Toddy Cake

That's toddy as in 'hot toddy', the drink beloved of many an Irish person or Scot on a cold wet day when the sniffles have set in: whisky (for the Scots) or whiskey (for the Irish) with hot water and sugar.  If you're feeling up to it, you can put the lot in a pan with cloves and cinammon, although personally I rarely get that far.  I thought this cake, which takes a lemon sponge and turns it into something a bit more complex with the addition of whiskey and marmalade, looked like it could be a heavy thing, especially given the marmalade (thrown in because I had a gift pot of whisky marmalade at the back of the cupboard that wasn't going to get used otherwise).  I feared something far too close in texture to a pudding of my early school days: sponge covered with marmalade served from great deep aluminium trays, to be drowned in lumpy anaemic custard.  But lo and behold, it emerged from the oven a light and delicate affair that carried just enough depth of flavour to make it interesting without so much as a hint of institutional stodge.

Lemon Chiffon Cake

This recipe is my take on a delicious creation from Konditor & Cook.  Having languished for so long in the wilderness of the ready-made box-wrapped "stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap" 'celebration cake' peddled by supermarkets up and down the country, London's denizens now rejoice in the renaissance of quality artisan delicacies.  A renaissance in which K&C is playing its part by returning to cosmopolitan glory that which was previously seen as the preserve of grandmas and people who had settled for a life in the slow-lane: iced cakes.

Sweet Pastry

Sweet pastry, or pâte sucrée* , is a 'rich' pastry, in that it uses sugar, eggs, and more butter than shortcrust (basic) pastry.  The only problem with something that has so much eggs and sugar in it is that at room temperature it goes very soft and is a nightmare to roll (even after leaving it in the fridge it softens up as soon as you start to work it).  Often have I ended up abandoning the first or even second attempt at rolling it out, scraping it off the surface and steeling my resolve for another attempt at getting it to co-operate with a rolling pin.  This is exactly what you want to avoid; the secret to good pastry is not to overwork it, lest the gluten develop causing it go chewy once cooked.  So this recipe, which involves cutting the dough up into discs and pressing it into the tin, requires no faffing about with a rolling pin and gives you a better finish.  Happy days!

Apricot Almond Tart

This is a great recipe from the Be-Ro Recipe Book.  Flour companies Be-Ro and McDougalls have both
been publishing books of popular recipes for decades.  Unlike the treatise of the latest celeb chef, these books are the store-cupboard standby that will remain long after the star of today's culinary cognoscenti has set.  The reason why?  Well, unlike chefs who, in their enthusiasm to convey the potential of the kitchen, enjoin home cooks to source squid-ink pasta or go candy their own primrose leaves, these books have been tried and tested by the most critical audience out there: generations of housewives (and more recently househusbands); people who will not tolerate having their time or their money wasted when all they wanted was to knock up something quick for Sunday tea.  The recipes are traditional favourites, are easy to follow, use ingredients you have at home or are always in the local supermarket, and just work.  The Be-Ro Book is now onto its 40th edition; if there was a clanger of a recipe in there, it's been weeded out by now.