Strawberry and Almond Cheesecake Sponge

I think probably to appreciate the sheer wonder that was my cake it's best to post the photo -

Stawberry and Almond Cheesecake Sponge. Note the dessert wine - underrated in my humble opinion.

There we go. Take in the cakey goodness. Also be sure to dwell on the artfully arranged chaos of my Bank Holiday Monday dinner party. This, my friends is a Strawberry and Almond Cheesecake Sponge courtesy of the June 2014 BBC Good Food Magazine. Sadly, the recipe isn't yet available online but if it does pop up, I'll try to remember to post the link. Suffice to say, this is a sponge cake with almonds and strawberries; so far, so good. And then... And then there is the addition of cheescakey swirls in the middle of the cake.

Now cake and I have a checkered history. Not the eating of. Oh no. But the cooking of has never been my especial forte. In particular, the boy will remind me, with regular glee, of the apocryphal grilling of the cheesecake, which occurred back in 2004 when I was trying to impress him with my culinary skills. I was living in Edinburgh at the time and hadn't worked out the exact specifics of the oven controls. As we sat opposite each other forking up dense blocks of slightly warmed cream cheese, we both pretended this was a successful dish. Clearly, at some point when he realised I was a shoe-in, he gave up the pretence and decided this was ripe ground for mockery. Admittedly, it really wasn't very good but the shame still burns to this day.

Therefore, it was with deserved trepidation that I made the decision to create cake for my friends for the Bank Holiday meal. Particularly as I was to be joined by T.V.'s Raj Bahra and was terrified the meal would not pass muster. Of course, me being me, I didn't go for a simple sponge. No no. I wanted to impress and had seen the tantalising front cover of BBC Good Food magazine displaying what looked like seriously good cake. (And also, let's not lie, more impressive than an everyday sponge - if you're going to cook all morning, you want the praise.)

Pretty close to mine right? 

Essentially, it's a sponge and then half way through the cake tin filling, spoon down the mixture and add sweetened cream cheese before hiding this gooey treasure with the rest of the cake mixture. My cheese mixture was a particularly worrying consistency and I was really worried that I was staring down the barrel of yet another cake related failure. Obviously, as I was dribbling the strange liquid of cheese, egg and sugar into the craters of cake mixture, that's when my friends turned up. What's that? They ask. Oh nothing as I try to surreptitiously cover up my suspicious looking cake and divert them with beer.

I talked it down. Naturellement. Secretly hoping for eventual triumph. I plied them with wine and slow roast lamb and ignored the fact my cake still wobbled after the required hour in the oven. We cracked open the dessert wine. Because that's who we are, people with dessert wine sitting around the house. And finally after much consultation with the boy, the cake was unveiled.

Triumph. I have beaten cake. Probably best to move onto something even more advanced next time.

Hawksmoor Air Street

How long exactly have I been hankering to visit Hawksmoor? By the time I actually managed the (fairly easy given the number of branches) feat of booking a table, a visit was positively passé; by which I mean all of my friends had already done it and shared their accounts of delicious meat. I should imagine the same will be true by the time I actually bother queueing for one of the Burger and Lobsters. Which obviously, I am still desperate to do.

I was feeling miserable and in a valiant attempt to eat my misery persuaded the boy to accompany me in spending a sizeable chunk of money on expensive steak. For no particular reason, I would have preferred the Seven Dials location but we could only score a table at the Air Street venue at this late notice. No problem. Hawksmoor steak is Hawksmoor steak, regardless of the setting and all I wanted to do was order more meat than is healthy for mankind and relax into a kind of meat stupor.

To this end, I was not interested in the very reasonable lunch / pre-theatre menu (3 courses £26.00) with its 250g of rib eye steak. A largely manageable amount unless of course you foolishly do as the boy did and order two gigantic Yorkshire puddings for your starter. Now I'm not at all against Yorkshire pudding as a major foodstuff. In fact, I've got particularly fond memories of a Lake District pub dinner served entirely inside a massive Yorkshire pudding but you have to be aware of what a starter like this will do to your long term meal prospects.

The offending item was very tasty, in the way that anyone who's stolen the last Yorkshire pudding from Sunday lunch will be fully aware of. It was accompanied by some potted beef and bacon, which was just about okay on my meat textures weirdness scale; paté not okay - rillettes acceptable. It was accompanied by some silky oniony stuff for spreading on the slightly overbrowned Yorkshire pudding in a strange parody of a sandwich. All fine. Until of course the steak came and the boy found himself unequal to the task. We came for the steak but he had to be satisfied with a few bites and a dishonourable disqualification. 

Not so me. I had wisely avoided the set menu with its fools' pathway of starters. I was fully primed for the main event, having consumed a glass of Montepulciano, a bite of Yorkshire pudding and feeling tipsily anticipatory of my steak and its beige accompaniments. 

And then it came. A 350g D-Rump steak (£20.00) with nary a vegetable in sight and a full range of carb heavy accompaniments: beef dripping potatoes (£4.00); triple cooked chips (£4.00) and macaroni cheese (£5.00). Sadly we didn't feel extravagant enough to be equal to the lobster mac and cheese (£16.00). Perhaps when I've been promoted, or am drunker. The steak is enormous and meaty and smoky from the grill. I never got round to asking our waiter what was special about a D-rump steak. In my ignorance I can only declare that it is more 'beefy' than other steaks. The boy declares it to be London's best steak and he can only manage half of his before being forced to a. admit defeat and b. accept that I had the correct approach to the Hawksmoor menu. 

I have triumphed so much in fact that I feel equal to desert, which the waiter kindly agrees to charge to the boy's lunch menu even though he can't do so much as lift his spoon in its direction. 

It's fine and I valiantly finish it accompanied by a nice glass of Tokaji wine. I once spent a year teaching English as a foreign language in Slovakia, which has a tiny Tokaji producing region, adjacent to the more famous Hungarian vineyards. As such, I have quite a taste for Tokaji, only helped by the fact it's the wine of choice for Lord Asriel in Philip Pullman's Northern Lights. I think I'm focusing on the Tokaji here because the peanut butter shortbread with salted caramel ice cream was more like something you'd find on a Millie's Cookies stand; pleasant but nothing special. 

The bill,when it came, was as expected; expensive but worth it (about £60.00 a head for one starter, two steaks and sauces, three sides, wine, desert, desert wine, and coffee). I've paid a similar price for deeply disappointing steak dinners. And so, we clutched our bellies and gently slid out of the booth. The only slightly sad thing was the wine mark up, which I stupidly checked when I got home. It's like checking the sale when you suspect an item you've already bought full price will be discounted. Our 2011 Gianni Masciarelli Montepulciano, carefully chosen as not even second down the list because everyone knows that trick, retails for around £6.00, we paid £30.00. I was perfectly happy with it while we were drinking it but we have recently got into the habit of checking wine on the Andy Hayler's wine app (although I looked this one up online as the app only works on Iphones)  which is brilliant but lays open some off the enormous markups you merrily pay and therefore makes the wine taste less good in hindsight. Never mind. Next time, we'll be sure to win the lottery first and eat lobster mac and cheese with some more expensive wine, where the mark up might not be so high.