COOKBOOKS GALORE

On my friend Phil's lovely blog, As Strong as Soup, [ http://asstrongassoup.blogspot.com ]   he writes about Nonnettes and using honey. I haven't tried his recipe yet, but my Polish dil also gave me her  recipe for a Polish Honey cake. Every time I visit a farmer's market I always buy a jar of local honey, so have plenty to use in both recipes. I decided that I needed a large cake to take to a meeting yesterday, so made the Polish honey cake. It's called Piernik in Polish. There seem to be many varying recipes for this cake, but they all contain a mixture of ground spices. The recipe said to use a 22cm tin, but I don't have one this size, so used a 23 cm tin and it turned out fine. 500g plain flour, 2 tspn baking powder, 1/2 tspn ginger, 1/2 tspn cinnamon, 1/2 tspn cloves. 1/2 tspn allspice, grated zest of 1/2 orange, 25g chopped walnuts, 25g seedless raisins, 25g chopped figs, 300g honey, 90g caster sugar, 90g butter, 4 egg yolks, 2 tspn instant coffee dissol...

My lovely Dutch friend sent me some goodies recently, including some of my favourite speculoos biscuits. I wanted to use them in a cake of some sort, and found this recipe in a French magazine. No cooking is needed for the cake. 125g speculoos biscuits [or any spicy biscuit] 4 dried figs, finely chopped 4 dates, finely chopped 2 tbspns sultanas 60g melted butter 200g milk or plain chocolate - broken into small pieces 15cl single cream 2 packets of Werther's originals or other butterscotch sweets 22cm cake tin - preferably a silicone mould Crush the biscuits and mix them with the dried fruit. Press the mixture into the bottom of the tin/mould and put it in the fridge to harden. Break the chocolate up into a bowl. Put the cream in a small saucepan and bring to the boil, then pour it over the chocolate. Stir well till the mixture is nice and smooth. Cool. Take the base mixture out of the fridge and pour the chocolate over, then put it back in the fridge again to...