This week I have discovered that if you get up before the crack of dawn you may well be worn out by the end of the day, but you’ll have an awful lot of cake! Upon waking on Saturday at 5:50am I decided that the best thing to do was to get baking, I mean that’s never a particularly bad idea is it? First up was the Lemon Limoncello Cake from Peggy Porschen’s Boutique Baking, as I had purchased some new cake tins and I thought I had better justify their place in the kitchen. The sponge was very simple to make and they were on the cooling rack in no time, soaking up the limoncello syrup nicely. Mine may not have looked as smooth and chic as the picture in the book (I’m going to blame my lack of a turntable!), but it sure did taste good – the weekend must be off to a good start when you’re baked and iced a cake before 9:30am. Though I must confess that I did not go to the effort of making the delicate daisies to adorn the top of my cake, I went for the retro ‘crystallised lemon slices’ instead. 
Since one cake is never enough a few hours after my first creation I turned my attention to the Caramel Cake from the same book, it is essentially the same recipe but with a few changes in flavours – brandy in the syrup instead of limoncello, and dulce de leche in the buttercream instead of lemon curd. I managed to ice this one a little better as I discovered a cake board I didn’t know I had and once this was placed on my cake plate it created a make-shift turntable upon which I could work. Instead of dusting with cocoa powder, which would have turned moist before hubby returned from his trip, I had a little bag of fudge pieces in the cupboard and thought they would work perfectly, so I sprinkled them around the edge of the cake. This was without doubt one of the best cakes I have ever made, the sponge was lovely and soft, the syrup had made sure it stayed moist and the caramel icing was just divine – it was so good that hubby put in an order for another one before we’d even finished it. 
Having been up to my eyes in cakes so far I thought it was about time I turned my hand to cooking something savoury and with hubby returning from a festival I thought he might appreciate a nice bit of home cooking. So my third new recipe of the week was Masala Chicken Pie from BBC Good Food Magazine, I think it was in a pre-Christmas issue last year so I’m a bit behind! Essentially it’s a curry with a mashed potato topping which is then baked in the oven to get nice and crispy. I made it the day before so that I could just pop it in the oven when I got home, and then listen to all the exciting festival gossip. It was the perfect thing for a Monday evening dinner, with all the work already done it was like being cooked for by someone else and it was really tasty to boot – I think hubby certainly appreciated some hot food.My final recipe of the week was Farfalle Salmone e Piselli from Gino D’acampo’s Fantastico! which was another resounding success, I love pasta but I do get fed up of always cooking the same thing over and over, and it’s frustrating when you go out for pasta and always get the same tired choices wherever you go. Therefore I’m making the effort to try loads of new recipes to see what works and to find some more exciting variations on a very tired theme. Having not been a fan of farfalle in the past I have really come to love it recently, the de cecco brand is especially nice and one of my favourites at the moment. This was a really simple dish of shallots, peas, smoked salmon and cream, all tossed through the cooked pasta and served immediately. It was full of flavour and made for a really delicious mid-week meal.
Oh, and I've had to up my target again...who knew I'd actually stick to this challenge!
Recipe Count: 107
New Target: 156
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