Religieuse à la Violette and Tarte Citron- Honfleur, France. 20th June 2011

The lovely but touristy town of Honfleur has a good number of delicious looking patisseries we chose “Oliver Deschamps No. 41 Rue du Dauphin” for this our first official cake tasting specifically for the blog.

I suppose now is a good time to explain the cake rating process! We share the cake between us, discussing with each mouthful the sweetness, texture, appearance etc. Sounding like a couple of fake food critics, we enjoy a good debate about whether this one was better than the last. We take cost into account so that a humble lardy cake can compete on equal terms with a hand crafted French delight. Then we randomly pick a number between one and ten and pretend that it is a thoroughly scientific process.

We were allowed a cake each for this culinary tour, not one with two spoons as per our normal habits!

Religieuse à la Violette and Tarte Citron

We tried the Tarte Citron first, a beautiful little golden dome of tongue curling tart lemon curd (although Jack thought it was something posher than normal curd) on top of a traditional Normandy galette sponge biscuit, you could taste just how much delicious French butter had gone into the biscuit.

Cake rating- 7.5/10 Cost- 2.6 euros

Then we had to try the very showy Religieuse a la Violette. Light as a feather but a bit too sweet for our taste buds. 2 choux pastry balls filled with crème Anglaise and covered with violet essence (and coloured) icing. It was topped with a sweet white chocolate hat. Would be Polly’s favourite for the colour alone!

Cake rating- 7.5/10 Cost- 2.4 euros

Gateau Saint Honoré- Westhope, Shropshire. 31st May 2011

Ok, I know that I said I would start this off with our recent cake tour of France, but this one needs a quick mention first.

As far as cakes made in a field go, this one has to be one of the best! We got the recipe from a James Martin cookbook, it’s a traditional French gateau found all over France, so of course we decided it’s entirely possible to make it in a tent.

We did have to cheat just a little. Instead of the traditional choux pastry base we used a shop bought sponge flan with the edging cut off. We covered it with quenelles of freshly made crème patissier (packet custard whipped with fresh cream), we used the same mixture to fill the shop bought profiteroles, but before we filled them we made caramel by melting sugar on the camp stove and topped each profiterole with it.

Gateau Saint Honoré

Not a bad effort especially as it was so hot. We shared with Mary and John in their campervan, we could have done with a few more people to help us eat it, but our only neighbours were sheep as the lovely Westhope campsite was completely empty apart from us.

Cake rating: 6/10- good effort for a field, but could have been better!

What is "Cakes We've Had"?

This blog started as an idea some years ago, before blogs really existed in fact.

We were sitting outside our tent in Normandy, France eating some superb patisserie. It was Me (George), my husband (Jack) and our daughter (Polly). I can’t remember now what the cakes were, but I do remember the conversation. Jack was reminiscing about an earlier trip to Paris with a friend in his post-student days, he told us that they had spent days wandering the streets of the capital in search of the one best cake….an arduous task! Polly, being interested in all things ‘cake’ decided that the best job in the world would be to become a ‘cake reviewer’. The job description would read something like: to find lovely cakes, eat them and then write a book about them- I think everyone would agree it would be brilliant way to live except for the possibility of an ever expanding waist line!

Following that conversation we spent a few years doing our best to sample patisserie from Spain, Italy and the UK, not obsessively of course, just for treats!

Time has moved on and the cake book idea is now this blog “Cakes We’ve Had”. We will do our best to sample cakes, pastries and all things lovely wherever we go, we’ll tell you all about them, we’ll give them a very scientific rating and you can add your own comments about patisserie from around the world. Some may be from shops, some we’ll bake ourselves, the only criteria is that it must be about cake! Until someone can prove to us otherwise, we firmly believe the best cake is in France, so the blog starts with a culinary tour as a benchmark of cakes to come.

It’s just the two of us now, we lost Polly to epilepsy 18 months ago, this blog is in her memory and we will be tasting every mouthful with thoughts of her in our hearts forever. This is for you Polly…..