Snow Topped Spice Cake

This is a really good cake as an alternative to Christmas Cake. It doesn't contain dried fruit, is very soft and light, yet really Christmassy with the spices. I've made it a few times, and each time it has been really successful.

It's a Nigella recipe from How to be a Domestic Goddess.

Snow-Topped Spice Cake

4 large eggs, separated, plus 2 extra large egg whites
125ml vegetable oil
125ml water
2 tbsp runny honey
200g dark muscovado sugar
75g ground almonds
150g plain flour
2 tsps baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp all-spice
1/4 tsp ground cloves
zest of 1/2 an orange
100g caster sugar
250g royal icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 180c.
Whisk together the yolks and oil, then add the water, honey and dark muscovado sugar. Add the almonds, flour, baking powder, bicarb, salt, spices and zest, folding in gently. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form and then gradually add the caster sugar. Fold the whites into the cake mixture, and pour into a well buttered 25cm Bundt tin. Cook for 45 minutes, or until the cake is springy on top and beginning to shrink away from the edges. Let the cake cool in its tin on a rack for 25 minutes before turning it out.

When the cake is completely cool, make up the icing. You want it to be pretty thick, or it will disappear into the cake. Drizzle the top of the cake with the icing.

Lemon Passion Meringue Cake

I made this cake for Easter, just before I start a well-needed diet. It certainly has the calories, but is a really lovely cake, and makes an amazing dessert. We had lovely weather here over the Easter weekend, and it complemented the trout we ate on Easter Monday after my husband's fishing trip.

As suggested by Nigella, Queen of Cakes, I added the pulp of two passion fruit to the lemon curd in the centre of the cake, and it was delicious. As you can see, it did make the lemon curd a bit too runny (or maybe I was just too generous with it) and it wasn't the prettiest cake, but I will definitely make it again.

The link to the recipe is here: http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/lemon-meringue-cake-109

Wedding Cupcakes

This year is definitely turning out to be a Year of Weddings. We had one wedding last weekend, another one today and we have six more to fit in between now and the end of August.

So when my friends Clare and Adam asked me to make some cupcakes to serve at the end of the their wedding service, it seemed fitting that I should turn to Samantha Blears' Love Bakery: Cupcakes from the Heart. This is an extremely pretty book, with loads of cupcake ideas.

As with all cupcakes, the icing really is the main event, and the prettier the better. I am definitely not the world's best with a piping bag, so I was pleased to read Samantha Blears' advice that the best thing to do is to 'Add the love' as she puts it, with flowers, sprinkles and other embellishments. These are designed to cover up the mistakes, but actually end up making the cakes look even more special.

With a good quantity of cakes to make, I invested in some flower and butterfly cutters as well as some pink royal icing from Hobbycraft. I had not discovered their cake-decorating aisle before, but I may well be hooked! Pink glitter sprinkles also helped to hide where my swirls had become more splodge.

The cakes are rose flavoured - to regular sponge cake batter, add a teaspoon of rose extract, and with rose buttercream icing (again, just add a teaspoon or two of rose extract to the icing). Now I'm off to find a large star-shaped icing nozzle...