COOKBOOKS GALORE

It was my daughter's birthday recently and she came up for the weekend, so needed a cake - this was just the thing. It's made with oil not butter and is very easy to make, yet it looks 'an occasion' cake. Preheat oven 190C/gas5 Grease and line 2x18cm [7"] sandwich tins For the cake you need to sieve 150g plain flour, 25g cornflour and 2 level tspns baking powder into a bowl. Mix together 100ml veg oil [I used sunflower] and 100ml water in another bowl. Separate 2 eggs and add the yolks to the oil/water mixture and mix together. Stir the dry ingredients in and mix to a batter. Whisk the egg whites till stiff then fold into the mixture. Divide into the tins then bake for 25-30 mins. Cool on a wire rack. Turn the oven off. For the little meringues you need to put 1 egg white in a clean dry bowl and whisk till stiff and dry. Mix together 40g caster sugar and 15g icing sugar, then gradually whisk them into the whites. Put a sheet of baking paper or a silicon...

We had a good holiday in Brittany, and enjoyed lots of excellent food and wine. We ate in several creperies, enjoying the galettes made with buckwheat flour and filled with great things like prawns, cheese, ham and veg. We enjoyed some of the regions specialities such as Le Far Breton [ which is similar to the French Flan I posted about a while ago, but it has prunes and rum in it] and Kouign-amann, a butter cake made with yeast - very rich. We visited  couple of biscuit factories and sampled different flavoured palets and the galettes breton. My favourite flavour was the caramel and sea salt one. We also ate some gateau Breton, which is very similar in texture and flavour to the special cake from the Deux Sevres. I find them rather dry, but ok with a glass of cider! I thought I'd post a French recipe to keep our holiday memories alive. It was given to me by my friend's neighbour; we were invited to her house for a meal, and this was the dessert. She also made a fantastic ...

Off on holiday to France tomorrow, so thought I'd post a French recipe. Will be back posting in 2 weeks. At the weekend I picked just enough rhubarb to make some kind of dessert. Wanted something different, and browsing through some old French cookery magazines, I found a recipe for a meringue tart with a difference, as it has a custard layer on the rhubarb before you add the meringue topping. Sounded like a great idea. I love rhubarb, but we haven't a very big garden so I have to make good use of what we can grow! It uses a 27cm tart tin, which is quite big. So, you need: 350g of shortcrust pastry 1 kg rhubarb 1 egg and 2 yolks 20cl of cream 1 tbspn vanilla sugar 150 g of caster sugar (50g for marinating the rhubarb and about 100g or a bit less in the custard] 1 tbspn cornflour For the  meringue :  2 egg whites 50g caster sugar per egg Preheat oven 220C/gas 8 Make the pastry and chill. Cut the rhubarb stems into 2cm pieces, taking the strin...