Queen of Puddings is Named One of the Top 50 UK Food Blogs to Follow

I was very honoured to be chosen as one of the Top 50 UK Food blogs to follow. Hurray!

Credit

Lemon Drizzle Cake (Gluten free)

So... my first recipe... back in the saddle. I feel I should be charging for this. Or set up production.

It is my own creation... and you REALLY cannot tell that it is not PROPER cake... rather than gluten free.

It is golden, with a soft crumb, moist, bouncy, crumbly. JUST LIKE PROPER CAKE.

And best of all it's super flexible. I have used it as an all-purpose sponge mix for making:

• Vanilla Cupcakes
• Banana Muffins
• Upside Down Plum Cake
• Speedy Steamed Sponge Pudding
• And our favourite... Lemon Drizzle Cake

In fact you can replace this flour mix in pretty much any standard sponge cake recipe. And it works!

Every person who eats it cannot believe it's not real cake... and asks for the recipe.

So here it is:

Weigh your eggs (in their shells) - as with a Victoria Sponge. We will go on the average of 45 grams an egg.

So your flour mix for a four egg recipe - which is what we use for our Lemon Drizzle Squares.

70g cornflour

70g ground almonds

15g brown rice flour

15g tapioca flour

10g potato flour

Lemon Drizzle Squares

180g butter

170g sugar

180g of magic GF flour (above)

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp vanilla

4 large eggs

zest of one lemon finely grated

Cream butter and sugar with electric whisk, add other ingredients and beat. put into small roasting tray - 30x20cm. Bake for 20 mins at 180 C till golden, and a toothpick comes out clean.

When out, leave in tin, sprinkle over 2 tablespoons of caster sugar and pour over the juice of the lemon. Cut into squares.

I'm BACK and baking!

Hi folks!

I'm back. Two things coincided - my writing career taking off... four books in two years... suddenly I went from hobby blogger, to professional writer, and needed to focus my time on my other blogs... and books. I was having to write all the time, for everything, I didn't have the time to bake, take pics, and WRITE. ONE. MORE. BLOG.

Another factor feeding into me not baking was discovering that I had a wheat intolerance. And cutting sugar right back. Suddenly the love of my life cake... and baking... was no more. For months I was in mourning. If I couldn't bake proper cake, then I wouldn't bake anything.

Next came months of experimentation with gritty, nasty, gooey, YUCK, gluten free recipes.

And now here I am... mainly wheat-free - except for the odd gluten loaded, I'll risk the consequences recipes of sheer delight.

And I missed this place. I missed food writing. Sharing recipes.

Teaching food blogging the past couple of years at the Ballymaloe Cookery School I felt a bit of a fake... because though I started off food blogging I had let the Queen of Puddings go. Sure I was Darina's blogging consultant - I get to live my food writing dreams vicariously through my work with her.

But MY CAKES... I miss sharing them.

It took my best friend ( a TOTALLY impartial critic) to tell me a few weeks back that she was just starting to work her way through my recipes here, and "oh, what a treasure trove of goodies you have there."

So I'm back. To share my recipes... and make this world a little better through my love of good cake. Don't set your watch by me... Don't count on perfect photos.

But the recipes.

You know you can trust them!