COOKBOOKS GALORE

  My daughter loves dark chocolate and raspberries, and as she was coming up for the weekend for Mothering Sunday,  I found this recipe in my scrapbook which was perfect for her. Raspberries seem to be available fresh all year round now. I do try and buy seasonally, but this cake is so good! For the cake you need:  250g dark chocolate (70% cocoa) 200g butter 1 tspn instant coffee, dissolved in 1 tbspn hot water 5 eggs 100g caster sugar 75g plain flour 100g raspberries  Preheat oven 170C/gas3                    Grease and line a 20cm springform tin In a saucepan, put the chocolate, butter and coffee and heat over a low heat till melted and glossy. In  a bowl beat the eggs and sugar till pale and fluffy.   Pour in the chocolate mixture, add the flour and fold together gently. Pour this batter into the tin and sprinkle the raspberries over the top. Bake for about 40 mins till the cake is firm. This cake is...

 Summer at last, or at least for a few days! Raspberries are my favourite summer fruit, so decided to make a cheesecake. I bought a jar of raspberry coulis in Waitrose. This is a baked cheesecake.  I adore the speculoos flavour of the Biscoff biscuits you get with coffee [and now in a jar], so used these biscuits as the base.  225g Biscoff biscuits, 3 eggs, 175g caster sugar, a jar of raspberry coulis [or you can make your own by sieving raspberries],75g butter, 675g cream cheese and 1 tspn vanilla extract, a few raspberries to decorate Preheat oven 180C/gas4            Line a shallow 23cm cake tin with baking paper. Put the biscuits in a large plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin. Melt the butter and mix with the biscuits. Spoon into the cake tin and flatten with the back of a spoon. Put in the fridge to set. Beat the eggs in a bowl and add the cheese and beat together with the sugar and vanilla extract. Spoon it over the biscuit base an...

My daughter loves dark chocolate and raspberries, and as she was coming up for the weekend, I found this recipe in my scrapbook which was perfect for her. I know raspberries aren't in season, and I know you could use frozen ones, but I found some at a reasonable price in my local market. For the cake you need:  250g dark chocolate (70% cocoa) 200g butter 1 tspn instant coffee, dissolved in 1 tbspn hot water 5 eggs 100g caster sugar 75g plain flour 100g raspberries  Preheat oven 170C/gas3                    Grease and line a 20cm springform tin In a saucepan, put the chocolate, butter and coffee and heat over a low heat till melted and glossy. In  a bowl beat the eggs till pale and fluffy.  Pour in the chocolate mixture, add the flour and fold together gently. Pour this batter into the tin and sprinkle the raspberries over the top. Bake for about 40 mins till the cake is firm. This cake is good with a ...

I made these recently for a family tea. They're delicious and the filling is rather like a brownie. I found the recipe in my scrapbook, so not sure where it originated. I bought a pack of shortcrust pastry, but you can make your own. For the filling you need -   1 egg, 100g caster sugar, 55g melted butter, 1/2 tspn vanilla extract, 20g cocoa powder, 20g ground almonds, 1/2 tspn instant coffee and a pinch of salt raspberries, crème fraîche and flaked almonds for the top.  Preheat oven 180C/gas4           Grease a 12 hole cupcake tin [or a little tart tin] . Roll pastry out thinly and cut out 12  x 4" or 10cm circles. Press gently into the holes in the tin and put in the fridge while you make the filling. Beat the egg till thick and frothy with an electric hand beater. Add the sugar and keep on beating till light and fluffy. Pour in the melted butter and vanilla, beating all the while. Fold in the cocoa, ground al...

What to make for a friend coming to tea? I bought some ground and flaked almonds last week so wanted to use them. I love Bakewell tart, so searched for a recipe with similar flavours and found this one. Couldn't wait to try it as a cake. It's from the  BBC Good Food site The recipe suggests you blend it in a food processor, but as mine is broken, I used an electric hand mixer and it worked fine.  There's ground almonds in the recipe so it's quite a thick batter. You put a layer of the batter into the tin, spread the raspberries over, then spread the rest of the mixture on top. It's mentioned in the recipe that it's better to use your fingers to spread the mixture on top of the fruit, and this is good advice, as it's impossible to spread with a spoon or spatula! It has a lovely almond flavour and the fresh raspberries give another texture and aren't sweet. It does feel and taste like a Bakewell tart. My friend loved it, and took a large piece...

I haven't done much baking lately. Been too hot, and not much fun baking for one! Friends coming for tea so decided to make something my friend in France used to make - a raspberry moelleux. The word moelleux means smooth or creamy, but it's used as a type of dessert too. You need: 180g sr flour, 1 tspn baking powder, 400g raspberries, 160g caster sugar, 1 small pot natural yoghurt ,3 eggs, 100ml vegetable oil, icing sugar Preheat oven 180C/gas4                  Grease a 20cm square tin well and line base. Beat the eggs and sugar together till fluffy. Add the yoghurt and oil and mix in. Fold in the flour and baking powder gently. Spoon into the tin and cover with the raspberries. Press them down gently with the back of a spoon. Bake for 25 mins. Mark the cake into slices then cool on a wire rack. Dust with icing sugar. The 'cake' is lovely and soft; the centre is smooth and a good contrast to the raspberries. Makes a good dessert w...

Since watching the GBBO ages ago, I've been wanting to make choux pastry. Nowadays I only bake for an occasion or when my family visit, so when I was asked to make something special for a lovely lady's 90th birthday party, I was very happy. I chatted to other people who'd also been invited to bake. They were making cakes of some kind, so I thought something with pastry would be good.  I love profiteroles, so decided on a variation on the usual chocolate ones. I have some French baking magazines and in one of these they used strawberries,in the filling, and being French, the recipe didn't use double cream but ricotta cheese. Interesting, but I wanted to use raspberries, and I wasn't sure that ricotta would give the flavour I wanted, so I decided to use the traditional double cream. I'm not going to write about making the choux pastry - have a look here for a recipe http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/profiteroleswithpist_90242 or there are plenty of others o...

 I decided to have a good sort out of my baking cupboard, to find any bits and pieces that needed using up. I found some pine nuts and ground hazelnuts, both very near their 'use by' date, so decided to use them in a tart. What would go well with them?  I always have some frozen raspberries ready to use, as they're one of my favourite fruits and thought these would work well with the nuts. For the filling I'd use creme fraîche instead of cream, not to make the tart too rich. My loose-bottomed tart tin is 23cm. Preheat oven 200C/gas6 You need 300g of shortcrust pastry, bought or home made [ I added a little sugar to it]. Roll out the pastry to fit the greased tin, and put in the fridge. Break 3 eggs into a bowl; add another yolk, 120g caster sugar and 60g ground hazelnuts. Whisk together , then add 100cl creme fraîche  and 1 tspn vanilla extract and mix together well. Put 200g of raspberries on top of the pastry and pour over the egg mixture. Sprinkle 80g of pin...

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...

A very Happy New Year! Here's to lots of great baking. After the success of the meringue on Christmas Day, I thought I'd try a variation as a dessert for New Year's Eve. I hunted through my cookbooks and folders and found a recipe for a meringue log in a Home and Freezer Christmas book. Anyone remember Home and Freezer magazines, littles ones which were always in racks by the checkouts? Anyway I thought it sounded ideal, although it has a fewextra ingredients in it, like mini marshmallows. You could use a chocolate sauce as the filling instead of the spread if you wanted, as this what was in the original recipe. I thought the spread would be more substantial when rolling up the log. I had visions of the sauce running out of the sides of the log! I know there's hazelnuts in the spread, but I don't think this will change the taste of the log very much. 5 egg whites, beaten 150g icing sugar, plus 1 tbsp extra 2 tsp cornflour, sieved  1 tbsp cocoa powder 400m...

We don't like Christmas pudding, so I try a new Christmas dessert recipe every year. Last year it was sticky toffee pudd. and this year I wanted to do something lighter. The recipe said that this amount would serve 8, but it served 3 people who had seconds! I made it in advance and froze it. The recipe comes from this year's 'Woman's Weekly Christmas special'. 100g white chocolate broken up into pieces 250ml ready made vanilla custard 3 tbspns Baileys liqueur 142ml pot double cream 2 tbspns grated dark chocolate a few raspberries small loaf tin lined with cling film Melt the chocolate and stir in the custard. Leave to cool then stir in the Baileys. Whip the cream then add it to the mixture. Spoon it into the lined loaf tin and feeze overnight. When it's solid, cover and wrap and label it. Take it out and put it in the fridge 20 mins before you want to use it. Put onto a plate, sprinkle the top with grated dark chocolate and decorate with a few...