freshness of the strawberries will waken up your tastebuds. Strawberries are used throughout the pudding to make a coulis which is then used between the layers of biscuits.
Small pieces of strawberry are scattered through the layers of the dessert and the biscuits are soaked in some of the strawberry coulis syrup, mixed with strawberry liqueur. The whole thing is topped off with slices of juicy red strawberries. A strawberry and cream feast. This works great with raspberries or a mixture of berries too.

This will serve 8-10 people
50 Savoiardi or sponge finger biscuits about 300g
250g mascarpone
150ml double cream
4 egg yolks
200g sugar
400g fresh strawberries
200ml strawberry liqueur

Make the strawberry coulis by placing a third of the strawberries in a pan with 200ml water and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Heat gently for 5-10 minutes. Remove from the heat and drain half of the syrup into a bowl. Whiz the strawberries and the rest of the syrup in a blender.
Add the strawberry liqueur to the juice you reserved and mix well then place to one side.
Make the cream by beating the egg yolks with the sugar until pale and creamy. Add the mascarpone and whisk in. In a separate bowl whisk the cream to soft peaks and then fold into the mascarpone cream.
Take a square 8 or 9 inch dish and spoon a little of the mascarpone cream into the bottom and spread it around. Take the Savoiardi biscuits and dunk them into the liqueur mix for a few seconds and then lay them into the dish. Do this until you have a complete layer at the bottom of the dish.
Pour over some of the mascarpone cream and spread it around covering the biscuits. Take some of the coulis and spoon it over the cream then take a few of the whole strawberries and cut then into slices and scatter around.
Do another layer of the Savoiardi dipping them into the liqueur and laying them out. Cover the biscuits with the remaining mascarpone cream and the strawberry coulis. Cut the remaining strawberries into slices and place them all over the top of the tiramisù.
Leave the Tiramisù to rest in the fridge for at least 5-6 hours or even better overnight, before serving.

To serve cut into squares and dust with a little icing sugar.
　

Sticky toffee fig pudding to bring a smile to your lips.....

.......and a few inches to your hips.


So today I made some sticky toffee puddings for a catering event next week. They keep really well and freeze great too.


I have a number of recipes which all work really well but of recent I have been swapping the usual dried dates for dried figs and the outcome is just as good if not better.
This will bring your home alive with wonderful caramel aromas. It is really easy to make and even easier to eat. Serve with toffee sauce and cream or ice cream, depending on your inclination.







So this recipe makes enough for 6-8 people. You can make it in a normal cake tin or like me in individual moulds.



You will need
150g dried chopped figs, 250ml water, 2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda, 75g unsalted butter, 125g light muscovado sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 200g plain flour, 2 eggs and 1 tablespoon golden syrup.



Preheat the oven to gas mark 5, 190°C, 375°F.
Butter your tin or moulds.
Place the figs in a pan with the water and bring gently to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes.
Remove them from the heat and add the bicarbonate.
Cream the butter and the sugar then add the eggs, golden syrup and the vanilla. Mixing well.
Add the flour and the fig mixture, mixing well then pour into the prepared moulds and bake for 25-30 minutes.


Meanwhile make the sauce by heating 100g muscovado sugar, 100g unsalted butter and 150ml double cream in a saucepan until all the sugar has dissolved and the toffee sauce has thickened slightly.


Serve the cake with lots of sauce and plenty of cream, custard or ice cream.

You can simply replace the figs with dates if you prefer the original or try apricots for a different take on it.

World Cup woes.......

Italy got knocked out of the World Cup today. I have to keep telling myself it's only football but I am a proud and patriotic Italian, so I am suitably narked off. (understatement of the century!)

Anyway if we had been given the two goals we should have had (except for a blind linesman) then we would have gone through. Although I was screaming at the tv and shouting abuse at all the players, mainly the Italians, Lippi, the slovakian,timewaster of a goalie and the horrible slovakian team, I have to admit that in the last 20 minutes the Azzurri bucked up their ideas and played with real passion. I wish they had done that from the start. Moving swiftly on before I burst into a fit of passionate, Italian tears, I dedicate the following recipe to the fallen champions. Tis not a cake, alas, but a stiff, alcoholic drink, Italian and world famous.

Limoncello, sour like the taste left in my mouth from this World Cup but refreshing like the memories of Grosso scoring the winning penalty in 2006.

I am lucky enough to have a cousin who owns her own lemon groves along the Amalfi coastline, where this fruit grows in profusion. We always have plenty of limoncello to go round and it works wonderfully both as an aperitive or a digestive.
It is best served ice cold and can be kept in the freezer. Like many liqueurs it can be used in a number of desserts, cakes and cocktails.
Best made with large, unwaxed lemons (preferably from Italy).
We use 96% proof alcohol but if you cannot find it use a very good, strong vodka.

This makes approximately 1 litre.
1 litre alcohol, 1kg caster sugar, 10 lemons, 1 litre water.

Wash and dry the lemons, peel the zest off them and place them in a large jar with the alcohol. Cover the jar, keeping it airtight and leave the peel to macerate for 20 days.
After 20 days make the syrup by heating the sugar in the water until dissolved. Let the syrup cool and then add the alcohol mixture.
Leave this mix for 24 hours then strain the limoncello and place it in a bottle.
Leave the liqueur a further week and then store in the fridge or freezer and enjoy when desired.

As with most liqueurs the longer you leave them to macerate and infuse the stronger and more depth of flavour they will have.

SALUTE

Crap day at work, but....

I finally have my business cards. I hope to be giving them out in the coming days and maybe, just maybe my dream will start to come true. After another stressful day at work I am beginning to think about handing my notice in, sooner rather than later. The electricity tripped at least 10 times today. The electrician said that's because you shouldn't have everything on at the same time. What a prat, he obviously hasn't worked in a professional kitchen and he obviously can't be bothered coming back in to fix his mistake, which it is. I'm sick of telling the people in charge about equipment I need and it going in one ear and out the other. It was sweltering in the kitchen and luckily I went in early and managed to get some bits out of the way before everybody else got in the way. Anyway I could go on all night but I'm not going to because Im, a: tired and b: sure there is no one reading this and giving a damn anyway. I feel really bad about taking it out on my mum when I got in, even if she did give my phone number out to some MFC of a woman from some shitty call centre who wont stop ringing. Breathe and relax... So what wonderful recipe can I tell you about today. Well seeing as it's hot here and I spoke about ice cream yesterday this is a kind of hybrid ice cream and cake rolled in to one. It's a walnut and toffee, ice cream cake. This cake combines a multitude of delicious ingredients and is easy to make. There is no cooking involved and once you've made it I'm sure you 'll be back for more. You can make 1 individual cake or 8 small ones with the following quantities: 300g digestive biscuits crushed, 100g amaretti biscuits crushed, 100g butter melted, 1 litre vanilla ice cream, 150g walnut halves, 300g thick toffee sauce. Firstly you need to grease a loose based cake tin or tartlet cases with a little vegetable oil. Mix the crushed biscuits with the butter and smooth them out in the tin or tins, pressing down well. Pop the tin in the fridge for 20 minutes to harden up. After 20 minutes spread the ice cream on top of the biscuit base and freeze for 30 minutes. Take the cake out of the freezer and pour over the toffee sauce and then sprinkle over the walnuts. Freeze until hard. To serve leave the cake at room temperature for a few minutes then cut and enjoy.

Dulche de leche is great for the topping or even better make your own. It's really easy equal quantities of brown sugar, double cream and butter heated together and left to thicken.