Rose & pistachio cake

Where is the recipe from?

Waitrose weekly newspaper.
Available online [HERE]

Ingredients & any changes made?

golden caster sugar, butter, self raising flour, eggs, vegetable oil, chopped pistachio nuts, ground almonds, rose water. Lemon juice, icing sugar, rose petals, more pistachios for the top.
No changes made. when it comes to cakes you must do exactly as you are told. That's the way I feel anyway.

Verdict?
Amazing. That's all I can say. When it comes to cake I am not the best at all, so any recipe I follow has to be as simple as possible. This caught my eye because it looked so pretty. How can anyone resist the green of pistachios with the pinkness of rose petals? A beautiful combination.

Cakes that contain oil always make me nervous after trying one that used olive oil that tasted absolutely vile. Not the case with this. It looked a little greasy as I poured it into the tin, but once cooked it looked perfectly fine.

It was also a very easy to mix cake, no mixer needed, just a case of pouring it into a large bowl and combining.
The icing was superb, as someone who is not a fan of butter icing, this made me very happy. Icing sugar and lemon juice will always be my favourite icing, it's easy and tastes wonderful.
It's Easter Sunday as I write this, and I'd had it in my mind since seeing the recipe towards the end of March that I'd like to make it as an Easter treat. Yet again it's a Waitrose weekly newspaper recipe, and I reiterate what I've said in previous recent posts, that their weekly paper has had some corking recipes lately. I've kept several and made several. Not only are they good, but they are recipes I want to repeat and feel confident making. I know I'm going to keep this cake as a 'go to' cake recipe. Try it. You will be glad you did.

broccoli, green beans & new potatoes in tarragon cream sauce

Where is the recipe from?

Waitrose's weekly newspaper, it's also online and can be found [HERE]

Ingredients & any changes made?

Purple sprouting broccoli, green beans, new potatoes, fresh tarragon, cream, white wine vinegar, dijon mustard, shallot.

Minor changes. I used tenderstem broccoli not purple sprouting, I didn't follow the exact quantities either as it was just for two of us and I didn't need to make a huge amount. This means the tarragon cream probably wasn't quite right, but let's face it, it's just mixing up a few ingredients and tasting to see if it tasted good or not. Pretty hard to mess that up. In hindsight I think I used a touch too much vinegar as it was quite sharp, but as suggested by the recipe I added in a sprinkle more sugar which seemed to correct it nicely.

Verdict?
Waitrose are putting out some great recipes at the moment, not a week goes by when I don't save at least one from the newspaper.
My favourite recipes are simple ones that just add something different to a plate of food. These were pretty dull ingredients, even though they were cooked simply by adding a creamy herb sauce it enhanced an otherwise ordinary Sunday roast chicken.
Tarragon isn't a herb I buy often or give much thought to, but I know I'll make this cream sauce again so it's time to think about growing some in my little herb garden.
Two mistakes on my part. I overcooked the shallot a bit. It was meant to be soft with no colour, mine ended up with too much browning but in the overall scheme of things it didn't matter.

The other mistake I made was forgetting to mix it so the sprinkled on shallots and sauce covered everything. Again, not exactly a huge problem as I'd made a decent amount of sauce so it seemed to cover most things anyway. But that is something you are told to do, mix it all in and coat with the sauce.
The empty plate tells you all you need to know. This recipe is a keeper.