So...............

you might have noticed that there was no wonderful blackberry tart!!!! Much to my disappointment!!

During the week I had changed my mind and made a blackberry cake topped with meringue that I had seen on the cover of a magazine a few months ago, I was taking it out of the tin and IT FELL!!!! There was much screaming and gnashing of teeth but there was no salvaging it as it was smuched all over the top of my gas hob!! Thankfully I had a punnet of blackberries left so Monday night was the night, I was all set to go only to find my blackberries were gone mouldy!!! More disappointment and gnashing of teeth ensued (plus cursing m&s but I have since forgiven them as they had beautiful black Bursa figs in stock and we have them baked on top of porridge this morning) and I decided to make my big come back this week instead with a book review and some baked goods out of the book.


Rachel Allen's new book was out last week (it's not out until 6th October in the UK) and I have to say I think it's her best book yet! Now Rachel (lovely name ;-)) irritates me sometimes with her slight over-exuberance but I still watch her as she's one of the better Irish tv chefs currently I think, but this is her best book yet! Entitled Bake everything in the book is baked from the most simple recipe of baked figs to puff pastry and a wonderful gingerbread house which I am so making at Christmas (I'm singing carols already in my head).

This book is a lot better presented than Rachel's previous offerings in my opinion, the paper is lovely, matt and heavy, the photography is in a different vein too still being homely but more enticing focusing more on the food than the backgrounds, with the usual gratuitous Rachel shots sprinkled throughout. I've been reading through the recipes for the last few nights at bedtime and decided I had to make the Iced Orange Cake, one of 2 orange cakes in the book as I had some gorgeous organic, unwaxed oranges that I got last week and was dying to use as they smelled so wonderful and exotic.


So here's what you'll need for the cake

100g butter
2 eggs
Finely grated zest of 1 orange (I used 1 and a half as I wanted a super orangey cake)
100g caster sugar
100 icing sugar (I used 75g as I didn't want my cake to be too sweet)
125g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 180/Gas4.
Butter a 20cm springform/loose bottomed tin and line the bottom with parchment.
Melt the butter over a low heat and when melted set aside.
Mix the eggs, orange zest, caster and iricing sugar together until thick and fluffy.
Add the melted butter and mix.
Then sift in the flour and baking powder and fold together gently.
Pour the mixture into the tin and smooth the top.
Bake for 30-35 mins until a skewer comes out clean.

I glazed my cake with a honey orange glaze using 100g icing sugar mixed with 1/2 tbsp boiling water, 1/2 tbsp orange juice and 1 tbsp honey but to be honest it was gorgeous just on it's own and would be a lovely cake to have with a cup of tea in the afternoon. My cake sunk a little in the middle but it was my own fault as I just can't leave the oven closed coming up to the end of cooking time!! Twas divine though so serve with a dollop of yogurt or cream and enjoy!

Tiny update

I got my blackberries today AND finally got my hands on Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme and Dorie Greenspan!!! Very exciting!

I'm back with blueberries

Hey all, am back from 2 weeks of being lazy and not doing very much cooking. Thanks so much for your concern in wondering had I fallen off the face of the earth, unfortunately not, but I was away last weekend in the lovely county of Clare hence the no posting but I didn't make am amazing fennel, parsnip and potato gratin that I will post about when I make it again but suffice to say it was divine and of my own creation aswell (go me).

There was a wonderful trip to the Milk Market in Limerick where I met the wonderful Maz from Style Treaty along with her boyfriend and parents and had a flying visit from Laura from EatDrinkLive and her gorgeous little girl. A foray into Cafe Noir which was lovely, fantastic coffee and fantastic cakes, what more could a girl and her wonderful cousin Cait want (Hi Cait and thanks to you for putting us up - Again!).

There were some lovely individual sponge cakes made with duck eggs I got in the market but these didn't get photographed either, very lazy of me I know but himself was eating them in 2 bites so I didn't have much chance!

So this is my return post, it's a kick back to a few months ago and the wholemeal pikelets which were lovely if I do say so myself. I bought some fresh blueberries in Tesco on Friday night reduced to a mere 93 cents a punnet so of course I couldn't help myself and bought 2 even though I should have gotten more and frozen them but my head wasn't working as efficently as it should have been after a week at work and I'll have to make so with what I got, both are now gone as I can't get enough of fresh blueberries at the moment - I think I'm addicted but am hoping over eating doesn't make any parts of my purple!!!


So picture this if you will it's Sunday morning, the sun is shining again but for how long so I decided a summery breakfast was in order and not having any buttermilk for buttermilk pancakes and not being in the mood to seperate eggs and whip egg whites I decided to make these as they are a very easy to make and the batter is quite thick but they're lovely and light when they're cooked.

I made a couple of changes and used a duck egg instead of my normal organic egg as I had 2 to use up, the last egg went into something else I'll post about soon, when I had the batter in the frying pan I popped a couple of blueberries on the top so when the pikelet was turned over they cooked into the batter and were divine, also I served these with a pomelo and lime curd (I finally made a curd that set up properly) I made on Saturday morning as pomelo's were reduced to an even more bargaintastic 35 cents in Tesco and the recipe for this will follow later on today as part of my entry for the Sugar High Friday blogging event.

So sit back, enjoy the sunshine, and have a leisurely breakfast, can't be wasting this sun now can we........................

Comfort food - Banana Bread

Last Friday week in a certain large supermaket who shall remain nameless I bought 2 bags of bananas that were reduced as they had reached their "sell by" date thinking it was a fantastic idea obviously.

Needless to say they were never used so I made up my mind to do something with them and banana bread is something I've never made before.

I used a recipe from 80breakfasts as it's a blog I read all the time and remembered I'd seen this recipe ages ago and thought I must make that at some stage. I've measured everything to make it easier as opposed to using cup measurements but you can find the original recipe here should you want to use the original measurements.

• 3 or 4 ripe bananas (mine were very ripe but not black and I used 3 medium bananas cos I was a bit worried it'd be too banana-y)
• 2oz melted butter
• 200g sugar (I used raw cane caster sugar as opposed to white)
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (not essence)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• pinch salt
• 300g flour

I am lazy and played around with the instructions so here's what I did but if you want to follow the original recipe click on the link above.

• Put your bananas (I used 3) into a food processor and blend
• Add your melted butter, vanilla extract, egg and salt and blend for a couple of seconds
• Add the sugar and blend and then the flour.

The mixture is quite stiff but still very easy to work with, I made 2 loaves 1 in a silicone mould and 1 in a loaf tin. Both came out really well and the loaf in the pics is from the silicone and so it's lower but still gorgeous.

Enjoy!!!!