lemon and blueberry layer cake

Man turned 40 a few weeks ago so a grand cake was required. Like myself he is a lemon cake fan and after running ideas past him we decided on a lemon and blueberry cake sandwiched with with lemon curd and a cream cheese icing. Also a trifle, because all celebratory occasions in life require trifle.

 

The cake is a slight variation on this one I made many years ago, back when I used to put effort into my photography, ha! I think it used to be the most popular post on this blog (also back when I used to check stats.) It's a cute, little cake and I'm surprised it has taken me so long to bake something similar again.

The main change I made is the size as I scaled it up to an 8" layer cake. I think I used a 5 or 6 egg Victoria sponge mix with the zest of two lemons. In hindsight I wish I had added more blueberries to the batter (or not made such a huge cake batter?) but I was concerned about them adding too much moisture to the cake. Looking back at my original recipe I think I had a better ratio.

For my lemon curd filling I used my reliable Delia Smith recipe (documented here), although for whatever reason it didn't seem as punchy as usual which was a bit disappointing.

For the icing I used my personal perfected ratio for cream cheese icing: 2oz butter, 4oz icing sugar, 6oz full fat cream cheese (doubled to cover this size of layer cake.) Beat the icing sugar and butter together for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy before adding the cream cheese, then mix until fully incorporated.

I probably added lemon zest as well, but I can't remember. It is a tasty icing with or without adding extra flavours to it.

We also hosted a sausage roll bake off for Man's birthday with our families. It was quite a spread with at least 8 different types of flavours/fillings. I've never seen so many sausage rolls on a (horrible yet practical) breakfast bar.

Although we didn't declare a winner I was pleased to see my sausage rolls were popular. Mine were filled with chorizo, sun dried tomatoes and pork sausage meat. If you haven't tried this combination I can recommend it!

an alternative lemon cake

Some may stunned to learn that I, the lady with a raging sweet tooth, am with a man who doesn't eat refined sugar or gluten. He follows a keto diet which has led me down a rabbit hole of keto-friendly bakes. We have had great success experimenting with cheesecakes, cookies and brownies but I keep forgetting to photograph any of our bakes.

This lemon cake, made for Man's birthday a few months ago, is my favourite keto cake I've tried so far. The recipe came from the Sugar Free Londoner, a great blog to follow if you also fancy dabbling with low sugar baking. My only changes were not using the coconut butter drizzle topping and baking the cake in a 7" deep round cake tin as despite owning many cake tins I do not possess an 8" bundt tin.

The cake had a good, strong lemon flavour and, as expected, was subtly sweet. Quite often I find keto cakes tend to be on the heavier/denser side as they don't have the natural 'lift' of standard flour, however I thought this cake had a surprisingly light, fluffy texture. I'm assuming it was the combination of coconut flour with the almond flour, rather than just almond flour. The addition of yoghurt also gave the sponge a soft crumb. 

Instead of the coconut butter drizzle topping I made a keto friendly lemon curd (recipe found here, I halved the quantities) and swirled it through some whipped double cream. It made a beautiful birthday cake served with some grated lemon zest and fresh berries.

We have since made the same cake again but with a syrup topping (2 tbsp erythritol, our natural sweetner of choice, mixed with the juice of one lemon) to make it a lemon drizzle cake which also worked brilliantly. It's proving to be a versatile cake and I'm sure we'll continue to experiment with it. I'm thinking some raspberries folded through the batter might be our next variation.

courgette, coconut and lime cake

My first ever courgette cake. I've been wanting to make one of these for years and am kicking myself I didn't do it sooner. This is such a lovely cake.

A few weeks ago I came across a Nigella Lawson courgette cake recipe, and variations of it, at least three times within the space of a few days. I took it as a sign that I finally needed to try a courgette cake.

My cake is yet another (slight) variation. I mostly followed Jean's variation though of adding desiccated coconut and lime zest to the cake batter.

I think all versions I came across had used lemon curd as a filling, but I made a lime curd using a lovely recipe I recently found at Only Crumbs Remain. I wanted to enhance the lime flavour in the cake and just generally fancied making that curd! I also added lime zest to the cream cheese icing (no juice though) to fully ramp up the zingy flavour and general green appearance of the cake. I also added a little bit extra icing sugar to the icing to make it slightly firmer and topped the cake with toasted desiccated coconut.

Speaking of the green appearance, I loved all the green flecks from the courgette and lime in this cake. I'm aware green isn't generally considered an attractive colour for a cake, but I thought it looked really pretty.

The courgettes gave the cake a really lovely, soft texture and the lime curd tasted insanely good. Man I love a homemade curd! I only made half a batch but had plenty for this cake filling and enough extra to add to my plain yoghurt and fruit at breakfast for a few days. Yet again, ridiculously tasty alongside blueberries and chopped banana in yoghurt.

So if you're in any ways on the fence about courgette cake I say DO IT. If you already like carrot cake and citrus flavours then you won't regret making it.

white chocolate and passionfruit sprinkle cake

Last October my sister-in-law requested passion fruit and lots of sprinkles as a theme for her birthday cake. This is what I created: a densely sprinkle-covered vanilla victoria sponge filled with passionfruit curd and white chocolate butter icing.

As suspected, I found sprinkles around my kitchen for DAYS afterwards. Totally worth it though.

I based the recipe around this cake I baked years ago. I'd definitely say it's one of my favourite cakes. I absolutely adore the combination of white chocolate, vanilla and passionfruit. It just feels special. The curd is zingy, the vanilla is aromatic and white chocolate is deliciously creamy and sweet. I also love using golden caster sugar in a vanilla victoria sponge. It gives an almost butterscotch flavour and just generally lifts the vanilla.

To make the cake look fancier I cut the sponges in half to make it quadruple layered but without being ridiculously tall. I really like doing this as it distributes all the flavours evenly through the cake.

To apply the sprinkles I coated the sides of the cake with the icing then rolled the sides in a tray full of sprinkles (I used at least 2 little tubs of hundreds and thousands). This is so much easier than trying to pat sprinkles onto the side of the cake and also contains some of the inevitable sprinkle mess. Then I iced the top of the cake and poured/pressed the remaining sprinkles on top.

I definitely want to make another dense sprinkle cake some day. Not only does it look fun but I also really enjoyed the crunch the sprinkles added to an otherwise soft textured cake.

There's no excuse not to make another sprinkle cake as I typically over bought sprinkles when I made this cake. There's at least two more tubs sitting in my baking cupboard. At least they're keeping all the pink marshmallows company!

White chocolate and passionfruit cake

 

sponges:

225g (8oz) golden caster sugar

225g (8oz) softened butter or Stork margarine

4 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

225g (8oz) self raising flour

 

passionfruit curd: 

(I would recommend doubling the quantity as I barely had enough for all the layers. However, if you don't cut your sponges in half this amount is fine)

3 passion fruit

1 egg

40g caster sugar

25g butter

 

white chocolate butter icing:

(enough if you don't cut your sponges in half, otherwise double the quantity)

100g white chocolate

100g butter

175g softened butter

 

First, make the curd. Cut the passion fruit in half, scoop out the pulp and strain the juice and flesh through a sieve. Discard the seeds. Put the strained juice, egg and sugar in a glass bowl and whisk until combined. Place the bowl over a small pan of gently simmer water and stir regularly until the mixture heats up and thickens. Do not turn up the heat and let it boil as you'll end up with sad scrambled egg. Add the butter and continue to whisk fairly regularly for about 20 minutes or until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Once ready, pour into a sterilised jar or bowl and leave to cool. Whilst the curd is cooling, make the sponges. 

 

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Grease two 20cm/8 inch round cake tins and line the bases with baking parchment. In a large bowl beat together the margarine and sugar for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Add the eggs to the mixture one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add a tablespoon of the flour with the last egg to prevent the mixture from splitting. Add the vanilla extract and flour and mix everything together until fully combined.
 

Divide the mixture between the cake tins and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for approx. 30 minutes until well risen, light golden and spring back when touched. Leave to cool in the tins for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

 

To make the icing, beat together the butter and icing until light and fluffy (about 5 minutes.) Melt the white chocolate either in short bursts in a bowl in a microwave (30 seconds at a time) or in a glass bowl over a pan of gently simmering water. Add the melted chocolate to the icing mixture and whisk again until fully combined.

 

Once cool cut both sponges in half to create four cake layers. Apply a layer of icing and curd to every sponge layer and stack. Cover the sides and top of the cake with the remaining icing. However if you want to create a sprinkle effect, there's a bit more work involved. First give the cake a light crumb coating with the icing then leave in the fridge for at least 1/2 hour to firm up. Once firm coat only the sides of the cake then pick up the cake, holding the top and bottom and gently roll the sides in a tray full of sprinkles (I used at least two tubs of hundreds and thousands sprinkles.) Once densely covered, put onto your cake onto a plate/cake stand and cover the top with icing. Pat/pour the sprinkles on top.

 

Now tidy the devastation that is your kitchen. Even if you think you've tidied up all the sprinkles, there will be MORE!!

 

white chocolate cake with passionfruit curd and chocolate dipped strawberries

Hey, long time no blog. 2017 has been utterly rubbish so far, hasn't it? I was so determined to start the year positively, despite a gut feeling of impending doom, but it's just been one crap thing after another. My gut was correct. I'm fed up with the year and basically want to hide in a dark hole. It's difficult to write when you have zero enthusiasm and the longer you leave it the less inclined you feel to return.

I'm not sure what to do with this space. It has been offline for the past week as I contemplated shutting down. I'm undecided as I do like having a creative journal and have always enjoyed all the like-minded blogger interaction, however I really struggle with putting myself "out there". I continued documenting my bakes earlier in the year, indicating that I did intend to catch up, I'm still sewing and knitting, and I still love reading blogs although I haven't been able to bring myself to comment or interact. So... yeah, that's where I am at the moment.

Anyway, today I'm sharing a white chocolate and passionfruit cake I baked for my Mum's birthday back in February. You're here for the cake, right?

The cake is a Peggy Porschen recipe from her "Cake Parlour" book I've had bookmarked for a few years, although I baked it as an 8" two layer cake instead of a 6" three layer. I also filled it with homemade passionfruit curd instead of jam and topped it with white chocolate dipped strawberries. Whenever a family birthday approaches my Mum inevitably says, "remember that cake you made with the chocolate dipped strawberries?" (this one!) so I felt it was about time I made something similar for her birthday.

My sponges didn't rise particularly well - I don't know whether this was down to my mixing of the batter, changing cake tin sizes or just the effect of adding melted chocolate to a sponge batter - but the flavour made up for the denser than expected texture. The sponges very much tasted of white chocolate and the white chocolate icing was gloriously silky and moussy. Then the freshness of the passionfruit curd and strawberries cut through the chocolatey sweetness. All in all, pretty tasty.

It's not the most immaculately decorated cake, certainly a far cry from the beautiful examples in Peggy Porschen's book, but it has its own charm. This is when I'm reminded that I'd make a terrible professional baker. I really don't have the patience for all the careful levelling, crumb coating and chilling.

Perhaps now that I've written this post it'll get the ball rolling for others.

How has everyone else's year been? Please say somebody has been having a good year?!

tropical banana bread

This has been declared my best banana loaf to date by my parents. High praise indeed, especially since I was merely trying to find a way to use up the rest of my pineapple not-quite-a-curd from the previous week. 

I've been favouring Mary Berry's plain banana loaf recipe for most of my banana bread variations this year. It's like the victoria sponge recipe of banana breads - ridiculously versatile. It also only leaves one bowl to wash at the end which gets a massive thumbs up from me. Hurray for laziness.

This cake has such a lovely soft, juicy crumb with a hint of added texture from the desiccated coconut as it's in the cake batter as well as the icing.

The icing is oh so luscious and smooth. Pineapple curd tastes so much better in cream cheese icing than ordinary butter icing. I loved the subtle, fruity flavour against the tangy cream cheese. It paired beautifully with the soft, spiced banana bread. Banana, coconut and pineapple most certainly create a summery dream team flavour combination.

It's a pity the weather isn't feeling more tropical or summery though. It's the end of June, why is it still cold?!

Tropical banana bread

Recipe adapted from Mary Berry's Baking Bible. I had 3 bananas to use up so I increased the ingredient amounts by half. It produced a huge loaf and a couple of muffins!

150g softened butter/margarine

260g soft light brown sugar

3 large eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1tsp ground cinnamon

3 bananas

325g self raising flour

25g desiccated coconut (plus extra to decorate)

1 level tsp baking powder

2 tbsp pineapple curd

1 tbsp milk

pineapple curd cream cheese icing

I wish I wrote down what I did at the time. I think it was this:

50g softened butter

75g cream cheese icing

125-150g icing sugar

1 tbsp pineapple curd

Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan 160C/Gas 4 and line a 2lb loaf tin with baking parchment. Put all the ingredients in a large bowls and mix together for about 2 minutes until smooth and well combined. Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf tin. Pour any excess mixture into muffin cases and bake them for half the time.

Bake the loaf in the middle of the oven for roughly 1 hour until well risen, firm to touch and skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.

For the icing, mix everything together until smooth. This makes quite a slack mixture (the curd was pretty runny) so feel free to add more icing sugar if you want it firmer. Spread the icing on top of the cooled cake and decorate with some toasted desiccated coconut.

coconut cupcakes - half with raspberry jam, half with (questionable) pineapple curd

Last week I was posessed with the idea of making summery pineapple curd to put inside coconut cupcakes. However there was a major flaw in my tropical plan: I'm a lazy low faff baker.

All the pineapple curd recipes I came across online only used egg yolks and I cannot be arsed with recipes which only use half the egg. (Now you know why I rarely make meringues!) The number of times I've set aside the other half of the egg with the best of intentions to bake something with it, only to eventually throw it away as I inevitably forget about it is annoying. And wasteful.

So I set about inventing a pineapple curd recipe loosely based on a few whole egg curd recipes. The resulting curd tastes lovely and is a glorious sunshine yellow but is sadly more like a grainy, runny sauce than a curd. I decided against putting it inside the cupcakes but mixed a few teaspoonfuls into the icing and have eaten some drizzled on top of a cupcake. It definitely adds to the overall flavour of the cupcake, but I'm kicking myself for not following an actual pineapple curd recipe.

Without the curd I find the cupcake a bit "meh". Coconut is a funny flavour for me. I think it's a subtle, secondary element or an additional texture. It needs to be paired with a strong flavour such as pineapple, raspberry, lime or chocolate to bring it to life.

Following the disappointment of my pineapple not-quite-a curd I split my coconut cupcake batch to produce a raspberry and coconut combination too. For these I put raspberry jam in the centre and whipped a few teaspoonfuls into the butter icing. I've seen a few people mix jam into icing but have never tried it myself. It is so tasty, why haven't I done this before?! Move over malt chocolate icing, this is my new obsession.

The girly girl in me is filled with glee by eating something which looks so pink and fluffy. The bright jammy centre just adds to the girly excitement. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed raspberry and coconut as a pairing.

Unsurprisingly the raspberry batch are the winners for me. However had the curd worked I think these would have been pretty special too as pineapple and coconut is such a fresh and summery flavour combination. I'll just have to suck it up one day and make a pineapple curd using only egg yolks!

Coconut cupcakes - half with raspberry jam, half with pineapple curd

6oz/ 170g margarine/ butter

6oz/ 170g caster sugar

3 large eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

5oz/ 140g self raising flour

1oz/ 30g desiccated coconut (plus extra to top the cupcakes at the end)

2 tablespoons of milk 

filling:

1 jar raspberry jam

1 jar pineapple curd - I won't write what I did as it didn't particularly work but you can find a few different pineapple curd recipes here, here or here.

  
butter icing (covers both batches):

150g softened butter

300g icing sugar

2-3 teaspoons of raspberry jam/pineapple curd (add to taste)

Preheat the oven to 180C/160 Fan/Gas 4 and line a couple of cupcake trays with cases. In a small bowl, soak the desiccated coconut in the milk. Whilst that's soaking, beat together the margarine and sugar in a large bowl for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition. Add a tablespoon of the flour mixture with the last egg to stop the cake mixture from curdling. Tip in the milky coconut, vanilla extract and remaining flour and mix until everything is fully combined. 
 

Divide the mixture between the cupcake cases (I think I got 16 from the mixture) and bake in the centre of the oven for about 30 minutes until the cupcakes are light golden in colour, well risen, and spring back when touched. Leave to cool in the tins for a couple of minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. 

For the icing, beat together the butter and icing sugar for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Split the icing in half, adding a few teaspoons of raspberry jam to one batch and curd to the other. Mix both icings thoroughly.

Using a sharp knife, cut a circular disc from the top of each cupcake and pop a teaspoonful of jam or curd inside and replace the top. Spread or pipe the icing on top and liberally cover with (toasted) desiccated coconut.

lemon curd swiss roll

For Father's Day last weekend Dad requested something lemon-y. I sense people may groan at the amount of lemon bakes I produce on this blog, but hey, my family *loves* lemon. Rather than bake my fail safe lemon drizzle I thought I'd go for something slightly different, a swiss roll.

A swiss roll filled with homemade lemon curd. Mmmmmmm.

Every time I make a fruit curd I think "I should make curd more often!" It's so easy and tastes so much better than shop bought which for some reason I always seem to forget. It's just taking the time for that extra little step in baking. I'd like to try making pineapple curd next to fully embrace summer flavours.

I had forgotten how wonderfully airy fatless sponges were. This swiss roll was so light! I loved the contrast of the crunchy, sugary crust with the fluffy sponge and tangy, sweet curd filling. 

Admittedly my swiss roll isn't the most technically proficient. I rolled mine a bit slack which caused a massive, unsightly crack. I sneakily hid this on the underside so all was ok. I also added so much curd that it squidged out everywhere, but then again I don't think that's a bad thing. Nobody likes a stingey filling.

I can happily report that Dad was delighted with his Father's Day swiss roll and we polished it off within two days. It's worth noting that swiss rolls are best eaten on the day of making as it did lose its freshness the following day (although still perfectly edible.) If there are a few of you eating I'm sure this won't be a problem!

Swiss roll with homemade lemon curd

Swiss roll recipe by Mary Berry. Lemon curd recipe by Delia Smith. Those ladies are the best.

For the lemon curd:

grated rind and juice of 1 large, juicy lemon 

75g (3oz) caster sugar

2 large eggs

50g (2oz) butter (I used slightly salted)

 

Place the grated lemon rind and sugar in a heatproof bowl. In another bowl whisk together the lemon juice and eggs then pour this mixture over the sugar. Add the butter cut into small pieces and place the bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. Stir frequently until thickened (about 20 minutes) and leave to cool whilst making the swiss roll.

For the swiss roll:

3 large eggs

75g (3oz) caster sugar

75g (3oz) self-raising flour
grated rind of 1 small lemon

Preheat the oven to 220C/Fan 200C/Gas 7 and line a 28 x 18cm (11 x 7 inch) tin with baking parchment. Whisk the lemon zest, eggs and sugar until the mixture increases in size and the whisk leaves a smooth trail when lifted. This takes a good 3-5 minutes and it's best to put your whisk at its highest/fastest setting as you want to add as much air into the mixture as possible. Sift in the flour and very carefully fold it into the mixture, taking great care not to knock out all the lovely air you just beat into it. Once incorporated, pour the mixture into the tray, tipping it gently from side to side to evenly spread the mixture into corners and level out. Don't be tempted to spread it with a knife! 

Bake in the centre of the oven for 10 minutes or until the surface is golden and the sides come away from the edges of the tin. While the cake is in the oven, unroll a piece of baking parchment slightly larger than the tin onto a work surface and sprinkle liberally with caster sugar. Once the swiss roll is cooked, invert it straight onto the sugared surface and quickly loosen and remove the parchment from the bottom of the cake. Trim the edges of the sponge (if needed) and mark a score about an inch in from one of the shorter ends (but don't cut right through) as it will help to roll up the cake.

Leave to cool slightly before spreading with curd then roll up the cake firmly from the scored end. Don't try and answer the phone whilst doing this like I did. It wasn't a good idea, you need both hands! Eat whilst fresh and fluffy :)

mango chai latte cupcakes and mango lime curd

Perhaps 2013 is my year for baking with different fruit. First passionfruits and now mangoes.

This bake came about when Drink Me Chai offered me some instant chai tea latte powders to play with. They have a great selection to choose from, but I was immediately intrigued by the mango flavour. I had no idea you could get mango flavoured chai latte!

When I decided on incorporating the instant chai powder into a cupcake, I fancied making a mango based curd as a filling. After some searching online I went with a mango lime curd recipe found on My Darling Lemon Thyme and it produced 3 full Bonne Maman sized jars of curd, so unless you want to go curd mad I would suggest halving the ingredients. I should also warn you that sieving mango puree is time consuming and so boring but it is worth doing.

Half of my cupcake batch were filled with the mango lime curd, also mixing it into the butter icing, and the other half were left plain with a mango chai latte flavoured butter icing.

It's hard to pick a winner. The curd batch had an extra punch of fruitiness, really pulling out the mango flavour, whereas the other batch were all about the chai latte flavour. I particularly enjoyed the creamy, spiced quality in the latter's icing. Despite my fondness for curds, I think I liked the more chai-ified (I'm making it a word) batch, but this is only if you're holding me at gun point to decide. I will happily eat tray-loads of either cupcake.

I also tried the mango chai as a drink and needless to say I loved it. The sweet, tropical fruitiness really comes through the warm spices. The powder can also be mixed with hot water instead of milk but I found the flavour disappointing as a water-based drink. Similar to water-based hot chocolates, they just lack that wonderfully indulgent sweetness and comfort you get with a milky drink. I always think if you're going to have a treat, do it properly!

And yes that's a new cake stand I picked up from my Glasgow travels two weeks ago. Is it possible to own too many three tier cake stands? (Humour me, please say no.)

Mango chai cupcakes

makes roughly 18 cupcakes

225g Stork margarine

225g caster sugar

225g eggs (I used three large duck eggs, but 4 normal hen eggs should weigh roughly the same)

2 tbsp instant mango chai latte powder from DrinkMeChai

2 tbsp milk

200g self-raising flour

1 jar of mango lime curd

Preheat the oven to 180C/Fan 160/Gas 4 and line cupcakes trays with cases. Beat together the margarine and sugar for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Add each egg one at a time, beating between each addition, and adding a tablespoon of the flour with the last egg to prevent the mixture from curdling. Mix together the chai powder and milk and add to the mixture. Sift in the remaining flour and mix everything together until fully incorporated. 

Divide the mixture between the cupcake cases, filling each one 2/3 full. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes, until well risen and springy to touch. Leave to cool in the trays for a couple of minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.
 

For the curd version, cut a hollow into the centre of each cupcakes (I just use a knife) and fill with a teaspoon of mango lime curd before replacing the top. Mix some of the curd into a standard butter icing (one part butter to two parts icing). I think I used 150g icing sugar, 75g butter and two teaspoons of curd to cover 8 cupcakes.
 

For the straight forward mango chai version, top each cupcake with butter icing flavoured with some of the instant chai powder. Once again I used a standard butter icing, but added some chai powder to taste along with a splash of milk until I was happy with the consistency.

Spread the icing on in a child-like fashion (like me) or pipe in swirls using a fancy nozzle, such as a wilton 1M or 2D.
 

Disclaimer: I was kindly sent products to bake with by Drink Me Chai. I was not paid for this post and all opinions expressed are my own.

Easter lemon cupcakes

Happy Easter everyone! I actually had another post planned but thought it made sense to post my easter bake while it was still easter weekend.

I'm not sure whether lemon cupcakes are actually Easter-y, but they certainly feel fresh and spring like and I've photographed them next to painted eggs so that's good enough for me.

Apologies to the citrus hating followers as I'm aware that half my bakes so far this year have involved lemon or passion fruit. I will try to move into other flavours soon!

If you're a lemon fan like me then these are absolutely perfect: a fluffy, zesty sponge with a sharp lemon curd centre topped with a soft, sweet, lemony butter icing.

By the way do you like my new floral fabric? I found this "scrap" in a charity shop on Friday and couldn't leave it behind. It's such a great retro pattern (and look, Fiona, I ironed it!)

Lemon cupcakes

175g caster sugar

175g margarine

3 duck eggs (weighing 175g, regular hen eggs are fine too)

175g self-raising flour

grated rind of one lemon

1 tbsp milk

1 tbsp lemon juice

jar of lemon curd (I used Tesco brand and it was lovely) or homemade lemon curd

300g icing sugar

100g butter

2 tbsp lemon juice

splash of milk

  
Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Beat the sugar and margarine until light and fluffy. Add one egg at a time, beating after each addition, and adding a tablespoon of the self-raising flour with the last egg to prevent the mixture curdling. Add the lemon rind, milk, lemon juice and flour and mix until everything is encorporated, taking care to not overbeat the mixture. Fill each cupcake case 2/3 full (I filled 18 cases with this mixture) and pop into the oven for approximately 25 minutes until risen, golden on top and springy to touch. Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes before turning out on to a cooling rack.

  
Once cool (carefully) cut a circular hollow from the top of each sponge using a sharp knife, dollop a teaspoonful of lemon curd inside and put the top back on. Mix the icing sugar, butter and lemon juice together until smooth and fluffy. Pipe on a swirl or spread the icing using a palette knife. I didn't quite have enough icing to cover all my cupcakes so you may need to adjust the quantities depending on how much icing you like to put on your cakes.

Passionfruit white chocolate cake

When I bought myself a copy of the new Clandestine Cake Club book a couple of weeks ago I immediately knew I had to make this cake. Not only does it involve my new found love for passionfruit but also my long term love for white chocolate. And I got to make curd!

The cake did not disappoint; it tasted absolutely gorgeous. The sponge was light and juicy, and white chocolate butter icing with passionfruit curd whipped through it might just be my favourite new icing. The zingy-ness of the passionfruit with the sweetness of the chocolate is such a great pairing.

I used duck eggs in my cake and curd and I'm sure it made them extra sunshiney and yellow, although perhaps not as radioactive as my photographs may suggest (damn night time light!) My friend and I baked in the evening and decided to enjoy the cake as late night elevenses, the best kind of elevenses if you ask me!

The original recipe comes from the creative chocolate fiend Choclette from Chocolate Log Blog which she baked for her first CCC event. If you haven't visited Choclette before then I highly recommend you do. The recipe is more or less a victoria sponge with the addition of two tablespoons of passionfruit curd and a tablespoon of lemon juice so I won't type it out. However I will direct you over to the Chocolate Log Blog for the passionfruit curd recipe. It is the brightest, happiest curd you'll ever set eyes on. I may have made a little extra just to eat from the jar...