New books, new cakes...& an old favourite too!

I baked this good old Coffee & Walnut Cake last week...baking usually cheers me up no end...but I  was feeling especially blue. You can read why here, on my other blog...

As most women will agree, a little retail therapy in these situations works wonders. But I'm not really a shoe-&-handbag type of gal. It's cookbooks that do it for me...and I succumbed to a bit of an indulgent splurge!

Dan Lepard is a bit of a star in the food writing world, & my kind of baker. Innovative and verging on the healthy, his recipes are inspirational. I made the delightfully named Marrakesh Express loaf cake (although I called it Middle Eastern Date Cake for The Coffee Tree...and mine wasn't a loaf cake!) which tasted absolutely gorgeous...and also created these Sour Cream Cupcakes with Banana Caramel -

which were received very well and are a hybrid of several different recipes in the book! I shall be using 'Short & Sweet' a lot!
Jamie is Jamie...a national (& becoming international) institution. He writes a book, I buy it. I always will. Love him!
Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey (not absolutely enthralled by the title...) by Jill O' Connor jumped out at me, partly because it's published by one of my very favourite US publishers, Chronicle Books (their publications are just so beautiful...) and the recipes are really good and interesting too. I made (but forgot to photograph, doh) the Chewy Lemon-Pistachio Financiers last week...gorgeous! Another one I'll be using a lot, I know.
Australian Women's Weekly (confusingly published monthly...!) is to Australia what Good Housekeeping is here in the UK. You know that the recipes will work as they're all triple-tested and totally reliable. And this book, The Cake Stall, has some great ideas...it also looks beautiful and is no-nonesense, which can be really useful when I just need a quick jolt of inspiration for the next day.
So, that was my cheer-up...and it worked!
I produced these creations of my own too...

Blackberry, Apple & Cinnamon Muffins....perfect for the autumn weather we're now having...and a new recipe I devised for my forthcoming baking book (I don't talk a lot about it - too scared! - but it's on it's way...more soon!)

Fresh Rhubarb Macaroon Cake...with a chewy toasty top. Delish!
Now time to plan next week's orders...
I hope you're having a wonderful weekend....x

Treats for Saturday

Pistachio Cake...I wanted a Spring theme to my Coffee Tree delivery this weekend, as the weather has been so amazing. This cake was pale green inside from the ground nuts...I frosted it with vanilla meringue buttercream...there was some in the middle as well...

then a Rhubarb Crumble Slice. Butter shortbread base, rhubarb tossed in brown sugar, oaty crumble topping. This was adapted from a recipe in the Nordic Bakery Cookbook I spoke about yesterday...a piece sold before I'd left the shop at 8am, which augered well...!

I love Battenburg Cake, but I already had one big gateau with nuts in & didn't want to have another with the traditional marzipan covering because of that. So instead I took the general idea...and expanded it. I'm not sure if you can see from the photo, but there are 4 alternating layers here of pink & yellow sponge...sandwiched with homemade raspberry jam...and topped with vanilla frosting & Spring coloured M & Ms!! I was very pleased with it...even though the slices will be HUGE! Huge but so pretty!
I made a 4th cake too, a Finnish Rye, Date & Spice Cake which smelt absolutely delectable and was lovely and sticky...but it didn't photograph too well...it just looked, well, brown! So I didn't bother showing you. Another Nordic Bakery adaptation though, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it went down at the cafe.

I'll leave you instead with another photo of the Pistachio Cake, because it;'s the one that I would have ordered if I'd been a customer!

I hope you've had a wonderful sunny weekend and enjoyed every minute! xoxo