APPLE SPONGE CAKE

We adapted this recipe from the Spanish website 'www.pequerecetas.com' which is great.
You need:
- 150 gr butter (room temperature)
- 125 gr sugar
- 200 gr self raising flour
- 3 eggs
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 tablespoons milk
- a pinch of salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
- 1 tbsp of lemon juice
- 750 gr apples
-  apricot jam

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees.
Beat 125 gr of butter with the sugar. Add the lemon juice, vanilla essence and salt. Then add the eggs (one at a time) and finally fold in the flour and baking powder. Last add the milk. Put it all on a springform tin previously greased with butter.
Peel the apples and cut them into quarters. Cut each quarter along its length four times but leaving the tops joined (see picture). Put the apple quarters on top of the cake. Melt the remaining 25 gr of butter and with a brush 'paint' the apples with the butter. Bake in the oven for 45 minutes.
As you take it out of the oven, dilute two tablespoons of apricot jam with a tablespoon of boiling water and paint the top of the cake for a nice shine.

PISTO

This is a very Spanish dish, very similar to a ratatouille but without aubergines.

You need:

3 large onions (into slices)
2 cloves of garlic (into thin slices)
1 red pepper (into cubes)
half a green pepper  (into cubes)
5 courgettes - into thick slices
2 large tomatoes - into medium size cubes
a bay leave
salt
olive oil

Heat the olive oil on a frying pan over medium heat. Fry the onion. As soon as they are a bit golden add the peppers and garlic and let them fry for 5-8 minutes. Then add the tomatoes and fry them for another 3-4- minutes. Put the heat down to minimum and let it all soften for 10 more minutes. Then put it on a serving dish and reserve.

Add a touch more olive oil and fry the courgettes for 7-8 minutes. As soon as they are ready mix them with the onion and tomato mixture. Add salt and let it all bubble for 10 to 15 minutes over low heat.

If you get lots of liquid then increase the heat and let it evaporate for another 10 minutes or so.

Do not stir too much as you should keep the shapes of the vegetables.

You can eat this with grilled meat, grilled fish, a fried egg or just with crusty bread. The children also like it with grated cheese on top and then melted under the grill.

TIGERS

'Tigers' is a mussel-version of croquetas (see our recipe). One of my aunts cooks them always when I go to Spain, which is lucky because these little things are truly laborious. The children love them though. Surprisingly, they were mesmerised by the chance of looking closely into their insides. Eating muscles after seeing the insides is an act for faith, but that goes for both children and adults...

You need:
- for each 20 mussels (keep the shells)
- 1.5 onion
- 1 clove of garlic
- a quarter of a green pepper (cubed)
-  8 raw (and peeled) shrimps (cut into small cubes)
- salt
- olive oil (lots)
- for the béchamel: flour (three heaped table spoons)  olive oil and  850 l of milk.

- for the crust: flour, 2 eggs, breadcrumbs

Clean the mussels. Put half a glass of water on a pan. When the pan is hot add the mussels. As soon as they open up take them off the heat and discard the ones that have remained closed. Keep the liquid at the bottom of the pan and sieve it through a colander so that you get rid of any sand.

Take the muscles off the shells and put the sells aside. Cut the mussels into small cubes.

On a different pan, fry the onion, green pepper and garlic until they onion becomes translucent. Then add the shrimps and mussels for a coupe of minutes. Add salt and take the mixture off the heat.

Separately prepare the béchamel (heat two table spoons of olive oil, add three tablespoons of  flour and let it get hot for 2-3- minutes while storing well. Then add the milk. Blend with a hand held blender and then put it back on the heat until it starts bubbling and thickening while stirring constantly. At the end add 4 table spoons of the liquid that you got at the bottom of the pan when 'opening' the mussels.  When the béchamel is ready mix it with the mussels mixture and pour it onto the mussels shells. Then let them cool down.

Beat the eggs and put then in a bowl. Prepare another bowl with flour and a third bowl with bread crumbs. Dust the shuffled shells with flour.  Then dip them into the eggs and cover them with breadcrumbs (by dipping the béchamel surface of the sells into the breadcrumbs).

Heat olive oil in a frying pan ( a lot of it!) and fry the mussels for a couple of minutes until golden.

BLACKBERRY CAKE

This cake is identical to the strawberry one. You just need to substitute the strawberries with 250 gr of blackberries. This cake is nicer though as the blackberries mix with the dough and make it all slightly purple.

We cooked it in a loaf tin so that the kids would see that different shapes require different cooking times. While the cake in the springform tin took 50 minutes to bake, this one took 1.15 minutes.

PINK LEMONADE

Just follow the recipe of the previous post but use only 85 g of sugar (instead of 100 g) and add a handful of strawberries. Blend of the ingredients and serve with ice.

LEMONADE

We made this because the children wanted to sell it (with cookies) to neighbours and it was a massive hit. You need:

- 6 lemons (cut them in quarters and remove the pith)
- 100 gr sugar
- 1 l water
- one pinch of salt
- a handful of ice

Blend all the ingredients except the ice in a blender (this tastes even better if you mix all the ingredients and let them rest overnight) Strain the lemonade through a colander. Add the ice.
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STRAWBERRY CAKE

This is a nice and very easy tea time summer cake. You need:
- 175 gr plain flour
- 225 gr sugar
- one table spoon baking powder
- grates zest of one lemon
- 80 ml sunflower oil
- 2 eggs
- 250 gr strawberries cut into small bits


Preheat the oven at 175 degrees. In a bowl mix all the ingredients except for the fruit with a wooden spoon. Then add the fruit and mix again (but be careful not to break the strawberries). Grease a springform cake tin and pour the mix in. Bake for 50 minutes.