Random Pistachio Cake.

This month's Random Recipe is Number 15 and celebrates Belleau Kitchen's 2nd Birthday.

Well, Dom, I have enjoyed a slice of this with a mug of tea and have raised my mug to you.  So many of my newly favourite recipes have been found by taking part in Random Recipes and this is yet another.  

I do so love a fairly simple cake and especially if it is not chocolate (I'm bored of chocolate cakes).  A good cake recipe is one like this which is simple but has an extra little something.  Here, you get the yielding bite and the distinctive taste of the pistachios which just jazzes up the beautiful, freshly baked vanilla loaf cake. 

I stacked up all my books dedicated exclusively to baking and used random.org to choose the book and then the page number.  The book was Cake Days from The Hummingbird Bakery.  I have previously blogged about the honey and pear layer cake and the grasshopper pie from this book and I think Steve has also made their whoopie pies.  Other than that, though, I have seriously underused this book which has many tempting recipes in it like lemon and thyme loaf; rose cupcakes; pea, ham and feta cheese muffins; walnut and honey loaf; butterscotch marshmallow bars - so watch this space for more!

Honey And Pear Layer Cake.

I decided to go a little more grown up for Dad's birthday cake this year after his last two novelty cakes!

I went for taste and chose the honey and pear layer cake from the Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days book.  I got this book from my two boys on Mother's Day but haven't made an awful lot from it yet.  I felt this cake was seasonal and knew my Dad would love the flavours.

The recipe worked very well and the cake was beautiful.  It has caramelised pears on the top of each of the four layers and a lovely honey buttercream in between the layers.  I even just decorated the cake in the same way they did in the book.  I hadn't made these wee crystallised fruits since I was in a wee craft class in the community centre when I was at school.  Brought back memories of all the lovely little projects we made there.  I think there were only about 4 regular members of the class but we did loads of different things.  I don't know who the people were who took the class but I am so appreciative now when I think back on it.  I really hope I showed my appreciation at the time!  

Anyway, back to the point.  This is where I would normally publish the recipe.  Sometimes I have varied the recipe a bit and other times not.  I always reckon that if I give good publicity for the source of the recipe, it's okay for me to give it here.  I guess, I have always had my doubts about that, though, and recent discussions on Twitter have made me really think hard about it.  Maybe I really shouldn't be copying other people's recipes on here.  I didn't vary at all from the recipe for this one so I am not going to publish it.  Especially as this book is fairly new and still available.

I would, however, really appreciate your opinions on this.  Should I continue to write out the recipes I use or should I only write out recipes if I have made them up myself or significantly changed the original?

What I can do, however, is let anyone who doesn't know how to make these crystallised fruits.  It works well with edible flowers too and the leaves in the picture are just mint leaves from the garden.

It is really simple.  Lightly beat an egg white.  Brush a light coating of egg white over your chosen fruit, flowers or leaves then sprinkle some sieved caster sugar over the fruit.  Leave on some greaseproof paper overnight to dry.