Mother's Day Afternoon Tea

Like last year I thought I'd make La Mama an afternoon tea for Mother's Day this year, as well as a few lovely presents. A model child! I scoured my books to see what I fancied making a few weeks in advance. I'm prone to stressing out and with a few elements to make I needed to be organised! I think it turned out pretty well, it's a great excuse to get my nice cake stand out! I wish we had room so I could keep it out but alas it only comes out on special occasions! Keeps it safe I suppose. It went down extremely well and there were enough leftovers to feed us for a few days - what a shame it meant eating cakes and scones for days!!

My savoury section was a Smoked Mackerel Pate, an adapted recipe from the National Cookbook by Oliver Peyton (review to come next week). The original recipe was a kipper pate which I made and was completely delicious so I decided to make it with mackerel. It's super easy, completely ridiculously easy so I thought it would be a good choice when I had other things to make. Certainly a lot simplier than a ham terrine like I made last year. The recipe is just smoked fish, softened butter (though not half the amount stated - no need if the fish is moist), cayenne pepper, tabasco, Worcestershire sauce and plenty of lemon juice. I will make this pate again and again, delicious. Served on toasted ciabatta with cornichons - the king of all pickles!

The next element was Hazelnut Blondies from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. I made some peanut butter blondies the week before from Eric Lanlard's Home Bake (again, review to come soon) and the result was quite different but both very tasty. I changed the pecans stated to hazelnuts and made only half the amount. They ended up pretty thin but this wasn't a problem. The white chocolate was melted in with the butter so it made the blondies pretty sweet and squidgy which was a nice contrast with the crushed, crunchy hazelnuts. I'd had hazelnut blondies from Marks and Spencer in their Valentine's meal deal this year and they came with some salted caramel so I decided to do the same thing. Really added another dimension to the flavour. I didn't make the caramel - it came in a jar from Marks. It's very tempting just to grab a spoonful of it every time you're in the kitchen!

My rosewater choux buns. These started out in my head as rosewater eclairs with pretty pink icing, things didn't quite go to plan. I knew I had to buy rosewater but I could have sworn we had red food colouring in the house. It was too late when I found out we didn't! Then it turned out we didn't have the right nozzle on the piping bag so I decided to make choux buns instead. Oh well! My icing had rosewater in it, it was a little too liquid but it kept my coloured sugars, heart and glitter on the top so it was fine. I also put rosewater in the whipped cream. It was quite a subtle flavour - I didn't want it to taste like perfume - but it worked well. Not as impressive as I had imagined it but still quite nice. I had to add glitter to something!

I used Raymond Blanc's recipe from his new Kitchen Secrets book. The recipe was great and made lovely choux pastry. They were a little bit greasy but they had a good flavour.

Lastly I made the Brown Sugar and Mascarpone Scones from Lorraine Pascale's Baking Made Easy which I reviewed last week. I was so happy with this scones. They were really light and rose beautifully. They weren't overly sweet as I thought they might be and they were the perfect foil for some jam and cream.

They were simple to make, I did it by hand rather than in a food processor and the mixture was made in about 5 minutes. I have lots of mascarpone left so I think I'll make a pasta dish with the remainder but I think I'll have to start buying mascarpone regularly as these scones were so yummy.

The food was all washed down with some jasmine tea. I love my Celia Birtwell mug, a great find from TK Maxx. Roll on the next afternoon tea! I have many more recipes that can be tried out!

After all those cakes I feel I need this gorgeous domed cake stand in my life. So pretty and an amazing price. A trip to Ikea is now on the cards! I don't actually cook big cakes but that's not the point! If not I could get this mini cake stand instead. Aw!

Baking Made Easy - Lorraine Pascale Cookbook Review

This week I was testing out Baking Made Easy by Lorraine Pascale. Having enjoyed her television series I went to borrow the book from my local library. After leafing through I promptly went out to buy my own copy! I thought she came over really well on BBC2 and that her recipes truly looked easy. She made it look like I could actually bake a decent loaf of bread or perfect a cake. But who am I kidding, I'm a sucker for a baking book and if it promises to make things simpler then all the better. That said, Ms Pascale had some making up to do, I didn't enjoy her cupcakes from Ella's Bakehouse in Covent Garden in the least. http://cookbookgoodness.blogspot.com/2010/08/london-town.html Heavy and boring and really not worth the price. I didn't return on my last London trip

The book itself has 100 recipes, everything that was featured on the show and more. The chapters are straightforward: breads, cakes, savoury baking, desserts and patisserie, dinner party, sweet treats and basics. There is a nice, laid-back introduction and a few baking tips, including a great one about lemons - wash ordinary lemons in hot, soapy water and ta-da - you have unwaxed lemons! Probably isn't a revelation to many of you foodies but I was impressed!

The first recipe in the book is for croissants, probably not the first item I'd start with in an easy baking book. It might have also been nice to have step-by-step photos for such a (relatively) complex recipe. The finished articles do look delicious but I have to say they're not something I'm sure I'd tackle. It gets better though and so many of the recipes sound gorgeous, I'd say I'd attempt 70% of the book which isn't bad at all. Same old, same old but where are all the photos? The ones that are there make the food look very inviting but there aren't nearly enough, especially for the cakes. I bet a lot of us buy certain cake books to delve into and admire the photographs then stick it back on the shelf! Well, when someone is making something as complex as a three-tiered red velvet cake I want to see a photo of it, not just a very attractice lady smiling over a bowl! We did see the finished product on the show but I do think it's a major downfall in a book. Photos aside, in tradition with Lorraine herself I had to take some photos of my food and share them with friends! Though they weren't taken with my phone and I'm afraid I've already eaten everything so there's no point coming round! I also don't deliver things on a moped, shame! I chose to make her pizza dough, mostly to try out my new pizza stone. I'm very scared of dropping it! Lorraine's was topped with prosciutto, mozzarella and fig but mine was ham and pineapple to keep La Mama happy. As you can see my tomato puree caught a little but it was fine. The stone made the edges really crispy and light but the middle of the pizza was still pretty doughy. Disappointing. Maybe the dough didn't rise enough, it was hard to find a warm place in the house at the time. The recipe was easy to follow though and it's nice to be able to make just 1 batch of dough. So not great but I'll try it again and see if it works better next time. Rachel Allen's recipe works better for me so far. http://cookbookgoodness.blogspot.com/2010/09/rachel-allen-bake-cookbook-review.html

The next I tried were the big fat breadsticks, I tweaked these so they were more like bread rolls as we'd run out of bread that day and were too lazy to go and buy some! Like a complete dunderhead I halved the recipe but I went ahead and put the bigger amount of yeast and salt. Oops! Strangely I think the bigger amount of yeast actually worked as these rose really nicely and the texture was great. Unfortunately the salt was a bit too much! But I was still really happy with these and would definitely make these again and again. I thought they looked really nice too. Finally, a bread that works, and I think I'll increase the amount of yeast again. http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/big_fat_salt_and_pepper_59413

Last of all I made the hazelnut and lemon madeleines. These went down extremely well in our house, La Mama is fanatical about these little cakes. I liked that the eggs were whisked first to get in as much air as possible into the mixture. Mine look a little anemic as I cooked them in a silicone madeleine dish and the bottom didn't get a chance to colour. I'm going to look into getting a proper tin as I think silicone bakeware really messes with the texture of a cake. It's great for ease of use but I can't help feeling that my cakes sweat in the silicone. But these were still really good and I'm looking forward to trying out new variations.

So all in all I'm pretty happy with this book and am excited to try out other recipes to see if they are successful. I'm trying out her mascarpone and brown sugar scones for my Mother's Day afternoon tea this sunday, fingers crossed they are delicious - not sure what they are meant to turn out like as there is no photo! Grrrr!