Cherry and Lemon Cream Slice Cseresznyés Lepény

This is a lovely soft buttery pastry jewelled with sweet summer cherries and flavoured with kirsch or cherry liqueur. It's usually served just dusted with icing sugar but this time I added some home-made lemon curd to give it a tangy creaminess. You could serve it with lemon curd mixed with lightly whipped cream too or vanilla cream. Whatever you do it will be a delicious afternoon treat.

100g butter

125g vanilla infused caster sugar (or plain caster sugar and few drops of vanilla essence)

pinch of salt

2 eggs

1 tsp kirsch (optional)

1 tsp baking powder

200g refined white spelt flour (or plain flour)

grated zest of a lemon or a lime

100ml milk

400g cherries, stones removed

Preheat the oven to 180C. Mix the butter and sugar until smooth, light in colour and fluffy. Add the salt, lemon zest, kirsch, eggs and mix well until very smooth. Mix the baking powder with the flour and add it gradually to the mix also adding a little bit of the milk each time until all completely incorporated. Grease and line a 20x30cm brownie tray, pour in the cake mix and spread the cherries on top. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes or until cooked through. Cool and slice, dust with icing sugar. I cut each slice horizontally and spread a little lemon curd in the middle before sandwiching them together again. But it would be lovely to serve it with some lemon curd flavoured whipped cream too.

 

Nigella's Lemon and Almond Cake

We all love lemon and almonds in our house and I often make this cake as it's simple and doesn't need too many ingredients. The recipe is from Nigella Lawson's 'How to be a domestic goddess'. 

It's still winter and the height of citrus season hence this cake made it to my blog even though it's not very Hungarian in origin, probably more Middle Eastern. Must warn you it has a lot of butter in it, but on the bright side it has hardly any flour. In fact I think you could probably substitute it with more ground almonds to make it absolutely gluten free.

You only need one bowl for mixing, it's quick and stays moist and delicious for days. We served it with creme fraiche and the saffron poached pears I posted earlier they pair up really well with almonds.

225g soft unsalted butter

225g caster sugar

4 eggs

50g plain flour

225g ground almonds

half tsp almond extract

grated zest and juice of 2 lemons

Preheat oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Cream together the butter and sugar until almost white. Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a bit of the flour after each one. When it's all really well mixed, gently fold in the ground almonds, almond extract, lemon zest and juice. Pour the mix into a greased and lined spring form cake tin (21-23cm) and bake for about an hour until firm, cooked through and the testing skewer comes out clean. You may need to cover it with foil halfway through if your oven is too fierce and the top colours too much. When ready, let it cool, take it out of the tin and wrap in tin foil and it will keep for several days. According to Nigella this cake will be best left for a couple of days, but we tried it the next day. Dust it with icing sugar before serving with cream, creme fraiche, berries or whatever takes your fancy.