COOKBOOKS GALORE

I made this last week for a friend’s birthday. It’s easy to make, but looks impressive. It’s a pavlova with a top! For the cake you need : 4 egg whites, 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar, 125g light Muscovado sugar, 100g caster sugar, 1teaspoon white wine vinegar Filling: 200ml double cream, 250g strawberries Preheat oven 150C/gas 2.     Grease and base line 2 x20 cm sandwich tins Whisk egg whites and cream of tartar in bowl till stiff. Put the sugars together then add to the white a bit at a time. Whisk a few minutes more till nice and thick and shiny. Divide equally between the sandwich tins and bake for 35 - 45 mins till light brown. Cool on a wire rack. Whip the double cream to peaks. Save 8 strawberries and slice the rest up. Put one meringue on a plate and cover with half of the cream Sprinkle the strawberry slices over the cream then put the second meringue on top. Cover this with the rest of the cream then slice the 8 remaining strawberries in half and arrange in t...

I wanted to make something special for my friend's birthday. She's a great fan of chocolate cakes, so I decided to combine another of her loves, meringue, with a chocolate cake. I looked through my cookery books and online for ideas, and there were plenty of them. Too many were very complicated and had lots of layers. I wanted a much simpler cake, but with a twist. So I decided on  a sandwich cake with a meringue layer on top and in the middle, and there's also some lime curd in the middle to give the cake an extra bit of zing. I bought a jar of this curd from a farmer's market recently, and don't know what to do with it! It's not a very green colour, so really it doesn't look very different from a lemon curd. The flavour seems to me to be a bit sharper. For the cake  - beat 115g of butter with 115g of caster sugar till nice and fluffy. Add 3 egg yolks one at a time,  then add 100g sr flour which has been mixed with 55g cocoa powder. Pour in 50ml of milk a...