Stuff what I has been bakin...

This afternoon I decided to bake a quince cake so I could say I had achieved something in my day beyond reading a lot of blogs and watching Grand Designs. I am waiting for it to bake at this moment, I could even live blog the cake *dashes to kitchen* *dashes back* it is rising nicely and slightly browned but needs a bit longer. Hmm. Anyway I have been baking quite a lot lately and taking photos with the idea of posting them here and making me look like an industrious weekend baker. Unfortunately I'm not a very industrious weekend blogger so I am just going to post lots of them now.

Crostata di Nutella or Nutella Tart

This was based on the type of tarts you get in Italy, I especially eat them in Rome. Often they have pinenuts on top but I used hazelnuts instead. I invented it and it is involves making shortcrust pastry, blind baking it, filling it with nutella and briefly baking it again and then covering with roasted hazelnuts. Good times. I also made some baby nutella biscuits with the leftover pastry.

Lemon Cake

This is one of my favouritest cakes. It is from The Cook's Companion and is called *runs to kitchen* 'Angie's Lemon Cake' it is very buttery and lightly lemony (p.s. the Quince Cake just came out, it smells delicious) I like to use the lemon's from my parents tree, which are those rounder less tart lemons with some What really makes it is the glaze, which is just lemon juice and caster sugar and it must be poured over the freshly cooked and still very hot cake after you have turned it out of the pan. This dissolves the sugar. I much prefer it to actually icing a cake.

Here it is posing with my enormous teacup to indicate how it will accompany my morning tea.

Chocolate Cake

I actually wasn't very pleased with this cake, it ended up a bit dry as though it had been overcooked but the middle didn't cook at all. Plus it fell out of the tin and broke. But the photos look nice so let's pretend it was gooey and chocolatey.

Quince Cake One and Two

I poached the quinces earlier this week and made this Quince butter cake from the Cook Almost Anything blog. It was delicious, but I had to take it over to someone's house and I only ate one slice so I decided to make it again. I made the first in a loaf tin and today's is round.

Mmmm Quinces. I haven't had them for ages but eating a few of these before I made the cake reminded me that Mum used to make Quince Crumble.

Cake One having its quinces tucked into it.

Cake One finished.

Cake two finished. The kitchen looks a bit ungracious with the empty bottle of white wine, but hey the cake is cooked and it smells delicious. Plus I need the wine now to help me think about rude things to say about masterchef. Byeeeee.