Beata's Recipe for You

BEATA‘S RECIPE FOR YOU … comes from her newest book which is all about baking! This cake is full of spices and aroma. Honey moistures it, dark muscovado sugar adds colour. The magic trio of ginger, clove and cinnamon pairs really nicely with sour plums. You can substitute plums with firm and sour apples.

Honey, spice and plum cake

120 g butter 120 g honey 120 g dark mascovado sugar 3 eggs 100 ml double cream 200 g plain flour 10–15 plums 1 tbsp ground ginger (I know it‘s a lot, but I want this cake to be strong, and bold)½ tsp ground cloves1 tbsp ground cinnamon1½ tsp baking powder.

1. Oven 190°C. Line the tin with baking paper, or coat lightly with butter.

2. Wash and stone plums. Cut them in half. Put honey, sugar, and butter in a small pan and melt it so everything turns into syrup. Boil syrup for about 4 minutes.

3. Add spices into hot syrup, pour it into another dish to speed cooling.

4. Beat eggs with cream lightly foamy. Add warm but not hot syrup into egg mixture mixing all the way.

5. Mix flour with baking powder, and add into the wet mixture. The batter will be quite runny, but its ok.

6. Pour the batter into baking dish, put plums on top, they will sink while the cake is baking.

7. Bake for about 40- 45 minutes.

My children play a big role in the books and they are very much family-related. I worked on my first book for one year. Some of the recipes I took from the blog, some of them were created specially for the publication. In the beginning I felt overwhelmed: I had never done anything like this before and of courseI doubted: “Can I do that?”

When I think about Lithuanian food I think about ingredients rather than dishes. People eat what they can get: potatoes, rye bread, apples rather than oranges, wild mushrooms, wild berries and a lot of milk products (curd and sour milk products). That is a typical Lithuanian diet. Considering it is only twenty years since we became independent, it is amazing that we now can get everything! Not on the same scale as in a capital like London because it is obviously a small country. However, it is amazing how quickly all the different trends came in. Sometimes I go back home and although I find it a little behind London, it quickly catches up. You can get normal European city food.

I think my cooking is very instinctive: Trust your judgement and instincts, I would say. A lot of ideas just pop into my head and I don’t know where they came from. You just have to be sensitive and listen to your heart. And of course: taste everything!

If you try and please everyone, you please no one.