Three cakes up for sale at cost-price left over from today’s photoshoot.

Thanks again to Holli for the wonderful pictures!

Happy Birthday Mark!

These cupcakes were made using Montezuma’s Organic Very Dark (73%) chocolate, local organic beetroots and, as always, Scottish butter and eggs. The buttericing topping includes freshly juiced ginger and finely chopped preserved stem ginger as well as a splash of ginger syrup.
Two boxes of 6 available.

sold

Not as red as its American cousin, but so moist and very tasty. Nobody had a bad word to say about this cake so, while I admit it is not as vibrant as the coloured cupcakes, I count it as a success.
Picture courtesy of Holli.

Even though I made a lot of macarons, it doesn’t take much to fill them, so I was left with a significant surplus of lemon curd mascarpone. Too much to just sit and eat it from the bowl. So, again taking my cue from not-so-humble, I decided to use it up in a cheesecake. A few years ago my Grandpa went to a “Man in the Kitchen” cookery course and came back with a lot of big ideas and a lovely lemon cheesecake recipe (as well as some cracking chicken kievs). It’s a baked lemon cheesecake and has seen a lot of outings since it entered our family repertoire. My favourite thing about it is the roughly chopped preserved stem ginger in the base. In all the years I’ve used this recipe I have never once augmented it, which is very unusual for me, but its time has come. I loved the smooth, cool texture of the lemon curd mascarpone and really only wanted the cheesecake as something to spread it on top of so I determined to make a lighter feeling version of Grandpa’s recipe and leave out the lemon juice and zest which would normally be in the filling and build up a bigger crunchy base as my pedestal. It turned out rather well, perhaps – sorry Gramps – better than the original recipe!

So I’ve been reading a lot about macarons recently, mostly on the amazing http://notsohumblepie.blogspot.com/ and naturally had to have a go myself. The result isn’t exactly pretty, and the photography leaves a lot to be desired, but they were tasty and I have it on good authority that they tasted like macarons, so, win, I guess. I used not-so-humble’s Italian Macaron with Lemon Mascarpone filling recipe, although I made the filling with equal parts lemon curd and mascarpone and nothing else as my left over lemon curd from the RCPM cake was rather zesty anyway. I did use a drop of yellow food colouring in the meringue, but you can’t tell until you bite into one of the shells (oven temperature too high?). I would like to have another go at these when I get a free afternoon to try and smooth out the flaws. I think perhaps I erred on the side of caution and under-mixed the batter as the ‘nipples’ didn’t disappear into the piped discs. Also, I’m not sure whether it was a consequence of the oven temperature, the batter or the fact that I didn’t insulate my trays with a second baking sheet even though not-so-humble specifically mentioned several times what a difference it makes… but my feet weren’t all that impressive. The one thing I did do right, though, was use Lakeland “magic non-stick liner” instead of greaseproof paper. It really is magic. Not a single macaron stuck and the whole sheet easily slid off the baking tray to allow me to start on the next batch while they cooled. Best of all, you can just wipe it clean and re-use it. So, all in all, it was a fun experiment but the finished product needs a lot of work. See you again soon, macarons.

‘Nuff said, really.