Let Them Eat Cake, Cake

One of the many things I love about Lorraine Pascale is the fact that she interacts with fans all the time, particularly on Twitter. Lots of other people have realised how amazing her recipes are and regularly post pictures of their creations, a selection of which Lorraine retweets to her followers. Over the weeks there had been one specific cake that stood out as a firm crowd pleaser: a chocolate dream covered in immaculate rows of Malteasers: may I introduce the Let Them Eat Cake, Cake. What an invention. It’s super easy to make and looks incredible: even if you have limited skills in the baking arena you can easily pull this off. If you persevere and take your time with the decoration it provides a professional finish that will fool people into thinking you bought it from a bakery.

Doorstop Vanilla Cheesecake

Before I go any further: DO NOT THINK ABOUT THE CALORIES INVOLVED IN THIS CHEESECAKE. It will not only scare you into never attempting to make it and will definitely scare you out of eating any of it. Just don’t think about it. Promise?

Lorraine Pascale’s new series, Fast, Fresh and Easy Food has started on BBC2, Tuesdays at 8pm, and I’ve been hooked. The editing is beautiful, her recipes are simple to follow, and I have massive respect for someone who can run round a kitchen in a crisp white t-shirt and look immaculate (I don’t care if she changes it a billion times during filming, I’m going to pretend it’s the same one). Her enthusiasm is infectious, and having seen the first few episodes I was very keen to buy the book.

Flicking through the pages though provided a slight dilemma: where to start? Since I hadn’t made a cheesecake this summer, it only felt appropriate to give Lorraine’s Doorstop Vanilla Cheesecake a go. Be warned, this is a mammoth of a cheesecake that really deserves its own postcode.

Blueberry and Soured Cream Loaf

From having no blueberries to having them taking over the fridge, I decided to use them again but this time in a Blueberry and Soured Cream Loaf. This was particularly good as the soured cream ensured the loaf remained fluffy and moist for days after it was baked. The blueberries sank to the bottom half of the loaf (which is nothing to panic about if that happens to you) and they looked amazing: really vibrant and made for a good photograph! This is definitely recommended if you like blueberries and you like cake: if so, then get on it!

Blueberry Muffins

I’ve made many variations of muffins, but for some reason never the classic blueberry. This summer I’ve thrown away so many tubs of blueberries as I’ve always started out with good intentions and never got round to actually using them, so after 10 weeks I decided enough was enough. Time to take the bull by the horns – so to speak! – and tackle for once and for all.

Pistachio Brownies

I really like making brownies, and given that I had some pistachios left over from the whoopie pies I thought I’d give a recipe for Pistachio Brownies a try. My first attempts at brownies a couple of years ago just ended up like really dry chocolate cakes, but recently I’ve somehow managed to transform them into rich, gooey brownies that are slightly crunchy on the outside and soft and squidgy in the middle. No idea how I’ve done that, but I’ll go with it! This one worked well, so instead of sharing my usual recipe I thought I’d share this one as the pistachios were a really successful addition.

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

I like Gemma Arterton and I like Jeremy Renner. Therefore I’m really, really hoping that this isn’t as awful as the trailer makes out. Let’s be honest though, it looks terrible. Such a disappointment, but with a title like Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters then what do you honestly expect?

Treacle Tart

I love The Great British Bake Off. Really, I do. It’s not only really good Tuesday evening television – a welcome twist on the regular (and crap) X Factor-style reality shows, but it’s made baking cool again. It’s no longer a hobby confined to just cute old grandparents or the women of the WI. I for, one, am all for this development as my numerous blog posts indicate!

Practise makes perfect, and what better way to improve my baking skills than if I attempted some of the recipes from the show? This week was Tart Week, and for the technical challenge the contestants had to produce a treacle tart, using Mary Berry’s very own recipe. The BBC website had a link to the recipe, I had 2 homemade white loaves almost ready to throw out, it’s Harry Potter’s favourite dessert and quite frankly it would have been rude for me to not give it a go!

Pea, Ham and Feta Cheese Muffins

Savoury muffins seemed like a good idea at the time (courtesy of Cake Days), but in reality they really weren’t at all! I’m not sure quite what didn’t work – I’m thinking it was the feta cheese – but even so these are not something I’ll be making again in a hurry. That being said however, I thought I’d blog the recipe, the photos and let you see for yourself! The people that tried them said the main issue was understanding that it wasn’t supposed to be sweet and was meant to taste savoury, so if you can get past that then give them a try!

#QOTD

"It’s one of those things people say. ‘You can’t move on until you let go of the past.’ Letting go is the easy part, it’s the moving on that’s painful. So sometimes we fight it, trying to keep things the same. Things can’t stay the same though. At some point you just have to let it go. Move on. Because no matter how painful it is, it’s the only way we grow."

— Grey’s Anatomy