Lemon marmalade

I am not a huge fan of marmalade, but Kirill likes it. So we had a go at making it. The recipe came from this page; I will post it here with my remarks lest the page disappears. First remark is that is should be called marmalade, and not “jam”, as it contains peels.

Ingredients:

4 lemons (ours were medium-sized)
Juice of one lemon, strained (recipe says 2 tablespoons, but lemon I used only gave about 3, so it all went in)
1 cup sugar (my favorite cup holds 260 ml)
4 cups water

Banana cake

For this banana cake it is best to take overripe bananas — even riper than on the pic

I never can quite understand if there is a banana season here on Canaries. Maybe not — bananas, mostly local ones, are available all year round. We can never guess how fast they will be eaten though, and often have to throw away some. This is a way to utilize some overripe bananas.

This cake is delicious. The recipe is based on this banana loaf, but I've changed the proportions somewhat, reducing sugar, adding lemon juice and generally adjusting to my taste and presence/absence of ingredients. Plus I've changed the process slightly (never could understand the need to cream the butter with sugar, so, none of that)

Ingredients:

• 140 g butter, softened to the point of melting
• 115 g sugar
• 2 eggs
• Pinch of salt
• Two (over)ripe bananas — this is, of course, somewhat vague measurement, and so are the eggs
• 1 table spoon lemon juice
• 150 g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Process

Start the oven : 180 °C non fan-assisted
Line whatever baking form you have with baking parchment
Peel and mash the bananas
Beat the eggs with the pinch of salt till foaming
Mix butter and sugar well
Combine eggs and sugary butter, beat with mixer
Add mashed bananas and lemon juice, mix and beat
Add flour and soda, mix and beat till lumpless

The mixture will be not pour-able, you will have to scrape it into the tin and level the surface.

Cover with aluminium foil, to prevent the top from going completely black.

Bake for 30 min, take the foil off. The color will develop really fast; test the readiness with a toothpick (if it comes out dry, cake is ready). The original recipe say to bake for 30 minutes; in my case I say 40 minutes is closer to the truth.

Enjoy :)

Baked stuff pics on Shutterstock

Orange and cinnamon cake

First time I made this cake without consulting any recipe, but vaguely remembering that I had made something similar in the past. It turned out so well, I thought I'd write down the recipe next time, if I ever manage to reproduce it. I did reproduce it, so here is the recipe:

Ingredients, in order of appearance:

teaspoonful orange zest
juice of one orange (measured, it amounted to about 100 ml)
2 eggs, medium
1/2 teaspoonful salt
3/4 cup* white sugar
teaspoonful cinnamon
60 ml sunflower oil (refined, so it doesn't smell of anything much; can easily be replaced by other refined non-smelly oil)
100 ml milk
1 and 1/2 half cups plain flour (approx)
teaspoonful baking powder