Some baking

Thanks all for the kind comments on the post about my wisdom tooth.  The good news is that this time it was a known quantity and I had a very experienced consultant so the actual op only took 20 minutes.  The less good news is that once the anaesthetic wore off the pain has since mainly been excruciating, so I have been awake most of the night and don't exactly feel tip top.  Mr W has confined me to bed which isn't so bad as the tooth fairy brought me an iphone.  If I could only get my head to work I'd be setting it up, but I can't so I'm writing a blog post instead.

It's been a while since I posted about baking, mainly because I gave it up for Lent!  Mr W and I had just eaten so much cake that we probably needed a break for the good of our healths!  Since Easter, I've done a bit of baking but I'm concentrating on less extravagant things, using ingredients that I have in the cupboards which are once again overflowing.

At the top are my gluten free banana oat and walnut rock cakes.  I've been working on this recipe over the last few weeks having modified them from what was originally a biscuit recipe in a magazine.  The current version bears no resemblance at all to the original biscuit and has been refined into a rock cake.  This time I tried it without dried raisins, but they do really need them.  Here's the recipe if anyone wants to have a go:

4oz of sunflower spread/butter/margarine depending on how decadent you are feeling
3oz of sugar
1 egg
4 oz of oats (ideally not the jumbo ones)
4oz of flour (gluten free or otherwise)
1 large or 2 small very ripe bananas
2oz chopped walnuts
2 oz sultanas (or raisins would work too) (or maybe cranberries would be nice - not tried that yet).
Cream the fat and sugar together and beat in the egg.  Mash and stir in the banana and then fold in the dried ingredients until well mixed.  Put spoonfuls onto a greased or lined baking sheet and cook in the oven at 180C (170C fan oven) until golden, about 20 minutes I think.

The bottom picture is of a "cherry and almond traybake".  I put it in inverted commas because there aren't any cherries in it at all.  It's a bit like a bakewell tart, only using coconut as well as ground almonds in the filling, and instead of using cherry jam and topping with glace cherries as the recipe suggested, I used raspberry jam and topped with flaked almonds.  I made the pastry myself too (the recipe called for readymade) and it showcases my new brownie tin which I got at Lakeland at the weekend.