Apple Clafoutis

Clafoutis is a french pudding traditionally made with cherries but in this book they are substituted with apples.

It is a very puddingy pudding with a kind of bread and butter pudding feeling, but with apples.

A simple batter is made out of sugar, milk, flour and egg, this is then left to rest for a while. You boil rum with sugar and add the apples to make them softer and the rum syrupy. You then poor the apples on top of the batter in a glass dish.

It is then baked for around 35 mins and served warm.

It was nice but kind of strange as although the rum was supposed to burn off, the apples were still quite alcoholic and crunchy rather than soft. But in other ways it was a very nice pudding and very warming.

Sorry the picture is so bad, I took this on my phone. 

Next Recipe: Scotch Pancakes

Red Velvet Cake

Or the meat cake as it will henceforth be known... 

This cake is really fashionable at the moment, so I thought I would give it a go. However, it wasn't very easy, or it was easy and I did it wrong. One of the two. 

Anyway the air gets in to it by adding bicarb to vinegar which fizzes, you then  add it to the mix and then you add food colouring. In the book she uses colouring paste...which I didn't have so I improvised using liquid instead. This may have been a mistake...

It is then baked (obviously) for a while. 

I put a skewer in to the cake and it came out clean. So I assumed that the cake was done. 

HOW ABOUT NO. 

No, the cake was not as we later found out when the inside was mushy and like meat... appetizing right? 

It was horrible, the consistency was sticky and gummy and revolting. Also the colour wasn't red enough as once the mixture was very watery, I was too scared to add more. So it was more of a salmon colour. 

It is topped with a cream cheese and sugar frosting, which is sweet but not too sweet. This was the best part of the cake. 

I didn't take a picture of this disaster of a cake because well it was a disaster, but as a visual representation... 

So that was the prize for the worst cake, woop woop!

Next Recipe: Apple Clafoutis 

Angel Cake

In order to make this cake, we had to make a trip to Divertimenti on Marylebone High Street to buy an angel cake tin which was very exciting. It is the most amazing baking shop ever. We spent nearly an hour in there deciding which one we wanted and looking at the other stuff that they sell.

Once we had eventually bought it and returned home, I started baking. It is an easy enough cake but the type of sponge is quite different. The sponge is made using icing sugar instead of caster sugar and it has 8 egg whites thus it is virtually fat free. But apart from that it is a very normal sponge in terms of ingredients.

All the ingredients are whisked together so that they are a creamy smooth mixture which is very pale. It is then baked in its really cool tin.

The cake itself is very white when baked and has quite a strange consistency which you either love or find a bit weird. It is served with blueberries which contrasts the white-ness of the cake well. 

Next Recipe: Red Velvet Cake

Cherry Crumble Cake

One slight change: It was raspberry crumble cake not cherry as 

THERE WERE NO CHERRIES ANYWHERE. So frozen raspberries were used instead.

This pudding is a layer of sponge and a layer of raspberries which is covered in a crumble. 

However although it has a lot of separate components in it they are still all baked together, rather than the sponge baked first and then baked again with all the stuff on it. This meant that the raspberry juice soaked through in to the sponge and gave it extra flavor. 

The crumble was all crispy, the raspberries were all squidgy and sweet and the sponge was soft. It was a nice combination and I will definitely be making it again at some point. 

Next Recipe: Angel Cake

Scones

scone as in gone not scone as in phone.

So scones... pretty dull, not going to lie, but it is in the book and I made it so there we go.

Scones are basically bread and are actually quite quick and easy to make, you make a simple dough of icing sugar, flour, baking powder, egg and milk. You then, using biscuit cutters, cut circular pieces out of the dough. They are then baked.

We ate them warm with jam while watching Skyfall.

So bloody British.

Next Recipe: Cherry Crumble Cake

Lemon Polenta Cake

Polenta for those who don't know is peeled barley and is used as a substitute for flour.

Anyway the cake.

It was very delicious if I say so myself and was made with very little catastrophes, thankfully. It is quite simple to make though so it doesn't say much...

You shove all the ingredients in to a bowl and cream together. The end mixture is grainy... because of the polenta, sounds really great right now doesn't it? Then you put it in the oven to do its thing.

I then had to make an accompanying strawberry compote. Now the problem with this was that it needed Kirsch. I had never heard of it before and surprisingly enough we didn't have any. After being told it was an alcoholic drink that if we bought a whole bottle of would just sit in the cupboard never used. I decided to improvise. Enter the sloe gin.

Along with the gin there is also strawberry jam, she says use Bonne Mama but that is way to fancy - I prefer Hartley's, and quartered strawberries.

This is then served with the cake along with some creme friache and it is all very yummy.

Next Recipe: Scones