Peachy keen.

There isn't a meal better than afternoon tea.  It's perfection.  Not a super heavy meal, usually of the sweet variety (my favourite), involving rather large amounts of chatter, and it's completely acceptable for it to go on for more than a few hours.  This week, I baked this fabulously light cake in the morning for an afternoon tea catch-up with friends.  It has a consistency much like a tea cake and the lemon comes through to save it from being overwhelmingly sweet.  

Lemony Peach Cake

175g unsalted butter, softened

165g caster sugar

3 tbsp lemon rind, finely grated

3 eggs

150g plain flour, sifted

1 tsp baking powder

70g natural yoghurt

2 peaches, sliced

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees celsius and line a 25cm round, springform tin in readiness.  Beat together the butter, sugar and lemon rind until light and creamy.  Gradually mix in the eggs, one at a time.  Add your flour, baking powder and yoghurt, stirring until just combined (much like you would do with muffins).  Pour your batter into the prepared tin and even out the top with a spatula.  You now have two options for adding the peaches.  My preferred choice is to neatly arranged them on top in a circular formation.  Otherwise, you could take a more rustic approach and plop the peaches into the batter.  Both work well.  Bake the cake for 50-55 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.  Allow to cool before dusting with icing sugar and serving with whipped, thickened cream.

Happy afternoon tea-ing!

F. x

Lovecakes

Oh goodness!  It does appear that I have gone slightly cupcake mad but I just couldn't help but share these ones with you.

Every week, I bake a batch of cupcakes for my hunky husband to take in his lunch every day.  In so much, these are not truly cupcakes, but lovecakes.  It's quite sweet really.  We have a ritual whereby, I bake the cupcakes and he gets very excited about how good they are.  Despite there sometimes being copious amounts of lovecakes, he doesn't even like taking extras into work to share - they are HIS.  When this is the case, he will simply eat another cake after dinner, just to get through them in the week.

This week, I decided to try a recipe that I haven't used before - a good ol' Women's Weekly favourite.  Cream Cheese Lemon Cakes.  I love how citrus cuts through the overt sweetness of the cake while the cream cheese offers a subtle tang on the palette.  Wrapped up in their gorgeous green polka-dot cases, these lovecakes just seem like happiness in a cupcake.  I topped them with a Buttercream flavoured with some finely grated lemon zest.  While I thought of colouring the buttercream a lovely pastel yellow, I am glad that I didn't as they are perfect, just as they are.

Cream Cheese Lemon Lovecakes

90g unsalted butter, softened

90g cream cheese, softened

2 tsp finely grated lemon rind

150g caster sugar

2 eggs

50g SR flour

75g P flour

Preheat oven to 180 degrees and prepare your baking cups.  Beat together the butter, cream cheese, rind, sugar and eggs until light and fluffy.  This is definitely one for the electric mixer.

Sift in the flours and beat on a low speed until combined. You will have quite a thick batter.

Divide batter into baking cups and smooth the surface. 

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a skewer comes out fairly clean. Allow to cool.

Lemon Buttercream

125g unsalted butter, room temperature

3 cups icing sugar, sifted

1-2 tsp lemon rind, finely grated

1-2 tbsp milk

Beat butter and icing sugar until light and fluffy.  Grate in lemon rind and thin buttercream to the desired consistency with the milk.  Pipe onto your lovecakes.

Lovely!

F. x

Lemon is lovely.

I don't make these lovely lemon shortbreads all the time, and let me tell you why....because I would EAT THEM ALL!  I have found in these darlings, the perfect shortbread: not so crumbly that you choke on the dust that hits the back of your throat, and not so buttery that you find yourself needing a chisel to get it off the roof of your mouth.  Even more of a testament to how good these are is the statement made by my wonderful friend, Tara, when she received these in her Christmas goody box: "I don't like shortbread.  I gave them to Leah (her sister) and she made me try one.  They are so good!"
Ok, well I've paraphrased but I'm sure Tara will back me up when I say, that was the general gist of it.  In short, even if you don't think you like shortbread, make these!!!

I believe that this recipe was originally from a Women's Weekly cookbook (probably the one of the many I have stolen from my mother, but possession is nine-tenths of the law, no?).  I have done a little tweaking over the years to get this just right so I cannot attest to how closely this resembles the original recipe.  Nevertheless, this shortbread is insanely wonderful and not even remotely like the old-fashioned fork-pricked triangles seen in old tartan-covered Christmas books of old.  The batter is amazingly soft and velvety, and if you can manage not to eat it all before you get it into the oven, the biscuits are even more so.

Lemon Shortbread

250g unsalted butter, room temperature

1-2 tsp finely grated lemon rind (to taste, really)

55g icing sugar

225g plain flour

75g cornflour

Preheat oven to around 160 degrees and top some baking trays with baking paper.

Beat the butter, sugar and lemon rind with an electric mixer until it changes to a light straw colour.  Next, sift your flours in two batches, mixing to combine in between.  When mixture has come together, place into a piping bag with an open star tip.  Pipe onto the baking tray in whatever manner takes your fancy.  I have done pretty 'bars' but you can also do little rosettes which are quite nice.  Bake for around 15 minutes.  Don't expect the shortbread to brown.  If it does, then they will be overdone.  Once baked, transfer to a baking rack to cool.

Prepare to fall in love.

F. x