Jottage from Lancaster/Cambridge - The Victoria Sponge (Birthday Cake)

There is nothing that John likes more than a nice Victoria Sponge and so the Family Cookbook seemed to provide the answer to provide him with favourite cake all ready for his birthday tomorrow. As Heather, Theo and Tristan are still up for Christmas then it makes sense to celebrate before they go home tomorrow so we decided to get the cake made today then we could all celebrate together tonight.


Heather gathered all the ingredients together on the kitchen table and prepared for making the cake, something she is very good at, but even so she struggled slightly with the complexities of the Family Cookbook - which may well be easy for beginners, but seemed to have a lot of steps for the old hands. Note that the tomato ketchup on the table isn't actually one of the ingredients, but is just still there from last night's Shepherd's Pie (Hugh's Mum's recipe).

She had some trouble with my oven and I couldn't quite work out why I noticed straight away that she had put on the top oven when she meant to put on the main one. More often than not, I do the same and never notice for an hour after I have left maybe a good sized piece of lamb in a cold oven while the top oven is spewing out smoke from the burnt bits that are coating the grill pan I keep in there. However, after a little longer than the recipe called for, these 2 golden rounds of cake appeared.

We had some debate about adding whipped double cream or buttercream along with the jam as a filling, but John loves it just with jam and nothing else, so we stuck to Hugh's instructions faithfully. We have some lovely strawberry jam and of course, as everyone in our family never attains an age over 57, we can use the candles yet again (see Pheasant and Chorizo - birthday celebrations).


And the final filled cake (without the candles) with the cook...

...and the birthday boy cutting it with the musical knife merrily playing 'Happy Birthday to you!'

Now he has a new Kobo and a Bjork app for his iPad to keep him quiet for a few hours.


By common consent the cake was voted about the best ever birthday cake anyone could hope for. Seconds all round!


HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHN!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jottage from Lancaster/Cambridge - Lemon Tart

I have been lacking a bit in inspiration over the festive season, hence not putting up any new posts at all. However I couldn’t resist reporting on the concoction of a very delicious lemon tart. The recipe came from the River Cottage Family Cookbook (pp. 52-3) – one of my Christmas presents. The book is full of lovely pictures and is clearly meant to be used by young children (there are quite a few pictures of cute kids peeling, chopping and eating things). It is neatly divided up into the major food groups – flour, milk, eggs etc. – with descriptions at the beginning of each chapter about what extraordinary things can be created from the most basic ingredients. The lemon tart was the most obvious thing to make as my mother had already bought a load of lemons, and my husband adores lemon tart more than pretty much anything else. Supermarket brands of lemon tart are generally pretty good, and for about 3.99 you can get yourself a nice tart which might even be sprinkled with some icing sugar. I was intrigued to know what it would taste like if I made it myself though.

Ethan and Amelia making breadcrumbs from butter and flour

This was my first attempt at making a lemon tart and I had no idea how time-consuming it was going to be. Hugh’s recipe was fairly straightforward  but there were a surprising number of steps and not much explanation at certain points – for example, he didn’t explain why the pastry needed to be pricked with a fork, or why a baking sheet needed to be warmed up in the oven. Also, what on earth are baking beans for and what would have happened if we hadn’t used them? Pastry is pretty fragile stuff it seems, and needs a lot of care and attention. I gathered the assistance of my 5 year old nephew, Ethan, and 2 year old niece Amelia, and – as the pictures below reveal – they got stuck in mixing the flour and butter together.

Tristan making sure that we follow the recipe correctly

However I couldn’t really interest them in the next stage (too many Christmas presents to play with)– a pity as there can’t be many things more satisfying than mixing together butter, sugar, eggs and lemons. We poured the gloopy mix into our perfect pastry case and warmed it slightly under the grill before eating. Unlike shop bought tarts the filling was very runny, but it was a perfect shade of yellow – not pale at all, but the colour of real lemons. There were no complaints at the table that night, and there wasn’t a scrap of pastry left.

The final product - edges slightly burned as we didn't read the bit which suggested you cover the sides in foil

Jottage from Lancaster/Cambridge - Lemon Tart the prequel

I bought the River Cottage Family Cookbook from Beverley. That's not to say that I didn't have it already as I had bought a copy from Amazon, but I saw one for 4.99 in W H Smith and I thought I would buy one for Heather. It wasn't long after this that the dilemma hit me - should I give my daughter the new one - or the second hand Amazon copy? In the end, she confidently picked up the new one and declared it as 'hers' which solved it very neatly. But that's not the point of this blog. As we are all together this Christmas there has been a lot of opportunities for cooking big quantities and some chance of cooking with the children. 


In the end, it was Heather who decided to have a go at the Lemon Tart. She has written her blog about this in Lemon Tart Part 1 so there isn't much more to say about that - but that it was really, really lovely. Much nicer than anything you can buy in the shops and far more lemony. So I thought I would introduce some of the cooks involved:

Ethan aged 5

Amelia aged 2

Tristan aged 9 months