Lemon layer cake with strawberries, oatmeal cookies, and peonies

Our peonies have started to bloom and this year we have enough to cut. I love rose peonies in red, pink, and in white, they are my favorite flower: so opulent, so gorgeous, and with a sweet and distinctive scent. I remember debating within myself when I was nine, trying to decide my favorite flower. I knew that my favorite flower had to smell good, not just look good.

I read Sherry Yard’s “Desserts by the Yard” this weekend. My reading has really slacked off because I’ve had other things going on. I renewed the River Cottage Meat Book three times and still didn’t finish reading it before it had to go back to the library, and I told myself I couldn’t let Desserts by the Yard go the same way. It made for some inspirational late-night reading last night. So today I made two desserts.

First I tried making Sherry Yard’s oatmeal cookies. They are very good, although when I first took them out of the oven I panicked thinking that I had overcooked them. But I hadn’t– they come out this colour. The cookies are spicy and chewy and full of raisins, just the way I like my oatmeal cookies. Keeping in mind that most baking tastes great right out of the oven, I’ll make the recipe a couple more times, eat some stale cookies, and if I decide it’s a keeper I’ll let you know.

Today I also made a lemon layer cake from Trish Boyle’s “Cake Book”. I didn’t have enough lemons to do the full on Lemon Lust cake, so I did the cake (very good, firm yet tender with a nice lemon taste), and the lemon simple syrup. I balked at making the 6-egg lemon curd, and lacked the cream cheese Trish Boyle needed for her filling, so I made my Delia Smith standby lemon curd recipe.

I sliced the cake layers and brushed them with the lemon simple syrup (1/4 strained lemon juice, 1/3 cup water, 1/2 cup sugar boiled and left to get to room temperature). Then for two layers I spread a thin layer of lemon curd to enhance the lemon flavour. The middle I filled with whipped cream and sliced strawberries, and I did the same for the top. I wanted a dessert that was light and fruity on the tongue but gave the satisfaction of a cake, and this was definitely it.

The recipe I’m going to share is for lemon curd. This is Delia Smith’s recipe and it is pretty much infallible (I did ruin it once by leaving the mixture on the stove and not stirring it, but unless you’re going to totally ignore the instructions, it will work for you, and work well):

Lemon Curd

grated rind and juice of one large, juicy lemon

3 oz caster sugar (75 g)

2 large eggs

2 oz unsalted butter (50 g)

Place the sugar and rind in a bowl. In another bowl, whisk the lemon juice and eggs together well, then pour over the sugar and zest. Add the butter cut into little pieces, and then place the bowl over a pot of simmering (not boiling) water. Stir frequently until thickened, about 20 minutes. Cool and use to sandwich cake layers together. This can be stored in the fridge for a few days, tightly covered.

I do think I need to take a course in cake decorating. My desserts are so homemade-looking. Drippy, crooked, oozy, crumbly…generally “rustic”. I can’t figure out whether I should embrace it, à la Nigel Slater, or doing some remedial coursework. It does taste good, but I’m not so sure about visual appeal.

By the way I’m back to the whole problem with having UK food as my project. All the British summer puddings revolve around fruit and dairy in the simplest possible combinations, so how can I write a post about it? Anyway we had stewed rhubarb and custard this week, a very British pudding but what is there to say about it, other than it was good and incidentally easy for elderly people to digest?

Ottawa

I’m back home after my first trip to Ottawa. I have to say — I love Ottawa! It is the most wonderful place! The Rideau Canal, that you see above, is so picturesque it brought back all my longings for a canal boat holiday.

Before I went I did find time to do some research into restaurants. I went for dinner Friday night with a friend to the Sweetgrass Aboriginal Bistro. They started us off with salted popcorn, bannock, and crowberry iced tea (strictly herbal, love it. Need to find crowberry tea soon for home use; tastes a lot like a raspberry tea). We went on to a “potlatch” appetizer of wild boar belly on daikon, barbeque glazed bison rib, and rabbit dumplings. That one bite of boar fat was delicious and the bison was heaven too. I found the rabbit filling in the dumplings way too dry.

I then had game hen on spinach with wild rice and pine nuts. Game hen cooked very well; spinach too salty which was disappointing because I like spinach. Waitress came by at least five times to see how we liked everything. Had quick conference with my dinner partner about the politeness of saying food was oversalted when everything else was so great. Decided not to say anything.

Finished by swapping our desserts halfway through so we could each try two: first, a cloudberry crème brûlée that was heavenly crème brûlée, but we couldn’t taste any of the cloudberry essence that supposedly was flavouring the dessert. Chalked it up to the general tastelessness of some wild berries, like salmonberries. I could have eaten two of those. We also shared a traditional Cree dessert called “buudin”, a kind of boiled (steamed) vegan cake with cranberries in it. It was like a moist spice cake and actually quite pleasant to eat but I was very full by that point.

Another good dinner was at the Canal Ritz, on the Rideau Canal. The food was very good there too but I didn’t take any pictures because I was there with three of my old professors and there are some things that should be kept semi private, like my need to document my food, although come to think of it they would all have understood.  I also went to the Byward Market and tried the beaver tail pastries and found them quite disappointing. Just a fried flat bit of bread in the shape of a beaver tail, heavily covered in cinnamon sugar. Not to my taste at all though I saw a group of boys eating them and one of them had his covered in Nutella, topped by Reese’s pieces. I felt faintly ill looking at it. The Byward Market was quite fun, and I was also thrilled with Richard Hoare’s bookshop on Sussex.

Other notable items – went to the National Gallery and got an inside tour of the Parliametary library (librarian connections). The city is beautiful and I want to go back — I totally loved my trip; it was a great experience in lots of ways.