Weekend Cooking: What I Baked (In My Kitchen) in March

The first Saturday of the month is when I share all the things that I baked in the previous month. I did manage to do some baking again this month, which is great!

Lemon Cheesecake - This recipe comes from Jamie Oliver's cookbook One. The idea behind this book is that you only use one frying pan or pot or whatever to cook in. This is a lemon cheesecake which is cooked in a frying pan. It should more rightly be called a raspberry and lemon cheesecake. I am planning to post about this soon.

Carrot, walnut and ginger cake - This is a cake that I have made a few times now using Nigella Lawsons recipe and it is always a hit. I took this to work and everyone loved it. My poor husband only got to lick the icing bowl. No cake left for him at all! I have shared this recipe before.

Eggless chocolate sponge cake - I posted about making this cake a couple of weeks ago! As a result of posting about this cake, a friend of mine has shared her tried and tested eggless chocolate cake so I will try to make that at some point too!

I am also sharing this post with In My Kitchen hosted by Sherry's Pickings.

Weekly meals

Saturday - Beef stroganoff

Sunday -  Butter chicken pizza

Monday - Steak and Pepper pie

Tuesday - Eggs on toast

Wednesday - Chicken enchiladas

Thursday - Out for dinner

Friday - Sausages, mashed potato

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page

Weeking Cooking: July Bakes

It's the last Saturday of the month and that means it is time to share my baking for this month. I started doing this earlier this year because otherwise every Weekend Cooking post would be about something sweet, which might be a bit much.

It feels like I haven't really baked very much this month. I do have a couple of things that I want to make but I haven't done so yet. So here's what I did bake:

Last month I made a raspberry and chocolate self saucing pudding. This month, I tried a different version of self saucing pudding. This time it was a ginger and apple self saucing pudding and it was oh so good!

I posted about making the Glamington Cake last week!

This carrot, ginger and walnut cake is one of our favourites. It's a Nigella Lawson recipe that I have shared before. It's always a hit when we make it, especialy the cream cheese icing which has a squeeze of fresh ginger juice in it!

The other thing that we cooked this month was some pastries that we had delivered from a local bakery. They were all premade and we just had to bake them but the danishes we had were so delicious that we ended up ordering some freshly made croissants which we are going to have for brunch today!

Have you cooked anything delicious this month?

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page.

Weekend Cooking: Raspberry-flecked Sour Cream Cake

A few weeks ago now I posted a Nigella Lawson recipe that I got from Masterchef Australia of Walnut, Ginger and Carrot Cake. As a result of how delicious that cake was I thought I would take a look at some of her other recipes.

Nigella Lawson must be one of the most famous food names in the world. Whilst I obviously know who she is and have watched the occasional episode of her TV shows I wouldn't really call myself a fan. I certainly can't remember cooking any of her recipes before.

Having borrowed At My Table from the library, I took a leisurely look through all the recipes and found several that I am interested in making. I must say I really enjoyed reading the intros to each of her recipes. There are warnings to not even think of substituting light coconut milk for full cream coconut milk, or my favourite one which is the introduction to a Brussels Sprouts with Preserved Lemons and Pomegranate. The paragraph starts "There is a vociferous anti-sprout brigade, but I have no time for the Brussels bashing bigotry." As an anti-sprouter I laughed!

There's a number of recipes I want to try. Some of the recipes that I want to try are Chicken and Pea Tray Bake, and the Chocolate Olive Oil Mousse. There's also a White Chocolate Cheesecake that I am tempted to try so that I can compare it to the one that I have been making to great acclaim for several years.

My first recipe to try though was this one, mainly because I wanted to try out the freeze dried raspberries but also because it looks really pretty and not too difficult. In the intro to this recipe it advises that you shouldn't substitute fresh raspberries, and that if you don't have a savarin ring, which I don't, then you can make this in a 1lb (450g) loaf tin.

Raspberry-flecked Sour Cream Cake

175g plain flour
1/2 tspn baking powder
1/2 tspn bicarbonate of soda
175ml sour cream, room temperature
150g caster sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 tspn vanilla extract
125ml vegetable oil, plus extra for greasing the tin
2 x 15ml tbspns freeze-dried raspberries, plus more for sprinkling

Icing

125g icing sugar
1-2 x 15ml tbspns freshly boiled water

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan-forced. Grease your 22cm savarin ring generously with oil using a pastry brush., and leave the tin upside down over a piece of newspaper or baking parchment while you get on with making the cake batter. Or line a loaf tin.

Mix the flour, baking powder and bicarb in a bowl. Put the sour cream into a large measuring jug, add the caster sugar, eggs, vanilla and oil and whisk to mix.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and beat until you've got a smooth batter. Fold in the freeze-dried raspberries, then pour the mixture into the prepared mould (or loaf tin) and bake for 30-35 minutes (or 45-50 minutes if using a loaf tin) until the cake is risen and golden brown and a cake tester pronged into two parts of the cake comes out clean. Sit the cake in its tin on a wire rack until cool before turning out, easing it gently with a small spatula first.

Once the cake's completely cold, transfer to a cake stand or plate. Mix the icing sugar with the freshly boiled water, adding 1 tspn at a time, until you have a thick but still pourable consistency: around 4 teaspoons of water generally does it. Make sure there  are no lumps before you spoon it all over the top of the cake and sprinkle immediately with freeze dried raspberries.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. For more information, see the welcome post.

Weekend Cooking: Ginger and Walnut Carrot Cake

The sous chef and I are big fans of Masterchef Australia. We have watched this season and I don't think we have missed a single episode. When I say big fans I may be overreaching a little, because by the end of the 3 months we are/he is ready for it to be over. The sous chef gets annoyed at one of the hosts and I often hear mutterings of "shut up George" and the like. But come next year, we will be there watching again from the beginning.

One of the things that I like about watching is the masterclasses that they have. Often they are big name chefs who come in and show a recipe or two, other times it will just be the hosts. Sometimes the masterclasses are way out of reach of ordinary cooks. For example, this  year there was a guest chef and in order to make his recipe you would have needed a sous vide machine, a dehyrdator and numerous other types of fancy equipment.

There are, however, numerous times when you can take the recipes and use them without too much difficulty. For example, earlier this season, Matt Preston demonstrated a recipe for roasting a whole head of cauliflower, adding in lots of Middle Eastern ingredients. Whilst we haven't done the whole recipe yet what we have done a couple of times is just roasted the whole head of cauliflower when we were having a roast, and it is sooo delicious. Similarly, Curtis Stone came on a couple of weeks ago and demonstrated how he cooks prime cuts of steak. Last time we had steak we used his methodology and it was definitely really good.

This recipe comes from a masterclass that Nigella Lawson did very early in the season. I am normally not that big a fan of carrot cake. If I had to choose between carrot and banana cake I would generally choose banana, but this cake looked so easy and so tasty that I thought I would give it a go. It was definitely worth it, and the sous chef has requested that it be made again which I did yesterday. We took it to an afternoon tea and there were thumbs up all round. And then the sous chef requested that I make it again at some point. Sounds like this has gone into our regular recipes now.

During her time on Masterchef she also did a chocolate feast that included an olive oil chocolate mousse, white chocolate cookie pots, chocolate brownies and a ruby chocolate cheesecake. Ruby chocolate is the new type of chocolate that has been developed which apparently has a fruity flavour that occurs as part of the growing process rather than being an introduced flavour. I have plans to try the chocolate mousse recipe, and I definitely am looking forward to trying ruby chocolate when it finally becomes available.

You can watch the video of Nigella appearing on Masterchef and making this cake. Not sure if the link will work or if it is geo-blocked.

Ginger and Walnut Carrot Cake

200g/7oz plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground ginger
¼ tsp fine sea salt
175g/6oz soft light brown sugar
2 large free-range eggs, at room temperature
200ml/7fl oz vegetable oil, plus extra for greasing
200g/7oz carrots, peeled and coarsely grated
100g/3½oz walnut pieces, roughly chopped, plus extra for decorating
75g/2½oz crystallised ginger, finely chopped, plus extra for decorating

For the icing

100g/3½oz unsalted butter, softened
100g/3½oz icing sugar, sieved if lumpy
1 tsp cornflour
100g/3½oz cream cheese
1 tbsp coarsely grated fresh ginger


Preheat the oven to 170C/150C Fan/Gas 3½ and grease the sides and line the base of a 20cm/8in springform cake tin with baking paper.

Mix the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, ground ginger and salt together in a bowl.

Beat the sugar, eggs and oil in another large bowl until they are completely mixed together, then gradually add the flour mixture. At this stage the mixture may seem alarmingly stiff, but the carrots will loosen it up. Beat in the carrots and then fold in the walnuts and crystallised ginger, until everything is evenly combined.

Spoon into the prepared tin. Don’t worry if it looks as if you haven’t got enough batter, as the cake will rise well as it bakes. Smooth the top and bake for 45–55 minutes. When it’s ready, the cake will be set and golden-brown on top, beginning to shrink away from the edges of the tin and a cake tester will come out with just a few crumbs stuck to it. Transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool in its tin.

Meanwhile, to make the icing, beat the butter and icing sugar together and when combined, beat in the cornflour, followed by half the cream cheese. Once that’s incorporated, beat in the remaining half. Be careful not to over-beat or the icing will get too runny. Squeeze the juice from the grated ginger into the bowl and mix in, discard the ginger flesh. Cover with cling film and place in the fridge.

When the cake is completely cold, take the icing out of the fridge for about 20 minutes. Beat briefly to make sure it’s smooth. Remove the cake from its tin and place on a plate or cake stand. Spread the icing on top, swirling it a little, then sprinkle some chopped walnuts and crystallised ginger on top.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. For more information, see the welcome post.