A bit of crumpet...

Ooh, missus! : )

Yep, this evening I decided to have a go at making crumpets. And it was a great success! I'd been out for an enormous pub lunch (I had a gorgeous grilled aubergine 'steak' topped with tomato sauce and grilled goat's cheese, with just about every vegetable imaginable - cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower cheese, carrots, roast butternut squash, parsnips and roast potatoes - and a Yorkshire pud) but I still fancied something for supper. I thought about making some pancakes, or maybe scrambled eggs...but then the idea of crumpets popped into my head and I decided to be brave and give it a go! It was a bit scary because the recipe involved yeast and yeast is always a bit of a worry for some reason, but I should have known good old Delia wouldn't let me down.

I halved the recipe because I didn't think I could quite manage 12 of them in one sitting, and while they came out a bit flatter than Delia's (I didn't have a crumpet/egg ring so I just spooned the mixture into the pan, which meant they didn't have any support to let them form proper crumpet shapes) they were absolutely delicious and I was seriously impressed by how easy they were to make!

Just perfect with butter...or blueberry jam...yum!

Somerset apple cake...

As promised, here's the apple cake recipe! It's been a family favourite for many years - I have no idea where the original recipe came from, but it's written on the inside cover of my mum's Dairy Book of Home Cookery from the late 70s, so it's been around in my family for as long as I can remember!

It's a really easy recipe - you just rub butter and flour together and then chuck in all the other ingredients, and it's so packed full of apples that you end up with chunks of apple lightly bound in spiced cake mix rather than a traditional cake batter! Which can surely only be a good thing. I also love it because it doesn't involve sultanas (why do so many apple recipes insist on including the horrible little things?) but if you don't have a sultana aversion, feel free to chuck a few of those in as well.

Somerset apple cake

4oz butter or margarine (we use Stork for cakes)
8oz self-raising flour
4oz sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon mixed spice
8oz peeled and diced cooking apples (3-4 medium/large apples)
A little milk

Rub the butter and flour together, then add the sugar, spice, egg and apples and stir until well mixed. Add sufficient milk to make a sticky consistency.

Grease and flour a 7–8” cake tin, spoon in the mixture and bake at 180C for about an hour in the centre of the oven or until firm and golden. You can test with a skewer but you might need to give it a few pokes because you'll often find some apple on it rather than uncooked cake!

Maple cake...

I've been down in Somerset for the last week, and you know what that means - lots of baking! It's so nice to have people to bake for, and there's a bit of a tradition in my family of making sure there's always cake available when people come to visit.

I'd already decided what to bake first - I'd stumbled upon the Baker's Daughter blog (which sadly doesn't seem to have been updated for a while, but there are some amazing recipes on there) via Pinterest, and as soon as I saw the Maple Cake recipe I knew it was one to try. Having spent four years in New England as a child, I developed a serious love of maple syrup, and it's a love my mum also shares, so I had to make this gorgeous cake for her.

The original recipe calls for one 9" tin, but we decided to bake it in two 8" sandwich tins and use the lovely maple icing to fill and top the cake. It worked really well and the sponge is beautifully light and delicate. It doesn't keep quite as well as an ordinary Victoria sponge, but the buttercream keeps the cake moist and it's so delicious it won't last long anyway - we devoured most of it in one sitting (although there were five of us...!)

I think it would make the perfect cake for an autumn birthday, too...hmm, wonder who's got a birthday coming up in the next few weeks...!

Cat and the Cream cupcakes...

Can I just take a minute to say OH. MY. GOD...

That, my friends, is a banana, walnut and chocolate chip cupcake with butterscotch icing from Cat and the Cream. Not only is it utterly delicious, it's also vegan and wheat-free (they don't use products containing gluten either, but can't legally label their food as gluten-free or coeliac-friendly as they don't have a specifically dedicated gluten-free kitchen) and they use ingredients that are as natural as possible, like unrefined sugars and nut milks.

I was in Piccadilly earlier and happened to stumble into Whole Foods (whoops...) and then I happened to stumble upon this beautiful range of cupcakes in the chiller cabinet. Look at the cute little container - perfect for keeping your cupcake in pristine condition!

There were all sorts of amazing flavours, but I chose just the one - I'll definitely be going back to try some of the others, though! The cake was quite dense, but that worked with the banana bread feel - I was tempted by the 'pure chocolate' cupcake so I'll have to try that one next and see what their chocolate cake is like! And the icing was gorgeous - so often buttercream can be really sickly but even this butterscotch version wasn't too sweet and it wasn't at all cloying.

They were quite expensive, £2.69 each, but if you're vegan or wheat-free and you want a seriously incredible indulgent treat, I'd get my hands on one of these if I were you! I'm now trying to work out how to get back to Whole Foods to pick up a selection to take down to Somerset for my family next Friday...