To Dare, to dream ...

With thanks and deference to Shuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater for this recipe and to co-hosts Dolores of Culinary Curiosity, Alex of Blondie and Brownie and Jenny of Foray into Food.

Oh. my. gosh. I am so late with this post, and a big thank you to my good db friend Claire for reminding me of my blogging duties for November! I made this cake for my boyfriend's birthday on the 18th, so I totally lost track of time...excuses, excuses.

Moreover, due to the fact I seem to have lost my camara charger and had to borrow my wonderful housemate's, I only have shots of the end product. But the memories of the make remain - oh, the memories!

I actually managed to freak myself out slightly by reading all the stuff about "balancing acids", and needing to get an oxygen cylinder's-worth of air into the cake batter. In the end though, I went ahead and made the damn thing the old fashioned way, as I have none of the equipment with which to attempt to make a professional job of it!

But despite my amateur credentials, I was extremely pleased with how the sponge cake turned out. I would make the recipe again in a heartbeat. With the curmogeonly fan oven we have, I had to hover over the thing for the last twenty minutes to make sure it was cooked through and through, but apart from that, it was a dream.

The icing was a different story. No less easy to make, but I was wary of the amount of icing sugar required for this recipe, and as it turned out, every mouthful of the final product felt like death by sugar as a result. I really enjoyed making the icing, but I can't say the same thing about eating it.

All in all, a lovely looking cake, but not too easy to eat. In future I would make half the icing, with half the icing sugar...or maybe just the sponge cake!

Crostata di marmellata

250g plain four
70g of ground almonds
100g caster sugar
150g butter
1 egg yolk
pinch of salt
1 tsp almond essence (v important, I think!)
approx 200g of fruit jam of your choice (alternatively, use chocolate spread)
icing sugar to decorate

put the flour, sugar and ground almonds in a bowl.

add the room-temperature butter in chunks, and rub into the dry ingredients to make bread crumbs.

the tricky bit, for me at least, is bringing this mixture together into a dough you can roll out. I find that adding the egg yolk and a sprinkle of cold water helps to do this.

cover the pastry in cling film and leave in the fridge for at least 30 mins.

grease a baking sheet and cover with baking parchment.

thoroughly flour your surface and rolling pin.

cut off a third of the pastry, and set aside.

begin to roll the pastry into a roughly rectangular shape, to fit the baking tray. The thinner the dough, the better the end product. Aim for approx 3 mm.

transfer the rolled-out pastry to the baking sheet, with a little space around the edge of the tray (the jam is prone to bubble over!)

cover with a good layer of jam.

roll out the piece of pastry you set aside earlier, so that it is roughly as long as the width of the tart's base.

cut this piece of pastry into 1.5 cm, long strips.

arrange these strips in a wide crosshatch over the jam-covered base.

if you have any remaining pastry, use it to create a cornice around the tart, so that the edges of the lattice are concealed.

bake for 30 mins.

dust with icing sugar.

Salmon, Courgette and Olive Pasta - From La Cucina Italiana

Serves four:

3 fillets of Salmon
300g of conchiglie-shaped pasta
2 Courgettes
Olive Tapenade
1 glass of white wine
a little butter, salt and pepper

Julien the courgettes so that they are in relatively thin short strips.

Begin cooking the pasta in boiling water.

Cook off the fillets of salmon in a little butter.

Once these are sealed, add the wine and begin to poach the fish. Add the courgettes to the pan. Season.

Once the pasta is cooked, stir in a little butter and seasoning, followed by spoonfulls of the tapenade, to taste.

Flake the fish and add with a little of the cooking liquid and courgettes to the pasta.