yoghourt cake, "croquetes" and wuthering heights

Quite a long gap from first post, despite the very best intentions! It's been a good week, work ticking along and as almost everyone was on holiday so I felt quite virtous to be doing anything at all!

Watched Wuthering Heights the last couple of nights, a new adaptation on ITV1, I really don't know why anyone would even try to adapt such a book into such a short amount of screen time! It couldn't be more unsatisfying, so of course I now need to get the book and read it. I am grateful to these TV adaptations, thanks to them I have discovered Austen, Hardy, Thackeray... we didn't do them at school back home (there is a great deal of Catalan and Spanish literature to get through, you know?).

Last week and this week the nursery serves no lunches so I've been doing lunch packs for Daniel and Maria, an excuse to do lots and lots of chicken "croquetes"... I use the HF-W recipy but add very finely chopped red-peppers and aubergine to the onions to up the vegetable contents... as it's quite a struggle getting vegetables into Maria at the moment, she's learned to seal her lips, take off the bib and shout "get down" whenever anything she considers undesirable is offered! Luckily she is completely mad about summer fruit, can't have enough blueberries and raspberries.

And as part of my attempts to fatten the children up a bit, I rediscovered one of the most popular home baking recipes in Catalonia, the yoghourt cake. We used to make it every week with my mum and my brother... fond memories! The idea is that you use a small pot of yoghourt to measure all the ingredients.

Yoghurt cake:
1 small pot of yoghourt (I prefer Greek youghurt for this, but any natural yoghurt will be fine).
1 pot of yoghourt full of sunflower or mild olive oil
1 and half pot of yoghourt of sugar
3 eggs
3 pots full of plain flour
1 sachet baking powder (or about 15 grams)
aromatics: I use one or two teaspoons of cinnamon and the zest of a lemon, but could also use vanilla, or orange zest... can also add bits of apple...
Pre-heat the oven to 180C.
Mix all the ingredients in a bowl, stir well, pour into a good size cake tin and cook for about 35 to 45 minutes. Eat as it is, or cut in half and spread a layer of jam or lemon curd, decorate with fruit...