Raspberry, almond and dark choc chip muffins

This is the second of the batch of muffins I made to take to visit my friend Lucy and her beautiful new baby.

Espresso choc chip muffins

My friend Lucy has had her baby boy, Jacob, and I'm going round to meet him for the first time today!  I'm so excited and proud of her. This morning I made a basket of two flavours of muffins to take as a present: this is the first, espresso and dark choc chips.

Chocolate raspberry brandy soufflés

It's Valentine's Day and also six years since Lu and I got together.  I came home to find Lu had started knocking down the ugly chimney breast in our kitchen, something we've wanted to do since buying the house two years ago.  It meant the setting for our romantic home cooked meal was a little dusty, but perfect!  Lu cooked the steaks for our main course and I made these chocolate soufflés, laced with brandy and full of  raspberries which bake into a sharp but sweet jam that combines beautifully with the gooey chocolate centres.  This is about the easiest thing to cook so don't be put off by me calling it a soufflé - you don't even have to separate the eggs!

Cream cheese blinis

It's Shrove Tuesday so we decided to have a whole pancake feast for supper this evening!  For a main course I made normal pancakes (Delia Smith is my go-to pancake recipe) which I filled with a garlicky mushroom and cream cheese filling, rolled up and baked with a sprinkle of cheese on top.  Then I made these cream cheese blinis - we had them as a savoury starter with smoked salmon and cream cheese, and then also as a sweet dessert, with blueberries, clotted cream and maple syrup.

Pistachio mocha marble cake

We're off for a girls weekend, six of us staying with our friends Liz and Dilly in Plymouth.  I'm looking forward to long walks on the moors, gin cocktails and a good catch up. This is my contribution to our Friday night feast - a marble cake made with one half espresso and cocoa flavoured, the other made with toasted, ground pistachios. I topped it with a coffee buttercream icing and decorated it with the bigger chunks of ground pistachios too big to sift into the cake batter.  A marble cake is a good cake to make when you can't decide which flavour to go with - make both!

Coffee, maple and ginger cake with maple-caramelised pecans

Today I went to visit my very pregnant friend Lucy for a cuppa and a catch up.  Her favourite cake is coffee cake, so I made this coffee cake with a twist - the flavour is intensified with fresh ginger and maple syrup, so it tastes like a gingerbread latte!  I iced it with a coffee and maple buttercream and decorated it with pecan nuts caramelised in a pan of bubbling maple syrup.

The sponge cake base is loosely based on Dan Lepard's recipe for coffee and ginger cake, but I forgot to add oil - it turned out fine though, I think because I added maple syrup and didn't include ground pistachios.  I also made it more moist by making a coffee syrup which I poured over the hot cake skewered with holes and left it to cool in the tin (inspired by Delia Smith's Austrian coffee and walnut cake, but I also added maple syrup and a little ground ginger).  Rather than Dan Lepard's lemon-cream cheese frosting or Delia's coffee mascarpone frosting, I opted for a simple buttercream flavoured with maple syrup and espresso.