Tasty recipes for you to cook

I made this cake to celebrate Alice's birthday, it was soooo good I made another one the next day!  

Ingredients 

200g (8oz) Greek yogurt

2 Large eggs

200g (8oz) Caster sugar

Zest of 3 lemons

100g (4oz) Ground Almonds

140g (5oz) Gluten-free self-raising flour

1tsp Baking powder

Ingredients for lemon drizzle syrup

140g (5oz) Icing sugar

The juice of 5 lemons 

Ingredients

Picking up a few windfalls in the garden and having bought a tub of stem ginger 'shavings' from the local market I thought the two ingredients would compliment each other in a crumble.

APPLE AND GINGER CRUMBLE

900 g/2lbs  dessert apples + 1tbs water + 1tbs sugar

1tbs or more chopped stem ginger

225 g/8 oz plain flour

115 g/4 oz butter

115 g/4 oz caster sugar

1tsp ground ginger

Preheat the oven to 190 C/375 F/Gas Mark 5.

It's difficult to give exact amounts but this is the general idea and these sweet treats lend themselves to imaginative experimentation!

There is no cooking involved, just melting the chocolate, and most of the ingredients I found in the 99p Store (cake, Nuttella, branded chocolate, sprinklings, wooden skewers and even the cellophane bags!)

Before I started I prepared a stand, a chunk of polystyrene covered in foil, to put the finished chocolate coated pops in while they harden in the fridge.

We had a lovely family Easter, both the children were home plus Bobbin (dog). Alice and I baked, knitted, crocheted, made organza flowers and shopped, a bit of mum and daughter bonding. This is the recipe for the Banana Cake we made for Easter, this recipe is great if you want to use up very ripe bananas. For the topping we melted chocolate then decorated it with chocolate animals and Maltesers.

BANANA CAKE

In Poundland I found some silicone ice cube trays, in the shape of really cute animals. In the pack you get two sets of animals, I chose the ones with ducks, dogs, squirrels and rabbits. I looked at them and thought the moulds would be perfect for chocolate. I melted some chocolate, in the microwave, poured it into the moulds and left to set. Because the moulds are made from silicone it was easy to remove the shapes from the trays. The animals are just the right size to decorate a cupcake or you could use a few of them to decorate a cake.

This has been a work in progress since the 24th November 2009. It doesn't take a lot of effort, it takes a bit of patience. I am on the home straight now, making the syrup. After making the syrup I realised the jar I had used, initially, wasn't going to have enough capacity for both syrup and vodka/lemon peel. I had to find another receptacle, a glass cookie jar was the only container suitable, I had to hand. I put in less of the syrup, than stated in the recipe, after a little tasting (it's tasting good!), I thought it was sweet enough.

One of my Christmas presents to Steve, my husband, was a work in progress, Limoncello. When Steve goes to Italy on a 'Jolly' (this term is particularly apt as the pub they meet at is called the Jolly Sailor, and their cycling group is called the Jolly Wheelers) he likes to bring back a bottle of Limoncello.

It doesn't take a lot of effort to make, but it takes a bit of patience and time. On the 24 November 2009 I started to make this lemon liqueur. I have only used a 1/2 bottle of vodka, just incase it turns out rubbish!

This is a substantial hearty soup for cold winter days

 INGREDIENTS

I followed the basic Rocky Road recipe from Nigella but changed some of the 'rocks'. I exchanged malteasers for amaretti biscuits, macadamia nuts for Brazil nuts and added crystallised ginger.

This recipe appears in Nigella's book Feast, published by Chatto & Windus.