Basil-infused berry, fig and clotted cream Eton mess

Last night Lu and I cooked a meal for my Dad and had such a lovely evening with him, eating, drinking,  listening to music and to him telling us brilliant stories from his days as a journalist, and generally putting the world to rights until the wee small hours!  I invented this very quick and easy dessert for pud - a twist on a classic Eton mess by swapping whipped cream for clotted cream, adding some fresh figs to the strawberries and raspberries, and infusing the fruit with fresh basil while it macerated in the fridge.

Roast figs with honey, Marsala and thyme

Roasting figs is a lovely way to bring out their flavours, especially when at the end of the season they are a little green rather than the delicious deep crimson insides of really ripe black figs. Together with warm honey and fresh thyme, I added a splash of Marsala to enhance the flavours, even though we were having them for breakfast, served with my maple, pecan and cranberry granola and lovely thick Greek yoghurt.  A perfect Sunday morning, listening to Sam Cooke and reading the papers, eating my perfect winter breakfast! 

Sloe gin, hazelnut and fig cake

Sloe gin seems to capture the flavours of autumn and the onset of Christmas festivities. It seemed like a perfect ingredient to incorporate into a cake for a Christmas craft and bake sale we went to today at a beautiful house in the Welsh countryside to raise money for a cancer hospital that our friend and old teacher Mags raises money for.  I decided to use it in a version of the hazelnut and fig layer cake that I made recently, adding a glug of sloe gin to the cake batter and drizzling the hot cakes out of the oven with it before layering it with hazelnut buttercream and topping each layer with fresh figs. Delicious!

Fig and clementine gingerbread

Lu and I have spent all week feeling very sorry for ourselves with a horrible virus. This is medicinal baking - unbelievably easy to make (it's all just blitzed in a food processor) so minimal effort for an achey body, and proper comfort food to eat - best served warm with a generous dollop of custard!  It's an adaptation of my sticky ginger loaf cake, but I used dried figs as we didn't have any dates in the pantry, and added clementine zest and juice and made a clementine icing to drizzle over the top. (It also happens to be vegan - no eggs or butter, all the stickiness comes from the figs, clementine juice and lovely liquoricy black treacle.) A big warm hug of a cake!

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. 

Chocolate hazelnut fig cake

I made this cake for our friend Liz’s baby shower - three layers of chocolate cake sandwiched with buttercream made with ground toasted hazelnuts, fresh figs and topped with edible rose petals. 

Lovely Liz at her baby shower

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!