Minnie's Soup Kitchen

Usually I love June. After all, my birthday falls in June. Roses are the flowers of June and pearls are its birthstone. I used to assume that the weather would be good on my birthday and that I was entitled to good weather on my birthday. How innocent I was! Last year we had lovely weather but all was not right with the world. This year there is more to be positive about.  Cranachan cheesecake with raspberry coulis I have baked some very good cakes and other items since the end of April. Exactly a month ago I baked a cranachan cheesecake , using a recipe from Paul Hollywood's book Pies and Puds . My mother-in-law had asked me to provide a dessert for a family lunch and I was happy to oblige.  Orange and marmalade cake A second recipe from the same book was a marmalade and almond cake . A couple of people said that orange and almond shouldn't work and then they tasted the cake. Orange has been a surprisingly luxurious flavour or ingredient in anythin...

Sometimes Things Go Pear-Shaped As you know, I enjoy baking and usually things turn out well. Last month (16th March) things went pear-shaped when I attempted to make what should have been a delicious, caramel-flooded sticky pear and ginger cake from my Norfolk cookbook . I carefully weighed the ingredients, I followed the instructions to a T so I'm not sure what caused the problem. First of all, you have to make caramel which will sit in the bottom of the baking tin. Unsalted butter was specified for the cake batter but not for the caramel. As I was short of unsalted butter, I used salted butter for the caramel. The other ingredient was soft dark brown sugar. I melted the two ingredients together and stirred but the mixture seemed too thick and grainy, and it was too salty.  Once the caramel had set in the baking tin, I placed pear halves over it before getting on with the batter. This contained chopped pears, chopped crystallised ginger and ground ginger. I checked the oven ...