29 Oct 2012

Victoria sponge

This one is Mary Berries' recipe from last year’s Great British Bake Off book. You can’t beat a good Victoria sponge as a tea time treat and this one is excellent.  I had some strawberries that needed using up so I made some conserve and used that with a few tablespoons of jam.  The sponge is golden and moist as it should be and holds a good amount of filling when sandwiched together. You can find the recipe here. Mary Berry uses just jam for her filling but I always add some whipped cream….
 









1 Oct 2012

Fruit tart


This is Nigellas’ “no-fuss fruit tart”, well I don’t think it really is a tart, it’s actually one of those no-cook cheesecakes masquerading as a tart. I kind of never really think of no-bake cheesecakes as real cheesecakes anyway and think they should just be called desserts so I am kind of glad that Nigella has called it a tart. Not that I think the no-bake stuff isn’t delicious (but I do prefer the proper baked cheesecake). In fact I cannot wait to try the chocolate hazelnut cheesecake from Nigellissima which I  bought last week. It is fabulous of course and I have already earmarked lots of recipes that I want to try! (I also loved the TV programmed which aired last Monday). 

Anyway let’s concentrate - the fruit tart-well it doesn’t need much concentration actually-it’s just a construction job (albeit a bit of an expensive one). You have a standard cheesecake biscuit bottom topped with luscious lemony cream and fruit. You do need to buy good quality lemon curd here as it has a pretty starring role, I have bought the cheap stuff once and regretted it!  And use whatever fruit you like ofcourse I used strawberries, blackberries,blueberries and a last minute addition of some mango also tasted great. The perfect pud on a very hot summers day (which is when I made this). Admittedly we are unlikely to get one of those now for a while now here in the UK :( …I will post more weather-suited things hopefully once I have cleared my summer backlog of baking….you can find the recipe here and enjoy the pics below…