COOKBOOKS GALORE

I seem to have made quite a lot of calorific pudds lately, so I wanted to make something simple but delicious. I love French madeleines, so decided these would be just right. I know that Proust's plain madeleine is perfection, but I wanted to make them different, so decided to add one of my favourite flavour combinations - apple and cinnamon. [I'm in apple mode atm!] I used a jar of apple purée instead of bothering to cook some. Madeleines look very simple, but I have had a few disasters making them. Some recipes say that you use brown butter, but you have to keep a close eye on the butter or it burns [one disaster]. Then to get the traditional hump, you need to put the batter in the fridge for 1-2 hours, and some recipes tell you to put the tin in the fridge too for an hour before using. One chef even puts his tin in the freezer. Then another says before you bake them you must heat a baking sheet in the oven, and put the madeleine tin on this. Did I say they were simple? ...

If you're on a diet, this isn't the recipe for you! It's a recipe for a special occasion, and as our French friends were coming to stay for a few days, I thought this was one of those occasions. It's another case of using up ingredients that are near their 'use by' dates; this time it was a tin of Carnation Caramel, a bag of pecans and a few Granny Smith apples. The idea for a cheesecake came from a programme I watched on Food Network - the chef was using walnuts and apples in a cheesecake. So what you have is the usual biscuit layer at the bottom, then a layer of the salted caramel, a layer of chopped pecans, a layer of apple purée, then the cheesecake and topping it off some whipped cream with a drizzle or so of the salted caramel. What's not to like? You need a 23cm springform tin or the same sized pie dish. Preheat oven 180C/gas4. To make the biscuit base - mix together 12 digestive biscuits with 3 tbspn caster sugar and a tspn of cinnamon. Melt...

January is the month for Galettes.  Usually I make the traditional Galette de Rois, puff pastry with a lovely almond cream filling [there's a recipe on here for one],  but I decided to try something different. I had some apples and raspberries to use up, so decided to make an apple and cinnamon one, and a raspberry and almond one. Cinnamon and apple are a marriage made in heaven for me, but wasn't sure about almonds with raspberries, but it turned out well. Using bought butter puff pastry makes them so quick and easy to make. The French bought puff pastry comes in a round, very useful for making tarts etc. I haven't found any round ones here. For the apple and cinnamon one: You need 2 sheets of puff pastry or a 500g slab, 4 apples [ I used Granny Smith], 100g caster sugar, about 50g apple purée [I used a jar of ready made from Lidl ], 1 egg and 1 tbspn of cinnamon. 1 china bean or dried bean as a fève. Preheat oven 180C/gas4 Line a baking she...