Ricotta, lemon, almond and blueberry cake with blackberry cream

I made this as a gluten-free dessert for a Boxing Day lunch with my mum and sister.  It's so light and seems to get even better after a day or so in the fridge.

(Wim)berry cake

On a recent work trip to North Wales, my colleague Paul told me about spending childhood days picking wild wimberries on the mountains near his home.  He couldn’t believe it when I said I’d never heard of, let alone tasted, a wimberry. He tried to explain that they were like mini blueberries, but was determined to find some and bring them into work.  True to his word, he came in the next week with a small tub and presented me with my first wimberry – delicious, but unfortunately he’d not found a very large crop and the tub he brought in contained only a single, solitary wimberry – not enough to bake with!  For his birthday, I made this cake – unfortunately, I could not find the elusive wimberries to bake with either, so I made do with a combination of blueberries, redcurrants and blackcurrants.  If I ever find enough wimberries, I will bake them in this recipe – but for the time being, I’m still less than convinced that they really exist (perhaps what Paul gave me was just the tiniest blueberry he could find...)

Banana, blueberry and cranberry muffins

A lovely recipe to use up blackening bananas, these combine the background taste of banana bread with classic blueberry muffins, and some fresh cranberries for little explosions of tartness.  

Italian meringue, chocolate and chestnut cake

This cake is based on one we watched James Martin make on the BBC’s Saturday Kitchen programme before Christmas.  I decided to make it for our annual Christmas girls’ night, as it’s quite complicated and needed a special occasion!  It’s the first time I’ve tried making Italian meringue, which involves making a sugar syrup and pouring it into whisked egg whites – this ‘cooks’ the egg and you then use it to ice the cake, which is finished off by blow-torching!  The cake recipe here is for my new favourite chocolate fudge cake, rather than the James Martin recipe.

Chocolate and pistachio layer cake

This mammoth cake I created for my friend Sarah’s wedding.  It’s nine inches wide and made of three layers of cake, which altogether sat about a foot tall.  Covered with dark chocolate ganache over a layer of chocolate buttercream, inside it is made from alternating, striped layers of chocolate fudge cake and pistachio madeira cake, sandwiched together with pistachio buttercream.  It’s then decorated with ground pistachios and fresh figs and berries.  This post includes the recipe and method for each element. 

Blueberry and almond friands

Another week, another wedding cake commission!  This time, I’m making one wedding cake and 80 heart shaped little cakes, for my friend Sarah who I used to work with.  She’s getting married in Caerphilly Castle, in an amazing medieval banquet hall – so I suggested we keep the cakes quite simple and rustic, to fit with the theme and surroundings.  Having made friands before and every time they’ve been such a hit, I decided to make four types – the blackberry and almond kind I’ve made and loved previously, plus some almond and blueberries, as in the recipe below.  I also experimented with different nuts, making pistachio and raspberry friands and some hazelnut and strawberry ones.

Fruit cake (7 inch square)

I’ve been asked by my friend Debbie in work to make a three-tiered wedding cake for her friend Lorna’s wedding in October.  We’re about to go on holiday for a fortnight, so I decided to get a head start and make the fruit cake for the top tier before we leave.  I’m then going to give it to Debbie to cake sit for me, and feed it brandy every few days while we’re away!

Chai cake with blueberries and chai caramel buttercream

I made this cake for our friend Jon's birthday. We celebrated at KatiWok, the pan-Asian street food diner I designed, where we always drink delicious homemade chai tea. When I was decorating the restaurant, creating a huge collage of Asian pop culture imagery all over the restaurant walls, I got completely addicted to the chai made to the secret recipe of Mem, their fantastic sous-chef (who also makes the most incredible bhajees, samosas and dumplings).  For this cake, I tried to replicate her flavours by grinding my own spice blend - I used cardamons, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and allspice. I'm sure there are hundreds of ways of making chai, but I'm pleased to say this turned out as close to Mem's as I could've hoped for. For the frosting, I made a caramel with chai tea bags and added it to a buttercream, then topped it all with fresh blueberries. Happy birthday Jon!

Nectarine and blueberry upside down cake with orange, Greek yoghurt and almonds

I've been having baking withdrawals since our house flooded a few weeks ago. It's been depressing enough as it is to have had to cope without electricity, heating and hot water for a week, plus the seemingly-endless rigmarole of insurance companies and loss adjustors and asbestos tests before dehumidifiers can be installed, and we're still a long way off getting things repaired and back to normal.  But to be without baking has has been one of the worst bits! So when our friend Kirsty came over last night I decided to make a cake despite the chaos of spotlights dangling from their wires overhead. I made a cake batter with some grated orange, ground almonds and Greek yoghurt, folded in a couple of handfuls of blueberries, and poured it over a couple of nectarines sliced and arranged in the bottom of a cake tin. We ate it warm when it was more like a steamed pudding, but today now it's completely cool it's happily solidified into a lovely moist cake consistency.  Served with a great big dollop of Greek yoghurt with honey, the chaos of the flood-damaged kitchen seems to melt away into the background!

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.

Blueberry Welsh cake fritters

It's been snowing for the last couple of days and today I decided we needed some hot cakes to warm us up after a nice walk in the snow.  I spotted a great big punnet of blueberries in the grocer's when I popped out to buy vegetables to make soup later, and thought I'd see how they worked in a Welsh Cake batter.  These are far more loaded with fruit than Welsh cakes are, which is why I've called them blueberry fritters - but they were absolutely delicious hot out of the pan, and good later once they'd cooled as we sat in front of the fire watching a movie.  Perfect fuel for a snow day!

Spiced berry maple betty

Tonight I cooked dinner for our friends Cath and Gregg – a lovely recipe for thyme-roasted belly of pork from Diana Henry’s amazing book, Food from Plenty.  I served it with yellow, orange and purple heritage carrots, purple sprouting broccoli, balsamic roasted red onions, and celeriac, mustard and parsley mash. Not bad, even if I say so myself!  Anyway, in browsing through Diana Henry’s book, my attention was grabbed by her recipe for blackberry, apple and maple brown betty.  She describes it as “a great, down-home American dessert that’s even easier to make than crumble.”  Anything described as “down-home” sounds good to me!

This is my adaptation of that recipe, but I used mixed frozen berries instead of apple and fresh blackberries.  Apart from that, and the addition of a little cinnamon, I’d followed her recipe exactly when I made this, which included so much sugar (mixed with the cake crumbs, and also mixed with the fruit before maple syrup is poured over them) that it was unbelievably sweet.  So here I’ve written the recipe without any extra sugar, as I’m sure it’s completely unnecessary.  Apart from that, it’s amazing – it feels a bit wrong to use cake instead of a crumble mixture, but wow it’s delicious – it’s so moist and soaks up lots of the fruit, so it’s a bit like a hot SummerPudding (which is my all-time favourite dessert)!

OBAMA rocks! cakes

What an amazing US election result last night! To celebrate Obama's second term in office, I decided to make something with ingredients that spelled out OBAMA (a habit I've got into what with my ABC cake (Apple, Blueberry and Cinnamon), BMW bread (Banana, Mango and Walnut), and more recent BANG cake (Banana, Amaretto, Nut and Ginger)...). These started life as cookies but I soon realised that they tasted just like the rock cakes my mum used to make with us on Sunday afternoons as kids. So rather than flattening small scoops of the dough into cookie shapes, I instead dolloped big scoops onto the baking tray and left them to come out as rock cakes. I made one dough but split it into two batches before adding the different OBAMA fruit and nuts. The first batch contained Oats, Blueberries, Apple, Macadamia and Almonds. The second batch contained Oats, Banana, Apricot, Mango and Almonds. The result: OBAMA rocks! [cakes]

Pimms and elderflower summer pudding

Summer pudding is one of my all-time favourite desserts. Soggy bread shouldn't be a good thing, but this fruit filled pud transforms the bread into a silky cake-like texture! It's really easy to make just using a frozen packet of mixed summer fruits. Once I've put it in the fridge to chill over night, I am desperate for it to be ready. And once it's had its first outing as a dessert, it makes an amazing breakfast! I've added a splash or two of elderflower and Pimms, but it is perfectly good without. I made a Pimms and orange syllabub to go with it, which complements the silky, cloud-like texture beautifully. 

Summer fruit tart with Pimms, elderflower, rose and mint

This is a really quick easy tart that I made after work for dessert.  I added Pimms, elderflower cordial, rosewater and fresh mint to a handful of summer fruits and left them to macerate for a while, then strained the juices and added it to extra thick double cream to serve with the warm tart.  The fruit is simply sprinkled over some ready-made puff pastry with a few flaked almonds and a little sugar.  Stunningly simple and summery!

Apricot, blueberry, orange and almond soured cream cake

We're having Sunday lunch today with some friends and their kids, and I've been asked to bring dessert.  This is a version of my blueberry, lemon and almond soured cream cake, but with orange instead of lemon, the blueberries mixed into the cake batter, and baked with fresh apricots, blueberries and flaked almonds scattered on top.  This vanished within minutes and everyone had at least one second helping!

Red wine, blueberry and chocolate brownie cupcakes

It's been a stressful couple of days.  I decided we needed chocolate and red wine.  Then thought - what better than brownies made with chocolate and red wine?  I also had some blueberries in the fridge so chucked them into the mix.  And used my silicone cupcake moulds rather than a brownie tin.  The result?  Red wine, blueberry and chocolate brownie cupcakes!  Sounds weird maybe, but tastes gooood.  Best served still warm with icecream!

Pimms cupcakes

It's the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and our friend Farree is having a big garden party.  These Pimms cupcakes are my contribution to the festivities!

ABC (apple blueberry cinnamon) cake

I made this cake up this evening as a quick recipe for pudding - after a long day I needed something sweet, quick and simple! This is as easy as ABC... 

Blueberry, pecan and cinnamon sticky buns

I've seen lots of American recipes for cinnamon rolls, which all use yeast to make a proper dough. I'm too inpatient to wait for dough to rise and so decided to try making sticky buns using just a mixture with self-raising flour - no need to leave it to rise in a warm place for hours, this can be used straight out of the mixing bowl. I added fresh blueberries and ground pecans to the traditional cinnamon filling. It was really quick and fun to make, and they turned out beautifully. Delicious with a cup of strong black coffee!