Mother´s Day Cake

With this Mother´s Day being one of the first I´ve spent with my Mum for a long time and seeing as I´ve never baked her a cake before, I thought I´d make her a Mother´s Day cake from Hannah Miles´ book The Big Book of Cakes and Cookies. However, I couldn´t find shelled pistachios and also all the pistachio´s I could find were salted, plus I wasn´t sure if I´d be able to find organic or free from pesticides roses so ended up making a sponge cake, which I filled with my Lemon Curd. I then made some lemon glace icing, which I iced the cake with (as smoothly as possible), then using some red fondant I had left over from my Valentine´s Day cupcakes, I used my heart plungers to cut out some red hearts which I stuck to the cake and I made a quick fondant rose based on what I had learnt on one of my cake decorating courses. I didn´t use cutters or anything for the rose and it was made in a bit of a rush but I don´t think it turned out that badly. It´s the thought that counts anyway! It tasted pretty yummy though although it was slightly overdone round the edges.....I think my oven thermostat has broken! That´s my excuse at least! Being a mum myself now,I´m finding it quite hard to keep up with my blog and visit other blogs and leave comments so my apologies for that but will try and visit them when I have more time!

Quick & Easy Lemon Curd

Despite the lack of recent posts, I have been baking and cooking as usual.I made a Number One first birthday cake with chocolate buttercream for my friend´s daughter but my husband said it looked like a certain part of the male anatomy so didn´t post it as it wasn´t my best cake. However, it tasted good and my friend´s nephew declared it the best cake he´d eaten, which was very sweet of him!

Anyway, after Pancake Day I had quite a few lemons which needed using up and as I haven´t tried my hand at many preserves,I decided to make a British classic, lemon curd. Lemon curd is great on toast for breakfast or as a snack and is a great filling for desserts and cakes. I´ll be making some cakes using the lemon curd I made. I´ve made lemon curd a couple of times and usually I make it using a bain marie method, which does take quite awhile so I decided to adopt Ruth from The Pink Whisk´s method, and is a much quicker method, great if you´re a busy mother!!This recipe is a bit of a mish-mash of The Pink Whisk´s recipe and a recipe from The Dairy Book of Home Cookery:



Ingredients:
Juice of 3 lemons and zest of 2 of the lemons
3 eggs plus 1 extra egg yolk,beaten
200g sugar
100g butter

Method

1. Grate and squeeze the juice out of the lemons.
2. Place juice and zest in a pan with the butter and sugar and heat until the sugar has dissolved and the butter has melted.
3. Add this mixture to the eggs gradually,stirring after each addition.
4. Pour back into the pan and place on medium heat again.
5.Heat the lemon curd while stirring continuously until lemon curd thickens.
6. When lemon curd coats the back of wooden spoon,it is thick enough so it is ready,place in jars and leave to cool. As it cools, it will also appear to thicken up even more.