Apple and spice loaf cake

If you read this blog, you'll know that we love teabreads. Wanted to try a new recipe, so found this one on the BBC Good Food site. You'll find it  here.
I tweaked the spices and used some 'quatre epices' which is much like mixed spice in the UK. I found it rather sweet so maybe less sugar next time. I like the sliced apple on top; it gave the cooked teabread  an interesting look.

We had a slice of it with a cuppa.

Apple puree cake

This is a lovely moist cake with a soft, dense texture. Make sure, if you do try it, that you grease the cake tin well, as I used my 2lb silicone loaf mould and even thought I did grease it, the cake still stuck to the bottom.

Apple puree cake

100g butter or margarine, softened

225g soft brown sugar [I used light brown muscovado sugar and it gave the cake a lovely flavour]

2 eggs, lightly beaten

225g plain flour

1 tspn ground cinnamon

½ tspn grated nutmeg

100g apple puree

1 tspn bicarb.

2 tbspn hot water



Preheat oven 180C/gas4/350F

Grease a 2lb loaf tin well



Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy

Beat in eggs and stir in flour, spices and apple puree.

Mix the bicarb. with the hot water then stir it into the mixture.

Spoon into tin and bake for about 50mins. Test with skewer to see if it’s cooked.

American chocolate cake

This a recipe I've used before and it's a lovely moist cake and it keeps well too [if there's any left!!].

275g sr flour
3 level tbspns cocoa
175g caster sugar
1 level tspn bicarbonate os soda
300ml milk
150ml corn oil
3 tbspns golden syrup
1/2 tspn vanilla essence

icing:
25g cocoa
3-4 tbspns hot water
25g soft butter
100g icing sugar [sieved]

Preheat oven 180C/gas4/350F
Grease and line 2x20cm sandwich tin or a 20cm springform tin

Sift flour, cocoa a nd sugar in a bowl. Make a well in the middle.
Dissolve the bicarb in 1 tbspn of the milk and then pour into the flour with the rest of the milk, oil, syrup and vanilla essence. Beat well till a smooth batter.
Pour into tin/tins and bake for about 35-40 mins till the cakes spring back when pressed with fingertip.
Turn on wire rack to cool.

Make the icing - put the cocoa in a bowl with the hot water and butter and beat till smooth and butter is blended in. Beat in the icing sugar and then sandwich the cakes together or smooth it over the top of the large cake.

The cake has a lovely texture, moist and dense.

This is my Easter cloth which has had it's annual airing today!

Lemon yoghurt cake

Inspired by my friend Lynn on http://www.lynnscookingblog.com/ I decided to make a cake. This is a recipe from my Mum's handwritten notebook and is in ounces.

Here's the recipe:

4oz butter
6oz caster sugar
3 eggs
finely grated lemon zest
6floz natural yoghurt
8oz sr flour
2oz chopped dried apricots

preheat oven 325F/160C.gas 3
grease a 2 lb loaf tin

Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.
Add eggs one at a time and beat well between each.
Gently fold in the lemon zest, flour and apricots.
Spoon into the tin and bake for about 35 - 40 mins rill golden.
Cool on a wire rack.

This is delicious with a yoghurt topping - mix 1 tbspn natural yoghurt with 3 oz icing sugar. Spread over top of cake when cold and sprinkle with some more grated lemon rind.
I found this icing very thin and it ran down the sides of the cake. Think I'd use more icing sugar next time.

Talking of icing sugar, this is my French icing sugar. I love the container. They make a special container every January for the New Year. This is just the normal one.

Here's the mixture ready to be cooked.

The top of the cake cracked because my oven is useless! I've got a thermometer in it, but even when it's the required temperature things burn!

Now all we have to do is eat it!

Steamed hake with chickpeas

I'm not very imaginative when it comes to cooking fish. I had some hake and wanted a good recipe so tried this one here ; it was very tasty and an ususual blend of flavours.
 I didn't have any broad beans so left them out. Luckily I had some chorizo left over from a pizza. I'm surprised that the parsley in my garden is still growing after the cold winter we've had.

I like Simon Rimmer on 'Something for the Weekend'. but this is the first recipe of his I've tried.

Things I like to do

Over the years I've enjoyed doing embroidery of all sorts. In the UK, my friend and I went to Evening class and we were lucky that our teacher was doing a City and Guilds in Crafts and taught us lots of different types of work such as shadow, drawn thread, Florentine etc. The only snag was that she taught a new skill every few weeks, not enought time to complete the previous one, as I was teaching full time and had 2 children, so little time to catch-up at home.

I saved it all 'for when I retired', but I still don't seem to have enough time to finish those projects!

This is a cushion I made for our bedroom.

I've done lots of birth samplers, one for each grandchild, wedding cushions etc

I made this Kaffe Fassett 'Victorian Cats' cushion for my daughter, supposedly for her 21st birthday, but actually got finished for her 30th! This is the kit before I started. All the shades of the cats were so difficult to see in the evening.

I'm making my son a Celtic design tapestry cushion; hope he'll get it before he's 40!! I'm following a chart this time instead of a printed canvas. He wanted different colours just to add complications an already complicated design; all the red is purple, the orange is another shade of purple and there are various shades of mauve and lilac; we've kept the turquoise and the black!

These cushions will be the family heirlooms!

This is one I'm doing for my French friends. They keep chickens and have a cockerel who is just like this one, strutting his stuff in front of his harem!

My next project but 2 will be this cushion - I love roses so this is a must do!

Now all I have to do is find some time!

Anniversary sampler

We didn't want any presents for our Silver Wedding anniversary, but I wanted to do something as a keepsake, so I've decided to do a sampler.

My favourite flowers are lilies and we received a lovely bouquet of them for our anniversary. So I decided to design a sampler with a lily like this one as a centrepiece. Am in the throes of designing the chart, so will update this as I go along.

Apple crumble cake

When we came to France nearly 7 years ago, we brought 2 Bramley apple trees with us, as the variety isn't known here. They've been prolific and have given us apples for the freezer every year.
I'm always looking for new recipes to use them and found this one in an old exercise book that I used in a cookery evening class in the 70s.

100g soft margarine or butter
100g caster sugar
1 tspn vanilla extract
2 eggs beaten
150g sr flour
milk if needed
350g apples, peeled, cored and sliced [and defrosted if frozen]
topping
75g hard margarine [I used soft]
100g sr flour
75g caster sugar
1 tbspn water
Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas 4
Make the cake first by creaming the fat and sugar till light and fluffy then beating in the vanilla and eggs.
Fold flour into the mixture and if necessary add a little milk to make a stiffish dropping consistency.
Grease a 21cm loose-bottomed tin and line base with parchment.
Put cake mixture into tin and smooth top, then put the apple on top in a layer.
Make topping by rubbing fat into flour and stirring in the sugar and water.
Spoon this over the apple.
Bake for about an hour - check after 45 mins as the top was golden, but the bottom wasn't cooked, so I covered the top in foil and cooked it for another 15 mins.

Serve it hot with cream or ice cream or cold as a cake.
It makes a substantial sized cake!

Paris visit

                                       We enjoyed our Silver Wedding Anniversary trip to Paris.

       Didn't want to go to museums this time and I wanted to visit the big department stores in the Boulevard  Hausseman. This is the Galeries Lafayette. A fantastic dome.

It's such a beautiful building.

We went to the basement Food Hall and wow - what a feast for the eyes. These are a few of the delicious cakes on offer.

 Some hams and sausages.

And of course, the famous Poilane bread.

We went on a tour of the area around our hotel with our friend's son, who lives in Paris. In one of the lovely glass topped arcades I found this shop selling biscuits - can't remember its name!

 This is the famous Fauchon shop in the Place de Madeleine. They sell macarons and I bought some to try - delicious!

For our Anniversary dinner we went back to a lovely restaurant we'd found on our honeymoon. It's called 'Julien' and now belongs to the famous 'Brasserie Flo'chain.

It's Art Deco style inside, amd is now a listed building.

Here we are enjoying our meal.

Altogether a very happy time.

Apple and blueberry cake

This is a recipe from my friend Annick.
I bought some frozen blueberries last week and made some muffins with them, but had half a bag left. What to do with them? This cake was the answer.
You can serve it warm, with creme fraiche or cream as a dessert, or cold with a cuppa.

Here's the recipe:

225g sr flour

1/2 spn salt

125g butter or margarine

175g granulated sugar

2 large eggs, beaten

2 large eating apples, cored and sliced

125g blueberries

icing sugar

Preheat oven 190C/170C fan/gas5

Grease and line a 20cm cake tin.

Put the flour in a bowl with the salt; add the butter or marg and rub it in.

Add 125g of the sugar and the eggs and mix together.

Spread half of this mixture into your tin - I found this very difficult until I used a flat spatula.

Layer the apples and blueberries on top and sprinkle with the rest of the sugar.

Spoon in the rest of the mixture.

Bake for about 45 mins [ my oven isn't very reliable and it took 40 mins]

Cool in the tin for 10 mins then put on a wire rack to cool.

Sieve some icing sugar over the top.

I have to say that this isn't the most attractive looking cake you'll ever make, but it's certainly delicious.

We ate ours with a cuppa.

Sultana and cranberry teabread

We love teabreads and have a slice with a cuppa in the afternoon. Very British!

This one is very moist and moreish. Try it!

225g dried cranberries
225g sultanas
350ml black tea [warm]

preheat oven 160C/gas 3/325F
soak the fruit in the tea for about an hour [I used earl grey tea and it was a lovely flavour]
then add
250g wholemeal flour with 1 tspn baking powder added to it
 2 tbspn brown or muscovado sugar
25g melted butter
1 beaten egg
mix it all together with a spoon
grease a 2lb cake tin and pour in the cake mixture and level the top
bake for about an hour; cover the cake with foil for the first half hour then take it off
test to see if it's cooked and if not, give it another 5-10 mins and then check again
let the cake rest in the tin for 15 mins, then cool on a wire rack
eat it with some nice butter!


you can use any dried fruit that you have; I didn't have enough cranberries, so chopped up a few dried apricots to make up the weight
you can also try experimenting with different teas to see which you like best

Souligne beef casserole

Had a good time in the UK at Christmas, but came back with bronchitis.
Am feeling fine now, so thought it was time I started to post on here again.
Am trying to use up the food in the freezers, so found some beef and decided to make a casserole. It's bitingly cold here today, so just right for a nice tasty casserole.

Having looked at lots of recipes, nothing really inspired me, so I decided to make my own recipe.
 It's for 2 very generous portions and is a meal in itself. Maybe some nice crusty bread to mop up the sauce?
Here it is ready to cook.

200g beef
2 leeks sliced
3 carrots chopped
tin chickpeas
2 tbspn tomato puree
bouquet garni
1 cinnamon stick
250ml beef stock
200ml red wine
s&p

Brown beef in a casserole dish. Add chopped eeks and carrots and cook gently for 2 minutes.
Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer gently until beef is cooked - the time depends on the cut of beef you're using. I used beef shin and it took 11/2 hours.
That's it!
I know in lots of recipes they tell you to add tinned chickpeas just before the end, but I love them to absorb all the flavours in the casserole.The cinnamon stick gives it a lovely flavour.
Interesting thought, my husband calls it a stew - is it a stew or a casserole? Does it have to be cooked in the oven to be a casserole? Ideas?