Pumpkin apricot and orange cake

A proper hallowe'en recipe this one - roasted pumpkin and soaked dried apricots are puréed with clementine juice to form the basis of this cake, drizzled with fresh orange juice when baked and then topped with zesty orange mascarpone icing.  There was loads of roasted pumpkin left over too, so I turned it into a pumpkin soup, and roasted the seeds with salt, pepper, paprika and olive oil to serve instead of croutons.  Happy hallowe'en!

Pecan, rum and chocolate chunk pie

I've made this for a weekend away with old friends from uni.  What better way to spend hallowe'en than eating scrumptious pud made of rum and chocolate!  This is best served warm when the chocolate is slightly melted and deliciously gooey.

Welsh cakes

I made Welsh cakes for the first time ever yesterday, with my niece and nephew Casey and James.  I've always thought they wouldn't work without a proper iron griddle or hot stone, but I tried it in a heavy-based frying pan and it worked fine!  The trick is just to keep it on a medium heat as the Welsh cakes burn on the outsides quite quickly if the pan is too hot.  Now that I've realised how easy this is, I can't wait to try it with other variations - dried cranberries, cherries or apricots, vanilla sugar, ginger, white chocolate chips... Fantastic served warm straight from the pan with a big pot of tea on a chilly winter Sunday.

Citrus rose sorbet

I recently found an enticing looking bottle of rose syrup in the foreign produce section of the supermarket – it’s a beautiful deep pink coloured cordial.  This sorbet recipe was an invention so I that could use it – the syrup is probably too strong for cakes, when a splash of rosewater is better, although I’m sure it could be diluted for that.  If you can only find rosewater, you could make a syrup by gently heating rosewater and about 100g caster sugar in a saucepan and then leaving to cool.  The colour is fantastic though!  The recipe is incredibly easy and would be even easier in an ice cream machine (the frozen disc for mine was unfortunately not in the freezer ready to use when I thought of making this, so I did it the old-fashioned way by stirring it every half hour).  I served this sprinkled with fresh pomegranate seeds.

Apple and almond (eggless) biscotti

I’ve never made biscotti before but decided to try making an eggless version of a traditional almond biscotti recipe for dinner with my vegan friend Ellie.  It was another excuse to use up Lu’s homemade apple sauce (made with lovely Welsh cider).  Delicious with coffee after dinner!

Apple, cranberry and walnut flapjacks

Lu recently made apple sauce for a roast pork Sunday lunch (about 6 cooking apples peeled cored and sliced, about 500ml cider and a little sugar and salt to taste).  There was loads left over so I came up with this flapjack recipe to use up some of the rest.

Apple and pomegranate Tarte Tatin

This is one of my favourite desserts and one of the easiest – I quite often make it as a mid-week pudding for after dinner on a hard day when I’m too tired and hungry for proper baking but need a cake fix!  This version adds pomegranate and cinnamon to the classic recipe.

Nectarine Earl Grey bread

For the opening of my friend Ellie’s yoga studio, I made these as a variation on the peach and pecan bread and the peach tea muffins I’ve made previously.  It’s a dairy free recipe so is great for Ellie and her vegan clients!

Fig, orange and lavender cake

This is a variation on the upside down cake recipe I’ve used many times now, this time though using some beautiful fresh figs that caught my eye in the greengrocers one Saturday morning.  Instead of the almond essence I usually use to flavour this yoghurty cake, I added grated orange zest and dried lavender flowers for a delicate flavouring, and made it in a deeper, narrower cake tin.  It took longer to cook and was more like a pudding than a cake – I took the leftovers to work the next day for a team meeting and it was quite a hit!

Lemon and lavender swede cake

This is from Harry Eastwood’s Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache, a wonderful book of cake recipes made using vegetables (think carrot cake, then beetroot, then take a big leap of faith and try sweet potato, swede and potato!).  I promise you cannot taste the swede in it – but I found it was best not to tell people it was in there until after they’d tucked into it and said how good it was; the look on their faces of such confusion that they were enjoying a cake made of swede was brilliant!  My first attempt at this was a huge success (the original recipe uses wheat free rice flour but I’ve substituted it for plain flour), although I have to confess that I made it again recently but tried using mini loaf cases – this did not work very well at all and it went a bit soggy and collapsed slightly.  Stick to a loaf tin in future...