It's a Bill Granger Weekend Part 2 - Lemon Pound Cake

As I've been watching Bill Granger this weekend courtesy of Bill's Food on BBC and also thanks to some lovely Malaysian person on YouTube who has all of Bill's Food series 1, I was all inspired to make this lemon cake as lemon is one of my favourite flavours (along with almond and chocolate obviously). It was on Bill's Food a couple of weeks ago and looked divine in it's lemony deliciousness and best of all it can be frozen so I can pull up out again in a couple of weeks and enjoy more lemony goodness.

This is supposed to be a pound cake but it's more like a 1/4 of a pound cake as you will see from the ingredients:

250g butter, softened
250g caster sugar
2 tsp grated lemon zest
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 free range eggs
250g self-raising flour, sifted

Preheat the oven to gas 4/180.
Grease and line the base of an 8 inchsquare cake tin.
Mix the butter and sugar together until smooth, I used my Kenwood but you could do this by hand pretty easily. Then add the lemon zest and vanilla and mix again.
Add the eggs, one at a time, and mix well after each one is added.
Fold in the sifted flour, half first, mix well and then the second half and mix well until combined.
Spoon into the tin and bake for 40-45 mins or until a skewer comes out cleanly.
Cool for 10 mins and remove from the tin.

While this was cooking there was the most delicate smell of lemon from when I came half way down the stairs. The cake is moist but dense and smells lemony. It is almost like a lemon madeira but firmer and denser in texture. Definitely worth a try.

Just not destined to make cheesecake!!!!!

This weekend I made Laura's Zest for Life cheesecake from EatDrinkLive. And guess what I failed!!!!!!!

The making was fantastic, I even made homemade lemon curd, I assembled everything and put it in the fridge last night at 10. I went down stairs this morning at 10.30 and removed the springform part of the tin and IT COLLAPSED!!!!!!! I am devastated!!! This is the second cheesecake I've made in a month that hasn't worked!!! What am I doing wrong??? Am I just not destined to make cheesecakes???? Boo hoo hoo!!!! Here's the pictures of the making so you can see.......................

Lucious Lemon and Lime Cream Tart

To follow on from my shortcrust sweet pastry and to stick with the Jamie Oliver theme this is the tart I made with it my pastry last weekend. Lemon is one of my all time favorite flavours (along with almond and cardamom) and this tart is creamy and luscious but sharp and tangy at the same time.

So you'll need

• 1 tart shell, baked blind and cooled
  
• 340g/12 oz caster sugar
• 6 large eggs
• 350ml/12fl oz double cream
• 200ml/ 7 1/2 fl oz lime juice
• 100ml/3 3/4 fl oz lemon juice

I also added the zest of 4 limes to this tart to make it extra limey as per Jamie's suggestion.

With this tart you need to remember as it has a very wet filling that the pastry will need to be brushed with beaten egg before you add the filling (egg washed) to keep the tart shell crisp. I normally do this at the very end of the blind baking but Jamie doesn't specify so whichever you want to do is fine.

• Whisk together the sugar and eggs.

• When they are mixed slowly stir in the cream and the juices. Put the cooled tart shell int0 the oven and pour the filling into it. If you pour it in while it's on the oven tray you shouldn't spill any of the cream mixture. Bake for 40-45 mins at 180/gas 4 or until the filling is set but still a bit wobbly in the middle. Let that tart cool for an hour before serving because if you don't then the filling will pour out and be gooey.
  

Dust with icing sugar and serve with strawberries or raspberries. DIVINE!!!!