Sorry, a "what" sandwich?

Lemon sponge sandwiches with raspberries, blueberries and cream

I love Tessa Kiros, she is an unconventional cookery books author who combines familiar history with ancestral recipes, excellent photos and flavors from different countries where she spent her childhood, mixed up with beautiful colors and the flavors of her past. Her books make you wanting to run to the kitchen and starts trying out her wonderful recipes. Far from being pretentious, her wisdom and elegance takes us to her kitchen and she teaches us that the best of cooking is the fact of sharing what you are coking. I only have two of her books, Falling cloudberries, and Apples for jam and this cream sandwiches recipe comes from the latter one. This post is from the latter one, and is as easy as making a sandwich, but far much better...

Ingredients

For the lemon sponge

250g Butter, softened
280g caster sugar
3 eggs
310g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp Baking powder
1 lemon, finely grated zest and juice
185ml single cream
1 tsp vanilla extract

For the filling:
100ml whipping cream
2 tsp icing sugar
100g plain Greek yogurt
100g Raspberries, halved
icing sugar, for dusting

Method

Preheat the oven to 170°C
Butter and flour a 30 x 11cm loaf tin.
To make the lemon sandwiches; cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one by one. Sift in the flour and baking powder; then add the lemon zest, lemon juice, cream and vanilla, whisking well to a smooth batter. Spoon into the loaf tin and bake for about 1 hour 10 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. If the top looks like it’s getting too brown before the cooking time is up, cover it with foil. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.

To make the filling, whisk the cream and icing sugar together until the cream holds peaks, and then fold in the yoghurt. Cut the cake like a loaf of bread into slices about 5mm thick.
Spread half the slices with the cream mixture and then top with the raspberries and the rest of the cake slices to make sandwiches.
Dust with icing sugar to serve.

The sponge is delicious just baked from the oven and on its own. But for these sweet sandwiches is better to cut the slices the next day, if you can wait (I couldn't)

A rainbow in my plate

This is my first post of the New Year, and I wanted it to be a light one, after the holiday’s lovely meals and sweets. Swiss chard is one of my favourite vegetables, and one of the things that got my attention when I moved to London was to find coloured chard, we don’t have those in Spain, and you can find them all year round, whereas in the UK they are seasonal, so every time I see them I “have” to buy them. The white part is very wide and hard and I don’t use it for this recipe.

It can be made as a round tart or with a rectangular shape and the base is really simple to make, and you need to start the day before for the marinade.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish every one a Happy New Year.

Ingredients

500g Swiss chard

Handful of sultanas

Half red pepper diced

3 spring onions finely sliced

Handful of pine nuts

Drizzle of olive oil

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

Salt and pepper

For the base

500g flour

100ml water

100ml olive oil

Method

Finely slice the chard (only the green part), and place them in a salad bowl with the diced pepper, the spring onion, the pine nuts and the sultans, drizzle the olive oil, the paprika and salt and peppr, mix well and leave overnight in the fridge.

Squeeze the excess liquid and reserve. Mix the ingredients for the base and roll it our very finely, place it on the tray or the tin you are going to use. Spread the filling all over the base and bake in the oven at 180 for 30minutes if it starts getting brown cover it with foil and carry on baking it.