Another simple, easy to make cake that is a tried and tested goûter time staple here 🙂

Ingredients :

• 4 eggs
• 180g sugar
• 120g flour
• 150g salted butter melted (if you use unsalted add a good pinch of salt to the ingredients)
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 100g grated coconut

Method :

1. Pre-heat oven to 180°C
2. Beat the eggs with the sugar
3. Add the other flour, baking powder and melted butter and mix well with a whisk
4. Mix in the coconut
5. Pour into greased cake tin and bake in oven for 25-30 minutes

Gratin dauphinois is a traditional french dish that may be eaten as a side dish or as a meal in itself.  It originates in the south-east of France, in a region that used to be called the Dauphinois – which today is in and around Grenoble.

This is the traditional recipe, lots of variants exist, namely that of adding grated cheese (gruyere or emmenthal etc) but once you have added cheese it is no longer a gratin dauphinois! It becomes a simple ‘gratin de pomme de terre’ or ‘potato gratin’!

Ingredients :

• 1.5kg waxy potatoes
• Butter
• 1 clove of garlic
• 50cl double cream
• 50cl milk
• Salt & Pepper
• Nutmeg
• 1 laurel leaf and 1 sprig of thyme (or a bouquet garnie)

Method :

1. Pre-heat oven at 160°C
2. Peel and rinse potatoes.
3. Slice potatoes finely – a mandoline is great for this, just be careful of your fingers 😉
4. Do not wash potatoes after slicing – otherwise you’ll wash off the starch!
5. Heat the milk in a saucepan with the laurel leaf and thyme (or bouquet garnie) and season with salt and pepper
6. Bring to the boil and add sliced potatoes, lower the heat and cook for 10 minutes mixing regularly (to avoid the potatoes sticking to the bottom of the pan)
7. Halve the clove of garlic and rub it round the inside of an oven dish and then rub the dish with a little butter
8. Remove the laurel & thyme from the pan and pour the milk and potatoes into the oven dish
9. Pour the cream over the potatoes
10. Put a few knobs of butter on top of the dish
11. Bake in the oven at 160°C for 1h30

There is nothing nicer than a good old apple tart – plenty of apples around this time of year and as per usual this is a very simple recipe with a minimum of ingredients but with a great result!

The main difference between apples in France and in Ireland and the UK is that cooking apples don’t exist – eating apples are used which I prefer anyway as you don’t need to add any (or very little) sugar that way.

Ingredients :

• 1 short-cut pastry
• 4-6 eating apples
• Vanilla Sugar
• Butter

Method :

1. Pre-heat oven to 180°C
2. Chop 2 apples into small cubes and place in a saucepan with approximately 2 tablespoons of water
3. Leave to simmer until the apple softens and then mash or use a hand mixer to make a compote
4. Roll out pastry into your tart tin and prick the base with a fork
5. Spread the compote onto the tart base
6. Peel, core and cut your apples into quarters and then slice each quarter3 or 4 times
7. Place the apple slices on the compote, arranging them around in a circle – or anyway you like!
8. Sprinkle some vanilla sugar over the apples and add 3 or 4 small knobs of butter
9. Bake in oven for 30 minutes
10. Enjoy on its own or with some freshly whipped cream or ice-cream

I love lemon flavoured cakes and desserts but I like them to have a really strong lemon flavour so this lemon cake is only going to be the one for you if you really appreciate the tangy fruit too!

The icing is optional as even without, the cake is very lemon-y!

The temperature for the cake is 170°C and it really needs to be no higher, as you can see from the picture my cake got slightly too done on the outside because I wanted to double up and bake it at the same time as a brown bread loaf so everything went in at 180°C – I won’t be making that mistake again!

Ingredients :

• 175g sugar
• 120g melted butter
• zest of two lemons
• 3 eggs
• 150g flour
• Juice of two lemons (approx 80g)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

For the icing :

• 125g icing sugar
• 25g lemon juice

Method :

1. Pre-heat oven to 170°C
2. Melt the butter in the microwave
3. Mix the butter and sugar together
4. Add the lemon zest and then the eggs, one by one mixing well after each one
5. Mix in the flour and baking powder
6. Pour in the lemon juice and mix well
7. Pour the mixture into a greased 1lb loaf tin and bake for 40 mins at 170°C (it may need 5 minutes more or less depending on your oven)
8. When the cake is cooked remove from the tin and wrap immediately in clingfilm while waiting for it to cool, this will keep the cake lovely and moist!
9. Whisk the icing sugar with the lemon juice
10. Remove the cake from the clingfilm and place on a grill
11. Cover the cake with the icing and leave for a few moments for the icing to harden
12. Eat!

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I was trying to think of a suitable name in english for this dish but couldn’t so I just stuck to the french one. Endives are mostly called chicory in english but are also called endives too.  A gratin means when a dish is topped with a golden crust, often using cheese or breadcrumbs by baking or cooking in the oven with an overhead grill.

And guess what? Endives are in season so are really plentiful at the moment – and are great in a winter salad too!

Ingredients :

• 6 endives
• 6 slices good quality ham
• 100g grated gruyère cheese (or any other hard cheese you have)

For the béchamel :

• 90g butter
• 45g flour
• 500ml milk
• Salt, Pepper and Nutmeg

Method :

1. Chop the ends off the endives and remove any discoloured leaves
2. Steam them or boil them until well cooked
3. Leave the endives to drain in a colander (to try and remove some of the excess water contained in the endives)
4. Melt the butter in a saucepan
5. Add the flour and mix well with a whisk
6. Season with salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg
7. Slowly pour in the milk whisking vigorously all the time to avoid lumps and to get a nice smooth texture for your sauce
8. Once all the milk is added continue to cook over a medium heat mixing all the time for another 5 minutes
9. Butter an oven dish and place each endive wrapped in a slice of ham on the bottom and pour over the béchamel sauce
10. Top with grated cheese
11. Bake in a pre-heated oven for 25 minutes at 180°C and the pop under the grill for another 5 minutes to get it nice and crispy on top

*  If you find the endives too hard even after all that cooking, you can also cut them in half lengthways, lay them on the bottom of the dish and simply cover them with the ham slices.

Well this definitely isn’t a french recipe but one that I have always made when there were a few bananas left in the fruit bowl!

Ingredients :

• 175g self-raising flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of bread soda
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 125g sugar
• 50g butter
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons of milk
• 3 bananas
• 50g walnuts

Method :

1. Pre-heat oven to 180°C
2. Sieve flour into a bowl and add sugar, bread soda and cinnamon
3. Melt butter in microwave and mix into the dry ingredients
4. Add milk, walnuts, egg and mashed bananas
5. Mix well
6. Pour into greased loaf tin
7. Bake at 180°C for 40 minutes