Birthday dessert – step by step photo guide – Part I

the Financier – cubed

the Amaretti biscuit

Amaretti biscuit crushed to a rubble

cubed cake in glass dish drizzled with juice

Part II on its way …

Birthday Dessert – Hints and tips

Note to self - I've learnt from experience that I'll always serve a dessert like this twice so I'll make sure I've sufficient ingredients to do just that.

I defrosted 250g of frozen raspberries and I didn't add any sugar, I wanted the pure, sharp raspberry juice.

The box of strawberry ice cream would certainly give me two scoops – tick.

A glass serving dish to serve – another tick.

I crushed 4 Amaretti biscuits in a “Bacofoil SafeLoc” bag – they each weigh 25g approximately and measure 4.5cms/1¾”. Bacofoil SafeLoc bags are really strong bags suitable for food and the freezer – yet another tick.

A financier weighs 25g and I used two cakes for each portion. Cut in half lengthways and then cut into small cubes – you'll get 12 small cubes per financier – 1cm x 2cm/½”x¾” . Place in the bottom of your glass dish. Drizzle the raspberry juice over the cake. You can do this ahead, cling film and fridge.

When you're ready to serve add half of the raspberries on top of the cake. Add one scoop of ice cream and then decorate with the crushed Amaretti biscuits.

Almond and raspberry are a match made in heaven. You have almond in the Financier and of course your Amaretti biscuits. Sharp raspberries and creamy home-made strawberry ice cream topped off with a crunch of the biscuits. What's not to love.

I didn't have to make a trip to shop for the dessert, it was in my freezer and my pantry.

I buy my financiers in bulk – Maison Jacquemart Les Petits Financiers – aka French Almond Cakes from Alma Trading Limited 24x25g cakes £11.99.

You can buy smaller quantities Bonne Maman have bags of 7 x 175g, normally £2. Available in Waitrose.

You could of course make your own but for me it's a really great product that has many uses and a long shelf life so perfect for the pantry.

A step by step Birthday dessert photo guide is up next!

Birthday Cake or Birthday Dessert?

We don't really do birthday cake in our house – I mentioned in the Dorset Apple Cake aka Comfort Cake series that we don't like light and fluffy.

It was H's birthday and he gets to decide his menu. Strangely he asked for salad … albeit my version of salad but that's another story. When I asked him about dessert he said I'd like one of yours please.

“One of mine” means an invention, which sounds too grand. Fruit is a particular favourite, especially soft fruit like raspberries and he also likes cake, biscuits and ice cream, obviously not all at the same time … or so I thought.

It's time for a treasure hunt!

H's birthday dessert came from my pantry and my freezer so I've decided to share it with you - I think you might find it useful.

My treasure hunt worked, it's amazing what you find when you look.

In my freezer I had the last box of home-made strawberry ice cream. Not a bad place to begin. I had frozen raspberries too – frozen raspberries vary considerably so you may need to shop around but if you can get decent quality with whole fruit, perfect. At the moment you can just about get the tail end of the season.

Now for the pantry.

Another of my pantry secrets … I have a bag of financiers – a must have standby. These individually wrapped treasures are sweet almond cakes, very handy to have around.

My other “go-to” stand-by stash is a bag of Amaretti biscuits.

Now I have an idea – this is like “Lego” only building with food!

Dorset Apple Cake photos …

… or, as I have now re-named it, Comfort Cake!

Photos for you :

the cake in the tin

and out of the tin

a portion with the clotted cream

Comfort Cake sounds so much better. This will be my Christmas Cake this year – the bonus – you get a cake or a pudding, hot or cold!

Dorset Apple Cake … the verdict

This cake recipe does exactly what it says on the cake tin and then some.

I served it to friends as a dessert with clotted cream – silence is the best feedback in my home – they loved it.

Backtracking the Dorset Apple Cake I found in Lyme Regis was good but a little too sticky and may be too dense. Hand on heart this version was better - it had a delicious richness with just a hint of cinnamon, just right. Sticky, treacly from the muscovado sugar, not too Christmassy but you can't help but think it would be perfect as an alternative if you're not a lover of the heavier, classic Christmas Cake if you'd like an apple alternative this could be the cake for you.

The cooking apples don't taste like cooking apples, they are soft and taste like plump pieces of squidgy toffee apples.

More pluses :

this cake is good warm or cold – serve with vanilla

ice cream, clotted cream, custard or a combination of all

three

it keeps well. I made it on a Friday, wrapped in foil – twice.

By Tuesday it was as good as Friday – just that there were

only two portions left!

In conclusion – I'm not a huge cake eater but I loved this. It's a perfect Autumn comfort blanket with a cuppa on a chilly afternoon.

Photos up next.

Dorset Apple Cake

There are loads of recipes out there for Dorset Apple Cake. The sample I bought was dark, rich, slightly and gooey but the glory was that you could see pieces of apple in the cake – you really have to eat this cake with a fork unless of course you enjoy licking your fingers!

This is another example of there's no real authentic recipe because everyone has their own. Add this, that and the other – who is to say which version is the right one?

I looked at lots of photos of the Dorset Apple Cake, some looked very pale, some looked dry, some looked overcooked on the top and pale on the bottom.

I really wanted a cross between a cake and a pudding, if that makes sense – so that you could serve it with cream, custard, ice cream or clotted cream or all four!

Here's my offering, tweaked as usual :

Dorset Apple Cake

225g cooking apples, peeled and chopped

slice an extra apple to decorate the top

juice of half a lemon – 1 tbsp

225g plain flour

1½ tsps baking powder

115g unsalted butter, diced

165g dark muscovado sugar – gives a dark

Chrismassy style cake or use light for a lighter

version – golden demerara too – use 50g of this

for the topping

1 egg beaten

2-3 tbsp of milk

½ tsp ground cinnamon

25g ground almonds

Preheat oven to 160fan/180c/Gas 4.

Grease and line a 7” round cake tin.

Toss the apple with the lemon juice and set aside. Sift the flour and baking powder together then rub in the butter until you get breadcrumbs then add the ground almonds.

Stir in 115g of the sugar, the apple and the egg, mix well, adding a drop of the milk at a time to make a soft doughy mix.

Transfer to your tin.

Finally, mix the reserved 50g of soft brown sugar, sliced apple and cinnamon and arrange on top of the cake mix.

Bake for 45-50 minutes. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire cooling rack.

Coming next ... the verdict!

My pending tray …

For those who've been used to paperwork of any kind you'll know what I mean – in theory a pending tray holds the stuff that can wait, which you promptly then forget, it gets buried and then becomes urgent.

I have a cookery pending tray which is not as dramatic – it's the stuff I want to cook or ideas I have scribbled down as an outline that I want to develop when I have the time. Part of the contents of my pending tray are ideas and research I've brought back from holidays. One of my favourite holiday habits is to research food or local delicacies before arriving. I don't want to waste time or forget a thing – it's like a picture postcard but with food.

As I've already mentioned earlier this summer we had our first holiday in Dorset – you know because I've droned on and on about the Hive Beach Café. My Dorset research told me about Dorset Apple Cake. I love a mission or a treasure hunt and this sounded just the job - the sort of cake we like – not light and fluffy! It uses cooking apples so not overtly sweet. I'm on the case.

Some time later … it wasn't easy to find but eventually I bought a huge slice from a bakery in the centre of Lyme Regis. It was as described, dark, moist and delicious.

Dorset is a large County and has its fair share of celebrity chefs and their restaurants – I think I prefer researching cake.

Top of the heap in the pending tray!