When I saw the recipe last night, and the photo, what I loved was the soured cream topping. It looked stunning and made me curious if it tasted equally good. So I made it this afternoon. It does! My own personal touch were the alpine strawberries from the garden.

For the base I used 140 g of crushed digestive biscuits, which I threw into 85 g of melted butter and added a tsp of caster sugar. All mixed and pressed together in the round tin bedded with baking parchment. Baked for 10 minutes in gas mark 4.The oven upwarmed immediately to gas mark 9 for later!

The filling I made of 450g of creamy Philadelphia cheese, 2 flat tbsp of plain flour, 2 whole eggs, about 150 ml of soured cream,a tsp of vanilla paste,  a zest of 1 lemon and juice of half and 125 g of caster sugar. All smoothed onto the base, baked in gas mark 9 for only 10 minutes, then lowered back to 4 again for another 25 minutes.And cooled in the oven afterwards. When cooled, I made the topping of some about 120 ml of soured cream, good squeeze of lemon juice and all that sweetened to taste.

I’ll be modest- excellent!

I bought the madeleine baking form inspired by green tea madeleines at work, which we serve as part of  a rather miserable petit four. Can’t remember if I used it before, but this afternoon I made half and half, some of the mini muffins and some of the madeleines. I used the recipe which calls for honey and orange zest, but made them a bit more exciting by adding a zest of one lemon, lost of yuzu juice,lots being around 60 ml I would think and and replacing ground hazelnuts by ground almonds. I also chucked a tbsp of crushed pineapple for extra moisture. So the final list of ingredients;

2 eggs whipped with 110 g of caster sugar, then 50 g of ground almonds, the zest, yuzu juice, crushed pineapple, a tsp of baking powder, 70 g of plain flour and at the end, 100 g of melted and cooled butter. All chilled in the fridge for roughly an hour before baking( 15 minutes in 180 degrees).

Moist, citrusy, enjoyable.

I’m back! Lacked  inspiration these last couple of weeks, cooked simple stuff or things that were not worth blogging, but the cake today made me sing again. I found the recipe last night on Good Food’s website, looking for something to bake for the boys at work, for the lovely dinner they made for Moka, Florek and me on Saturday.  I’m making one for them tomorrow morning, this one will not last till sunset, I think!

Having upwarmed the oven to mark 4, I creamed 50 g of soft butter with same amount of brown sugar, spread it all over the bottom and a bit of sides of the round tin, then arranged the tinned pineapples and cherries on the bottom. For the rest of the cake I used 100 g of soft butter, same amount sugar and self raising flour, a tsp of baking powder, 2 eggs, some vanilla paste, plus extras. One of the reviews said that the cake was a bit too sweet, so I added some lemon zest and 2 good tbsp of crushed pineapple, which I got by mistake, luckily! All this nicely whipped together went on top of the pineapples and baked for 35 minutes.

It came out of the tin no problem, I tasted it 10 minutes afterwards, it’s moist and excellent. Will be made again.