This is not the most brilliant photo of the cake, I admit, but I’m lucky I managed to snap it before the remaining cake was eaten. I came across the recipe on youtube, of all places, copied it quickly and ended up with a surprisingly lovely, moist and lemony cake. I had some nice Italian lemons – amazing what you can sometimes find in Lidl, I thought it would be a good practise before having beautiful lemons much more easily available later this year!

So I started with 180 g of caster sugar, into which I rubbed 2 heaped tsps of lemon zest, then 110 g of soft butter, KA took over here. 2 tbsps of veg oil. 2 whole eggs, one by one. 30 ml of lemon juice. 187 g of plain flour, 1 tsp of baking powder, 1/2 tsp of salt, all dry ingredients gently folded in, then 120 ml of milk, combined, not overmixed.

Loaf tin was waiting ready lined with paper, the cake baked for about 45 minutes in 160 degrees, till the baking stick came out clean.

Once slightly cooled it was glazed, 50 g of icing sugar and 30 ml of lemon juice, plus a little grated zest on top. Delicious, the next day even more so.

While browsing French supermarket online last night I really felt like some madeleines. The fastest way would be to bake them, I thought, found a decent recipe on BBC Good Food and this morning engaged The Child to shell the pistachios and grind them. 50 g of them. 100 g of unsalted butter was getting melted on the stove. 55 g of plain flour got added to the pistachios. 25 g of my candied orange peel. 100 g of caster sugar, some of it vanilla sugar. 1 whole egg and 1 egg white. Both egg whipped stiff, all other ingredients apart from butter gently combined, butter at the end. Moulds were waiting, nicely greased by The Child. Once filled, they went into the oven at 170 degrees for around 12-13 minutes. Most delicious when eaten still warm, straight from the moulds!

A couple of days ago I received my first order of fruit from crowdfarming.com, a website Ken recommended when he was here last time. Spanish farmers send their produce directly to the customers, lovely, fresh, organic fruit. I ordered a 10kg box of oranges and a 5kg box of avocados and mango. Avos are not ripe enough to try yet, mango is sensational, oranges could be sweeter, but I put some of them to a good use today. We needed a cake, so having quickly looked through mojewypieki.com I brought Izzie from school and got cracking.

I used 200 g of soft butter, which I creamed with 170 g of caster sugar. Slowly added 3 beaten eggs. Then, with the mixer off, 180 g of plain flour, 30 g of potato starch, 1,5 tsp of baking powder slowly added and combined with the spatula. 100 ml of freshly squeezed orange juice, an orange peel from one orange and some of my candied orange peel too. All this gently combined went into the oven for 40 minutes in 170 degrees.

A nice drizzle of orange juice/icing sugar kind of combo went on top and then a good sprinkle of desiccated coconut. I’m thinking might even serve it with some whipped cream later. What a lovely cake!

I recently splashed out the whole £7 on a book “Secrets of macaroons”. Some useful tips, do’s and don’t’s, but most importantly ideas for beautiful macaroons with lovely fillings.

As I’ve cleaned the freezer the other day, I came across some frozen raspberries, which I topped up with blackcurrants, roughly 60-40 and made some lovely macaroons today, perfect for The Bake Off this evening. The guy’s recipe for the shells does not differ much from what I normally do, so I stuck with the usual method and quantities, but the filling was made yesterday, only this morning reheated and topped up with more gelatine, it was too runny. So I cooked down the fruit, then pushed it through a fine sieve. Made a sugar syrup out of 170 g of caster sugar ( could have used less, I decided when tasting the finished jam) and 100 ml of water. Once the syrup reached 110 degrees I added the fruit and a juice of half a lemon. Brought the temperature back to 105 degrees, cooked it for a further few minutes and took it off the heat. Added 1,5 gelatine leaf and left to cool.

This morning it was still far too runny, so another 2 leaves went in and that made it perfect.

Next macaroons will be hazelnut ones, but the filling will be chocolate, a dark chocolate, methinks. 🙂

I dusted off my Paul Hollywood’s baking book. Last Tuesday on Bake Off they were excelling at making focaccias and bread sticks, I had a warm up today with these posh little French things. Having tasted a couple, 15 minutes after baking them I think they could have had more flavour in them, so this weekend I’ll try to make Hollywood’s ciabatta bread sticks with cheese and olives, there will be no problem with lack of flavour!

The dough was unbelievably tricky. Super runny, needed a heavy dusting of flour to come anywhere near handling it. I started off with 250 g of strong white bread flour, 5 g of salt, 10 g of fresh yeast, 200ml of tepid water, which kitchen aid worked into a mess barely resembling something one can handle. A drizzle of olive oil was also added towards the end and it was POURED into a well oiled, rectangular container for proving. When tipped out, it looked like that;

I then laboriously shaped it into something resembling sticks, sprinkled with salt, oregano and some of my truffle butter from Italy ( original recipe wanted truffle oil, I don’t buy any anymore as it goes off quickly and I tend it waste it). The shaped dough proved for another 30-40 minutes and went into the oven for about 11 minutes in 230 degrees. More truffle butter on top once baked.

They’re nice and crunchy, in our bread loving family they won’t last beyond this evening, next time however- olives and cheese ones. 🙂

Birthdays for this year are now over, one can start rebuilding the savings. 🙂

Paul’s cake 2 weeks ago was a chocolate number layered with marzipan, which I had to freeze half of, as it could not be managed by Florek himself, us girls are not mad on chocolate cakes. As a special nod to Tesla fan Florek, I cut out a Tesla logo out of marzipan, nice little effect while sitting on a shiny ganache.

For Izzie I decided to go with a rainbow cake idea. The recipe I used was mojewypieki.com, but the end product was slightly different. First of all I realized quite late that I had no blue food colouring and having baked 6 sponges I decided to leave one out- the cake was a monster and would not fit in the fridge. For two sponges I used 4 eggs, 170 g of sugar( less than in the original recipe), 100g of plain flour and 40 g of potato flour and food colouring. Once the sponges came out of the oven ( less than 20 minutes) I dropped them gently onto the floor in their tins from about 30cm, so that the sponges were nicely even and tight when cooled.

For the filling I used 500g of mascarpone and 500 ml of double cream, all whipped with icing sugar, then some lemon juice added and some yuzu juice, which I also used to drizzle onto the sponges while building the cake. I also used a large can of pineapple for the texture and folded it through the cream.

The end result is a surprisingly light and soft cake, big, but we gave some away and then enjoyed most of it yesterday with Mariusz and Ewa. Might be attempted again, but would have to be smaller. New set of Wilton food colouring was also purchased, so next time I’ll have all the colours I need.

Ever since I came across an organic coconut flour in Lidl, I thought I wanted to have a go at lime and coconut macaroons, but coconut was to be in the shells too. Today, after a work out with Choda in the morning I thought – today is the day! I bravely experimented with the recipe for the shells, instead of 150 g each of ground almonds and icing sugar, I did 100g of each and 100 g of coconut flour. Not a good move, it turned out. The paste was mega thick, even when added to the Italian meringue and blended for some extra time I knew there will be no joy from this experiment. Still, I decided to bake some of them. They have risen a little in the oven, but having tasted one of the first batch I dumped the whole lot in the bin, swore a lot, tidied up and after lunch I used up the left over egg yolks for creme brulees.

Then, while browsing the net looking for suggestions and ideas relating to coconut and lime macaroons, I came across some stunning photos of lime macaroons. Simple, hardly any colouring, white filling. I shut the laptop down and marched into the kitchen thinking-there will be some sodding macaroons this afternoon. I ditched the coconut, baked the shells the usual way( almost half of them cracked, damned things!) and then filled them with double cream whipped with icing sugar, lime zest and lots of lime juice. Some of the good looking ones I froze for Izzie’s birthday bash in 2 weeks time. I’m munching on them this evening thinking that they don’t need the coconut. But what if I had some Malibu?……

I’m amazed myself! Florek has ordered a jar of seriously indulgent and posh gianduja, 40% hazelnuts, so I thought it deserved something special to be put on. Paul Hollywood’s book came handy again, I started last night, as the dough must rest in the fridge overnight and this morning I shaped my brioche, proved again and baked.

It took 500g of strong white bread flour, 7 g of salt, 50g of caster sugar( I added some vanilla sugar, but I think the loaf could do with some more, myself), 10g instant yeast, 140 ml of warm milk, 5 whole eggs and as much as 250g of soft, unsalted butter. Butter was added slowly, bit by bit after about 6 minutes of initial mixing. Not sure if this job could be done without a standing mixer, the dough was seriously runny, needed to be scraped into a bowl for overnight resting. But this morning it came out of the bowl easily, butter nicely hardened. I made 2 loaves, one long tin and one round.

By the time Iz was taken to school and some morning chores were completed, the proving was done and I could bake the loaves in 190 degrees for about 25 minutes. The pastry stick was essential to check if they were baked, as they browned quickly.

The smell in the house was quite something. Brioche itself, like I said could be sweeter, but with gianduja it tastes great. Will try it toasted tomorrow morning.

I was running around Cheltenham the other day looking for these, hoping to sprinkle some crushed on the pasta. There were none in Sainsbury’s, Home Sense was closed, M&S tried hard, but no. Florek suggested Food Fanatics, our mega overpriced Winchcombe deli and sure enough, I obtained a small packet for an eye watering £7 (!!!).

I looked them up yesterday, thinking for £7 I can get tons of ground almonds. The first recipe that appealed to me was from a blog called Charlotte’s Lively Kitchen. I baked them an hour ago and I’m amazed how good they are. And simple too! Food Fanatics will be visited again in a couple of years time!

For 20 biscuits I used 2 egg whites, whipped well. In a bowl I had 190 g of ground almonds, 150 g of caster sugar, combined, some vanilla paste and to that I added the whipped whites plus a tbsp of Disaronno. Next time I’ll add more, can just about smell it, but certainly can’t taste any. I formed 20 little balls, rolled them in icing sugar first, then caster sugar and baked in 150 degrees for 17 minutes.

They really are lovely. Crunchy on the surface, soft inside. Good stuff!