Honey and Pear Layer Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

It's busy busy busy at the moment. We revisited the Lake District very briefly last week for one cold night in the rain, it was beautiful even through the rain. There were so many deer roaming through the valley, hardly bothered by us strolling in the rain at all. It was very very cold, sleeping in jumpers, socks and scarves cold... but the poor little house hasn’t had the fire on since October so it may take some time to warm through.

So there was that little trip, another mini trip to London this week, organising my exciting and tasty Spring Graze market and it all adds up to a busy busy me right now... But everyone took a little pause on Sunday to celebrate a very important marker in time... A very important birthday, I will spare his blushes and not reveal figures, but Mr. Hedworth deserved a special cake and a tea party...

This cake comes with a warning, it's very sweet, the frosting in particular, so go easy and only proceed if you think you can take it. I'm still not ready for any form of sugar days later, saying that, it is delicious, it just packs a fair bit of sugar... I think it is a Hummingbird Bakery recipe originally, I have made a few adjustments... and made my own crystallised fruit to decorate it, surprisingly simple and totally beautiful. Simply paint berries of your choice with a lightly beaten egg white, roll in caster sugar and leave to dry on greaseproof paper over night. I even added a few mint leaves for extra foliage...

Start the caramelised pears by melting 20g of unsalted butter, 60g of honey and 40g of caster sugar together in a pan. Peel 3 pears, core and slice each into 12 pieces and add to the melted honey mix. Simmer the pears gently for about 15 minutes, until the pears start to turn golden.

In a large bowl beat 4 large eggs and add 120g of caster sugar and 40g of soft brown sugar. Then in a jug stir together 120ml of live yoghurt, 120g of honey, 120ml of vegetable oil and the grated zest of a lemon. Beat this all together until it is a creamy emulsion and add it slowly to the egg and sugar mix. Then sift in 280g of plain flour, 1½ teaspoons of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate soda, 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon and 1 teaspoon of salt, mix everything together to form a creamy cake batter.

The cake is meant to be divided between four cake tins, but this would result in 3 layers of inside cake icing, which I think would have been a step too far towards full on sugar overload. I divided the mix between 2 tins, thankfully... Add half of the cooked pears to the top of each cake mix, in an even circle so each slice will come across some honey soaked pear, then bake both at 150°C for about 25 minutes, until golden and springy.

Allow the cakes to cool on a wire rack while making the cream cheese frosting. It is best done in a food processor, I tried by hand at first and ended up with lumpy butter bits that I had to scrape through a sieve, save yourself the trouble and wizz up 100g of unsalted butter with 350g of icing sugar, the recipe said 500g, which is just far too sweet for me, so adjust to suit your taste... Wizz it up until it is a fine crumb, then add 200g of cream cheese and a few teaspoons of the honey, buttery pear juice left over from cooking the pears, again to suit your taste.

Frost the top of the first cake layer, top with the second cake layer and then frost the whole cake, sprinkling the top with a pile of sugary berries and leaves. The sponge is so light and delicious, full of sweet soft pears and covered in creamy sweet cheese frosting. A cake fit for a birthday king...

Roast Pork Belly and Fennel Seeds served with Poor Man’s Potatoes

The allotment looks somewhere near normal, well the most normal it has looked since I got it two years ago, by normal I mean tidy, a bit tidy, in parts... because that's what everyone else's looks like, tidy, weed free, organised. Apart from the odd one, which I look at in delight when they are worse than mine.

In the past few weeks I have been making a real effort though, this is the year that I am going to get on top of it, be organised and grow loads, that's what I'm telling myself anyway. I have surfaces covered in seed trays around the house, the peas have popped up along with the broad beans, and still to emerge are sweetcorn, sweetpeas, turks turbans, green courgettes and yellow courgettes. I've planted beetroot, parsnips and poppies at the allotment and have two types of potatoes chitting on the window cill. Chitting is a technical term for sprouting shoots... I now speak horticulture... The seed potatoes came from the garden centre in Gosforth Park, Pink Fir Apples, which are delicious apparently and Duke of York’s. All this makes me sound very organised, but if you could see the thousands of weeds and huge grass chunkers taking over my plot you really wouldn’t think it...

After two hours of hard work gardening this left over roast pork belly was totally delicious, even more delicious than last night perhaps. It is a Moro recipe, Cerdo al Horno, and is the best pork I've turned out so far I think, my previous method with herbs wine and water seems a poor comparison all of a sudden. This one is roasted without any liquid for three hours with fennel seeds, garlic and lots of salt; crispy, soft, salty and delicious... Served with Poor Man’s Potatoes, Patatas a lo Pobre, slow cooked potatoes in olive oil with sweet onions, garlic and green peppers. I didn’t want it to end...

Start by bashing 1 tablespoon of fennel seeds in a pestle and mortar together with 2 cloves of garlic and a pinch of salt. Rub this all over the flesh side of your piece of pork belly, not the skin, the other side. I used a piece of pork belly from the Grainger Market that weighed about 1kg and would feed four. Turn the meat over and sprinkle the skin side with salt, lots of it. Ask the butcher to score the skin for you and rub the salt into all the slashes. Leave it to sit for half an hour and pre heat the oven to 230°C.

After half an hour brush the excess salt off and dry off any water that has come to the surface, put the pork into a roasting tin greased with olive oil and put it in the oven on a high shelf for half an hour. Make sure the oven is really hot, as this will form the hard, crispy crackling. Then turn the oven down to 180°C and cook for another 2 ½ hours. When it is done remove from the oven, transfer it to a chopping board, cover with foil and leave it to rest for 15 minutes.

I tried to make a gravy with the pan juices, Moro say to put the roasting tin on the hob, deglaze with 150ml of white wine and scrape up any sticky bits into the sauce, it looked like real gravy, it tasted of burnt bits and aluminium, you may have better luck than me...

While the pork is cooking you can make the Poor Man's Potatoes, heat 5 tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan, then slowly cook 3 large thinly sliced onions with a pinch of salt until golden and sweet, about 30 minutes. Stir them now and again so they don't catch on the bottom of the pan. After 30 minutes add 5 cloves of garlic sliced thickly, 3 green peppers roughly chopped and 4 fresh bay leaves, continue to cook for another 15 minutes. Then cut about 750g of new potatoes into wedges, salt lightly and leave for 5 minutes.

When the pepper is softened add another 10 tablespoons of olive oil, wait for it to heat up and add the potatoes and let everything simmer in the oil until the potatoes are cooked. Moro said about 20 minutes, I found it to be more like 45 minutes... Stir now and again to stop it sticking and turn it up a bit towards the end if it needs to be a bit browner and stickier... Finally drain through a sieve or colander before serving to remove the olive oil, keep the oil though as it tastes delicious for bread dipping or making crispy onions...

Serve a slice of the crackly crispy pork, which is meltingly soft in the middle and crispy, salty and crunchy on the outside with a big pile of slow cooked potatoes, peppers and garlic. They go so well together and taste even better the next day, I'm pretty glad I made far too much...

Parsnip, Gruyere and Thyme Bread

I've been trying my hand at baking more and more recently. A long Bank Holiday weekend offers lots of time, so I set about another type of loaf. My baking started when I was given a sour dough starter before Christmas and I had a go at a few loaves of sour dough to varying degrees of success. Unfortunately the starter is no more, I neglected it a bit too long, I tried to revive it but to no avail. I feel terrible. Like I killed a pet or something... I'm trying to put it behind me...

Since then I have been making homemade flat breads regularly, they are very simple, when you don’t set fire to them, which I managed last week... I even tried them on the bbq, they puffed up beautifully, full of hot air and toasted on the outside, I was so proud! They melted in your mouth... Bread feels like a real achievement to me, I still have huge amounts of confusion and questions about what I'm doing, but just giving it a go is a good starting point I think... I tried a Traditional Soda Bread this weekend, I might have to work on that one a bit more, it looked beautiful but was quite heavy...

My most successful loaf to date has been this Parsnip, Gruyère and Thyme Bread however, adapted from one of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipes, he has a lot of simpler recipes for amateur bakers like myself... I had a couple of old sprouting parsnips that were a bit past it and this seemed a good way to put them to use....

To start, heat 1 tablespoon of sunflower oil in a frying pan and slowly cook 1 sliced onion until soft and golden. While it is cooking mix together in a big bowl 175g of grated parsnips, about 2 medium sized ones, 175g of self raising flour, ½ teaspoon of sea salt, 2 teaspoons of thyme leaves, 50g grated gruyere and some ground black pepper. Add the onion to the floury parsnip mix when it is done, along with 1 beaten egg and 2 tablespoons of whole milk. Bring the whole lot together with your hands, it's easier to get to grips with whether it needs a little more milk or not when using your hands. Don't overwork it, just a little gentle kneading...

Then shape it into a ball, flatten slightly and place on an oiled baking sheet. Bake in the oven at 180°C for 45-50 minutes, until the loaf is golden and makes a hollow sound when you tap the bottom. My bread always seems to take longer than recipes direct so I think my oven is perhaps a bit lower than it tells me.

Leave the bread to cool for ten minutes on a wire rack before slicing. The warm soft parsnip with melted cheese and almost smoky thyme leaves flecked through the bread is delicious. I didn’t get any further than just having slices of it with cold butter, but it would be lovely with an earthy warming soup, perhaps cauliflower or carrot... It is also amazingly good as toast... again with more butter! I love butter... a lot... this new found love of bread baking is doing nothing to reduce my butter intake at all... it's a slippery buttery slope to a butter induced overdose I feel...

Tax Free Pasties

Shortcrust Spiced Lamb and Pine nut Pasties and Filo Roast Sweet Potato, Garlic and Feta Pasties

This weekend saw a spot of topical cooking, I made mini pasties, although my 'freshly baked goods' didn’t come with an extra 20% VAT and were perhaps a little bit better for you than a trip to Greggs... I did heat them for the customer, so should have charged extra according to Mr. Osborne... But served them in various states of cooling, so perhaps not according to Greggs chief exec, Mr. Ken McMeiKan. It's a complicated business these days all to do with ambient temperatures. So in winter a warm pasty would be chargeable but last week in our little heat wave when its boiling outside it wouldn’t be...

Thankfully The Blonde and her fella, Boozer and the other characters didn’t have to stump up any cash and everyone tucked in to piles of steaming pasties... There was a modest supply of flat breads to accompany the little hot pasties, along with smoky aubergine dip, toasted cumin hummus, spicy tomato sauce, tzatziki to start... Followed by slow cooked Moroccan lamb, couscous, apricot jam and garlic green beans... and perhaps too much wine...

The limited supply of flat breads was due to a little fire incident as I tried to speedily make my own. I had pre rolled them and left them between layers of grease proof paper, thinking I was being super organised... It turned out that they didn’t really want to come off the grease proof paper and as I faffed around peeling paper and getting stressed I managed to stick some of the said greaseproof paper under the hob that was in use! Thankfully the back door was already open so as the flames leapt up I had to throw the whole lot out of the back door... So we were a few flat breads short on starting, but everyone still had a fine time... It all added to the excitement.

There were two types of pasty, Spiced Lamb and Pine nut in shortcrust pastry and Roast Sweet Potato, Garlic and Feta in filo pastry. The sweet potato ones were so simple. Peel and chop into inch sized chunks 2 sweet potatoes, add to a roasting tin with salt and olive oil and put them in the oven at 200°C, roast for 30 minutes, adding 5 or 6 cloves of garlic still in their skins after 15 minutes. When they are done take them out of the oven to cool, squeeze the garlic out of their skins and mush everything with a fork. Test for seasoning and add some salt and pepper if needed, then crumble in about half a pack of feta cheese. I also added a few cheeky bits of manchego.

I used filo pastry, brushed with melted butter and folded them into little triangles, I made about 20 of them in total, they were voted the favourites by the visitors. But at that point they had survived a kitchen fire and had quite a bit of wine so who knows...

The lamb pasties were a little bit more effort but by no means complicated... Chop an onion and cook in olive oil with a little salt until soft and golden, add ½ teaspoon of allspice, ½ teaspoon of cinnamon and 1 teaspoon of sumac. I brought my sumac back from a holiday in Turkey, you can get hold of it here, but it would also be fine to leave it out if you can't find any. Cook the onion and spices for a few minutes. Add 300g of lamb mince and cook until it is browned all over, then stir in 1 tablespoon of tomato purée, add 2 chopped vine tomatoes and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and cook until most of the liquid has evaporated. Mine dried out more than I expected in the oven so don’t cook it away entirely. Finally season and add a handful of toasted pine nuts and a handful of chopped mint, and leave to cool to room temperature.

I then used shortcrust pasty cut into circles and folded over into little crescents with a teaspoon of lamb mixture inside, sealed with a fork and brushed with egg wash. I baked both types of pasties at 200°C for 20 minutes, keep checking them though as they may brown at different rates depending on your oven and you don't want burnt pasties! The spiced lamb ones were lovely with the spicy tomato sauce, and the sweet potato even more delicious with buttery crisp pastry, mellow garlic, sweet potato and tangy melted cheese...

I'm thinking about trying out ones with roast apple and black pudding next perhaps or creamy chicken, capers and bacon...