Chocolate Egyptian Cake

I made this cake when my 7-year-old sister studied Ancient Egypt. (I had made one about 15 years earlier when I was studying it.) It's a very simple cake, chocolate sponge, with melted chocolate icing on the top. The tricky bit comes when accurately mapping out the geography of Egypt. Now, apparently I didn't get it quite right, but who's really checking?

To make it yourself simply buy a Toblerone and break it into chunks to form the pyramids, make up some cream-cheese icing and add some blue food colouring and pipe away!

Lemon tart

This is a variation on a MasterChef recipe from this year's Celebrity series, Christine Hamilton made a 'Citrus Meringue Tart'. The thought of meringue on top of a sweet tart was a bit too much for me so I just stuck to the tart itself. Christine put lime in hers, but having only lemons to hand I went with them. The pastry base was delicious, it uses mostly ground almonds with just a little flour. It is moist and crumbly all at the same time, and with a little lemon zest to bring out the flavour I was pleasantly surprised. The filling is simple too, double cream, eggs, and lemon juice. It isn't too sickly so you can eat a nice hearty slice of it, and it works wonderfully as a light dessert. The only thing I would fault is it doesn't look too special, perhaps why Christine put a meringue on top of hers!

Jam thumb-prints

I made these after winning a copy of 'The Great British Book Of Baking'. They are a cakey-biscuit, and have a thumb-print full of (my homemade) jam in the centre. They are easy to make and taste great with a cup of tea. My tip for the future would be to make the thumb-prints slightly bigger so there is more room for tasty jam!

Hello

Hello, this is my brand new blog where I will be sharing my baking success (and disaster) stories with you. I hope you enjoy it.