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 ...

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. 

This recipe for lemon shortbread is adapted from one on the  Sorted website . The shortbread is really delicate; with the addition of the lemon drizzle it gives it an amazing zing! You definitely won't be able to just have one slice. I baked the shortbread for a charity cake sale, so luckily they can't all be eaten by me! For the lemon shortbread you will need: 150g plain flour 75g cornflour The zest of 2 lemons  75g caster sugar 185g soft butter For the lemon drizzle you will need: Juice of half a zested lemon 50g icing sugar Preheat the oven to 170 ° C/338 ° F and prepare a tin by lining with greaseproof paper; I didn't butter the paper as there's such a high butter content in the shortbread it's not going to get stuck! Cream the butter and sugar together until pale Zest in your 2 lemons Sift in the flour and cornflour and smush it all together with a spoon until it comes together - I got a glamourous assistant to do it for me (he...

The summer for me feels well and truly underway when I've got a bowl of Eton Mess to hand (or in my tummy). You can even get the summer feeling when it's raining outside and pretend the sun is shining. I couldn't be bothered to make the meringues myself (I will put up a meringue recipe soon!) the reason was though that I'd spent all morning knocking up  an easy peasy fake chocolate torte  and didn't have the time or energy to make meringues too.  This summer in a bowl will serve at least 8 people a good pudding-sized portion. For summer in a bowl you will need: 400ml double cream 6 meringue nests A punnet of strawberries A punnet of raspberries A punnet of cherries 2 kiwi fruit Whisk up the double cream until it forms soft peaks Crumble the meringue nests in Cut the strawberries into quarters... The cherries in half... And throw the raspberries in whole! Chop the kiwi into slices and then little chunks and fold everything toget...

. To celebrate the end of our degree  our tutor invited the whole group for a barbecue at his house, which I took as the perfect opportunity to whip up a really chocolatey dessert.  The reason this is an easy peasy (and fake) chocolate torte, is that although the sponge part of a torte is kept the same, the traditional apricot is swapped for raspberry conserve and the chocolate glaze (which usually involves thermometers and smearing chocolate all over granite) is swapped for ganache. Still delicious but so much less faff. You will need a 25cm tin for the sponge as it forms one cake. For the chocolate sponge you will need: 225g butter (room temperature so it's nice and soft) 280g icing sugar  250g dark chocolate, broken into chunks  1/2 tsp vanilla extract (ideally the one with vanilla seeds in!) 5 eggs, separated 50g caster sugar 260g plain flour For the raspberry spread you will need: 150g raspberry conserve 3 tbsp water For the chocolate ganac...