There’s this little Italian coffee shop in my hometown. The coffee is superb. The food perhaps even better. But look more closely and you find a jar labelled ‘biscotti – 12p’. They’re only small. You might even want to order 4 or 5. But in biscotti lies the ability to bring forth the best from a strong black coffee. Orange and Rosemary Biscotti? Perhaps even more so.
Cookies come but once a year in our house. They’re oh-so-wrong, yet oh-so-right, in the sense that they’re worse for you than pretty much anything, but consequently also taste better. Of course, scarcity demands indulgence and my Salted Chocolate Chunk Cookies are the culinary manifestation of such necessity.
Despite its name, Madeira Cake is a traditional British sponge cake. It has no connection with Portugal, except in name. In fact, it’s only gently flavoured with citrus – usually lemon – making it one of the simplest pound cakes in the repertoire.
Banana bread is one of my all-time favourite cakes. It has a texture all of its own; moist and dense. Quite unlike almost any other cake. And that’s no bad thing. But the texture of banana isn’t something everyone gets along with. For those of you who reside – rightly or wrongly – in that camp, but want the flavour of banana in their cake, my Chocolate Orange Banana Traybake is the answer.
Almost all of the fruits and vegetables I buy are sourced from within Britain. This respect for locally produced, quality ingredients helps keep my kitchen frugal and fresh. But very occasionally, this rule is broken – as rules are made to be – and a certain item will tempt me across the Channel and into Europe. The doughnut peaches in my Caramelised Peach Cake were too much to refuse.