(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...)

Citrus almond cinnamon cake with Chantilly cream, berries and pistachios

This weekend we cooked a huge brunch for a lovely gathering of 15 of our friends and five of their kids, including three very beautiful babies!  I made this whopping great cake which Matilda, pictured here, could barely wait to dive into. The cake itself was flavoured with orange and lemon zest, cinnamon, vanilla and ground almonds, then topped with apricot jam, Chantilly cream, raspberries, blackberries and pistachios.  You can see it was massive and for a smaller number of people you could halve the ingredients and make a one layered cake (and still it would be deep enough to slice it in half to sandwich with jam and cream).

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. 

Apricot, almond and amaretto cake

This was the other cake I made today for Paddy's 80th birthday party at Butetown History and Arts Centre, where I'm a board member. On the way there, I thought this might have ended in disaster when the apricots looked as if they were going to slide off the top in an avalanche of whipped Amaretto cream, but luckily some emergency cake repairs in the kitchen on arrival sorted it out and it was demolished by guests very quickly - the fact that it was still a little warm (the source of the melting panic in transit!) in fact made this delicious, a warm, boozy, almondy pudding, delicately spiced with nutmeg and full of baked and fresh apricots, with a fresh, Greek yoghurt cream which lifted it perfectly. For me, this was the winner of the two! 

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!

BANG cake (banana, amaretto, nut and ginger)

It's fast approaching that lovely time of year when pumpkins and sparklers come out. In honour of this, I've called this a 'BANG' cake, as it's made from banana, amaretto, nuts and ginger. The cake contains ground walnuts and ground ginger, and is topped with a kind of crumble made from blitzed pecans and crystallised ginger. I'm serving this tonight for my friend Ali who is cooking me supper!

Banana, honey, yoghurt and hazelnut bread

As usual when I make banana bread, it's to use up very ripe bananas which I've secretly been not eating for days so I've got just this excuse! Today I've added toasted hazelnuts, natural yoghurt and a mixture of honey and brown sugar, but for a plain banana bread recipe my old faithful one is here.

Banana, yoghurt, honey, oats and walnut muffins

It's my Saturday morning baking session and so I've used up a couple of ripe bananas to make some breakfast muffins.  These fill the house with an amazing smell while they're cooking, and taste delicious!

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!

Lemon ginger yoghurt and poppy seed mini muffins

I bought some delicious lemon and ginger yoghurt recently and thought it would make a lovely ingredient for some mini muffins.  I added poppy seeds for some crunch and they add a wonderful speckled texture. These are light and delicious.

Lemony peach and raspberry cake

My mum's having a house warming party tonight and I've been asked to bring some cakes. A great excuse for a baking marathon to try some recipes out I've recently been salivating over on Pinterest! The first cake was this lemon and yoghurt cake topped with raspberries and peaches. I've adapted it from a nectarine cake recipe from Technicolor Kitchen. A lovely fresh cake for an early spring sunshiny day.

Blueberry citrus scones

These are my adaptation of a traditional scone recipe, using blueberries instead of raisins, a little lemon and orange zest, and a mixture of greek yoghurt and milk instead of buttermilk - the result is beautifully light, fresh and moreish!  Best when split open and buttered while still warm, these are really lovely served with a dollop of greek yoghurt and a drizzle of honey - but you could of course also serve them the traditional way with jam and clotted cream.

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!

Plum upside-down cake

This was a new take on several upside-down cakes I've made.  They are a lovely way to use left-over fruit that you find beginning to wilt in your fridge or fruit bowl, including rhubarb or blueberries - and a greengage and blackberry one I made recently using this recipe was especially good.  The one pictured here I made using red and yellow plums, the red ones so shiny and bright they looked almost like juicy ripe tomatoes.  I've added yoghurt as it worked so well in the redcurrant and white chocolate muffins I made recently - it keeps the cake beautifully moist, and makes the texture more like a decadent pudding than a mere sponge cake.

Apple, cranberry and cinnamon crumble muffins

Some wrinkled-looking apples languishing in my fruit bowl were the excuse to invent these.  I’ve used the same yoghurt muffin mix from my redcurrant and white chocolate muffins and added a crumbly topping like that used for my apple and blackberry crumble.  The smell of cinnamon fills the house as these are baking – yummy!