Monday 21 October 2013

“There are few hours in life more agreeable than the ceremony known as afternoon tea”

Spiced apple cake with caramel drizzled on top

I completely agree with the title of this post - a great quote from 'The Portrait of a Lady' by Henry James. So when a friend recently suggested a catch up over tea and cake (she knows that if she suggests cake, I will offer to provide the said cake!), we invited a few friends to join us and it soon turned into 13 people for afternoon tea!

Alongside the multiple pots of English tea, I also made a lemon cake with lemon buttercream, a spiced apple cake drizzled with caramel, a homemade alternative to jammy dodgers, and flapjacks.

Cake leftovers were taken to work the next day and my colleagues are still demanding the recipe for the spiced apple cake, so I will publish that in a later blog post.

The jammy dodgers were sables (French butter biscuits) with good quality raspberry jam inside and a little vanilla sugar sprinkled on top. I used this BBC FOOD recipe. They were delicious !

Jammy Dodgers

My Mum is a great baker (and in fact a great chef in general). Growing up we were spoilt with freshly baked goods, and flapjacks are one of her specialities. A few years ago she passed me the recipe and I have had so much success with them - whether for afternoon teas or taking along to football matches as post-match sustenance. They are super easy to make so maybe I will share the recipe at some point ...
 
I ran out of time so the lemon cake was very simply decorated - lemon buttercream with citrus sugar sprinkled on top. Despite the presentation, it was still tasty.

Lemon cake with lemon buttercream

Friday 18 October 2013

Commissioner Potočnik celebrates 10 years of HEAL



(c) HEAL/De Ribaucourt Photography
The Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) recently celebrated their 10 year anniversary and I was lucky enough to be asked to make cakes for this occasion. The EU Commissioner for Environment, Janez Potočnik, was on hand to cut the main cake which was decorated with the HEAL logo.

Janez Potočnik, EU Commissioner for Environment
(c) HEAL/De Ribaucourt Photography


The logo cake was chocolate sponge with a chocolate buttercream filling and decorated with fondant and royal icing. The second cake was an organic spiced apple cake.


Organic spiced apple cake
 

Commissioner Potočnik with HEAL President, Dr. Peter van den Hazel, and HEAL Executive Director, Génon K. Jensen
(c) HEAL/De Ribaucourt Photography