COOKBOOKS GALORE

As Autumn is nearly upon us, I thought I'd make an apple cake. I seem to have collected a file full of cakes using apples in various ways, but I haven't made this cake before. It's from a leaflet that came with a French magazine a few years ago. I love cinnamon, and cinnamon and apple are made for each other. You need: 4-5 apples , 180g butter, 1 heaped tspn cinnamon, 150g golden caster sugar, 50g flaked almonds, 3 eggs, 160g sr flour and 90g crème fraîche Preheat oven 180C/gas4 Grease a 20cm cake tin Peel the apples and cut up into dice. Melt 120g of the butter in a pan and add the diced apple. Sprinkle with the cinnamon and leave on a low heat for a few minutes. Sprinkle the flaked almonds over the bottom of the cake tin. Spoon the apples on top. Beat together the eggs and the sugar then fold in the flour and add the cream. Spoon this onto the apples. Bake for about 25 mins. Leave in tin to cool then turn out upside down. ...

I had one more lot of butter puff pastry left over from Christmas, and I've been wanting to make these tarts for ages, as I love custard tarts in any form. I don't think this is exactly like the famous ones, but they're made to a secret recipe! The tarts were first made by Catholic monks in the 18th century. Large amounts of egg whites were used to starch clothes, so the yolks left over were used to make cakes and pastries. Preheat oven 200C/gas6 These are easy to make - you need 250g of puff pastry which you roll out. Lightly grease a muffin tin, cut out 12 small circles and  and line the tin with these. Put the tin in the fridge for about 20 mins. For the filling - beat 4 egg yolks with 100g caster sugar till thick and white. Add 1 tspn of flour and the zest of a lemon, then mix in 25cl of crème fraiche. Pout into a saucepan and bring to the boil over a gentle heat, stirring all the time. As soon as it comes to the boil, take it off the heat and allow to cool. P...