Simnel Cake

Simnel cake is a British fruit cake that is served at Easter.

Traditionally it should have 11 marzipan balls placed around the rim to symbolise the apostles (Judas excluded)



As I'm not religious, but do love cake, I replaced the apostles with Pac-Man chasing ghosts. I then realised I could give it the pun-tacular title of a Pâques-Man cake (Pâques is French for Easter) and giggled for longer than was necessary at my own joke.

The cake is tasty and light, the marzipan layer in the middle really lifts it above mere fruitcake.

Ingredients

175g butter
175g soft brown sugar
3 eggs, beaten
175g plain flour
pinch salt
½ tsp ground mixed spice
400g mixed fruit (raisins, currants, sultanas and mixed peel)
2 tbsp apricot jam
1 packet of yellow marzipan
1 free-range egg, beaten for glazing

Preheat oven to 140C. Grease and line a 18cm cake tin.

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy.

Gradually beat in the eggs until well incorporated and then sift in the flour, salt and mixed spice a little at a time.

Finally, add the mixed dried fruit and stir into the mixture.

Put half the mixture into the prepared cake tin.

Take a third of your marzipan and roll it out into a circle 18cm in diameter. Lay this circle on top of the cake batter in the cake tin.

Add the rest of the cake mixture and smooth the top.

Bake in the preheated oven for 1¾ hours or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes away cleanly.

Remove from the oven and set aside to cool on a wire rack.

Brush the top of the cooled cake with the apricot jam.

Divide the remainder of the marzipan in half; roll out another circle to cover the top of the cake with one half and use the remaining marzipan to decorate your cake, either with balls or Paque-man.

Place the circle of marzipan on the jam glaze and set the decorations round the edge. Brush the cake topping with a little beaten egg.

Preheat the grill to high. Place the cake onto a baking tray and grill until the top of the marzipan begins to toast.

You can also use a blow-torch to toast the marzipan if you are lucky enough to have one!

Chocolate Cake with Olive Oil and Sea Salt

This cake is amazing. Moist, chocolatey, with a hint of the olive oil and sea salt that just brings it to another level and makes it a very indulgent, adult cake.

Ingredients

200g dark chocolate (70% cocoa)
175g unsalted butter
4 eggs
150g caster sugar
60g plain flour
1½ tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

For the ganache -

400ml double cream
200g dark chocolate (70% cocoa)

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Grease and line a 19 cm round springform cake tin with parchment paper.

Melt the chocolate and butter together in saucepan on a low heat, stirring constantly until completely melted.

In a large bowl, beat the sugar and eggs until pale and fluffy. Add in the flour, a tablespoonful at a time, along with the baking powder and sea salt.

Fold in the melted chocolate and butter mixture and the olive oil until no streaks of flour are visible.

Bake cake for 30-40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes away cleanly. Cool on a wire rack before removing from the cake tin.

While the cake is cooking you can prepare the ganache.

Place the cream in a saucepan and heat it just to a simmer, don't let the cream boil. Then, remove from heat and add the chocolate but don't stir it until the chocolate has melted. It will help the chocolate melt if you break it up into pieces first.

Place in the fridge for an hour or so to cool and thicken.

When the cake and the ganache have cooled, cut the cake horizontally so you have two equal discs.

Put half of the ganache on the bottom half, spreading carefully with a palette knife to make it even, and place the other half cake on top.

Put the rest of the ganache on top of the cake and spread evenly down the cake’s top and sides.

Keep the cake in the fridge, taking it out about an hour before you want to serve it.

Lime Meringue Pie

This was my contribution to Pi Day this year.

It's a very tart lime base with just a little meringue around the edge to provide a little sweetness.

When browning the meringue, I realised that I really need a kitchen blowtorch to be able to do these things well as the heat from the grill made my lovely, smooth lime curd surface blister. So that has been added to the birthday wish-list!

Ingredients

115g salted butter, cut into pieces
180ml freshly-squeezed lime juice (from about 5-6 limes)
150g sugar
zest of two limes
pinch of salt
3 large egg yolks
3 large eggs

For the meringue -

2 large egg whites
75g sugar
pinch of salt
a few drops vanilla essence

You also need one pre-baked Sweet Tart Crust

Preheat the oven to 180C.

In a medium-sized saucepan, warm the butter, lime juice, sugar, zest, and salt.

In a jug, whisk together the eggs and the yolks.

When the butter has just melted and the mixture is warm, gradually pour some of the lime juice mixture into the eggs, whisking constantly. Scrape the warmed eggs back into the saucepan and cook the mixture over low heat.

Stir the mixture constantly over low heat, using a whisk, until the filling thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Do not let it boil. It will take at least 30 mins at a low temperature to thicken sufficiently.

Remove from heat and scrape the filling into the pre-baked tart shell.

Bake for 10 minutes until set and then remove and cool slightly.

Now make the meringue. Whip the whites on high speed in a mixer to soft peaks. Next, gradually add the sugar and the salt, while whipping on high speed, until the meringue is shiny and stiff. Beat in the vanilla last.

Scrape the meringue into a pastry bag fitted with a star tip and pipe a ring around the edge of the tart.

Pop the tart under the grill (or, as I would recommend, use a blowtorch on the meringue), watching carefully, as it will brown quickly.

When the meringue begins to darken, remove the tart from the oven and cool completely before slicing.

Sweet Tart Crust

This tart crust is wonderful and foolproof! The end result is a crisp, buttery crust that takes no time to pull together with no fuss.

It's adapted from a David Lebovitz recipe.

Ingredients

90g salted butter, cut into pieces
1 tbsp vegetable oil
3 tbsp water
1 tbsp caster sugar
150g plain flour

Preheat oven to 210C.

In a medium-sized ovenproof bowl, combine the butter, oil, water, sugar, and salt.

Place the bowl in the oven for 15 minutes, until the butter is bubbling is starting to brown around the edges.

When done, remove the bowl from oven and add in the flour and stir quickly, until it comes together and forms a ball which pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

Transfer the dough to a 9-inch (23 cm) tart mold with a removable bottom and spread it a bit with a metal spoon.

Once the dough is cool enough to handle, pat it into the shell with the heel of your hand, and use your fingers to press it up the sides of the tart mold. Reserve a small piece of dough, about the size of a raspberry, for patching any cracks that will appear once baked.

Prick the dough all over with the tines of a fork, then bake the tart shell in the oven for 15 minutes, or until the dough is golden brown.

Remove from the oven and if there are any sizable cracks, use the bits of reserved dough to fill in and patch them.

Let the shell cool before filling.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are what I think of as grown-up chocolate chip cookies. They have a lovely, rich flavour from the browned butter and the sea salt stops them from being too sweet.

Ingredients

250g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarb of soda
1 tsp sea salt
200g butter
220g soft dark brown sugar
50g granulated sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
200g dark chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 160C.

In a saucepan, melt the butter and continue to cook until it has gone a nutty brown colour and has a toasted caramel smell. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Beat together the sugars and the melted butter in a large mixing bowl. Add in the vanilla and the egg and egg yolk and beat until well mixed.

To this mixture, add the flour and bicarbonate of soda and mix until just combined. Sprinkle the sea salt and chocolate chips into the cookie dough and mix again.

Place the cookie dough mixture into the fridge for 5 minutes to cool.

When you're ready to bake the cookies, take about 3 tbsp worth and form into a ball in your hands. Place on a cool, ungreased baking sheet. Keep the cookies 3 inches apart as they will spread.

Bake for 13-15 minutes in the oven until the edges are crisp but the middle is still slightly soft.

Carefully transfer them while hot to a wire rack to cool.

Lemon Drizzle Cake

I love lemon in cakes, I think it's just the right combination of fresh and sweet. This is my favourite lemon cake recipe as it contains lemon curd, making it really moist and tender.

You can add in poppy seeds to add a bit of variety if you like.

Ingredients

140g self raising flour
112g butter, softened
112g granulated sugar
3 tbsp lemon curd
2 eggs
1 small lemon, juice and zest

Icing

2 tbsp icing sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice

Preheat oven to 175C.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until light.

Add in the eggs, lemon zest and juice and lemon curd. Beat to incorporate.

Lastly, add in the flour and mix until there are no visable lumps in the batter.

Pour cake mix into a buttered loaf tin (400g/1 lb size).

Bake for 30 mins, or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes away cleanly.

Allow to cool, then make up the icing and drizzle artistically on top.

Toasted Coconut Cake

This cake is a dream. It actually came about as a bit of a mistake as I wanted to make a plain sponge, but realised I had no normal milk so added a small can of coconut milk instead.

It's light, fragrant and not too overpoweringly coconutty. If you wanted a stronger flavour, you could swap the vanilla essence for coconut essence but personally I prefer a more natural coconut taste.

Ingredients

2 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup cake flour
1 cup dessicated coconut, toasted
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup coconut milk
3 tbsp butter, melted and cooled



Preheat oven to 175C.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together. Add in the flour, toasted coconut, baking powder, salt and vanilla and mix well.

Finally, add the coconut milk and butter to the mix and stir until you have a thick batter.

Pour the cake batter into a buttered 8 x 8 square cake pan and bake for 20 minutes or until light brown.

Cool in the pan and cut into squares.

Banana Bread

This has always been one of my favourite cakes which is ironic as I am not a fan of fresh bananas!

It's a great way to use up over-ripe bananas and it is a very adaptable recipe, you can add choc chips, nuts, a little espresso or even lime juice to jazz it up.

I'm not sure why this is called banana bread rather than banana cake - I think it might be that it is commonly baked in a loaf tin rather than a cake pan and also that the use of bicarb of soda as a raising agent would place it into the quick-bread category along with soda bread.

Ingredients

4 over-ripe bananas
375g plain flour
75g butter, melted
150g brown sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp bicarb of soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 175C.

Mash up the bananas in a large mixing bowl with a fork.

Add the butter, sugar, egg and vanilla and mix well with a spatula or wooden spoon.

Add the bicarb, salt and cinnamon and mix again.

Lastly, sift in the flour and stir until just combined.

Pour mixture into a buttered 400g loaf tin and bake for 50-60 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the middle comes away cleanly.

Leave to cool slightly in the tin before turning out and cooling on a wire rack.

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!

Earl Grey Tea Bread

This cake (an adaption of a Delia recipe) has a firm but light texture and the flavour of the tea really comes through without being overpowering.

It's also really easy to make and adapt to what you have in the cupboard to use. I've made it with walnuts, pecans, all mixed fruit, sultanas only, and it's been perfect every time.

It also keeps for about a week as well as it's got such a good amount of fruit in it. All in all, it's one of my favourite cakes to have in the house!


Ingredients

340g currants, sultanas and raisins
55g mixed peel
120g demerara sugar
137ml Earl Grey tea
55g pecan nuts
1 egg
1 tbsp milk
225g self-raising flour

Preheat oven to 170C

Dissolve the sugar in the hot tea and add to a bowl containing the dried fruit and mixed peel. Leave for as long as you can, overnight if possible, but I've made it after 1 hr and it was fine!

Place the pecans on a baking sheet and bake in the oven for 5 minutes. Keep a close eye on them so they don't burn. After 5 mins, remove and chop roughly.

Beat the egg and milk together and add to the bowl containing the fruit and tea mixture and stir together. Add the flour and pecans and mix until well combined.

Pour cake mix into a buttered, silicon loaf tin, place onto a baking sheet and bake in the oven for 70 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes away clean.

Turn out and onto a wire rack immediately.

Ricciarelli

I am making Christmas hampers this year for people, so the next few posts are things that will be contained within them. I have to be able to send them across to the UK in one piece so they need to be hardy and able to stand the week or so they will be out of refrigeration, awaiting Christmas morning.

These Italian almond cookies are really simple and impressive. They're fun to make and are also gluten free. The only tricky thing can be finding the almond flour for them. I have a lovely Italian bakers nearby where I can buy this but health food shops should have it. Almond flour is more fine than ground almonds, so at a push, you can make almond flour from grinding blanched almonds in a food processor until they are very, very powdery.

Ingredients

2 cups almond flour
2 large egg whites
2 tbsp cornflour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 cups icing sugar
1 tsp bitter almond extract

For rolling you need an additional cup of icing sugar.

Preheat oven to 150C

Mix the almond flour, icing sugar, cornflour and baking powder together in a large mixing bowl.

Beat the egg white separately until they are stiff and fold them into the almond mixture.

Add the almond extract and stir until you have a soft dough. You should be able to pinch off a piece of the mixture and roll it into a fairly tight ball so if you feel your mixture is too soft, add extra almond flour.

Cover a clean worktop with a small pile of icing sugar.

Form one tablespoon of dough into a small ball, coat in the sugar, and flatten it out slightly so you have a lozenge shape.

Place the cookies on a baking sheet covered with a silicon baking mat. Just before placing in the oven, press a clean fork down in the middle of each cookie to create an indentation.

Bake for 10-12 minutes until light gold in colour. You don't want to over-cook these cookies as the joy of them is in the chewy texture.

The cookies will keep in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks.

French Baguettes

This baguette recipe uses a poolish which means that you have to start preparing it the night before. It's worth the work as a first foray into using ferments, although I will keep the ferment going for a day or so longer next time to get a more intense flavour.

There is no need to use special equipment for this bread. A couche would be great for letting the bread rise, but until I have a bigger kitchen, a well-floured tea-towel does the job.

This recipe will make 4 good sized baguettes.

Ingredients

Poolish -
300g strong white bread flour
300g water
1/2 tsp instant yeast (4g fresh yeast)

Dough -
605g strong white bread flour
300g water (slightly warm to the touch)
12g salt
1 1/2 tsp instant yeast (8g fresh yeast)
All the prepared poolish

Prepare the poolish at least 12 hours in advance. Mix together the flour, yeast and water until the mixture has the consistency of a smooth batter. Cover with cling film and a tea-towel and let ferment in a warm place overnight.

The next day, the poolish will have risen and look bubbly and smell faintly alcoholic.

Mix the dough by combining the flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl. Add all the poolish and the water and mix together until it starts to form a dough.

Turn the dough out onto the work surface (not floured! If you haven't already, get Richard Bertinet's book, Dough. It's an amazing resource on how to knead dough)

Knead the dough for around 8-10 minutes, until it comes away cleanly from the work-top and is smooth, supple and pliant. Coat the dough lightly in flour and shape into a ball.

Place the dough in a mixing bowl and cover with a tea-towel. Let the dough rest until it is nearly doubled in size, around 1hr to 1hr and a half.

Pre-heat your oven at this point to 200C.

Once the dough has doubled, gently remove it from the bowl and knock it back on the work suface.

Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces (I weigh each one to be sure, as it helps with the second rising if they are all exactly equal) Shape the four pieces into rounds and let rest for a further 15 minutes.

Shape each piece of dough into a baguette shape by rolling the round into a sausage shape and folding each length onto the other, creating a seam at the bottom of the baguette that will give it strength.

Place each baguette into a fold of well-floured tea-towel on a baking tray. Ensure that there is a fold of towel between each baguette, so they don't stick to each other, and that there is room for the baguettes to rise.

Cover the shaped baguettes with another tea-towel and let rise again for an hour in a warm place (I use the hob-top, away from the oven door so they get the general warmth with none of the direct heat).

Once the baguettes are risen, score the tops with a razor blade and transfer carefully to a baking sheet for putting in the oven.

Baguettes get their crisp, chewy crust from being baked in a moist, steamy oven so I place a roasting tin with 200ml of water in the bottom of the oven about 10 mins before I am going to bake the baguettes. This gives the oven plenty of continuous steam.

Bake the baguettes on the middle shelf for 20 minutes until they are golden brown and sound hollow when tapped on the base.

Cool on a wire rack and then eat with cheese and wine!

Stem Ginger Cake

This is the recipe that I used for the wedding cake for Joe's manager.

It's rich, moist and is actually a lot better after being kept in an airtight container for a couple of days. It's great served plain as a teatime cake but even better iced with Maple Syrup Buttercream for a more indulgent treat!

Ingredients

270g self-raising flour
115g butter
115g dark muscavado sugar
115g treacle
115g golden syrup
250ml full-fat milk
85g preserved stem ginger, grated
1 egg
1 tsp bicarb of soda
1 tbsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp mixed spice

Preheat the oven to 160C.

Mix the flour, bicarb and all the spices in a large mixing bowl. Add the butter and rub it into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Heat the sugars, treacle, syrup and milk in a medium saucepan, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Turn up the heat and bring the mixture to just below boiling point.

Add the shredded stem ginger to the flour mixture, then pour in the liquid mixture, beating well to avoid any lumps.

Add the egg and stir in to combine. The mixture will be the consisitency of a thick pancake batter.

Pour this into a buttered and lined 18cm round cake tin and bake for 50 minutes-1 hour, or until a skewer pushed into the centre of the cake comes out fairly clean.

Leave to cool completely in tin before turning cake out.

Swedish Gingerbread Cookies (Pepparkakor)

So somehow I ended up agreeing to do the wedding cake of Joe's manager. I'm not sure how it happened, but I've been told that I offered willingly!

She was having an autumn-themed wedding so we settled on gingerbread cookies and lemon cookies for the main body of the cake, and a small gingerbread cake on top for ceremonial cutting.

This led to about 6 prototypes of gingerbread cookie, trying to get the texture that we were looking for. We needed the cookie to be crispy, so it would survive being out in the air all day and also keep the shape of the cookie-cutters.

This was the winning ginger-cookie recipe. I will also post the others as they were all lovely, but just not suited to what we needed the wedding cookies to do.

You need to make the dough the evening before as it needs to be very chilled to be able to roll it out as thin as it needs to be. I separated the dough into 4, and wrapped each log of dough in clingfilm to make it easier to roll out the next day.

This recipe makes about 60 thin cookies, using a medium cookie cutter.

Ingredients

300g butter, softened
250g caster sugar
150g soft brown sugar
1 egg
2 tsp grated lemon rind
300ml golden syrup
300ml double cream
1100g plain white flour
3 tbsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp ground ginger
1/2 tbsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp allspice
1 tsp salt
1 tsp bicarb of soda


Sift the spices and the baking soda into a small bowl.

In another larger mixing bowl, mix butter with the two sugars.

Add the spice mixture and the egg.

Add the lemon rind, golden syrup, cream and finally flour. The dough will be fairly sticky – don’t worry as it will solidify a lot in the fridge. Refridgerate for at least 6 hours, preferably overnight.

The next day, preheat your oven to 180C.

Take out one log of dough at a time and roll to about 1/2 cm thickness and cut the cookies with whatever cutters you have. The dough becomes very sticky again quite quickly, so you need to work quickly. Make sure to flour your worktop and cutters well. Don't worry about the excess flour on the bottom of the cookies, this is easily brushed off when they are baked.

Bake the cookies for 8- 10 minutes. You want them to be a rich golden colour when they're done.

Cool on a wire rack. The cookies keep for about 3 weeks in an airtight container.

Carrot Cake

This carrot cake (originally from Baking Bites) is amazing. It's easy to make, moist, nicely spiced and just everything you could ever hope for in a carrot cake.

I should know, as carrot cake has always been one of my favourites. It also has enough substance and flavour that you don't need icing but I will publish a recipe for simple cream cheese icing that works really well with this cake.

The recipe is quite flexible if you are missing a couple of ingredients - I've made it with different fruit juice depending on what I've got in the fridge and it's always been tasty.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups demerara sugar
2 large eggs
1/4 cup butter, melted and left to cool
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp mixed spice
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 - 3 medium carrots, grated


Preheat the oven to 175C.

In a large mixing bowl, beat together the sugar and eggs with a handwhisk until smooth and the mixture has changed to a lighter colour.

Stir in the melted and cooled butter, orange juice, vanilla, spices and salt. When it's all combined, sift in the flour and bicarbonate of soda. Stir gently until you have a smooth batter with no visible flour.

Stir in the grated carrot and make sure that it's well combined with the rest of the mixture.
Scrape the cake mix into a greased standard loaf tin (but this cake can be baked in a square baking pan or even muffin cases)1

Bake in the oven for 40 minutes, until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes away clean. Be careful when opening the oven to check on the cake as it can sink in the middle!

Remove from the tin and cool.


1. If you are using this recipe for muffins, then you will only need to bake them for 25-30 minutes.