(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...)

Gin and Lime Gâteau au Yaourt with gin berry coulis

I recently read about Gâteau au Yaourt, a staple in French home baking and often the first thing that children in France learn to cook.  That’s because it can be made be using two small yoghurt pots, which once you’ve emptied out the yoghurt, you use to measure out the rest of the ingredients.  I decided though to make a more grown up version, with fresh lime zest and juice, and a good glug of gin.  I served it with a coulis of mixed berries, which I also added gin and lime to.  It’s lovely and light and airy, with a great crust on top. 

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. 

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)!

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. 

Beetroot redcurrant and white chocolate muffins with elderflower mascarpone icing

Tomorrow our friends Cath and Gregg are getting married. I'm helping decorate and it's a red a white colour theme (Gregg is a big Liverpool football fan). Tonight, Cath is having a few of her close girl friends round to her mum's house to celebrate her last night of freedom! I've made these red and white muffins - coloured with beetroot powder (and a little red food dye to make them more red than pink) and full of white chocolate chunks and redcurrants. The icing is flavoured with elderflower cordial.

Redcurrant, white chocolate and hazelnut beetroot friands

I've made friands before but always as mini-muffins, but this time I used my heart-shaped muffin tin.  Instead of ground almonds, I toasted and ground hazelnuts and added a little beetroot powder for colouring (I could've used another spoonful or so to get the cakes a really rich pinky red).  The tops of the cakes are sprinkled with redcurrants and white chocolate, but these hazelnut friands could be made with lots of different fruit combinations.

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!

Summer berry white chocolate muffins

For Christmas I was given the most amazing present - a shiny red Artisan KitchenAid! Now pride of place in my kitchen, this was my first attempt using it - a batch of delicious muffins to start the evening before heading to a New Year's Eve party.

Summer fruit terrine

OK, it's not summertime, but this is such a pretty looking dessert that I'm doing it for Christmas dinner.  It's a Delia Smith recipe, which means it's foolproof!

Redcurrant and white chocolate muffins

I made these recently for my friend Kirsty's 30th birthday - 15 muffins with two pink and white candles in each (so no room for the extra redcurrants on the top).  The recipe actually makes 18 (so we had the excuse to test 3 before the birthday party).  I've made these with icing using the juice of the redcurrants to colour it pink, but I think they are nicest just with the glaze of redcurrant jelly and dusted with icing sugar, making them glisten temptingly!