Calendar Cakes

At the eleventh hour I decided to enter the Calendar Cakes  run by Dollybakes and Lauralovescake. 

This month's challenge is Fruity Bakes.  The banana cake I made yesterday met the challenge, but I thought something with summer fruits would be more appropriate.

I used another recipe from Rachel Allen - Coconut Meringue Roulade, although I didn't have any lemon curd, and used strawberries instead of raspberries.

We found this a bit too sweet and sickly, and the meringue was too soft.  More practice at meringues needed I think. It would be great for a summer barbecue.

Alphabakes challenge

Another challenge that interested me is the Alphabakes challenge run by Caroline of Caroline Makes and Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker.  This month's challenge is hosted by Caroline and the letter is F.  To meet the challenge, you have to make something where either the name of the bake, or one of the main ingredients starts with the chosen letter.  Basic ingredients like flour, sugar and eggs don't count!  As I already had Rachel Allen's Bake out, I had a look through and found Florence's Orange Cake.

The sponge, the buttercream and the icing all contain orange.  The decoration is a packet of Fruit Flakes I found in Tesco.   My work colleagues gave this one a thumbs up and it made a lovely change to the usual Lemon Drizzle I make.

I finally got round to actually doing a challenge

Over a year later, I finally decided to start entering a few challenges.  First up is the Belleau Kitchen random recipe challenge.

The July challenge was to count across your books, pick the thirtieth, then turn to page thirty.  It took me ages to gather all my books together and rearrange the bookshelves.  The random book was Rachel Allen's Bake.  The recipe on page 30 is Carrot and Pecan Squares.  I can't find the exact recipe online, but this is very similar, although mine had a lot less icing and no orange.

The cake went down very well at my mum's barbecue yesterday.