Toscakaka (Swedish almond cake)

Toscakaka cakeWell, these are strange times. I hope you and all your loved ones are well. We should have been going back to Turkey about now, but it looks as though we will be in Cornwall until after the summer.

I am very much aware that there are worse places to be – today we were out for our daily walk on the Bissoe Trail and I think it’s fair to say that spring has thoroughly sprung. Primroses, daffodils, tulips, camelias and rhododendrons are in full and beautiful bloom – a cheering site to say the least.

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Gluten-free berry almond torte

IMG_3192When is a cake a cake and when is it a torte? Sachertorte is the one that everyone knows, and it turns out that ‘torte’ is simply a German word for ‘cake’, though Sachertorte originated in Vienna of course.

It seems that if a cake contains luxury ingredients, such as ground nuts and fresh fruit, rather than just flour, butter, eggs and sugar, then it may well be a torte. Tortes also tend to be more dense in texture and less tall than their cakey cousins, so I’ve decided today’s offering qualifies on all counts. It contains ground almonds and fresh fruit, it has a deliciously fudgy texture, redolent of marzipan, it is under-tall and it looks pretty posh, even though it is extremely simple to make. Continue reading “Gluten-free berry almond torte”

Apricot frangipane tart

IMG_1815.jpgI’ve just spent a week in England, moving our furniture into storage, as the sale of our house completed on Friday. The weather in the UK was absolutely glorious –  miles better than here, where I was welcomed back by one of the very chilly winds that are a speciality of this area – one that had come down straight over the Russian Steppes, then the freezing cold Black Sea, with a quick pass over the snowy mountains that form the entire Turkish interior between here and the north coast. By the time it reaches us, it would freeze the Sahara. Continue reading “Apricot frangipane tart”

Welcome to Kaş, have a nice stay!

Ece K at the lunch stopYesterday was the final, chaotic, day of the 9-day Şeker Bayramı holiday. Over the last week, Kaş has been practically under siege.

Essential grocery shopping trips were restricted to a small hour-long window, post 8am opening, before the hordes of holidaymakers from the big cities were awake and taking over the town. It wasn’t just parking that was an impossibility, getting into town at all was simply a non-starter. On arrivals weekend, queues of traffic backed up for over a kilometre either side of the main roundabout. As the town was physically unable to absorb any more cars, they simply ended up crawling along the main road before eventually passing the people queuing up in the other direction. If it hadn’t been so frustrating, it would have been quite comical. Continue reading “Welcome to Kaş, have a nice stay!”