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The Very Versatile Pound Cake…
“Wouldst thou both eat thy cake and have it?” George Herbert The Pound Cake…very versatile! Time & again I return to making my first love in cakes, the pound cake. I have 1 bundt pan which I guard with my life & love the way it turns out my precious pound cake. Perfect & pretty every single time, for the ‘once in a while’ rich buttery cake that uses 200gms of butter, this is just the most satisfying bake. A traditional British Pound Cake recipe would specify one pound each of flour, butter, eggs (8 eggs), sugar, and several kinds of dried fruit (currants, sultanas, and raisins, with perhaps a…
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AHOY THERE MATEYS…IT’S A PIRATE CAKE!
“Birthdays are nature’s way of telling us to eat more cake.”Unknown Chocolate Genoise Sponge with a ganache topping & marzipan Time for the son’s 9th birthday & his level of excitement has the rest of us crawling up walls!!! The countdown began 2 months ago, & reached a frenzy in the last week. Each morning of the last week was announced with 7,6,5,4,3,2…tomorrow, “I just can’t wait for tomorrow”!! That night a calm overtook him (as my friend commented, “must be the calm before the storm“). Dead right she was, because we were all so wound up by the end of it we were all riding waves of stormy seas…&…
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PEACHES & CREAM…A truly sublime dessert!
“Chocolate’s okay, but I prefer a really intense fruit taste. You know when a peach is absolutely perfect… it’s sublime. I’d like to capture that and then use it in a dessert.” Kathy Mattea Peaches ‘n’ Cream… As summer proceeds & the weather becomes even hotter & hotter each passing day, we are rewarded by fruits as luscious as peaches! Strange are the ways of nature, where we are subjected to harsh, scorching summers on one hand, & rewarded with fruits as sweet & juicy as nectar on the other! No reason to complain, so moving on from juicy plums, I decided to explore peach in a dessert! SUBLIME!! There…
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AMAZING MAIZE & CORNY COOKIES
“I am still convinced that a good, simple, homemade cookie is preferable to all the store-bought cookies one can find.” James Beard Bowled over by Cornmeal Pistachio Cookies Then comes along one of those looooong lazy summer days where you want to bake something & for once you’d rather it wasn’t chocolate. It happens to me at times after a chocolate overdose in the kitchen. Something different has to be attempted; something which has a chance of turning out unexpectedly good or even bad, but different. Have started throwing caution to the wind & have begun treading on uncharted territory. Read on for my tale of good…& then bad, as…
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DEVILS WITH ICY COOL HEARTS…COCOA MINT CUPCAKES
“There’s more to life than chocolate, but not right now.” Cocoa Cupcakes…with Icy Cool Hearts & Icy Cool Toppings too! Chanced upon ‘The Cupcake Hero’ theme while perusing random blogs & saw that COCOA was the theme for the month. The crew there say…”Well, let’s see your skills! Each month a theme ingredient will be named. The theme ingredient must be used in either the cupcake, the frosting, the filling or all of the above if you choose. Simple enough? I think so. I beg of you to be creative with this theme. Of course we will take any entries you guys bake up. With that said, go outside your…
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CITRUS MAKES ME HAPPY…TANGY FRESH LIME CAKE
Anytime the perfume of orange and lemon groves wafts in the window; the human body has to feel suffused with a languorous well-being.” Frances Mayes, Bella Tuscany CITRUS is Tartelettes’ chosen flavour for this months’ edition of Sugar High Fridays , a monthly event created by Jennifer of The Domestic Goddess. One of my favourite flavours, I find myself using ‘citrus‘ , mostly lime, every single day, in one way or another. No day is complete with a squirt of lemon, or a splash of orange. It’s quite amazing how international a flavour citrus is. We’re talking marinades, salad dressings, desserts, chutneys, cookies, cakes, sauces, pickles, preserves…the list seems endless.…