Spiced Quince Upside-Down Cake

This was definitely a George’s Marvellous Medicine cake; sweet, spiced, syrupy and squidgy, made during a dizzy turn without really looking at any of the ingredients. That is where genius lies- I’ll have to stop paying attention more often! Feeling up for the challenge of cooking with a strangely antiquated ingredient that was nevertheless new to me, I’d bought a couple of quinces before Christmas from a farm shop up on the moors. They had to wait patiently for their turn though, as lumpy onlookers to our festivities from their vantage point by the fruit bowl. When it’s "buffet season" I’m not going to faff about poaching anything other than an egg. The reason everything turned into a cake was simple; Daddy. I want everyone to enjoy dessert, so having him silently eat a spiced, poached quince wasn’t something I was looking forward to (he’d even pointed out earlier that the smell of cloves reminded him of the dentist). So a thirty-second cake batter was whipped up, spooned on top and with fingers crossed it got pushed into the oven. I’ve never even eaten a quince before but with the right preparation they’re absolutely delicious. If you see any that are still lurking around in the shops, really do try this; they’re like pears but amazingly perfumed and fragrant.

Windfall Plum Tart

Now, though there may be a photo of a beautiful plum tart here, this article is really to showcase a trade secret I learnt on the first day of my part-time Patisserie course in Leeds (more posts on that to follow!). And that trade secret is a little thing called almond cream. In my previous ignorance, I’ve called almond cream a frangipane but was pulled up pretty quick on this by my tutor Fabrice, who sighed very loudly when I described the recipe in front of us as such. Apparently, a frangipane has twenty per cent crème patissière stirred into it. This means that every recipe I’ve made in the past that’s called its filling a frangipane has been downright lying to me. The cheek! Once I’d overcome this revelation, in class we set about making the stuff. And boy is it good. Soft, sweet, moist and dense. What’s not to like?

Plum-go Chutney

Sorry if this is a boring photo, but you can't really sex up chutney.

It’s no secret that I love fruit straight from the tree at harvest time, but when I got back from the Scilly Isles and took the train home, our neighbour Ken gave us a BUCKET of plums and I began to feel pretty scared that they might go off if I didn’t deal with them quickly enough. The end result was that I embarked on a large-scale operation of chutney and cake making. We had crumbles coming out of our ears and compotes filling up the freezer, not to mention sauces and pickles taking up every empty jar.

After I’d made an old favourite (Nigella’s Chinese-style plum dipping sauce), I began to consider the other options that were open to me. Having looked up a few recipes online, I decided to make a few jars of mango chutney: with plums. Hence “Plum-go” chutney. Basically, all of the spices are the same as those that you’d find in a mango chutney and it does taste very similar. It’s a good idea if you’ve got a glut of fruit to use up, rather than shelling out for precious mangoes!