SALMON EN CROUTE

This is nice for the children to make because it comes out really beautiful. You can do this with various vegetables, but we normally do it with leeks. I added a few spinach leaves as well but had to hide them from the children (they saw in a newspaper that spinach is full of mercury and that this is toxic, so they now feel scientifically entitled to refuse eating them).

You need:
- one packet of puff pastry  (already rolled)
- 350 gr salmon ( two rectangular steaks)
- a little bit of olive oil
- butter
-s alt and pepper
- 2 leeks
- a few spinach leaves
- 1 tablespoon creme fraiche.
- 1 egg ( beaten)

In a pan fry the leeks (medium to low heat) on a tablespoon of butter and a table spoon of olive oil for 15 minutes. Add the spinach leaves, and toss it all well. After 1 more minute add the cream, salt and pepper,  wait until it bubble and take it all off the heat.

Roll out the puff pastry. Add salt and pepper to the salmon. Put the salmon in the center of the puff pastry, add the leeks mixture on top. Cover it all with the pastry encasing the salmon well. Press the extremes of the pastry together with a  fork so that the crust does not open up. Paint the pastry with the egg wash. Put it on an oven tray with a little bit of olive oil so that it does not stick. Bake in a preheated oven at 200 degrees for 25-30 minutes ( until golden).

CELEBRATION CAKE

We baked this recently for a family birthday and it was truly spectacular. We saw the  recipe in a Pascale Lorraine programme. She calls it 'I cannot believe you made that cake'.

You need:
- 200 gr butter
- 200 gr sugar
- 140 gr plain flour
- 4 eggs
- 60 gr cocoa powder
- 2 tsp baking powder
- a pinch of salt
- buttercream (you can make it by beating well 250 gr butter, 500 gr icing sugar and 100 gr cocoa, but we cheated a bit and bought it ready made at the supermarket)
- lots of chocolate cigarillos (you can buy them at www.chocolatetradingco.com). You need around 350 gr for the cake but my children (and I) ate a fair amount of them while arranging them on the cake.
- strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, pomegranate seeds
- a bit of vegetable oil for greasing the cake tin

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line and grease the cake tin (with the vegetable oil).

With an electric mixer cream the butter and sugar. Add two eggs and half of the flour and mix it all well. Add the rest of the eggs, flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt and mix it. Put it all into the tin and bake it for 40-45 minutes (the recipe calls for 30-40 minutes but we needed more time)

When the cake is cool, cut it in half with a serrated knife. Put the upper layer at the bottom, cover it with buttercream, put  the bottom layer of the cake on top and cover it all (top and sides) with a generous amount of buttercream. Let the buttercream harden in the fridge for 30 minutes and cover it all again (top and sides) with even more buttercream.

Stick the cigarillos on the sides of the cake and put the red fruit on top.

The cake is rather deceptive because it looks light and elegant but it is actually rather heavy (tonnes of buttercream) If you can forget the amount of calories it is actually very delicious.