A rather pleasing carrot cake with lime mascarpone icing



This carrot cake is an exceedingly good cake made all the more pleasing by the twist of lime mascarpone icing. It’s delicious, it works and it’s better than any other carrot cake I’ve tried. I would normally bake this in a square or round cake tin, but for the picture I used a lovely old loaf tin and it came out looking gorgeous.



Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4. Grease and line a 22cm square cake tin or a round equivalent with greaseproof paper. Beat the butter and sugar together by hand or in a food processor until pale and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks one by one, and add the orange zest and juice. Stir in the sifted flour and baking powder, and add the ground almonds, walnuts, spices and grated carrot and mix together well.

Sizzling beef with scallions and black bean sauce (usa version - imperial)



This works best with rice that has completely chilled down or, better yet, has been made earlier and kept in the refrigerator. But if you can’t prepare rice for this dish in advance, you can still cook it and pop into the refrigerator while you’re cooking the rest.

To prepare your stir-fry

Bring a pan of salted water to a boil, add the rice and cook according to the package instructions. Drain the rice in a strainer, run it under a cold tap to cool, then allow to dry out in the fridge. Trim any excess fat from your steak and slice the meat into finger-sized strips. Peel and finely slice the ginger and garlic
Finely slice the chile. Cut the ends off your scallions and finely slice. Pick the cilantro leaves and put to one side, and finely chop the cilantro stalks. Get yourself a big bowl and put in the ginger, garlic, chile, scallions, cilantro stalks, and steak strips. Add the sesame oil and mix everything together.