Rescuing a disaster

I had a pot-luck dinner & bridge party to go to on Saturday night. I was assigned to bring a dessert (Alec decided to organise a bit better this time, after the last one when, left to our own devices, we all brought dessert) and decided to make one of those lemon & yoghurt cakes with syrup. I checked out the web for recipes and chose this one.

Looks pretty good going into the oven doesn't it?


Looked good coming out too.

But look what happened when I tipped it out of the tin:


And that's after I tried to put it back together. It just broke into about 20 bits.

I didn't have time to start again with something else, so I decided to turn it into a sort of Greek trifle. I broke it up a bit more (scarfing down quite a bit of it), put it in a crystal bowl, then opened a tin of mandarin segments and scattered them on top. I poured the syrup on, adding a bit more Cointreau …


… then popped into the supermarket on the way out and bought a pot of honey flavoured Greek yoghurt, which I poured on top once I was at Alec's.

A dribble of date molasses on top (brought in a small container from home), and voila …


… a perfectly acceptable looking dessert.

While all this drama was going on I also performed a small experiment with my new juicer. I'd used it to make peanut butter during the week - how easy! roasted peanuts in one end, peanut butter out the other in two seconds flat - and wanted to try something a little different.

Hazelnuts and chocolate:


I roasted the hazelnuts and rubbed them to remove the skins. Then put the naked nuts through the juicer with a bit of dark chocolate. My version of Nutella!


It's a lot coarser than Nutella, and doesn't spread quite as well, but it is yummy.