I'm just back from a few weeks in Australia. One of my favourite things to do when I'm back home is to spend a few days in complete relaxation at my parents' farm in the Capertee Valley, about 3 hours west of Sydney. My mum revels in her kitchen, preparing breakfast, and then morning tea, lunch, and dinner (with dessert of course). She loves that my sister and I never say "mum, come out of the kitchen, sit down and relax", because we understand (because we're the same) that a day spent cooking for loved ones is relaxing!
When my mum served up this lemon and blueberry cake, it was so gorgeous I couldn't resist stealing the recipe for my blog. Here it is, a delicious, moist and oh-so-pretty cake. It comes from a 1995 edition of an Australian magazine "Better Homes and Gardens".
Lemon and Blueberry cake
3 cups plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda
3 eggs
2 cups caster sugar
250g unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest
2.5 tablespoons strained lemon juice
200g blueberries, fresh or frozen, tossed in enough flour just to coat
glaze
1 cup icing sugar, sifted
1/4 cup strained lemon juice
30g unsalted butter, melted
(use a little less liquid or butter if you want "icing" rather than "glaze" as per the photo of my mum's cake)
Method
Preheat oven to 160 degrees C. Butter and flour a medium sized ring tin, set aside.
Mix/wizz/beat together the sugar and eggs. Slice the butter into small chunks and add to the bowl, mixing as you go.
Combine the buttermilk, lemon zest and juice and then add to the mix. Add the flour, salt and bicarb soda and mix until just combined.
Fold through the blueberries. Pour batter into the cake tin and bake for 1h 15min, or until a skewer comes out clean.
Once the cake is out of the oven, leave to cool before turning out of the tin and icing.
For the glaze, stir the ingredients together until smooth, and then ice the cake.
Perfect for, say, a Royal Wedding party?!
We recently hosted a couple of (loosely) Italian themed supper clubs. For dessert I made ricotta fritters, served hot, straight from the sizzling oil, with a dollop of almond custard and strawberries tossed in a splash of balsamic vinegar. I hope the rate at which the fritters were devoured was an indication of how yummy they were (rather than people desperately wanting an awful experience over and done with!).
Most elements of the recipe can be done ahead of time, so all that's needed is some last minute frying of fritters. Enjoy!
Almond custard
From Tobie Puttock's "Daily Italian"
You can make the custard 1-2 days before serving. This quantity is plenty for 4-6 people.
500ml milk
4 egg yolks (the yellower the better!)
4 tablespoons sugar
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
50g ground almonds
Heat the milk in a saucepan. When it comes to the boil, remove from the heat, cover and keep warm.
Fill a medium saucepan half way with water and bring to the boil. Using a bowl that fits comfortably on top of the saucepan, add egg yolks and sugar. Place the bowl on top of the saucepan of boiling water and whisk the eggs and sugar over the heat until the mixture thickens and becomes creamy.
Slowly add the warm milk, whisking, and then add lemon zest. Keep whisking until the mixture thickens. It feels like this takes forever! I admit I don't whisk continuously, because it is boring. Remember that the custard will thicken further once it cools.
Remove from the heat and stir through the ground almonds. Leave to cook and keep in a sealed container in the fridge - remove about 30 minutes before serving, so it's not too chilled.
Strawberries in balsamic vinegar
Serves about 6
1 punnet strawberries, sliced
1 tablespoon icing sugar
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
Slice the strawberries - you can do this during the day of your dinner.
When you put the oil on to heat for the ricotta fritters, add the icing sugar and a generous splash of balsamic vinegar to the strawberries and toss. Leave to absorb while you cook the fritters.
Honey syrup
15g sugar
1 tablespoon honey
juice of half a lemon and a strip of peel
1 cinnamon stick
Put all ingredients in a saucepan with half a cup of water and bring to the boil. Stir so that the sugar dissolves. Simmer for about 5 minutes and then leave to cool. This can be made 1-2 days before serving, and kept in the fridge. It will keep for at least a week.
Ricotta fritters
Based closely on Tobie Puttock's recipe from "Daily Italian"
Makes about 20 fritters, which is enough for 6-8 greedy friends
400g fresh ricotta
3 eggs
6 tablespoons of caster sugar
finely grated zest of 1.5-2 lemons
a pinch of bicarb soda
5 tablespoons of sultanas
200g plain flour
about a litre of vegetable oil
icing sugar for dusting (and honey syrup, recipe above)
Make the batter during the day of your dinner and keep refrigerated. Take out of fridge about 30 minutes before you make the fritters.
Drain the ricotta of excess moisture and beat or whisk until smooth, then add remaining ingredients and mix well.
Heat the vegetable oil in a medium sized saucepan until a pinch of flour sizzles when dropped in the oil. Using 2 spoons, spoon balls of dough into the oil and fry - they can be as big or small as you'd like, but I aimed for a small meatball size. You need to move them around a little with a slotted spoon and when they are golden brown, remove onto kitchen paper. You can cook about 6-8 at once in a medium sized frying pan.
Drizzle fritters with the honey syrup and dust generously with icing sugar.
Serve the fritters hot along side the cold custard and strawberries and let people help themselves.
A little multicultural after dinner treat - an Italian classic corrupted by my penchant for all things Moroccan!
I'm a sucker for cardamom and pistachios, so when Nicola of the Shed Likes Food mentioned she'd recently tried pistachio and cardamom biscotti, I had to give it a go. I used a Bill Granger recipe for chocolate and pistachio biscotti.
I love these because they are dead easy, can be made well in advance, but best of all they look so pretty with little specks of green. Oh and they taste rather delish too!
Chocolate, pistachio and cardamom biscotti
care of Bill Granger "Feed Me Now"
makes about 40
160g caster sugar
2 medium eggs
150g plain flour
60g good quality cocoa powder
80g pistachio nuts chopped
1-2 teaspoons of ground cardamom (taste the batter and adjust according to how much you love this spice!)
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
Beat the sugar and eggs together by hand or with a mixer, for about 3 minutes until the mixture is thick, pale and has increased in volume. Sift in the flour and cocoa powder and stir to combine. Add the pistachios and mix well. Add a teaspoon of the cardamom and taste (such a chore having to eat raw batter), and add more to suit.
Grease one large or two small baking trays. Divide the mixture in 2 and shape into logs on the baking tray(s). The logs should be about 20cm long and about 2cm thick - maybe 10-15cm wide. Bake for 20 minutes or until firm. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
Turn the oven down to 120 degrees C. Cut the log into slices - about 3/4 cm thick. Spread the slices in a single layer on a baking tray and bake for 20 minutes (10 minutes on each side).
Allow the biscotti to cool before storing in an air tight container. They can be stored for up to a month (if you have an iron will!). They are the perfect crunchy, not-too-sweet accompaniment to have with coffee.
