COOKBOOKS GALORE

My son and family were coming at last, and I wanted to make a cake. My daughter in law loves ginger, so I found this great recipe on the BBC Good Food site. ://www.bbcgoodfood.com/search/recipes?query=Squidgy+Lemon+Ginger+Cake It's a lovely cake, easy to make, and the fresh ginger cuts through the sticky sweetness of the sugar and dates. It's a dense and sticky cake with great flavours. I didn't use the suggested candied lemon peel or the coffee crystals to decorate the top. I just used the white chocolate. It's great as a cake, but would also make a great dessert with cream or ice cream [minus the chocolate topping maybe?]

                 There was a special offer on British blueberries at my local supermarket, so I bought several punnets.  I love them for breakfast, in muffins and in one of my favourite cakes, blueberry lemon yoghurt cake. Watching Monty last week, he said to pick any lemons that were ripe, so this gave me the lemon for  my cake. It's an easy cake to make too.   Preheat oven 180C/gas4                     Grease and line 20cm springform tin you need: 125g softened butter,150g caster sugar, 175g sr flour, 100g Greek yoghurt, 3 eggs, grated zest of 1  large lemon,  130g blueberries For the icing: 100g icing sugar, juice of the lemon   Cream the butter and sugar till pale and fluffy. Add the flour, yoghurt and eggs and beat together. Stir in the lemon zest. Spoon half of the batter into the tin. Mix most of the blueberries into t...

Am still doing my weekly bake for my kind neighbours, so decided to make something different this week, muffins. There’s been a lot of hype on Facebook about Muffnuts or Donkins! They’re a doughnut muffin. I just had to try them. Decided also to make one of my favourite muffins, using some rosemary from the garden and walnuts . So 2 for the price of 1 today!                                                         Muffnuts It makes 6.            Preheat oven 180C/gas 4 200g sr flour, 100g caster sugar, 125ml milk, 85ml sunflower oil, 1egg and 1 tspn vanilla extract Jam, Nutella or other filling of choice Topping : 75g melted butter and 100g granulated sugar Mix milk, oil, egg and vanilla together in a bowl. In another bowl mix flour and sugar.  Add the milk mixture to the flour, gently. No problem if ther...

Since lock down started, I have been baking every week to share with my lovely neighbour who gets some shopping for me. I decided this week I wasn't going to make just a cake, but a cake that can also be a dessert. In the fruit bowl were some ripe pears, so I made my favourite pear recipe, a French one from Creuse, Gargouillau. You need for the cake: 150g butter, 150g caster sugar, grated zest 1/2 lemon, 2 eggs, 350g plain flour, 2 tspn baking powder and 8 tbspn milk You also need: 600g pears, ripe but not soggy and 50g butter, extra sugar and cinnamon/icing sugar Preheat oven 200C/gas6        Grease a 25cm springform tin and line the base with greaseproof                                                            paper,lightly greased Cream the butter and sugar, add the lemon zest and mix in. Add the eg...

There's nothing like chocolate for cheering a day up. I was given a large bar for Easter, so wanted to stretch it out by using it in a cake. I love loaf cakes, and this is one of my favourites. It uses courgettes as well as chocolate, and I just happened to have one medium sized one that needed using up. It also uses soft brown sugar, a bonus as I've no more caster sugar! You need: 2 eggs, 80ml honey, 120ml sunflower oil, 100g soft light brown sugar, 2 tspn vanilla exctract, 1/2 tspn baking powder and 1/2 tspn bicarb, 1 heaped tspn coffee granules, 45g cocoa powder, 210g plain flour, 2 small courgettes or 1 medium grated, and 200g dark chocolate cut into chunks and divided into  2 x100g portions Preheat oven 170C/gas4           Grease and line a 200g loaf tin Whisk together the eggs, honey, oil, sugar and vanilla. Sift together in another bowl the flour, bicarb, baking powder, coffee and cocoa: mix together then gently add to the egg mixture. Fol...

In these difficult times, we’re all using up what we have in our store cupboards. Finding some pecans, a bit of golden syrup and some ground almonds made me think of a recipe I’d kept from a supermarket magazine ages ago. I had plain flour, so that would be fine for the pastry. Preheated oven 190C/gas5.   2 x deep bun tins Pastry: 100g plain flour, 25g caster sugar, 50g ground almonds, 85g butter, 1 egg and 2 tspn lemon juice. Put the flour, sugar, almonds and butter in a processor and blitz till crumbs ( doesn’t take long) Add egg and juice through the feeder tube and bring together using your hands. You can also make the pastry in the traditional rubbing in way. Wrap in film and put in the fridge for about 15 mins. Roll out thinly then cut out 18 circles using a 7-8 cm cutter. Press carefully into the tins. Prick the bottoms then leave to chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours. Filling: 70g melted butter, 50g light muscovado sugar, 2 beaten eggs, 2 tbsp golden syrup...

Something to cheer us up in these miserable days. Was given a bottle of local cider, and had several apples needing using up, so found this recipe from an old Woman's weekly magazine. You need:  330ml cider, 150g melted butter, 4 medium apples, peeled, cored and grated, 2 large eggs, 150g soft brown sugar, 300g plain flour, 2 tspn bicarb, 1 tspn mixed spice, 1 tspn cinnamon, 1/2 tspn grated nutmeg, 200g raisins or sultanas and 100g roughly chopped pecans. Preheat oven 180C/gas4         Grease and line a 20cm spring form cake tin. Pour cider into a pan and bring to boil. Lower the heat to simmer and let the cider reduce. You need about 100ml. Melt the butter in another pan and pour the cider over to cool a bit until just warm. Mix the sugar and  eggs into the apples and pour in the butter and cider. Mix together. Sift the flour and spices together then fold into the mixture. Finally add the fruit and nuts and stir together. Pour into the ca...