A nice touch

Bye bye summer!

OK, let's get to it.

These delightful bitesize cakes are a beauty and so delicious you won't believe how easy and fun they are to make. They taste of summer, so before winter arrives I give you these little cuties...I would also tell you about what happened one night not so long ago after I made these. Here is the story...

It's so grateful to be rewarded for your work, even more when you least expect it. This is what happened one night, not too long ago. It was quite late, around 8 pm, when my doorbell rang. I opened the door and there was this delivery man handing me a form to sign and with a big long box by his side. I looked at the box and when I saw the Interflora logo, I kindly smiled, (I may have slipped a patronizing sigh (He, my husband, the Vegetarian hasn´t brought me flowers in years!) so I opened my mouth to let him know he got the wrong door, when my eyes saw the addressee name: Mrs B. Wait a minute, that's ME! I signed the form and I almost hugged the man! (he run away of course!) Then, this got me thinking, could it be that my hubbie, the Vegetarian, had the urge for bringing me flowers? They say that if this happens out of the blue, he might have been having an affair! I grabbed the box, closed the door and had a deep breath. 
-"Do you have anything to do with this???" -I shouted. His steps getting closer downstairs...
-"Erm...Noooo?"- (suspicious smile)
So, I opened the box and there it was, a beautiful, colourful and huge orchid plant! The plant pot was the same colour as the flowers, a nice touch. So, the Vegetarian had to break and he spat it all out. His workmates were the ones. I use to send them my culinary creations via the Vegetarian, like the ones from this post, and this was their way of thanking me, along with a nice card with a lovely message. I am more than grateful to these guys, to whom I've never met, for letting me know about their tastes, for helping me out with my experiments and for eating them. So, people from BAA, at Heathrow, Thanks a lot!

Here's the lovely plant.

And here's the recipe, passion fruit mini bites and bites size cherry cakes. They're so simple to make and the result is impressive.

Mini passion fruit cakes

Ingredients

2 tablespoon passion fruit pulp
60g softened butter
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon rind
1/4 cup (55g) sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup (75g) self raising flour
1/4 cup (60ml) buttermilk

Icing
1/2 cup (80g) icing sugar
1 teaspoong milk

Method
Preheat oven to 180. Grease two 12 hole mini muffin tins
Strain passion fruit pulp over small bowl, reserve seeds and juice separately.
Beat butter, rind and sugar in small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in egg, add flour, passion fruit juice and buttermilk. Spoon mixture into muffin tin holes. 
Bake cakes about 20 minutes. Stand them 5 minutes. Turn, top side up, onto a cooling rack.
Meanwhile, stir icing sugar and milk, add the reserved seeds and mix until combined. Top cakes with icing.

Cherry bites

Ingredients

115g self raising flour
Pinch of salt
100g sugar
115g softened butter
3 eggs
50g ground almonds

Method

Preheat the oven to 180. Grease the muffins tin.
Sift the flour and add a pinch of salt, and stir in the sugar.

Melt the butter and leave to cool. Lightly beat the eggs and mix them into the sugar and flour, then add the cooled butter and ground almonds. Cover and chill for an hour at least. Fill the tin three quarters full.
Top with a cherry (you can substitute with any other fruit) and bake for 9 to 10 minutes. Leave to cool then turn out to a cooling rack.