Quatre Quarts cake

This cake is beautiful in its simplicity. It has only 4 ingredients (hence the name), and it can be whipped up in no time. Proportion is the key with this cake so no substituting or chucking in whatever is in the cupboard.

It's my favourite "Oh no, I have guests coming and they will expect cake" cake. That happens more often than you would think, due to my obsessive need to have something tasty waiting for anyone who makes the effort to visit me!

For this recipe I will assume that your eggs weigh 60g in-shell. Weigh them before you begin and use whatever weight they are for the other 3 ingredients.

Ingredients

3 large eggs
180g plain flour
180g sugar
180g salted butter (if using unsalted, add 1/2 tsp salt to the flour)

Preheat oven to 180C

Melt the butter and leave to cool slightly.

Add sugar to a large mixing bowl, add the butter and beat well until creamy.

Separate the egg whites and yolks and put the egg whites to one side. Add the egg yolks to the sugar-butter mixture and beat well. This improves the fluffiness of your cake as there is no other raising agent used so it's worth the time.

Sift the flour into the batter, stirring as you go.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until they are stiff.

Incorporate the egg whites with the batter, adding one spoonful of egg white at a time to the batter and folding with a gentle motion. Again, it's important to keep as much air in the batter as you can.

Pour the batter into a buttered 1lb loaf tin. Bake for around 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes away clean.

Leave to cool on a wire rack, or if you're anything like us you'll eat it while it's still warm and keep going back until you've accidentally eaten the whole thing!

Lemon Curd

This lemon curd is amazing and so easy! It adapts well to different fruit as well so there is no reason why you couldn't make lime, orange or even grapefruit curd!

It's also suitable for use in baking as well as on toast (or just eaten from a spoon)

The lemon curd comes out tart and not too sweet which is what I look for in a lemon curd, if you want it a bit sweeter you can of course add some more sugar.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons lemon zest (about 2 lemons worth)
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (2 or 3 lemons)
1 1/2 cups sugar
8 tablespoons butter
2 whole eggs, lightly beaten
3 egg yolks, lightly beaten


In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, combine lemon zest, lemon juice, and sugar.

Bring just to a boil; reduce heat to medium-low and simmer 5 minutes, you'll notice the yellow colour getting darker at this stage.

Add butter and stir until it has melted and combined. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature.

Beat eggs into cooled lemon mixture until well blended.

Return to heat and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, 10 to 20 minutes or until mixture thickens and coats spoon (it usually takes about 20 mins for me to get the consistency I want, but just keep an eye on it).

Remove from heat.

Pour into prepped, clean jars (I put them in the oven on about 170C/350F while I'm stirring the eggs in as this sterilises the jars and means they don't crack when the hot lemon curd goes into them)

Seal the jars with the lids while hot, and allow to cool before putting into the fridge.

Store in the fridge for up to a month.