The Big Apple

Tomorrow I'm heading off to New York, where I won't be eating an apple a day - more like a cake a day. I'm touring some of the city's loveliest, tastiest little bakeries for a spot of research (yes, this actually is work!) for a few projects I'm working on and can't wait. It's my first time in New York and I'm unbelievably excited - I'll be staying in the ubercool Hudson Hotel overlooking Central Park, and visiting (to name but a few) the Ladybird Bakery, Billy's, Baked, Babycakes... the list goes on and on.

Having just finished reading Colette Rossant's food memoir, Madeleines in Manhattan (at EatLikeAGirl's recommendation to me), I'm also very excited to head to Sullivan Street (I believe she actually lived/lives on the street too), where we'll be popping into Sullivan St Bakery.

It's only a flying visit, but we'll be spending Thursday in Brooklyn, eating lunch at Vinegar Hill House which I read lovely reviews about. Before flying back Friday, I'll be catching up with my wonderful friend Sarah, who's promised we'll hang out in Chelsea, where she lives, and venture up possibly to SoHo if we've got time before my flight.

And of course, thanks to the other lovely Sarah, I'll be able to take some vaguely pretty photos at least too (all recent ones snapped with her on-loan Nikon D40 after her masterful supervision) - so you can read and see all about it when I'm back. To the Big Apple!

A banquet of cake fit for a queen

Here's what we ate over the weekend, courtesy of some very talented ladies in the neighbourhood - you know who you are :)

Vanilla cheesecake topped with raspberries...

Marble cake and Bundt cake...

Mini chocolate tarts...

Yum. What more can I say? I'm still full.

Daisies, strawberries and cake

Yesterday, I took along some Her Little Place lemon and lavender cake to Hyde Park for a picnic in the evening sun. The cake got eaten, but still, cute packaging, no?

The cure for writer's block...

...must be a writer's desk. I'm lacking one, and if any of you read my interview on OndoLady's site, you'll know that I work in the worst possible places in the worst possible posture. So a new writing desk is in order. Since I can't afford a retro Ercol or this beautiful one from Made (which is too big in anycase), I've been in Islington this morning on a desk-mission. Consequently, I'm caught in schizo-design mode.

Should I go vintage with this 1950s oak desk at After Noah?

Or modern cool at Twenty Twenty One?

Or mix and match, with a vintage desk and modern chair? Votes please? I'm leaning to vintage myself...

Lavender and Lemon Cake

A warm, June Sunday equals one thing: barbecue weather. But for a sweet treat after all that meat, you need something light and fresh - and this lavender and lemon cake certainly hits the spot. (Believe me. The plate was cleaned of cake within minutes). I absolutely love baking with lavender (I have lavender cookies at the shop), and while the fragrance it added to this cake was but light, it's just so pretty to bite into the flowers.

I got a little carried away, and decided to plant the cake with tiny summer flowers...

... which I then scattered around the plate prior to serving, just to let you feel like you really are taking a bite of summer-time.

The addition of lemon curd makes this far more citrusy than a drizzle cake that depends on zest alone. We made our own lemon curd at Cookery School a fortnight back, but it takes a good 45 minutes, time I didn't have today - so you can just use good quality shop-bought lemon curd as I did. I had planned on using Harry Eastwood's lavender and lemon cake recipe (no surprises, she uses vegetables to replace the fat - this time a swede) but I'd left her book back in London. So thank you to CoconutRaita for sharing her recipe online (you can view the original recipe here; the one below is every so slightly tweaked, so it's up to you which you use) - I shall definitely be making this again (and again).

Ingredients
175g butter
175 caster sugar
1 tbsp lavender flowers (I used fresh)
3 beaten eggs
175g self-raising flour (sieved)
1/2 tsp baking powder
Grated zest of three lemons
2 tbsp lemon curd

For the drizzle
Juice of 2 lemons
100g-150g icing sugar (to taste)

Method
Preheat the oven to 180ºC and grease a loaf tin with parchment paper. Cream the butter, sugar and lavender until light and fluffy. Add the egg gradually, beating well after each addition. Then, fold in the flour and baking powder, followed by the lemon zest and lemon curd. Spoon carefully into the loaf tin, and bake in the centre of the oven for 45 minutes (check that a skewer comes out clean) - the top will look browner than a normal cake, but don't be alarmed (it's not burnt!). While the cake bakes, mix the icing sugar with the lemon juice to make the glaze - simply add more sugar to taste. Once removed from the oven, let the loaf cool for 5 minutes in the tin, then remove. Skewer the cake gently numerous times, and then slowly spoon the drizzle over the cake, to add extra moist zingyness.

Enjoy.

Fairy Cake Friday

I got sent a lovely little gift on Friday courtesy of Food For Think: a box of two fairycakes. In all this cupcake frenzy, we've forgotten the younger cousin; the smaller, daintier, pretty little fairycake that's not too sickly and isn't covered in mounds of frosting, but is simply a couple of perfectly manageable, easy bites' worth of satisfaction.

The fairy cakes were oh so terribly cute, decorated with a little ladybird by Mich Turner, cake decorator to the stars at the Little Venice Cake Company.

I was so smitten that I got slightly snap happy, trying my hand at for once taking somewhat nicer photos. Pretty, no?

Food For Think and her pals are on a mission to bring back fairycakes, our very English baking treats, and so have from this moment forth decided that every Friday should be Fairy Cake Friday. Hear, hear!

Sponsored post: BBC Summer Good Food Show

Lately I've been pouring over Rachel Allen's Home Cooking, particularly the page with the recipe for baked raspberry and ricotta cheesecake - it looks and sounds beautiful, summery, and a little lighter than a regular cheesecake, but I'm anxious that I'd end up overcooking it and drying it out.

Still, I suppose I could always ask Rachel for her tips herself - she'll be appearing at the BBC Summer Good Food Show, starting next week; she'll be in the Summer Kitchen, along side some of our other most-loved TV cook names, no doubt cooking up some lovely seasonal treats.

I'm looking forward to stocking up on fresh, natural, locally sourced goodies too - FoodLoversBritain.com has got its own little fair section going on too, with independent food producers like Lodge Farm Kitchen, which makes home-cooked treats (such as the fruit pie above and apple pudding below) straight from the farmhouse.

And if all that seasonal talk gets you inspired, there's no excuse for not going home with fresh herbs and veg to get busy planting - all tickets for the food show let you also visit BBC Gardener's World Live, which is running at the same time, so you can stock up on everything you need to grow your own back home.

Enjoy - I'm planning on escaping from football fever there!

The BBC Summer Good Food Show, NEC Birmingham, 16-20 June

Window Dressing

My mum's getting new curtains at home in the front room; the front room being "the formal room". My parents' generation have this thing about formal lounges and informal lounges, and dinner parties and what nots, so the "formal" room rarely gets used unless there's an occasion for it. What luxury, says the daughter (that would be me) whose entire apartment is about a quarter of the size of my parents' first floor. Anyway, my parents have a pretty cool house. It's modern, largely open plan (apart from this front room), has exposed brick (exposed brick!) and lots of style features like slate floors and a glossy white kitchen. No wonder I wanted last week's photo shoot there.

So, back to the curtains. We're finally getting rid of the only un-modern drapes in the entire house (swags and tails, throwback to the early 90s - like the equivalent of floppy curtain hairdos on teen boys). We looked online for a little clean line inspiration, and here's what caught my eye at Living Etc.

Now mother dear wants a pelmet, although I did insist that if she gets pelmets, there will be no swags and certainly no tails. However, I see her point: a pelmet at least creates some structure and focus - how about this one, I suggested (still no reply though):

Then I quickly got distracted and started looking through for stuff for me and my windows instead. When we first moved into the big family home we have now, I was about 11; I had forever wanted down-to-the-floor-curtains in white (what good taste) but I wasn't allowed (white would catch the dust, she said). I have no idea where I must have seen these drapes, but I always thought they looked like ball gowns skirting the floors. So these down-to-the-floor curtains certainly aren't white but mega cool on style with the bright colours next to each other...

I also, when about 13, went through this vaguely hippy phase when we'd all listen to indie music about heartache while doing our homework. I hung up fairy lights above my bed, and a chunari dupatta up on one of the smaller windows in my room (see, clearly this interior design obsession thing was growing even then). Chunari is crushed, tye-dye silk - pretty (my sister-in-law designs dresses made from them) - but this picture below is a far more grown-up version of using Asian fabric, by using a sari border to trim the curtains, a really workable way to bring in pretty patterns without overdoing it on the "ethnic" front.

One of the biggest design mistakes in my own apartment was my curtains. They simply don't stand out the way I thought they would, and the flecks of lime and orange running through the silk that I thought would "pop" just don't. Maybe I can just start cutting up old saris if I can get my hands on any... I'm sure my mum has some somewhere...

Courgette cake

As you can probably tell, I'm going through a bit of a phase at the moment over these vegetable cakes. With several courgettes left over yesterday I was dying to use them up and having made courgette cupcakes before (no one could tell the difference) I thought I'd sneak some leftover veg into cake to take with me to a friend's kid's birthday party.

Harry Eastwood, who shares my vegetable-healthy-baking obsession in her book Red Velvet and Chocolate Heartache, appears to sneak a courgette into most cakes more often than not; it seems to be the most inoffensive of legumes you can use.

Since you can't go wrong with what looks like a simple sponge, I thought I'd give her "birthday cake" (basically a lemon tinted Victoria sponge) a whirl. It sure ended up looking good, but sadly, the friends I gave it to thought so too. They snuck it away to keep for afters, so I have no idea what it tasted like - but I'm hoping good!

Birthday Cake
Serves 12, 419 calories per slice

Ingredients
4 eggs
200g caster sugar
400g grated courgette
220g plain flour
140g ground almonds
3 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
finely grated zest of 3 lemons

For the icing
50g unsalted butter
2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
200g icing sugar, sieved

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C. Measure out all your ingredients first because you need to work super quick once the courgette is incorporated. Whisk eggs and sugar for a good 5 minutes until the mix becomes very pale, bubbly and full of air. Add grated courgette and whisk until incorporated. Finally add flour, ground almonds, baking powder, lemon zest and salt and beat well, but be careful not to knock out too much air out of the mix. Divide the mix between 2 tins and place in the oven for 40 minutes. Then, let the cakes cool while you make the icing by whisking the butter to a smooth paste and alternately adding drops of lemon juice and icing sugar until all is combined resulting in a pale white ice mix - just enough to cover the top of the cake. Sandwich the cake together with a big dollop of jam, and spread icing on top. Cover with sprinkles for a birthday effect; enjoy!

I feel like every post should now have a disclaimer that I'm working on my photos, but I hope these give you an indication of what it looks like (pretty). Also in a couple of days I'll be blogging about fatless cake I made last week at Cookery School so watch out as my health-cake-obsession (can such a thing as a healthy cake exist?) continues!

It may be closed on a Sunday...

...but do try and get there during the week, because the Rebecca Hossack Gallery on Charlotte St will soon be transformed into Kate's Come Dine With Me Cafe. Intrigued? Do be. I stumbled upon the gallery on my way to the Charlotte St Hotel a fortnight ago; running late, in heels, on my way to the Sex and the City 2 press night screening, I simply had to stop and take a photo (a skill I'm working on) of this chalkboard door. Chalkboard clearly means one thing: supreme creativity hiding behind it, the only sort of sparkling imagination that could turn Come Dine With Me into an artform!

The Come Dine With Kate exhibition is running from 2 July to 24 July, so a while to wait yet, but what fun to whet your appetite. The clever and witty Kate has crocheted dinner menus, creating marvelous little trinkets to play with.

Canapes, madam? But of course...

Or how about a cocktail?

For mains, you could try a sequined salmon...

Or some sparkly fish fingers?

And to top it off for pudding, how about a little fruit patisserie?

(All photos from Rebecca Hossack Gallery)

If you were left hungry for the Moschino hotel's cushions, these could perfectly fill the void. Oh, and while we're on the subject, speaking of Come Dine With Me, do check out CDWM winner Sabrina's blog. We recently met at a stiff networking event, but both bonded over instant bemusement at what on earth we were doing there. Her blog, Sabrina's Passions, is fantastic.

Meanwhile, mark the dates in your diary and go check it out next month: Kate Jenkins, Come Dine With Kate exhibition, at the Rebecca Hossack Gallery, Charlotte St, London 2 July-24 July.

Cute. x

If a picture tells a thousand words, I'm way off...

"You have a way with words" is quite possibly the highest compliment a professional writer can ever receive, and yesterday's Times piece (which you can read here) resulted in quite a few of those reassuring comments that remind me why it is I chose to do the precarious job that I do.

However, while I don't have to worry so much about my words, it's a completely different story when it comes to taking pictures.

I used to love taking pictures. I used to take them all the time. My university photos are full of the most random, mundane photos taken on "nothing" days on which there wasn't even a reason to pose. Even when we weren't going anywhere, the camera would still get pulled out. I swear I have a picture of an old housemate brushing her teeth. Exactly. No need.

I couldn't stop taking photos in those days, and as a result have ended up with massive box files of pictures ("....and here we are again.... this time in the garden..."), only one of which I've managed to go through and compact into a memory book of sorts.

And so then there was Paris...

...Oh Paris. And again, I took my camera everywhere. It was in my bag as if it were just as important as my lipbalm, water, book and phone (the contents of my handbag, prioritised). I took photos like the one above - which I distinctly remember took me ages, because I specifically wanted to capture the mannequin in the mirror, without me being in the mirror too. See how I at least tried to be creative?

But then I came back to London, and life became, well, normal and flat; nothing moved me enough to want to capture it. Work sent me abroad to amazing places across Europe, sometimes further; gorgeous glossy-magazine hotels in fabulous cities. Friends and family would want to see, and when they'd ask to see pictures, I'd say I didn't have anyway: "Why would I take pictures when I'm there on work, alone?" Who was there, what was there, to remember?

It's now got to the point that I can't remember where my camera is, let alone when the last time I used it was. My blog food pics are embarassingly poor (I know, I know) and never mind my yield over words - if a picture paints a thousand words, then I've got a huge wordcount to make up.

People say "I love your blog!" (which is nice) but followed closely by "But, seriously, who takes your pictures?" with a slightly worried look on their faces when I admit that, yes, sometimes, sometimes I might just resort to taking crappy photos on my iPhone. Sacrilege, I know. (In case you're confused, the pictures that accompanied the blog post below were taken by a professional photographer for The Times, hence the shiny clarity!) I know, I know, my photo taking skills are rubbish!

I am very aware that a blogger doesn't just blog words, they blog photos too, so I am going to learn how to recapture that love for constantly wanting to remember every detail of even the most mundane of days via a photograph. They say practice makes perfect, after all.

Lynne at Tea for Joy has done a very good thing, which is to take a photography course. Luckily, my friend Sarah, who took all the gorgeous food photos for the Her Little Place cookie shop, has offered to spend a few days teaching me, both with my point and shoot (when I ever find it) and also one of her own old cameras which she swears I'll be able to handle. Sarah's photos are so understatedly simple and lovely (she's also taking the photos for my sister-in-law's new clothing line - for which you'll have to watch this space until the website is launched) that I can't think of a better teacher. And now, you need not be offended by my really, really rubbish pictures. Thank you, Sarah (and happy birthday).

Cooking from the heart

(Photos by Jas Lehal)

My piece on Pakistani cooking and learning to cook with my mum, appeared in The Times in the food section, The Table, this morning - and I'd love to share it with my blog readers too - click here to read it.

The piece was in part inspired by my reading Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's The Settler's Cookbook, which is a food memoir of her growing up, her relationships and her travels from East Africa to London. I met Yasmin at a book reading-discussion she took part in recently (by sheer coincidence, we discovered that my mother and Yasmin were pupils at the same school together in Uganda), and she spoke of how part of the need for her to write a food memoir about the food she grew up with was so that her children would have some sense of the place that their mother, and so in part, they too come from. It sort of got me thinking that I should know that too.

I'd recommend her book to anyone with a love of food and culture; and I hope you also enjoy my piece too. I've had some lovely praise and feedback from it via emails, Facebook and Twitter, and hope it touches in a nice way. My mum and I had a huge amount of fun doing the all-day photo shoot as we cooked "live", the result of which can be seen in the paper today if you managed to get a chance to see it.

There are also several recipes that go with the piece too, and with time, I'll post them up here as well (if you can't wait, then look for the "Related Links" section on The Times' website - although it's not very clear).

Enjoy the sun, maybe my piece will put you in the mood for a curry tonight!