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.

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. 

Raspberry ripple, elderflower and almond cake

This is a birthday cake for our friend Shahien, whose son Sabir commissioned me to make a cake with raspberries and strawberries for her. I made a Victoria sponge but included crushed raspberries rippled into the cake batter, which also contained elderflower cordial and substituted some of the flour for ground almonds. I then made an elderflower whipped cream and added elderflower to raspberry jam for the filling, layered with fresh raspberries and strawberries. Happy birthday Shane!

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. 

Hazelnut and strawberry friands

This is the recipe for the hazelnut and strawberry friands I made to go with three other flavoured types for my friend Sarah’s wedding – you’ll also find the recipes for the blueberry and almond friands, pistachio and raspberry friands and my favourite, blackberry and almond friands elsewhere on the blog.

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. 

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!

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!

Eton Mess cupcakes

Lu's nan is finally home from hospital after being admitted during the hottest week of the year.  Everyone outside is sun-bathing and enjoying the weather, but she has been stuck inside on an unbearably hot ward.  She's been most upset about missing the start of the French Tennis Open, so I thought now she's home I'd make some cupcakes that celebrate the sunshine and the spirit of Wimbledon, for her to enjoy while catching up on the tennis and recovering from her first round of chemotherapy today.  These are inspired by Eton Mess and include diced strawberries, crushed meringue and a hint of rosewater in both the cake batter and the icing.

Mini Victoria sponge cakes

My friend Liz is getting married on Saturday, and tonight had a hen night for lots of friends and family back in Penarth from all over the world.  I made some little Victoria sponge cakes for the celebration - a festive welcome back to the UK and congratulations to Liz!

Strawberry almond cake

I bought a small wooden crate full of beautiful strawberries from the greengrocers the other day, and the shiny red juicy fruit inspired me to whip up this cake - it's incredibly quick to do, but utterly delicious!  The strawberries are pushed into the cake batter with their noses pointing upwards before baking, but when it comes out of the oven they have become completely submerged as the cake has risen, so it's a strawberry surprise when you cut into it.  This has all the flavours of British summer - Eton mess, Victoria sponge, strawberries and cream - and brings a bit of sunshine even to rainy spring days like these.

Rhubarb and strawberry upside-down slices

It was the most beautiful sunny weekend and we went for a lovely picnic on the cliffs of Southerndown, before clambering down the cliffs to the beach below for a paddle in the sea with Doug the Pug. On the way we stopped at our favourite deli to pick up some picnic supplies, and I bought a couple of slices of the most delicious rhubarb and cherry cake. It was so good I had to figure out how to make it - I couldn't find any cherries in the local greengrocers so I used some lovely ripe strawberries instead. The cake batter is really just my usual upside-down cake recipe, but this time in a rectangular brownie tin. These are sweet, sunny and perfect for seaside picnics!

Peach, strawberry, blueberry & pecan cake

Tonight we're going for a pot luck dinner at my vegan friend Ellie and Ru's new house.  I wanted to make a vegan cake and decided to make a round cake version of my peach and pecan bread - this time with tinned peaches, which worked just as well.  We'd got a small punnet of blueberries and some strawberries in the kitchen so I added them to the mixture, and made a cinnamon icing drizzle using the tinned peach juice, lemon and apple juice.  A lovely, dairy-free way to warm a new home (and it made ours smell wonderful too)!

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!

Strawberry and hazelnut bread

It's a charity bake sale in work tomorrow, so I thought I'd use a couple of punnets of strawberries that were sitting in our fridge to try out my new fascination with fruity mini loaves (see my recent experiments with mango bread and peach bread).  I doubled the quantities of those recipes, so this makes 2 normal loaf cakes or 13 mini loaves.  Hazelnuts seemed like a nice combination with strawberries, but I think this would be lovely with pecans or macadamia nuts too.  The strawberry jam glaze made them look deliciously shiny and tempting. These are really sweet!

Lime muffins with kiwi, pomegranate and strawberry jam filling

I'm still using up the last of the sweet salsas from the Mexican dessert the other night - this recipe uses the microwave to make a quick and easy jam out of diced kiwi fruit, strawberries and pomegranate.  It takes a while to cool down so you need to make it at least an hour before the muffins to give the jam time to cool.  And make sure you use a really big bowl in the microwave as the jam bubbles up really high!