Finally got my mitts on a 9” flan tin & set about making Mary Berry’s Tarte au Citron yesterday.. I’ve got a bit of an obsession with lemony-tasting things at the moment & made the Hummingbird Bakery’s Lemon Bars earlier this week too.

This recipe has been taken from the BBC’s food website (a good place to pass half an hour) & you can find it here.. It looks rather intense, but actually it’s very in depth, doesn’t use weird cooking terms you don’t understand & gives you a handy few hints on how to avoid making a huge mess of it. Who knows, maybe one day I will be good enough to go to the bake-off too!?

Ingredients:

Pastry:

- 175g (6oz) plain flour
- 100g (3.5oz) cold cubed butter
- 25g (1oz) icing sugar
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tbsp cold water

Filling:

- 5 eggs
- 125ml double cream
- 225g (8oz) caster sugar
- 4 lemons, juice & zest.
- extra icing sugar for dusting.

Method:

i. Place the flour, butter & sugar in a bowl & rub together until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. The recipe says to do this in a food processor – but I don’t have one. Fingers seem to work just as well though. Add the egg yolk & water & bring together into a ball of dough. If your butter is very soft you can leave it in the fridge for 15 minutes. I was impatient & didn’t do this.

ii. Grease the bottom of your flan tin & dust with flour. Place onto a piece of parchment paper & draw a rough circle approximately 1” larger than the base. Place your ball of pastry onto the base, flatten & roll out until it is slightly larger than your drawn circle. Gently fold the pastry into the middle, drop the base back into the greased tin & push the folded pastry into the corners & up the sides of the tin.

iii. Prick the base all over with a fork, cover with clingfilm & chill in the fridge for 30 minutes (I forgot to do this bit too). Preheat the oven to 200c/400f/Gas6. Remove the cling film & line the inside of the pastry case with tin foil for blind baking. Fill the case with baking beans & bake for 12-15mins in the oven. Remove the foil & beans, trim off the excess pastry from round the edge & return to the oven for a further 10-12mins. Remove & leave on a wire rack to cool. Reset the oven temperature to 170c/325f/Gas3.

iv. Make the filling by beating the eggs, then add the rest of the ingredients & whisking together until smooth. Transfer to a jug, or if you’re lazy like me beat them together in a jug to begin with. Place your empty pastry case back onto the oven shelf & add the filling from the jug. Bake for 30-35 minutes until mostly set, but there should be a little wobble in the middle.

v. Leave to cool a little before removing from the tin, dust with icing sugar & eat.

& there we go.. Mine is probably nowhere near a Mary Berry standard & I would be voted off The Great British Bake Off forthwith.. But it tastes great & even better today straight from the fridge. Yum.

This is basically the Bridget Jones of cheesecakes and it goes a long way towards curing most ills, but will probably rot your teeth as well. I made this to share with a friend, and to lament the fact that my car has expensively (& possibly permanently) failed its MOT.

Ingredients:

For the base:

- 10-12 digestive biscuits
- 70g butter

For the cookie dough:

- 60g caster sugar
- 30g butter
- 60g plain flour
- 100g bag of chocolate chips
- tsp vanilla essence

For the cheesecake:

- 450g cream cheese
- 150g caster sugar
- 4 eggs
- tsp of vanilla essence

Method:

i. Bash the biscuits into crumbs with a rolling pin. (The easiest way to do this is to put them into a plastic food bag first.) Melt the butter and stir into the biscuit crumbs, then press into the cheesecake pan & put into the fridge until ready for the topping.
ii. Make the cookie dough by creaming together the butter & sugar first before adding the vanilla essence, flour & chocolate chips to form a dough. Roll the dough into smallish balls & put on top of the base.
iii. Beat together the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla essence & eggs and pour over the base & cookie dough.
iv. Bake in the oven at 180c/350f/gas4 for about 40mins until set but still a little bit wobbly.

This came out really well, but I think the cookie dough recipe needs a little tweaking. This is actually the second time I’ve made this, but I’ve managed to misplace the recipe I used the first time round which featured the most yummy and perfect eggless cookie dough.. Although it’s probably in my waistline’s best interests for that to remain lost!

In other news my car is still rather expensively dead – it failed its MOT because it is basically about to become the car from the Flintstones & soon I will be able to see daylight through the floor. Realistically I know I should sell it on to become someone else’s project, but there is a rather large part of me that wants to tuck it away safely in the garage for a few years & replace the floorpan & front beams when I have a little bit more time, money & expertise. I do miss having a car at the moment though – it’s been my little orange & white link to freedom & independence for the past 6 years & I will be very sad to see it go.

C xx

This is my current favourite soup.. Mostly because it stays lovely & green, without taking on that horrible greyish brown-y green colour of the overcooked vegetables you used to get given at primary school.

You can use chicken thighs or breasts for this.. (Must refrain from making a ‘Do you prefer thighs or breasts, wink wink nudge nudge oh-ho-ho’ type comment, it is not the Christmas dinner table & I am no one’s stereotypical dirty uncle.) I used chicken thighs, you can buy them already boned, or if you have a spare half hour or so bone them out yourself, and it’s not too difficult if you have a sharp knife & some kitchen scissors.

This makes a big bowlful which will feed about 4 for lunch – it keeps well in the fridge for a couple of days too.

Ingredients:

- Chicken thighs boned & skinless (Or about 2-3 chicken breasts, also skinless.)
- A large onion, white or red, it doesn’t matter.
- Chicken or vegetable stock.
- About 4 courgettes.

Method:

- Chop the onion then add it to a large saucepan to soften.
- Cut the chicken into bite size pieces & add to the softened onion to brown.
- Once it’s all browned cover the chicken with a good amount of vegetable stock & leave to simmer on low for 30-40 minutes.
- Grate the courgettes.
- Once the chicken has simmered stir in the grated courgette & cook for a further 5-10 minutes.

You can then leave the soup as it is or run it through a food processor. This is a really nice way of using up a large crop of courgettes from the garden. (Although I type that rather bitterly as all my courgettes this year stayed small & then went mouldy. I think we had one off the whole plant that was edible. Boo.)

I made jam again! Plum this time, as our neighbour came round with a huge bowlful from one of her trees (I think they’re getting a bit plummed-out at the moment).

This recipe gave me about 4lb jars full.

Before you start don’t forget to put two side plates into the freezer for checking whether it has reached setting point.

Ingredients:

- approximately 1.5kg of plums, stoned & roughly peeled
- 500ml of water
- a good dash of lemon juice
- 1.5kg of sugar.. (I didn’t use proper jam sugar as from what I can tell you don’t really need it for plums, but my jam is a little on the runny side – if you want a firmer jam I suggest getting sugar with pectin in it, or adding a little pectin to it before you bring it to the boil.)

Method:

i. Simmer the plums in the water & lemon juice for about 20 mins or until suitably soft & broken down.
ii. Add the sugar, stir it until it has dissolved & then bring to the boil – beware bubbling & spitting jam at this point!
iii. Boil for about 20-30 minutes & then check whether it has reached setting point by dropping a little onto one of the frozen plates – if it wrinkles when you run a finger through it it’s ready, if not boil for a little longer.
iv. Ladle the jam into a jug & pour into sterilised jars, put the lid on & you’re done!