COOKBOOKS GALORE

Most of the supermarkets seem to have nuts on offer at the moment, so I've stocked up and now need to use some of them. I love pecan pie, but it can be very sweet and rich. These tarts are little versions, but still give you that lovely pecan fix. The recipe comes from a magazine supplement on 'Nuts', from Woman's Weekly, I think. As it's Thanksgiving Day today, pecans seem appropriate. Recipe makes 18 tartlets, so you need 2 x 12 bun tins. I love this pastry as it uses ground almonds as well as flour, which gives it a soft texture. You need: Pastry: 150g plain flour 25g caster sugar [golden's best] 50g ground almonds 85g butter, cubed 1 medium beaten egg 2 tspns lemon juice Filling: 70g melted butter 50g light muscovado sugar 2 medium beaten eggs 2 tbspns golden syrup juice of 1/2 lemon 100g pecan nuts, chopped but not finely The pastry is easy to make as you put the flour, sugar, almonds and butter into a food processor and whizz it ...

I love apple cakes and am always very happy to find a new recipe. It's a very country looking cake with little chunks of apple and dried fruit. Nothing refined about it, but the taste is good. I love spices and this one has cinnamon and mixed spice. It's made using the rubbing in method, and I found it difficult to get all the ingredients together. I didn't think I'd mixed it properly, but it came out fine. There's a lot of mixture for 1 egg! 400g apple chopped into dice 125g mixed fruit 125g brown sugar 125g butter 1 large egg 1 tspn cinnamon and 1 tspn mixed spice Preheat oven 180C/gas4 Grease and line a 20cm springform tin. Rub together the butter and flour till it looks like breadcrumbs. Add the egg, sugar and spices and mix together. Then add the apple and mixed fruit. Bake for about 35 mins till the middle feels firm when you touch it. I didn't have any mixed fruit so used raisins. You can see that the apple stayed in little ch...