Strawberry Meringue Cake

With Wimbledon just started, thought I'd make something special with strawberries. It was my daughter's birthday and she came up for the weekend, so needed a cake - this was just the thing.
It's made with oil not butter and is very easy to make, yet it looks 'an occasion' cake.

Preheat oven 190C/gas5
Grease and line 2x18cm [7"] sandwich tins

For the cake you need to sieve 150g plain flour, 25g cornflour and 2 level tspns baking powder into a bowl.
Mix together 100ml veg oil [I used sunflower] and 100ml water in another bowl.
Separate 2 eggs and add the yolks to the oil/water mixture and mix together. Stir the dry ingredients in and mix to a batter. Whisk the egg whites till stiff then fold into the mixture.

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Rhubarb Meringue Tart

Off on holiday to France tomorrow, so thought I'd post a French recipe. Will be back posting in 2 weeks.


At the weekend I picked just enough rhubarb to make some kind of dessert. Wanted something different, and browsing through some old French cookery magazines, I found a recipe for a meringue tart with a difference, as it has a custard layer on the rhubarb before you add the meringue topping. Sounded like a great idea.
I love rhubarb, but we haven't a very big garden so I have to make good use of what we can grow!


It uses a 27cm tart tin, which is quite big.

So, you need:

350g of shortcrust pastry
1 kg rhubarb
1 egg and 2 yolks
20cl of cream
1 tbspn vanilla sugar

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Chocolate Cake with Meringue

I wanted to make something special for my friend's birthday. She's a great fan of chocolate cakes, so I decided to combine another of her loves, meringue, with a chocolate cake. I looked through my cookery books and online for ideas, and there were plenty of them. Too many were very complicated and had lots of layers. I wanted a much simpler cake, but with a twist. So I decided on  a sandwich cake with a meringue layer on top and in the middle, and there's also some lime curd in the middle to give the cake an extra bit of zing. I bought a jar of this curd from a farmer's market recently, and don't know what to do with it! It's not a very green colour, so really it doesn't look very different from a lemon curd. The flavour seems to me to be a bit sharper.

For the cake  - beat 115g of butter with 115g of caster sugar till nice and fluffy. Add 3 egg yolks one at a time,  then add 100g sr flour which has been mixed with 55g cocoa powder. Pour in 50ml of milk and stir till smooth.
Grease 2 x 20cm sandwich tins and preheat oven 170C/gas3.
Spoon half the batter into each tin and smooth the tops.

For the meringue - whisk the 3 egg whites with a pinch of salt and 1/4 tspn of cream of tartar till you have soft peaks, then gradually add 140g of caster sugar and carry on whisking till the mixture is thick and shiny.

Spoon half of the meringue over each cake and bake for about 20 mins till the meringue is a golden colour. Leave in the tins to cool.

When cool, take out of the tins and put one cake, meringue side up on a plate, spoon on 2 tbpsn of lime curd and smooth is evenly over the cake. Put the other cake on top, meringue side up.

You can't keep this cake for long, so put it in the fridge or use it within a few hours.

It's an unusual cake and was very popular with my friends. The lemon curd is most unexpected, but gives a lovely sharp contrast to the crunchy meringue and the moist chocolate cake. It would make a great dessert, and you could use some cream instead of the curd, or even fruit - I certainly think you need another texture on top of the meringue. Don't think I'd like just 2 layers of chocolate cake and meringue. This is certainly a cake I'll make again.

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Chocolate meringue log

A very Happy New Year! Here's to lots of great baking.

After the success of the meringue on Christmas Day, I thought I'd try a variation as a dessert for New Year's Eve. I hunted through my cookbooks and folders and found a recipe for a meringue log in a Home and Freezer Christmas book. Anyone remember Home and Freezer magazines, littles ones which were always in racks by the checkouts?
Anyway I thought it sounded ideal, although it has a fewextra ingredients in it, like mini marshmallows.
You could use a chocolate sauce as the filling instead of the spread if you wanted, as this what was in the original recipe. I thought the spread would be more substantial when rolling up the log. I had visions of the sauce running out of the sides of the log! I know there's hazelnuts in the spread, but I don't think this will change the taste of the log very much.


5 egg whites, beaten
150g icing sugar, plus 1 tbsp extra
2 tsp cornflour, sieved
 1 tbsp cocoa powder
400ml double cream
1 vanilla pod, seeds scraped out
chocolate spread such as Nutella - or use chocolate sauce if you prefer
50g raspberries and a few redcurrants of you can find them
100g mini marshmallows

to decorate
extra icing sugar and cocoa powder, to dust
*chocolate sauce and raspberries or any red berries

Preheat oven to 150C/gas 1. In a clean bowl beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually add the icing sugar, beating till the mixture is creamy and gooey. Then whisk in the cornflour and cocoa.
Spoon the mixture onto a Swiss roll tin lined with baking paper. Bake the meringue for 1 hour then set aside to cool.
In a bowl whisk the double cream with icing sugar and vanilla seeds till it's thickened.
Sieve some icing sugar and cocoa powder onto a large piece of parchment paper then turn the meringue out onto the paper.
Spread the chocolate spread on top , followed by the whipped cream, then dot with raspberries and mini marshmallows.
Carefully roll up the log, using the parchment paper to help you, and dust with more icing sugar and cocoa. Serve with some *chocolate sauce and raspberries. I had some recurrants in the freezer, so added a few of those.

* I made a simple chocolate sauce using double cream and melted chocolate.

It was delicious. A lovely combination of flavours - the only thing I wasn't sure about were the marshmallows -they weren't really necessary to the filling, a bit chewy. The chocolate sauce gave it another kick of chocolate - you can never have too much chocolate imho, but again, it isn't absolutely necessary to the log.

Chococlate and raspberries are always a good combo, and this is a log I'll certainly make again.

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