La Recette du Jour

Thank you to Pam on the Cottage Smallholder Forum for this recipe. I took advantage of it to use up three mushy bananas from the freezer. It looks a bit “whole earth”, brown and speckly, but it is moist and tastes great either on its own or (better) spread with butter. And it costs almost nothing to make. I cut down on the sugar a bit here, because I found the original 150 g made it too sweet for my taste.
Recipe for Pam’s cheap-as-chips low-fat banana bread »

This?

Or this?

I know many people buy hollandaise in jars and OK, it’s acceptable. But it’s not true hollandaise. The real thing is easy and quick to make, and is infinitely superior. I’ve seen recipes that faff about with blenders or even food processors, but this is quite unnecessary A couple of small, heavy pans and a whisk are all you need.

A good hollandaise is a perfect blend between the smoothness of butter, the sharpness of lemon, and the velvety consistency of egg yolks. Wonderful with vegetables such as asparagus or artichokes, and with fish. Or, of course, eggs benedict.
Recipe for Hollandaise sauce »

This is a patisserie staple in France. I love the look of these tarts, so dark purple they are almost black, glistening with juice, with just a sprinkle of icing sugar. They taste pretty good too I had a big bag of frozen bilberries in the freezer and 6 guests coming, so the conclusion was obvious. I googled, and found Clotilde’s recipe, so I started with that, but tinkered a bit to suit my own tastes. Frozen bilberries have lots of juice, which risks making the pastry soggy and purple even if you blind-bake it. So I added a layer of almonds, sugar and flour to soak up the juice. This worked really well; the tart was easy to slice and serve, and tasted gorgeous with a blob of crème fraîche on the side. Within minutes, there was none left, that’s why there’s no photo. You can take my word for it that it looked just like Clotilde’s.
Recipe for Tarte aux myrtilles, or bilberry tart »

I love lemon drizzle cake, a true Women’s Institute cake-stall staple. But I’ve never been satisfied with the ones I’ve made, no matter how highly recommended the recipe; they never seemed quite moist enough, and the crackly glaze didn’t work. I tried several recipes I found online and none hit the spot till I found this one. It’s lovely and moist and truly is luscious when split and sandwiched with home-made lemon curd. And as a bonus it’s really easy to make. The only thing wrong with Sylvie’s recipe is that it doesn’t make enough cake Certainly not for choir practice purposes. So I doubled the ingredients, converted it to metric, and made a nice large round cake; but you could make it in a loaf tin too.
Recipe for Luscious lemon drizzle cake »