Classic Caggs

It was my sister's 21st birthday today...which called for a pretty impressive celebration! We headed to Jamie Oliver's Fifteen in Cornwall for the occasion and it was absolutely incredible.   I started off with a Watergate Cooler, which is basically a glass of appley orangey gingery deliciousness.  This was followed by a starter of buffalo mozerella, smashed peas and pea shoots.  Main was an incredible pollock fillet with lentils, rosemary and anchovy dressing. I am a massive fish fan and the pollock was one of the best cooked I have ever tasted. The meal was wrapped up with a pudding of "dark chocolate nemesis" - basically a deliciously moist brownie with raspberries and praline. It was the perfect end to a perfect meal...for an almost perfect girl.

Tomorrow is the 22nd birthday of one of my best friends...which called for a pretty special birthday cake. His absolute favourite cake is a Dorset apple cake, so I decided to soup it up a bit and create a caramelised apple topping!  Apologies for the lack of photos on this blog entry; I whizzed through the preparation so quickly I completely forgot to capture what I was doing! You will need: 230g self raising flour 25g cornflour 110g butter, cubed 110g caster sugar 1 egg and 1 tbsp milk, whisked together 2 cooking apples - one cut into bite-size chunks (to go into the mix) and one into thin slices (to sit above the mix) Zest and juice of 1 lemon 3 tbsp soft brown sugar Preheat the oven to 170 ° C and grease and line your tin. You can either go for a square one if you want to cut out pieces to or a nice deep round one with a loose bottom, which I went for as I want to present it nicely! When lining the sides of a round tin cut little snips in the bottom of the greasepro

It's my sister's birthday next week so she invited a gang of her friends over for a little birthday do. Obviously birthday cake is a must, even if you're allergic to gluten! I knocked her up a chocolate cake (with ground almonds rather than flour) with a little help from her friends. It is everso moist...and even more delicious with a good scoop of vanilla ice cream. We shared a square tray between 10 of us, but if you're not greedy it will happily go between more people in slightly smaller portions! You will need: 125g melted salted butter 125g caster sugar 4 eggs (separated into yolks and whites) 200g dark chocolate (nice high percentage cocoa content as there are so few ingredients you want to make sure the chocolate is good!) 200g ground almonds Pre-heat your oven to 170 ° C and grease your baking tray. I used a square silicon one so didn't need to line it, but if you use a metal one you'll need to pop some greaseproof paper in. 

Apologies for the lack of posts recently; just got back from a month backpacking around Sri Lanka with three friends, sampling the incredible curries, fresh juices and street food this amazing country offers...as well as fitting in a bit of culture (when we weren't planning where our next meal was going to come from!) We had a   brilliant   time and I've got lots of ideas buzzing round my head at the moment for things to pop on here. As well as ideas from Sri Lanka though it is my sister's birthday coming up in a fortnight, which means I'm going to need to knock up a gluten-free cake of some description...so that will be making an appearance on here too I'm sure.