Salted Caramel Apple Cake

Oh my… this cake was a bit of a triumph.

Not too sweet, spiced just like an apple pie, and sporting a glossy, luscious salted caramel buttercream.  This cake got two thumbs up from everyone at the inlaws BBQ, especially Dave as I baked it with him in mind as a welcome home cake.

Bara Brith

Bara Brith might seem like an autumn or winter sort of bake, but for me it is good at any time of year when you need something comforting and homely.  That makes it perfect for the rain we're being plagued with at the moment.  It really feels like autumn; I've spent my evenings huddled under a blanket with a book and a chai latte for company. Comfort food is absolutely required, diet be damned!

There are two schools of thought on Bara Brith: a tea loaf or a yeasted bread.  Your allegiance seems to be based on the very first bara brith you ever tasted. My Bara Brith falls into the tea loaf camp as I can't recall ever having a bready version.  It seems to me that it would be like Starbucks fruit toast, which is very nice, but not my idea of a Bara Brith!  Apologies to those who love the bread-style version!  The tea loaf version, aside from tasting gorgeous, has the advantage of not requiring kneading and can all be mixed in the same bowl leaving you hardly any washing up!  The recipe is very child-friendly,too, if your little one(s) likes to join you in the kitchen.  I made Lucas do 90% of the work.  He's beginning to mutter about child labour...

I should also add that Bara Brith travels very well.  I took a huge one to Cornwall last year when we went on holiday--very good toasted towards the end of the loaf--and I can imagine tucking into thick slices around the campfire.  (Should camping be your thing.)

Bara Brith, my way

450g mixed dried fruit
300ml strong black tea
175g brown sugar
1 tablespoon golden syrup
zest and juice of one orange
1 large egg, beaten
1 1/4 teaspoon mixed spice
450g self-raising flour

To top: crushed sugar cubes, pearl sugar or jam sugar

The night before: put the dried fruit in a large bowl, pour over the tea and give it a good stir. Cover and leave overnight to let the fruit plump up.

Next day: preheat the oven to 140C fan oven / 160C conventional.  Line a 2lb loaf tin with baking parchment.

Add the sugar, syrup, zest and juice to the mixing bowl.  Mix well. If your brown sugar was lumpy let the mixture sit for a few minutes to allow the sugar to dissolve.  Beat in the egg.  Finally sift the flour and mixed spice together into the fruit mixture. Beat together.

Spoon into the prepared tin. Give the tin a few bangs on the worktop to remove any air pockets and level the top.  Sprinkle generously with the sugar topping.

Bake for 1 3/4 hours, checking after 1 1/2 hours. It's done when a skewer inserted into the centre of the loaf comes out clean.

Leave to cool completely in the tin.

...And They Lived Happily Ever After

Last week I was honoured (and very surprised) to be asked to bake a wedding cake.  My sister-in-law asked me to make a cake for her friends who were getting married this week as she'd just discovered they didn't have one.  Awww, how lovely is she?

Now, I've made big cakes, small cakes, ridiculously layered cakes--really want to make another Dobos Torta--a 3D raccoon, and a couple of stacked cakes, but never a wedding cake.  So baking this wedding cake was not something I undertook lightly.  There are so many emotions tied up within a wedding cake, you've got to get it right.  I was a nervous wreck by the time I was done.

I sketched out a few ideas and settled on a simple but hopefully pretty design.  (Loving playing with my chalkboard; I get to feel all artistic.  Luckily for everyone, I bake better than I draw.)  As I'm currently in love with peonies and the wedding colours were to be white and baby pink, I thought I'd have a go at making a simplified one to grace the top tier.

I'd love to say that this cake went smoothly, but as with all things that you care rather too much about, nerves played their part.  My fingers were less than nimble at times and the cake isn't the flawless beauty I'd imagined.  But what I think doesn't matter: Emily and AJ were thrilled with their cake and as luck would have it, the flower I created looked exactly like one of the flowers adorning Emily's dress!  (I'm going to ride the wave of these burgeoning psychic powers and buy a lottery ticket.)

Congratulations Emily and AJ, I hope you have many happy years together!

And should anyone ever be crazy enough to take on a wedding cake, here are my top tips...

Top tips

Make a timetable.  Work backwards from when the cake needs to be ready and add an hour on to each stage of the cake to give yourself a nice contingency cushion. Just in case things go wrong.  (I had sufficient time left to bake another tier of the cake if necessary.)

Use a tried and tested recipe.  I used Lindy Smith's madeira cake recipe which I've been using successfully for the last three years.  (I go the whole hog and wrap the tin up in newspaper as well as having a tin of water on the floor of the oven.  Works a treat.)

Use a cake leveller.  And use it properly. Level each tier to the same height, then as you cut the cake into layers cut each tier before changing the height on the leveller again. This will make your cake look very professional when cut!

Don't use new-to-you items.  I used a different brand of fondant icing, in the name of saving money, and regretted it.  It changed colour overnight and then my ribbon didn't match and it was all very traumatic.

Catch of the day!

Meet Bob, the bass.

I made Bob--I have no idea why I named a fish--for my father-in-law's combined birthday and retirement in July.  After years of hard graft he's looking forward to spending his days fishing, so I thought I'd start him off with an easy catch!

This is a bit of a make-ahead cake.  The bulrushes need to be made a few days ahead so that they can dry out and (fingers crossed) stick to the skewers.  You can also make the fish head in advance, too.

I'm afraid that I didn't take many pictures of the cake process--sticky hands and cameras aren't a good combination--but for the rushes I mixed 50:50 flower paste and fondant and coloured about half dark brown and the rest holly green.  Getting the fondant to stick to the skewers for the bulrushes was a bit of a mission: I tried dampening the skewers by soaking them, brushing with sugar glue, and (of all things) some jam.  I wedged the skewers into a polystyrene box insert that was lying around so that they could dry without resting on a flat surface and then draped the leaves over the rest of the skewers to give them the right shape.  Once dried out the bulrush heads stayed in place (thank God) and the extra leaves I made were easy to stick straight into the cake for a nice pond scene.

The fish head was moulded from rice krispy treats, covered in fondant, and then I spent an hour smoothing the surface and adding details.  Despite having a box of fancy tools in the cupboard, sometimes you can't beat a cocktail stick and your fingers for fiddly work!  This tutorial was very helpful, too.  I painted it the next day with food colourings mixed with lustre dusts and vodka.  A dab of piping gel made the eye nice and glossy for that freshly caught look.  (This was my first time using piping gel and it is weird but very wonderful stuff--it made fantastic ripples on top of the cake as well as a shiny glaze for the pebbles. Totes amaze!)

For the cake itself I turned to my new favourite recipe: Lindy Smith's Madeira cake.  It makes a fabulously deep cake with a lovely flat top, so there's hardly any waste.  It's really tasty, too, which is the main thing!  It's easily split into three layers and looks really impressive when cut.

Bob went down a storm with my father-in-law.  He couldn't bear to cut into Bob so, like a real fish, he's been stashed away in the freezer.  We did eat the rest of the cake, though!!

Great Bloggers Bake Off: Baked Alaska edition

Lemon & Lime Baked Alaska

After "Bingate" I couldn't resist making a Baked Alaska for the Great Bloggers Bake Off.  I used to make one every year for Dave's birthday but once I discovered the wonderful world of cake decorating, they fell by the wayside.  Which is a shame, because a Baked Alaska done right is a cracking dessert!  (Not at all 'nasty'  or 'embarrassingly retro' as Ruby Tandoh said in The Guardian!!)

With the benefit of hindsight, I bet Iain wishes that he'd saved the very centre of the ice-cream and a bit of sponge...he could have done a mini Alaska for them to taste.  Mind you, both Mary and Paul seemed highly unsympathetic to his ice-cream being left out.  Last year, after Custardgate, they tossed out the baker who'd used the other competitor's custard.  At any rate, now that Diana's had to drop out due to ill health--losing your sense of smell and taste is just horrible, I hope it comes back in time--I am willing to bet that Iain will be back in the tent tomorrow night to make up numbers...

Enough of Bingate, and back to my own baking!  I had intended to just do a small one, since it was just the three of us, but it turns out that I don't do small.  As I poured ice-cream mix into the lined bowl I did wonder if it was perhaps a bit big, but carried on regardless.  Dave and Lucas ended up providing a Baked Alaska Home Delivery service to the family!!  Next time I make one, I'll throw a Baked Alaska party...

Dave asked for a citrus ice-cream, so I obliged with Lemon and Lime and I also added a thin layer of mandarin orange slices underneath for a Citrus Extravaganza.  If you're baking for adults only, then you could soak the sponge with Cointreau or Grand Marnier rather than fruit juice.  The slight bitterness of the liqueur would nicely offset the intense sweetness of the meringue and ice-cream.

We don't have a blowtorch at home--and I call myself a foodie--as I get a bit twitchy about something full of fuel hanging around in the drawer, so I made a French meringue and shoved it into the oven.  I thought about sitting on the kitchen floor Bake Off style and talking nervously to camera, but leaning on the counter drinking a cocktail seemed much more fun.

Eight minutes later I pulled a beautifully browned Baked Alaska out of the oven.  The meringue was gorgeously crispy on the outside and just-cooked inside so that it was marshmallow-like in texture.  It did its job really well, as the ice-cream was only just starting to melt on the outside.  Because I didn't have enough meringue to completely cover the cake layer, the bare edges got all toasty which turned out to be awesome.  Such a great textural contrast and toasted sponge tastes so, so good.

My only regret is that I didn't put together the Baked Alaska earlier in the day.  The dark evenings made photographing it a nightmare!  (Maybe I should have dyed the ice-cream a bright green for contrast?)

Lucas, who had never eaten Baked Alaska before, loved it.  For Dave and I it was a nice citrusy trip down memory lane.  I'm pondering doing it again, but using little pudding basins to give individual Baked Alaskas that could happily live in the freezer for a few weeks as emergency "I Need Sugar!" desserts.

If the trials and tribulations of the GBBO contestants have put you off making your own Baked Alaska, think again!  You can do so much in advance, and you absolutely don't have to make your own sponge or ice-cream--Mary Berry's recipe uses a bought sponge and jam--if you don't want to.  Give it a go!

Lemon and lime no-churn ice-cream

2 lemons
2 limes
175g icing sugar
568ml tub double cream

Zest and juice the fruit into a large bowl (your mixer bowl is ideal for this), making sure to remove all the pips!  Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.  Add the cream and whisk on a medium speed until soft peaks form.

Line a pyrex or pudding bowl with a couple of layers of clingfilm and carefully fill it to the top with the ice-cream mixture.  Press a layer of clingfilm over the top and seal.  Freeze until hard.  This took about six hours.  Overnight (or longer) is fine.

Sponge cake

110g caster sugar
110g unsalted butter, room temperature
110g self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon milk

Preheat oven to 180C (160C fan oven).  Grease a loose-bottomed 8" sandwich tin with butter.  Set aside.

Place all ingredients, except for the milk, into your food processor.  Blend until a cake batter forms.  Slowly pour in the milk, pulsing the mixture.

Scrape all the cake batter into the prepared tin. Level the surface.  Bake for about 25 minutes until the top springs back when pressed.

Cool in the tin, on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then turn the cake out of the tin and leave to cool completely.

To finish

3 large egg whites
175g caster sugar
Fruit of your choice, sliced as necessary (optional)
Liqueur to sprinkle the sponge base with (optional)

Preheat the oven to 200C.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place the sponge layer on top.

In a mixing bowl whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form.  Slowly add the sugar to the egg whites and keep whisking until glossy and the peaks are very stiff.

Sprinkle the sponge with fruit juice or liqueur and arrange a thin layer of fruit on top of the sponge.  I used tinned mandarin oranges and kept the layer as thin as possible.  Remove the ice-cream from the bowl--it should come out easily if you lined it with clingfilm--and place on top of the fruit.  Make sure you remove all the clingfilm!

Working quickly cover the ice-cream with the meringue, bringing it down to the cake and make sure there are no gaps.  The meringue insulates the ice-cream, so gappage means melty ice-cream!

Bake for 8-10 minutes, slide onto a serving plate and serve immediately in thick slices!

Great Bloggers Bake Off: Swiss Roll edition

I painted that plate!

I've been a massive fan of the Great British Bake Off since the very first episode aired, but it's never dawned upon me that I could bake along with the contestants.  Bit slow sometimes, me.  A couple of days ago I saw an absolutely delicious Mary Berry Cherry Cake from Clare on my Bloglovin' feed and then Jenny mentioned on Twitter that she was baking a Swiss roll, a la Bake Off.  I just had to join in!

I took the opportunity to try something I've been meaning to for absolutely ages, baking a pattern into the cake.  I've seen DIYs and tutorials for this all over Pinterest but I've never had an occasion to try it.

Turns out, it's super-easy.  All you need is a steady (ish) hand for piping and you can turn out something that looks rather special with ease.  Drawing a template with a thick marker and sliding it under the parchment would be a good idea if you're a bit nervous about free-handing.  It won't take much longer than making your usual Swiss roll recipe, honest!

I'm not sure what Mary and Paul would have thought of my efforts, though.  I used a little too much food colouring and alas, not only did the pink turn out a little on the garish side, but there was a slightly bitter taste which I'm putting down to chucking too much colouring in.  My advice?  One tiny dab of colouring at a time!!  I think Paul might have fixed me with his icy blue eyes and said, "Style over substance."  However Lucas described it as delicious, and he's my favourite critic, so that's all right.

Can't wait to see what the bakers get up to in Wednesday's episode!

Vanilla and Strawberry Swiss Roll

For the decorative paste

30g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 large egg white
30g caster sugar
40g plain flour
a drop of vanilla extract (optional)
food colouring gel of your choice

For the cake

4 large eggs
100g caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla paste
100g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
caster sugar for dusting

For the filling

100g unsalted butter, softened
150g icing sugar, sifted
40g strawberry and vanilla jam (or just strawberry jam and add a drop of vanilla extract)

Grease and line a Swiss roll tin (23x30cm) and brush the parchment with melted butter.

Make the paste: beat the egg white into the melted butter followed by the sugar and flour.  Add food colouring, carefully, as too much will make the paste taste slightly bitter.  This will probably make more than you need, but it's hard to divide since it only uses a single egg white!  Also, having a bit of excess is handy if you want to do a multi-colour pattern...

Put the paste into a piping bag with a fine, round nozzle, or simply snip the end off the bag when you want to start piping..  If it's a hot day it might seem a bit too soft, so pop it in the fridge for about 10 minutes.

Pipe your design onto the prepared tin.  If you make a mistake, you can scrape it off the parchment and pop the paste back into the piping bag.  Once you're happy with it, put the tin in the freezer while you make the cake batter.

Preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan).

Let the cake cool for two minutes before sliding it onto a wire rack, keep the parchment on.  Sprinkle the surface of the cooked cake lightly with caster sugar to prevent sticking.  Starting from a short end, fold in the baking parchment and start rolling the cake up.  You might want to protect your hands with a tea towel as the cake is hot!  Allow to cool on a wire rack for about an hour.

Make the buttercream: in a mixer, beat the butter until it pales.  Add the icing sugar and beat in slowly--covering with a clean tea towel is advisable--then add the jam.  Keep beating until fluffy.

Carefully unroll the cake and spread the buttercream in an even layer.  Gently peel the parchment away from the cake and roll it up tightly using the parchment to help roll it all together.  Chill for about half an hour before serving to set the buttercream slightly.

Best eaten on the day of baking.

Strawberry and vanilla jam

After our strawberry picking adventures at Chosen Hill Farm a few weeks ago, all I could think about as we drove home, the scent of strawberries thick and heady in the car, was making jam.  Those berries smelled amazing, I just wanted to bottle the smell and save it forever.  Well, for as long as jar of jam ever lasts!

Strawberry jam is a classic for very good reason--it's such a pure and bright flavour--but I wanted to make it extra special by adding some vanilla.  I'm sure that I'm not the first person to add vanilla to strawberry jam, after all strawberries taste amazing with Chantilly cream, but I felt like I'd made some alchemical discovery when I tasted the finished jam!  The vanilla really kicks up the strawberry flavour.

I'm not ashamed to say that we all stood around the cooled pan, armed with spoons, and scraped the remnants from the pan and ladle.  It was amazing, even better than the berries themselves!

The jam is absolutely delicious simply spread on hot buttered toast and sublime as part of a cream tea with .  If a jar survives into autumn or winter, then I reckon it would taste fantastic dolloped on top of a bowl of rice pudding!  Perhaps rippling it into ice-cream would be fun, or you know...you could just eat it from the jar with a spoon.

I've always been quite keen on making the occasional jar of jam and curd, but now I can easily see how people wind up with cupboards upon cupboards full of jam.  I'm saving every jam jar and planning to go blackberrying very soon, as well as making some chutney.  I'm going to turn into a crazy jam lady, aren't I?

Strawberry and vanilla jam

(Adapted ever-so-slightly from Mary Berry's excellent recipe.)
Makes 4 jars of jam.

1kg strawberries, rinsed, dabbed dry, and hulled
juice of one lemon
1kg jam sugar
3/4 teaspoon vanilla bean paste

First things first, click through and watch the video that accompanies Mary Berry's recipe.  Making jam is such a visual thing, it's hard to describe in words and the video really helps!

Put a couple of saucers into the freezer to chill.  Wash and sterilise jam jars.

If the strawberries are large, cut them in half. The general rule of thumb is that the strawberries should be small enough to fit on top of a scone in the finished jam.  Put the strawberries and lemon juice into a large pan. Heat for a few minutes to soften, add the vanilla paste and sugar and stir over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved.

Once the sugar has dissolved and the liquid is clear, boil steadily for about four minutes, or until at setting point. The jam should cook at a fast, rolling boil that you can't stir down.

To test if the jam is at setting point, spoon a little onto a cold plate, leave for a minute and then push the jam with your finger. If the jam crinkles and separates without flooding back, setting point has been reached.

Set aside to cool for ten minutes.  (This ensures that the strawberries will stay evenly suspended in the jam, rather than all bobbing to the top in the jar.)  Spoon into sterilised jars, label and seal with wax paper and a lid.  Leave to cool completely.

Summer Fruits Frozen Yoghurt

Sometimes you just have to treat yourself, don't you?

Yesterday I treated myself to a very sexy ice cream maker; it's sleek, shiny and best of all...self-freezing!  I've been lusting after one of these beauties for at least ten years, waiting patiently (and then not-so patiently) for the somewhat astronomical price to fall so that I could feast upon ice-cream.

My luck changed on Saturday when I visited the Nisbets stand at the Foodies Festival in town.  (I had absolutely no idea that Nisbets was open to the public--I'd always thought it was trade-only--so that was a nice surprise.)  I flicked through their catalogue and spotted the Buffalo ice cream maker at a rather nice price, and the folks running the stand mentioned that it was actually on special offer at the moment.  Well.  My heart went pitter-patter.  I got even more excited when I discovered a 10% off voucher tucked into my catalogue!

One quick trip to the Nisbets shop in Avonmouth and my dreams finally came true.  I wonder how many people can say that their dreams have come true in Avonmouth of all places?

I was delighted to discover that the Buffalo had an incredibly simple design.  Just put the bowl and paddle in the machine--there isn't a wrong way to do this, bonus!--pour in well-chilled ingredients and put the lid on.  Then all you have to do is set the timer and watch the temperature plummet.  The Buffalo went from 24C to -24C in less than five minutes and was pretty quiet when churning, too.

I put it to the test with a 'kitchen sink' sort of frozen yoghurt.  There were some blackcurrants leftover from a trip to a PYO farm last week, half a punnet of blueberries and some cherries in the freezer.  My eyes lit on a tub of Greek yoghurt  at the back of the fridge and that was that...Summer Fruits frozen yoghurt was born.

The first thing Lucas said to me when I picked him up from school was, "Did you make ice cream, Mummy?"  He was thrilled when I told him that I did!  Unfortunately I tested his patience while I fussed over my photo set-up and took a million photos before finally fixing him a cone.

He was happy.  My poor deprived child...fancy having to wait a whole five minutes for frozen yoghurt?!

So far I'm really pleased with my shiny new ice cream machine.  The texture of the frozen yoghurt was silky smooth and the yoghurt was firm enough to scoop when I took it out of the machine, so if you had some sort of ice cream emergency you could have a bowl of freshly-churned ice cream ready in just over half an hour.  How awesome is that?

Next up is salted caramel ice cream (followed by some vigorous exercise).  I can't wait!!

Summer Fruits Frozen Yoghurt

400g mixed summer fruit (I used about 200g blackcurrants and roughly equal amounts of blueberries and cherries)
60g caster sugar

400g full-fat Greek yoghurt
125g caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
pinch of salt

Place the fruit in a large saucepan and add the caster sugar.  Place on a medium heat and cook for about 10 minutes until the fruit softens and collapses.  Don't put a lid on--it will boil over and then you'll have to scrub and scrub and scrub. Ask me how I know.)  Allow to cool before rubbing through a fine-mesh sieve.  Make sure to press through all the liquid--you should be left with a small spoonful of skin and seeds once you're done.  Put the fruit puree in the fridge and allow to chill completely.

When you're ready to make the frozen yoghurt, mix the caster sugar and salt with the Greek yoghurt.  Allow the mixture to sit for 5 minutes (to allow the sugar to dissolve) then mix again.

Beat in the vanilla bean paste and approximately half of the fruit puree.  Taste and add more purée if needed--you want a strong flavour that is just too sweet.

Churn in an ice cream maker, following manufacturers instructions.  Once churned, spoon into a freezer-proof container, alternating the frozen yoghurt with drizzles of the remaining puree. Gently swirl the mixture together to create a ripple.  Freeze for at least four hours to finish hardening.

Elderflower Cordial

Every year I promise myself that I'll make my own elderflower cordial, and every year I promptly forget until the leaves are turning gold and I'm left kicking myself for being an idiot.

This year I vowed that things would be different.  I would make that bottle of cordial and it would be awesome.  So I went out on an elderflower foraging walk with my friend Claire.  We scoured the banks of the duck pond near school only to discover that the council had ripped all the bushes out along with the brambles, leaving behind a swathe of opportunist jagged, green nettles.  As much as I'm growing to love foraging, I don't think I'll be making nettle soup any time soon!

So we started walking the lanes near school and eventually found a lone elder bush.  Well, more of a tree, really.  The only trouble was that someone had beaten us to it and all the lower branches were stripped bare.  After jumping up and down, snipping wildly at far-away blooms with my longest pair of scissors like a crazed Edward Scissorhands, we admitted defeat and Claire popped home for a step-ladder.  Things went much better after that!

© Julochka via flickr

Sadly we only managed to reach eight heads so I headed to a park and managed to snag another two heads of flowers with my umbrella.  Not quite the romantic basketful that I had in mind!  Enough, however, for a half-batch...

I prettied up my bottle of cordial with this gorgeous label generously created by Holly at Hollytron Blogs.  I didn't have any proper sticky-back label paper to use, so I printed it out on regular paper and used Power Pritt (the grey one) to stick it on.

I'm so pleased that I finally got round to making my own cordial.  It's just as good as Bottlegreen's and so much cheaper, plus there's the satisfaction of making it yourself!  I've been experimenting with it in cake, drinking it over plenty of ice, and I've also had fun trying out cocktails.

This little beauty is vodka, a couple of slices of chopped cucumber lightly muddled with the vodka, ice, a dash of cordial and all topped up with lemonade.  (I have a sweet tooth, but tonic water would probably work well.)  Cucumber and elderflower goes amazingly well together!   No proper measurements, I'm afraid...I put a couple of fingers of vodka in a jam jar--why yes, I have succumbed to this hipster trend--and went from there.  So good.

Elderflower season is over in my part of the country, but if you're further north then you might strike it lucky and find some elderflowers blooming in a park.  If you do, go forth and make your own little bottle of summery sunshine!

Elderflower Cordial

from Countryfile

Notes: I've read that a lot of people have difficulty getting hold of citric acid these days.  (Apparently Boots don't sell it any more as drug addicts use it to cut heroin and cocaine!!)  I ordered a 50g box from my local independent pharmacy, and you can also get it from wine or beer-making shops.  Of course, Amazon sell it too.  (Is there anything they don't carry?)

900g caster sugar
600ml boiling water
30g citric acid
1 lemon, unwaxed
10-15 heads of elderflowers--do not wash. Pick in the morning on a dry, sunny day.  Check for insects and pick them off before using!

Place the sugar into a large bowl.  Pour over the boiling water and stir until all the sugar is dissolved.  Add the citric acid and allow to cool for about 10 minutes.

Grate the lemon zest directly into the syrup, then slice the lemon thinly and add the slices to the syrup, too.  Place the elderflower heads in the syrup, ensuring that all the flowers are immersed.  I left the stems sticking out as some recipes say that they add a bitter flavour.  Cover with clingfilm and leave to steep for 24 hours.  (Some of the flowers may turn brown and look yucky; it's normal.)

Strain through a sterilised muslin into a sterilised jug.  (A still-hot jug straight out of the dishwasher will be fine, and pour a kettle-full of boiling water over the muslin or even a clean tea towel.  You want everything to be squeaky clean so that the cordial will last for as long as possible.)  Fill sterilised bottle(s) with the cordial and add a label.  Store in the fridge.

Midsummer Cake

Strawberry & elderflower cake

Today it is Midsummer, the summer solstice.  It's been a dreamy day here in Bristol...bright blue skies with the occasional puffy cloud floating by, the sun blazing down and the cheerful clink of ice in a glass.  There's a hint of breeze every so often and it's gloriously hot, but not ridiculously so.  A perfect summer's day.

The only way to make today, and indeed any other day, awesome, is to add cake.  Well, a Lottery win might work, too.

I've been eyeing up this strawberry and elderflower cake on Pinterest for a couple of days.  The styling is just gorgeous--every picture makes me want to grab a fork and dive right in.  Since I've just made a bottle of elderflower cordial and the fridge always has at least one punnet of juicy English strawberries in it at the moment, it seemed like serendipity.  A cake that just had to be made.

This is a super-easy cake to make. I love how towering and abundant it is with the strawberries piled as high as I could get them.

This cake is just as lovely as it looks.  The elderflower flavour is subtle, but that could just be down to my homemade elderflower cordial not being quite as strong as the big brand ones.  Taste your elderflower filling before slathering it onto the cake!!  Still, I'm quite happy to drizzle a little cordial over the cake to pump up the elderflower flavour.  You don't want too much elderflower, though, otherwise you'll drown out the berries which would be a crying shame.

You can find the recipe for this gorgeous cake at Call Me Cupcake blog. a new-to-me blog that I'm going to spend the rest of the weekend drooling over!

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Foraging for Wild Garlic

A few weeks ago, I dragged Dave and Lucas out for an early morning walk in the woods to forage some wild garlic.  After discovering a veritable sea of wild garlic at Arnos Vale Cemetery, I've had it on my mind ever since.  Arnos Vale were quite happy for me to pick their wild garlic, but it felt a bit wrong to pick it from the old graves it was growing over--it would be like eating our ancestors--so I asked around and came up with Baddock's Wood in Westbury-on-Trym as a prime spot for wild garlic.

They weren't kidding.  There was wild garlic as far as the eye could see!

I was planning to do all the picking myself, but Lucas got really enthusiastic about it so I let him carry on and watched as he scrambled up and down slopes looking for the biggest, glossiest leaves he could find.  He filled a carrier bag--I really need to get a trug for more idyllic foraging gear--before we called it a day and zoomed home to turn the leaves into pesto.  (The leaves wilt quickly, so ideally need to be used within an hour.)

Astonishingly, Lucas turned out to be the biggest fan of the wild garlic pesto!  He ate loads of it, slathered in ham sandwiches in place of chutney or mustard, tossed into gnocchi and in pasta, too.  Dave and I liked it, but by comparison, Lucas was nuts about it!  Maybe it was because he foraged for it himself?  Either way, I'm very proud of my little gourmet!

Bouquet of wild garlic flowers

Wild Garlic Pesto

For every 100g of wild garlic leaves
150ml olive oil
1 small clove of garlic
50g toasted pine nuts
50g grated parmesan
salt and pepper

Check through the wild garlic leaves, picking out the ones that are nibbled, brown at the edges, or have an excess of nature on them, ie bird poo.  Put in a colander and wash really well.

Fill a large bowl with ice cold water. Blanch the wild garlic for 30 seconds in a pan of boiling water. Drain and plunge into the cold water until cool.  Drain and then dry on a clean tea towel.

Chop the wild garlic roughly and put in a blender or food processor.  Add the rest of the ingredients and blitz until a paste forms.  Taste and adjust seasoning as required.

Use in exactly the same way as regular basil pesto!  Store in the fridge and eat within a week.

April 2014 in pictures

April was a bit of a lazy month blog-wise, but we managed to cram lots of lovely offline things into the month.  I will get around to blogging about them--promise!

We had a lovely (and thoroughly gluttonous) Easter with all of the family and had several jaunts to National Trust properties.  There was baking galore, and plenty of crafting, and a surprising amount of sunshine.  Naturally this was followed by a week of rain, but for once I wasn't bothered as we had new turf laid and all the rain saved me from having to remember to water it!

In May, I'm going a bit crazy and blogging every day.  I've succumbed to peer pressure and am joining Louisa and Michelle in Rosalilium's Blog Every Day in May challenge.  Given how patchy my blogging has been over the last month, this will be a massive kick up the bum for me, and should also help me drag all those unfinished posts in my drafts folder, blinking, into the light of day.  I'm looking forward to it!

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Surf's up!

A couple of weeks ago my lovely friend Claire turned forty.  I'm still reeling at that...she doesn't look a day over 62!

(I kid, I kid...I would never have pegged her as being anywhere near the big 4-0.)

As cake is always an appropriate gift, I pulled out my favourite chocolate cake recipe and set about making her a birthday cake.

Now... Claire is sporty.  She's a bona fide surfer girl.  She bikes up and down mountain and she runs, too.  (Not all at the same time.)  What on earth she's doing being friends with a fully-fledged sloth like me is beyond me, but I'm glad she is!  With all her sporty loves in mind, I had loads of cake ideas leaping around in my head vying for attention, "Me, me, me!"

I settled on a surfing cake for purely selfish reasons.  I've been pinning ruffled cakes to my Pinterest boards for absolutely ages and I've been dying to have a go.  I also wanted to have a go at an ombre cake, and thought the different shades of blue would make quite a good ocean effect. Alas, it quickly became clearly that there was something wrong with my technique in applying ruffles, so I whipped off my embarrassingly awful efforts and went for much chunkier strips that I teased into wave-like shapes with my fingertips.

The surfboard, by comparison, was dead easy.  I just cut it out freehand then smoothed the edges until it looked right.  As a quick shortcut, I dried it in the oven on the lowest heat possible along with the pink gerbera I knocked up while I filled and decorated the main cake.  It worked a treat!

Claire's reaction totally blew me away!  I've never had someone hug me so much over a cake, nearly burst into tears, or phone their Mum and insist that they come round right now to see it!  Wow.  I was nearly in tears myself at that.

Hooray for surprise cakes and hooray for happy friends!

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Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everyone!  Lucas would like to share a Creme Egg cupcake with you all.

We had an early Easter egg hunt on Good Friday at Nanny and Granddad's with Lucas's cousins.  The Easter Bunny visited and left lots of eggs hidden in their beautiful garden, so after a massive fry-up we let the kids loose and enjoyed watching the fun!

Leila was surprisingly good at spotting eggs.  I paused to take a beautifully framed shot of a blue egg nestled beneath the contorted hazel and before I knew it, she'd swooped in and grabbed it.  Yoink!

As for the cupcakes...if you have some spare mini Creme Eggs (or even some mini Caramel eggs) that you fancy trying something different with, then these are a delicious option.  I mean...cake, still-gooey Creme Eggs nestled in the middle, buttercream and a drizzle of dark chocolate?  That's way better than just a plain old creme egg, right?

I used this recipe for the mini Creme Egg cupcakes.  When I came up with the idea a few weeks ago, I thought, "What a brilliant and utterly unique idea!"  And of course, it turned out that many, many people had the same brilliant and unique idea.  I guess that makes it an epically awesome idea.

Happy Easter!

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Life lately...

Found on Pinterest

Life is good right now.  Busy, but bloody good all the same!

I spent half of today at school doing PTA stuff, admiring the children's projects and watching the Easter bonnet parade.  Tomorrow I'm baking a birthday cake for a friend and in the evening there's this month's WI meeting.  Apologies if anyone sees me out and about in a weird lycra-based outfit...we're doing street dance this month and there's a prize for the best outfit!  I'm going to channel Beyonce and Rhianna.  Actually, just cover your eyes until Friday to be on the safe side!

Thanks to Lucas and Dave I had an amazing Mother's Day on Sunday.  They thoroughly spoiled me.  Not only did I get some Baileys fudge and a lens adaptor to let me use my old Canon nifty fifty on my new camera, they spent the whole day in the kitchen making me dinner!

They were so sweet about the whole thing.  For the last week they've both been bursting with excitement and loving keeping the menu a secret.  It was totally worthwhile!  They did seared scallops on local black pudding, with minted pea puree followed by Lamb Kleftiko which was amazingly delicious if perhaps not the most photogenic dish ever and finished off with white chocolate mousse and homemade langues de chat.  All utterly delicious.  They're justifiably very proud of themselves!!

Over the last week or so I've found myself in the midst of an epic craft spree.  First I played with hot glue (and made a tiny mess, but that's all cleared up now so we shall say no more) and made a spring wreath for the front door.  I'm rather thrilled with how it's turned out (and the postman said nice things about it to me this morning).  I also crocheted a bird and a few flowers to adorn Lucas's Easter hat for the Easter Bonnet parade at school.  He didn't win (boo hiss etc) but he loves the bird so much that I might make adapt the pattern to turn it into an Angry Bird.

And then there was the crochet lining for my yarn basket... No more snagged yarn!

I want to finish it off with some ribbon around the outside edge (to hide the stitches) and a crocheted rose.  This calls for more hot glue!

I have just booked my hotel room (well, cell really as it's a windowless room at the EasyHotel), bought my train ticket and printed out my ticket for Blogtacular!  It's getting closer and closer; I'm super-excited and a bundle of nerves at the same time which is fun.  Lucy from London Loafing and I have hatched a cunning plan to form a cluster of nervous people who don't know anyone else IRL and fret together as a bonding exercise.  Really looking forward to all the workshops, particularly the photo styling one!!

How's life with you?

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