Made up Cheesecake

After pottering round the supermarket just before closing time last night and finding a lack of rhubarb, N and I decided we'd make a cheesecake rather than the planned rhubarb and custard cake for dessert tonight. So we bought some cream cheese and frozen berries, thinking we'd have sufficient ingredients for the rest back at home. And we did, though I did have to amalgamate several recipes to accommodate the half a pot of cream and some marscapone, a leaf of gelatine and some squeezey lemon juice. Tasted good though!!

Birthday cake!

At the weekend I went down to Kew Bridge for the last of Anna's Romantic Disease workshops http://annadumitriu.tumblr.com/RomanticDisease at Waterman's gallery. I stopped in at Peyton and Byrne for a little yoghurt and berries breakfast with some Lapsang Souchan. The server then brought over a complimentary cupcake! How very lovely!!

Cakes, cakes everywhere!

It was the last day of one of my post docs today - he'd been working on miniature schnauzers and so I found a schnauzer cookie cutter and made some sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies with royal icing.

http://www.bakespace.com/recipes/detail/No-Spread-Sugar-Cookies-(Cookie-Cutter-Recipe)/33698/

http://www.thekitchenpaper.com/gingerbread-cookies-wont-spread/

http://www.marthastewart.com/316888/royal-icing-for-sugar-cookies

Last week it was Katherine's last day too and we had a cake festival - I made lemon macaroons, egg yolk cookies and friands!

http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/16507/heavenly-lemon-macaroons.aspx

http://www.food.com/recipe/egg-yolk-cookies-63803

For the friands:

I mixed together 175g unsalted butter with 210g icing sugar until light and fluffy. Then I mixed in 5egg whites, a teaspoon of pistachio essence, 60g plain flour, 150g ground almonds, 200g chopped milk chocolate (some of which were Lindor chocolate balls!). I put the mix into greased and floured muffin tin and cooked them at 200C for 25min when the sides were coming away from the sides. I let them cool in the tin and then popped them out and dusted them in icing sugar.