Minnie's Soup Kitchen

June: my favourite month. Not least because my birthday falls in June. This year I spent my birthday across the water with my siblings but my absence didn't hold me back from baking at home. I tried five new recipes and repeated Bronte Aurell's banana cake recipe from Hygge and Fika . I made it to bring in to work for a departing colleague and it had the best reception of practically everything I've ever brought in. You'll find the recipe here .  Strawberry flan Blondies with lavender and lemon My other June bakes were a strawberry flan with rich sweet flan pastry, banana flapjacks, walnut biscuits, lavender cupcakes (from Norfolk's Own Cookbook ) and blondies with lavender and lemon (another Hygge and Fika recipe). The blondies went down well with the younger offspring's friends.  Words to the wise: (1) strawberries dipped in hot melted chocolate seem to start fermenting and (2) when you have whizzed lavender sprigs to make lavender sugar, d...

Fruited teabread and pear and cardamom teabread My kitchen was very productive this May. The doyennes of the fete cake stall retired last year and so the new stall holders were looking for donations. I girded my loins, reviewed my recipes for cakes that I could make and freeze, and set to. Nine different cakes and teabreads resulted: apple and ginger teabread, cherry and apple streusel cake, fruited teabread, pear and cardamom teabread, amaretti plum cake, rippled date and banana loaf, glazed rosemary cake, spiced fruit parkin, and prune, walnut and molasses teabread. I'm a legend in my own kitchen! And I had to make fudge for the stall I was working on.  Later on in the month I made panforte from a Good Housekeeping recipe and a mushroom and onion quiche from Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course  for domestic use.