I have a cousin from Brittany and she decided to spend some days on the Frecnh Riviera with me. So here the story goes.
Today the weather was a bit moody; so guess what we did? We cooked a delicious cake from a much-loved book of mine : “Mes 100 recettes de Gâteaux” from C. Felder. It is called Vol Blanc (which means white flight, i can’t tell you why really, maybe it’s its “white colour and lightness” as my cousin just said).
Anyway it’s a lovely summer cake made of fromage blanc (a French thick and creamy yoghurt) and cream mousse and red fruits. Here we used raspberries because it was the only red fruit i had in the house.

VOL BLANC
serves 8

for the biscuit base
120g caster sugar
4 eggs, separated
120g plain flour
icing sugar
for the mousse
75g caster sugar
50ml water
3 egg yolks
4 gelatine leaves
1 tbsp Cointreau (céline and fanny : we used rum)
250g fromage blanc
300g whipped cream
for the filling
250g frozen red fruits (céline and fanny : we used raspberries)
50g caster sugar
200g white chocolate
- The day before put the frozen fruits in a bowl in the frigde along with 50g of caster sugar.
- Preheat the oven to 210°C. Drain the fruits and keep the raspberry syrup for later. Put the white chocolate in the fridge.
- Prepare the biscuit base: beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks and add the sugar a little at a time until you’ve got a firm meringue. Add in the egg yolks and beat again for few seconds. Sift in the flour and mix carefully with a wooden spatula.
Divide the mixture between two 18cm lined tin, sift some icing sugar over and bake for 12-15 minutes (céline and fanny : it only took 10 minutes to get a lovely golden colour).
- Soak the gelatine leaves into cold water.
Bring the sugar and water to the boil and simmer for 1 minute. Pour the syrup over the egg yolks and beat with a mixer until cold, white and frothy.
- Drain the gelatine and melt it in the microwave (fanny : i’m so happy i discovered we could melt the gelatine in the microwave; it only takes 10 seconds…). Mix the meleted gelatine with a tbsp of Cointreau and add to the egg yolk mousse. Finally fold in the fromage blanc and whipped cream with a rubber spatula.
- Pour the mousse in a 20cm pudding basin, lined with cling film, until half-filled. Soak one of the biscuit in the fruit syrup and put it over the mousse. Add the fruits and the remaining mousse and top with the other soaked biscuit.
Chill for at least 2 hours.
- Grate the white chocolate and sprinkle over the unmoulded cake. Voila…Don’t you think it’s nice?

I thought I would never be in time for the 11st edition of Sugar High Friday, hosted by lovesicily, which theme is coffee.

I’m not a big coffee drinker. Actually, I never have coffee for breakfast or after lunch, as pretty much everyone in France does.
However, I just love coffee ice-cream, caffe latte… Everything sweet with coffee in it is a real treat for me; this the reason why I’ve chosen a chocolate espresso cake with latte cream from Nigella’s wonderful Feast - Food that celebrates life.
Feast is a book I seem to really enjoy. I know it received some really bad reviews, but I just can’t help it. The mood, pictures and thoughtful recipes totally do it for me.
Actually, I found myself to be using this exact cookbook much more than my other cookbooks.

Chocolate espresso cake with caffe latte cream
Adapted from Nigella Lawson’s Feast.

This almost flourless cake is moist yet fluffy, and very fragrant with good chocolate.
The caffe latte cream is a melt-in-your mouth delight.

Above are some delicious blueberry and raspberry jam muffins. The recipe will be in my book. This will not be the picture though because i really have to improve my photography and this blog is a good way to do so

Due to the popular demand, i feel obliged to tell you a little bit more about my book and when i say “my book” i mean the book i’m writting.

I first decided to write a book around Christmas this year. I thought it would be a great idea to write down all my favourites recipes just to keep them in mind. So i started to collect all the recipe i wanted to included. I had divided my book in 6 chapters; each one being an occasion that usually brings me to cook. But since i am a student and that the book contained over 300 recipes, i give up everything. It was too much work. And the summer holidays arrived. I did some shoots for my book…

Then i decided i had to do a book that is easy to handle and i’m used to think that a book with too much recipes is a book that stays on the shelf. I wanted a book i could use myself. So i chose to write a single book on each of the previous book’s chapters.

At the moment i’m writting a book about breakfast, it will be an anthology of almost 100 recipes with a picture for each. Indeed i think that pictures are one of the things that help me to choose between two cookbooks. I also want the recipe to be clear. I do love Nigella Lawson, but i think that her recipes are a bit too long (on the paper).

Even if i reckon that this book is the good one i can’t help thinking to my old cookbook, which was pretty good too: it gave menus for lunch and dinner…

So please tell me what you think because as you can see i’m still not sure about what to do.

I’ve been craving for these for months and months. Actually i’ve never had fish and chips in England, but the first i ate were in Ottawa (Canada) in a local English pub.
As my boyfriend’s family is English, i thought it was the good moment to try and make them.
I used Jamie Oliver recipe. I love Jammie’s Dinners. I will always remember the day i bought this book; my boyfriend (who lives in Kingston) and I decided to spend one day in London to look for a cake stand (i can’t find one in France, if anyone knows…). But at the end of the day, the rain started to fall and i still didn’t have my cakestand; so as soon as i saw a Waterstone, i rushed into it. And guess what did i see on the shelf : Jamie’s dinner at just 14£95… I had my treasure for the day. In the train back towards Kingston, i couldn’t help thinking about this beautiful pink and green (my 2 favourites colours) book. Weither it was raining or not, weither i had my cakestand or not, i had this book and was so happy for it

Here is the beautiful story and here comes the recipe
FISH, CHIPS AND MUSHY PEAS
serves 4

Good fish and chips are becoming harder to find these days, but there are still some good boys out there making the real deal. However, if you want to make your own at home, here’s the recipe I use. Unless you’ve got a really big fryer I’d say it’s not really worth trying to make fish and chips at home for more than 4 people - otherwise it becomes a struggle. Other things to have on the table are some crunchy sweet pickled gherkins, some pickled onions (if your other half isn’t around!) - and pickled chillies are good too. Then you want to douse it all with some cheap malt vinegar and nothing other than Heitz tomato ketchup.

sunflower oil for deep-frying
1/2 tsp sea salt (fanny : i used 2 tsp)
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper (fanny : i used 4 tsp)
225g nice white fish fillets, pinbonned (fanny : i thought 225g weren’t enough for 4 so i bought 800g and there was nothing left on the table…I used cod fish.)
225 flour, plus extra for dusting (fanny : 420g were a little too much as i had loads of batter left, but i can make some onion rings tomorrow and who’s gonna blame me for that?)
285ml good cold beer (fanny : i used 460ml of a french beer called 1664)
3 tsp baking powder
900g potatoes, peeled and cut into chips

for the mushy peas
a knob of butter
4 handful of podded peas
a small handful of fresh mint, leaves picked and chopped
a squeeze of lemon juice
sea salt and freshly ground pepper

To make your mushy peas, put the butter in a pan with the peas and the chopped mint. Put a lid on top and simmer for about 10 minutes. Add a squeeze of lemo juice and season with salt and pepper. You can either mush the peas up in a food processor, or you can mash them by hand until thay are stodgy, thick and perfect for dipping your fish into. Keep them warm while you cook your fish and chips.
Pour the sunflower oil into your deep fat fryer or a large frying pan and heat it to 190°. Mix the salt and pepper together and season the fish fillets on both sides. This will help to remove any excess water, making the fish really meaty. Whisk the flour, beer and baking powder together until nice and shiny. The texture should be like semi-whipped double cream ( i.e it should stick to whatever you’re coating). Dust each fillet in a little of the extra flour (fanny : i forgot to do this, but nothing went wrong), then dip into the batter and allow any excess to drip off. Holding one end, lower the fish into the oil one by one, carefully so you don’t get splashed - it will depeend on the size of your fryer how many fish you can do at once ( fanny : mine is about 30cm diameter and i can do 3 fillets at once). Cook for 4 minutes or so, until the batter is gloden and crisp.
Meanwhile, parboil your chips in salted boiling water for about 4 or 5 minutes until softened but still retaining their shape, then drain them in a colander and leave to steam completely dry. When all the moisture has disappeared, fry them in the oil that the fish were cooked in at 180°C until golden and crisp (fanny : as you can see in the pic, i was so in a hurry to taste at this gorgeous fish and chips, that my first batch of chips wasn’t cooked enough…). While the chips are frying, you can place the fish on a baking tray and put them in the oven for a few minutes at 180°C (fanny : mine stayed in the oven for about 30 minutes!) to finish cooking. When they are done, drain them on kitchenpaper, season with salt, and serve with the fish and mushy peas.