COOKBOOKS GALORE

This is a nice easy tart to make, but gives the impression it's luxurious. It's one of my family's favourite desserts. Here I go reminiscing again, but in France my neighbour over the road had a walnut tree, and gave me carrier bags full of them. Ahhh!  No carrier bags full, but a special offer on walnuts in a supermarket was the incentive for making this tart. For the shortcrust pastry - 250g flour, 130g butter, 2 tspn sugar, pinch salt and water. Am not going to tell you how to make pastry! Preheat oven 180C/gas4                Line a tart tin with the pastry. For the filling - 250g chopped walnuts, 2 eggs, 400ml crème fraîche, 2 tbspn salted caramel and 2 tbspn soft brown sugar Beat the eggs with the cream and the caramel. Sprinkle the nuts over the pastry, keeping a few back to decorate afterwards. Pour over the cream mixture and sprinkle on the soft brown sugar. Bake for 35 mins. Decorate with some walnuts before serving. ...

Some kind of Chocolate Log is a Christmas tradition in our house, Sometimes I cheat and buy a 'good' one, but this year decided to make it. The cake is a chocolate Genoise sponge and the filling has salted caramel in it - one of my favourite things - and it's covered with a great chocolate icing/ganache. For the Genoise sponge:  Preheat oven 200C/gas6                   Grease and line a swiss roll tin with baking paper. Separate 4 eggs. Beat the yolks with 100g of caster sugar till pale and fluffy. In another bowl sieve together 120g plain flour, 4 tbspn cocoa powder and 1 tspn baking powder and fold into the batter. Beat the egg whites till stiff then fold them gently into the cake batter. Spoon into the tin and level the top. Bake for 10 mins. Take out of the oven and roll the sponge up using the baking paper to help you. Leave it on a rack to cool. For the Caramel Cream: In a bowl mix together 200...

Far Breton is a French speciality from Brittany. The  Far  bit comes from the Latin  farina  or flour [hence the french  farine  I guess]. Doing a bit of research, I found that it was orginally eaten by farming labourers who took it into the fields for their lunch, and it was a savoury flan - a Farz Fourn [oven baked  far  in Breton].   It's similar to a clafoutis - a baked custard, and is usually made with prunes. I've gone rather off piste and made the custard then topped it with salted caramel sauce. So I suppose it is a Far, but not a true Breton one - except the caramel sauce is from a jar I brought back from Brittany, and which was made locally there. Preheat oven 200c/gas 6. Grease a 20cm cake tin [not a springform one in case the custard leaks]  or an ovenproof glass dish . I find this mixture works best if you mix well between each addition. I have seen recipes which use a food processor, but haven't tried this. Bea...

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...