I fancied a souffle this evening, had some strawberries in the fridge, which I quickly pureed with some sugar.It’s a shame that English strawberries most of the time don’t taste of much, I wish I could pop out to Mum’s garden in Poland and pick some real ones.

The recipe that seems to work every time, for 2 souffles  I whip one egg white with a tbp of caster sugar until stiff, then fold in a random amount of fruit, in this case berries, not too much, so that the mixture still held. In it goes into the buttered and sugared ramekins and then to the oven 200 degrees for 12 minutes. Light, fluffy, nice.

Last weekend I experienced a culinary disaster, worse even, as in presence of guests. I attempted a beautiful looking strawberry and marshmallow cheesecake, which fucking didn’t set, even overnight. 7 leaves of gelatine and it still poured out of the tin, making me want to throw it at the wall. Good thing, the guests were Zatrybki, who were polite enough not only not to take the piss, but eager to eat it from the bowls. Zatrybek even had seconds.

So this afternoon, in the middle of The Awesome Rota Week, I had a need to bake something, a dessert that worked and was delicious. I had some rhubarb, but didn’t fancy another crumble, so I adjusted Mum’s apple pie recipe and made it with rhubarb instead. If Sojka was reading it, she’d be annoyed, as I haven’t used any measurements. 🙂 I felt confident enough to put together a sweet, crumbly pastry with plain flour, some soft butter, a couple of egg yolks, some icing sugar and a bit of baking powder. And it worked. The rhubarb was cooked quickly with a drop of water, I threw a couple of apples, I thought it was not enough of rhubarb itself, cooked it with brown sugar and discarded the liquid though the sieve and followed Mum’s suggestion of making sure it will not be too runny in the oven- added a bit of breadcrumbs to it.

Baked in 180 degrees until golden, a bit more than 30 mins. Towards the end I put some flaked almonds on top and when cooled, finished with icing sugar. I’m very pleased with it, especially with the pastry, Florian says it could be sweeter. I disagree, rhubarb is rhubarb and must have some distinctive acidity  to it. It is now being enjoyed with a lovely cup of tea.

So simple, that it’s embarrassing. I had some blueberries in the fridge, some vanilla cream leftover from last night and some meringues. I crushed them into a bowl, added the berries, the cream, a good splash of lemon juice and mixed it. Then stuffed into the cooking rings, powdered with bitter cocoa and finished off with an almond- ran out of my favourite flaked almonds. Pretty and simple. And delicious.

I baked them this evening as a treat for doing a good job painting the front door. Found the recipe yesterday while flipping through the old “Good Food” mags.  As always, when using the recipe for the first time, I actually followed it…(!) 🙂

I whisked 2 large eggs with 110 g of caster sugar, added 70 g plain flour, a generous tsp of baking powder, 50 g of ground hazelnuts, a tbsp of honey and lots of cinnamon. Then the zest of one orange and 100 g of melted and cooled butter. The whole mixture went to the fridge for an hour and then the little delights got baked for about 15 minutes in 180 degrees. When done, I finished them off with icing sugar. They’re lovely and light, but the top is ever so slightly crunchy. Very, very nice indeed.