Milk chocolate 'Everyone knows oats are good for you' Flapjacks

Mmmm, delicious oaty goodness. Oats really are very good for you. Full of soluble fibre and with a low GI, they'll keep you full for longer. Flapjack on the other hand, is sadly not very good for you. Flapjack is chock full of sugar and butter and in this case, delicious Green and Blacks chocolate. But flapjack really is delicious and so you should forget that it isn't as good for you as you want to believe and just enjoy it!

What prompted that little ramble there? Well, when I took these into work, they disappeared rather quickly. Far more quickly than I had expected. I took them in at the same time as an apple cake (recipe to follow, just to keep you in suspense!) and they were definitely more popular. Now this could be for a couple of different reasons; a) the cake looked nasty (which it didn't, I promise) or b) people believe flapjack is good for them because it's full of oats. Hmmm.

These were a request from a colleague who 'doesn't like cake'. I don't know where these people hide, but they obviously do exist! Anyway, she liked these flapjacks and was most put out when other people ate them too!

Anyway, what you really want is the recipe for these flapjacks because they were rightly popular - chewy and sticky with little nuggets of chocolately goodness (!) spread throughout. They are simplicity itself to make and in just 40 minutes you too could be eating warm flapjack with melting chocolate....Enjoy them for what they are (just don't kid yourself that they're health food!).

Milk chocolate flapjacks

Ingredients

175g butter

120g light brown soft sugar

200g golden syrup

350g rolled oats

100g milk chocolate (or dark if that's your thing!) chopped into little chunks

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and line an 8" x 12" (20 x 30 cm) baking tin. Please use parchment paper, greaseproof paper may well stick to your delicious flapjacks rendering them sadly inedible (I speak from experience - not mine, but J's!!!).

- Melt the butter, sugar and syrup over a low heat.

- When melted add the oats and mix well until everything is coated.

- Add the chocolate and mix briefly and quickly to prevent the chocolate melting entirely.

- Spoon into the prepared tin and roughly level out. Place in the preheated oven and cook for 30 minutes until deliciously light golden brown.

- Mark into pieces while still warm (this is much easier than waiting until they are completely cold - believe me!) and allow to cool completely in the tin.

- Store in an airtight container. They should keep for a few days. Unless you just can't resist them, which may well be the case!

Spring is springing!

Well, it's spring now! The clocks have gone forward and even though it's been grey all day here (boo!) there's enough light to take photos when I get home in the evening. It's all good from now on! So I just thought I share this lovely daffy trying to flower in my front garden, having fought its way through the muck that passes for soil, and evaded drowning and repeated slug attack. It'll be even more beautiful when it opens!

Chocolate Fruit and (not Nut) Cases (without red noses)

G doesn't like cake. How can that be? How can someone not like cake? But anyway, he doesn't. He claims to like chocolate cake, but I don't ever remember seeing him eat it. (I think he likes his gran's chocolate cake which no-one could possibly replicate so we've given up trying!) But he does like these. In fact, he can't get enough of them, so they're the thing I make for his birthday, in lieu of a proper birthday cake.

I have to admit though, there is something rather enigmatically delicious about these. You wouldn't think it from the simple list of ingredients, but they are extremely more-ish, to the point of being addictive. Best from the fridge so that the chocolate is nice and set, but if you don't mind sticky fingers they're lovely at whatever temperature.

In 2001 Delia Smith published 12 new chocolate recipes in aid of Comic Relief. The booklet cost £1 and was possibly the best £1 ever spent (I think J probably bought it though, so I'm not claiming it's the best pound I've ever spent!) because I've made four of the twelve recipes, and of the remaining eight, three contain nuts so I'm unlikely to ever make them. That's a pretty good hit rate for someone who owns cookbooks they've barely opened let alone made anything from! These come from that little booklet and have been made over and over and over again in my household, always with a positive response. Be warned, they will dissapear in the blink of an eye. Because they were originally for Comic Relief they were Chocolate Fruit and Nut Cases with Red Noses. I subbed out the stipulated toasted hazelnuts for dried cranberries (as suggested by Delia) and have never bothered with the red noses (half a glace cherry) but if you want to, don't let me stop you! These are the perfect size for an after dinner bite.

So where is this fabulous recipe, I hear you cry. And you would be right to be dashing to the kitchen to make them - but not if you're on a diet as they're so addictive you'll be thrown right off track unless you've got a will of steel. The big night of Comic Relief may be over for this year, but Delia's legacy from 2001 lives on still.....

Chocolate Fruit (and Nut) Cases (without red noses)!
100g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), broken into small pieces
50g raisins
50g dried cranberries (or use 50g toasted whole blanched hazelnuts)
2 tbsp golden syrup
50g butter
60-70g cornflakes

Method (this is simplicity itself!)

- Line 2x12 hole mini-muffin tins with paper cases

- Melt the chocolate, golden syrup and butter over a bowl of hot water (barely simmering, although I just use boiled water from the kettle - by the time it has cooled down the mixture is melted!)

- Stir the melted ingredients together until well combined. Add the raisins and cranberries and mix briefly followed by the cornflakes. Stir gently, being careful not to smash the cornflakes if possible. Keep stirring, there is more than enough chocolate to coat it all, but you'll need to get right down to the bottom of the bowl, because the chocolate collects there and tries to hide! If you want to make more, add more cornflakes a few at a time, mixing until they're coated. Eventually the mixture won't take any more cornflakes as there won't be enough chocolate to coat them. If you're doing them to sell, I add more cornflakes, if they're for family I don't bother.

- Divide between the muffin cases and leave to set.

Enjoy - you really won't regret making these as they're so much better than I could possibly tell you!

PS For some reason, it's the dark chocolate and cornflakes that really make these. I can't imagine them working with milk chocolate or rice krispies. Sorry!

Lemon cake for a spring day

Well, it finally feels as though Spring might possibly arrive again. It seems to have been grey and miserable for far too long, and here in the North West of England, we didn't even have an exciting snowy break at the beginning of February (although actually I'm quite glad about that because I didn't really fancy driving in the snow, although it did look very pretty on the news bulletins!). So I am now waiting for spring. Things have buds on them, my daffodils are fighting (the losing battle) against the slugs and might attempt to flower at some point and there are snowdrops. Yes, it's time to celebrate Spring. And what better way to celebrate than with a light lemony cake. This isn't the kind of dense soaked in syrup drizzle loaf affair, but is somewhat lighter and more victoria sponge like.

I decided to go for lemon through and through. Lemon zest in the cake batter, lemon buttercream icing and a lemon water icing to top it all off. Lemon is the name of this celebration, with its lovely bright colour and gorgeous scent, it just says happiness and Spring to me.

Lemon through and through cake
Ingredients
4 large eggs
225g softened butter
225g caster sugar
225g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
grated zest of 1 lemon

For the buttercream
75g very soft butter
150g icing sugar
grated zest of around 1/4 lemon

For the lemon water icing
130g icing sugar
juice of around 3/4 lemon (obviously depending on how juicy your lemons are!)

Method
- Place the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and cream together with an electric whisk until light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs, flour and baking powder and combine thoroughly until light and evenly textured.
- Divide between the two prepared cake tins and place in the oven. Bake for 30-40 minutes. Mine took 40minutes, but were perhaps slightly overdone.
- Remove from oven and when cooled enough to touch remove from tins and remove baking parchment (if used). Allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

For the buttercream, cream together the butter and icing sugar until light and fluffy. Add the zest and mix through. When cakes are completely cooled, sandwich together with the buttercream.

For the lemon water icing, add sufficient lemon juice to the icing sugar to make a thick icing and pour and spread it over the top.

Decorate as you wish - had I been more organised I would have bought all yellow flowers to decorate the top. As it is, I had to do the best I could with yellow, pink and white. Well, at least you can tell it's home-made!!!

Light, lemony and delicious, this is the perfect cake for welcoming Spring this year! Roll on the warmer weather!

Coconut and lime buttermilk cake

This was the last of the cakes I made for Comic Relief. My colleagues were very generous and in total we raised £61.82, which I'm very proud of. I think this will help to make a real difference to a child's life (and hopefully more than one) so it really was worthwhile doing 'something funny for money'!!! I hope you'll want to try this one too - it was light and moist and delicious....

Coconut and lime cake
Ingredients
33og plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
2/3tsp bicarbonate of soda
230g low fat natural yogurt
165g softened butter
265g caster sugar
4 large eggs

100g creamed coconut, grated

For the buttercream icing

100g very soft butter

Around 300g icing sugar

Grated zest and juice 2 limes

100g creamed coconut, grated

Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and line an 8 x 12" cake tin.
- Sift the flour, baking powder and bicarb together into a bowl and set aside.
- Weigh the yogurt into a small bowl.
- Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl using an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
- Mixing slowly, add the eggs one at a time, continuing to mix for 30 seconds between each. Add a spoonful of flour if you're worried about the mixture splitting.
- Add flour mixture and yogurt alternately until all used up, blending well after each addition.
- When all thoroughly combined, stir in the grated creamed coconut.
- Spoon into the prepared tin then bake for 45 - 50mins (but start checking at 40 mins if you know your oven is hot) until a skewer/cake tester comes out clean when inserted into the middle.
- Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the tin before unmoulding and allowing to cool completely on a wire rack.

For the icing:
- Gently melt the coconut cream with the lime juice and zest in a small pan. Allow to cool.
- Cream together the butter and 200g icing sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add a little of the melted (cooled) coconut lime mixture and a bit more icing sugar and mix in well. Keep adding a little more coconut/lime and a bit more icing sugar until it tastes nice and is a good consistency for spreading. (Sorry this is a bit vague, I sort of did it as I went along!)
- Spread the buttercream icing onto the cake.
- Enjoy the fruits of your labour!!!!


I cut this into 18 generous pieces.

It was very much enjoyed at work and I had lots of recipe requests for it. I think the buttercream icing went down particularly well. T managed to get a piece of this cake for once (as we were both visiting home simultaneously!) and his comments were 'It's not very coconutty' but he did like the buttercream. However, it smelled seriously coconutty while it was baking. Sadly I can't tell you whether his tastebuds are rubbish or not as I couldn't eat this one myself. So..... you'll just have to try it out for yourself and see what you think! Do you agree with my colleagues at work that it's fab - or my darling brother, that it's not very coconutty???

Do let me know what you think if you make it!

Carrot cake with orange icing

There are lots of carrot cake recipes available, but this one from Delia Smith is a definite winner for me. The recipe comes from her more recent 'How to Cook' series (before she lost face by doing the 'How to Cheat' series which I personally felt was a mistake!) and is in book one, in the Cakes and Biscuits for beginners chapter. I think it's appropriate that of all the things people can learn to cook, cakes come in book one!!! Delia is obviously a woman after my own heart!

This is called 'Low-Fat Moist Carrot Cake' in the book, but I first made it because it was the first recipe I found containing no nuts. I don't quite believe it's one of the quickest and easiest recipes ever, as Delia claims, but it's not too onerous either! I give you my slightly adapted recipe. The original can be found here.

Carrot cake
Ingredients
3oz (85g) dark brown soft sugar
3oz (85g) light brown soft sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
4 fl oz (120ml) sunflower oil
7oz (200g) self raising flour
1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3 rounded tsp mixed spice
grated zest 1 orange
7oz (200g) carrots (weight before prep) peeled and coarsely grated
6oz (175g) raisins

For the topping
Juice of one orange
Icing sugar (probably about 150-200g)

Method
-Preheat oven to 170C/Gas 3. Grease and line an 8" square tin.
- Whisk the sugar, eggs and oil together in a bowl using an electric whisk. If your dark sugar is quite lumpy, it's best to squash all the lumps out first (otherwise you'll end up with pockets of sugar in the final cake).
- Sift the flour, bicarb and mixed spice into the bowl.
- Fold in the carrots, orange zest and raisins.
- Pour into the prepared tin and place in the oven. Bake for 35-40 minutes (although mine always takes longer - around 50-55minutes) until it is well risen and feels firm and springy to the touch when pressed lightly in the centre.
- Remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool in the tin. When the cake is nearly cool, make the icing. Mix the icing sugar and orange juice together to a pouring consistency. (Sorry this isn't more precise, but it depends how thick you want your icing, how juicy the orange you use is etc etc.)
- When completely cool, cut into pieces (12) and drizzle over the icing.

The syrup glaze that Delia specifies is really nice, but sadly I forgot all about it this time! Her quark cheese topping is absolutely gorgeous too, but I needed something more practical (i.e. could be stored outside a fridge) so an orange icing was better for me.

This was also part of the Comic Relief fund raising effort on my part. My work colleagues enjoyed this greatly. It's a really moist and juicy carrot cake, and is nice and spicy too, with lots of flavour from the dark sugar.

Courgette Risotto

I don't often post savoury recipes. I love baking, and tend to share the fruits of my labours with my work colleagues or family if I happen to be visiting them at the right time, but my savoury side isn't as well developed. I blame it on living alone. It doesn't seem worth it half the time to make something interesting just for me, but I must get out of this mindset and start making more of an effort. Anyway, I was visiting J and T this weekend and we decided that we wanted courgette risotto. I've blogged about mushroom risotto before here and I use pretty much the same method for making the courgette risotto.

The inspiration for the recipe originally came from the BBC Food website, from their video section, Get Cooking, which is really instructive. The recipe is one of Sophie Grigson's, Courgette and Herb Risotto. I have to admit that I've never made it with all of the herbs specified (or in fact, any of them!) because lots of small amounts of fresh herbs are not budget friendly and the only thing growing in my garden at the moment (aside from weeds and grass) is rosemary, which wouldn't have quite the desired effect!

However, I think my take is good too!

Courgette risotto
Ingredients (for 3 people)
Olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
3 medium-large courgettes
250g arborio risotto rice
100ml dry sherry
750ml-1 litre vegetable stock (I use Marigold Bouillon powder)
Parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
- Heat a good glug of olive oil in a large-ish pan, and add the chopped onion. Sweat slowly until softened but not coloured, about 5 minutes or so.
- Coarsely grate about 1/3 -1/2 of your courgette into the pan and continue to cook over a medium heat until the courgette has started to soften.
- In the meantime, coarsely chop the remaining courgette and saute over a medium heat in a large frying pan.
- Add the risotto rice to the grated courgettte/onion mix and stir for around a minute to coat the rice, which should go translucent.
- Add the dry sherry and simmer until it is all absorbed.
- Start adding the warm vegetable stock, a ladleful at a time keeping stirring as much as you can. The stock needs to simmer while it is being added, if the heat is too low the rice won't cook. Too high and the stock will evaporate before the rice has had a chance to absorb it.
- Add the stock until the rice is cooked to your liking. Al-dente is traditional, but I like mine softer.
- When it is cooked, add salt and pepper to taste and stir in a knob of butter and some grated parmesan (as much as you like!) and grate some more parmesan to add at the table.

J made a lovely rosemary and rock salt foccacia and a green salad to go with the risotto, which were great accompaniments.

Red Nose Day fairy cakes

Quick and easy cupcakes for Comic Relief. I wanted to make something super-speedy and appropriate to mark Red Nose Day today. I didn't have much time in the evening, and these cupcakes fitted the bill perfectly. This must be the easiest cake mixture in the world, and tastes fantastic, largely due to the use of real butter. Well, it's worth it to raise money for a worthy cause!!!
The half a cherry represents a red nose. Yep, this seems obvious to me too, but quite a number of my colleagues didn't click on until I explained it..... even though I've been raising money for Comic Relief all week by taking cakes into work. Well, I think they look like red noses!

Fairy cakes with red noses

Ingredients

120g very soft butter

120g self raising flour

2 medium eggs

120g caster sugar

1tsp baking powder

2-3 tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

9 glace cherries, cut in half for decoration

Icing sugar

Method:

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Line 18 holes (you'll need two bun tins really, but see note later) with fairy cake cases (not muffin cases, which are larger).

- Place all ingredients (except cherries and milk) in a bowl and whisk with an electric hand whisk until well combined, light and fluffy.

- Add the milk a little at a time until your mixture is softer and drops more easily from the spoon.

- Divide the mixture between the cases and put in the oven.

- Bake for about 18-25 minutes, but check after 15 if you know your oven is hot. They are done when pale golden brown and springy to the touch.

- Remove to a wire rack and allow to cool.

- Make a simple water icing by mixing icing sugar with hot water until you have the required consistency. I don't have amounts for this, simply adding more icing sugar if the mixture is too runny or more water if it's too stiff. Add the water 1tsp at a time though - it's so, so easy to get into a cycle of too wet, too stiff, too wet, too stiff....... until you end up with gallons of icing! I made mine fairly stiff so it didn't run off the fairy cakes too much.

- Add half a cherry and admire your work.

Notes: I only possess one muffin tin. I filled all 12 holes with fairy cake cases and balanced the remaining six on the top, between the holes. This worked surprisingly well, but the cakes balanced on the top cooked in about 15 minutes, the ones in the proper holes took nearly 25!?!

I also used quite small eggs for these and needed to use 3 tbsp milk to make the mixture soft enough.

If you want, you could fold some chopped glace cherries through the mixture before baking, say 100g. If you want to do this, wash them first to rid them of the sticky syrup that will make them all sink to the bottom.

Now for the important bit..... sell them for as much as possible to raise funds for Comic Relief. Yum! Everyone who had one of these loved them, and I'm sure your friends and family could be persuaded to part with a bit of hard cash, even in these (whisper it) credit crunch times to support such a worthy cause.

Soured cream cake with a chocolate spice swirl

I've been meaning to try baking a cake with soured cream in it for quite a long time now. I've made Nigella Lawson's chocolate soured cream cake in the dim and distant past, but I don't particularly remember the soured cream making much of an impact. I'm sure the effect is there, but subtle as her recipe uses a relatively small amount of soured cream in a relatively large cake.

Anyway, I was reminded of the existence of the little freebie booklet 'The Guardian Guide to Baking' (with recipes predominantly by Dan Lepard) which was given away in November 2007 with one of the Saturday issues of the paper. In here is a recipe entitled 'The easiest cake in the world' which is a rich soured cream cake. I actually don't think the title is accurate - yes, the cake is easy to make, but an all-in-one sponge (such as I used for these butterfly cakes) is even easier!

I decided to follow Dan's recipe closely and he gives quite a few option for baking. I went with a 7" (18cm) square cake tin but also decided to adapt the recipe slightly by adding a cocoa sugar spice layer. Well, that was the idea. You can see from the pictures that the layer wasn't quite there, it turned rather magically into a swirl!

Soured cream butter cake

Ingredients

200g unsalted butter, softened

250g caster sugar

2 large eggs

200g soured cream

300g plain flour

3 tsp baking powder

For the cocoa layer

10g cocoa powder

30g light brown soft sugar

1 scant tsp mixed spice

a splash of milk

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4.

- Grease and line a 7" square baking tin.

- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy and then add the eggs, one at a time until well combined (an electric mixer is best here).

- Beat in the soured cream until it disappears and then sift in the flour and baking powder, beating to combine.

- Remove a large dollop (sorry I didn't measure this, but probably about 1/5 - 1/4 of the mixture - I only wanted a thin layer) and add it to the cocoa, sugar and spice in a small bowl. Add the milk and mix through until well combined.

- Spoon around 1/3-1/2 of the white mixture into the cake tin, smoothing out into all the corners. Place small blobs of cocoa mix and spread to cover the white layer completely. Then blob the remaining mixture onto the top (it is easier to spread it evenly if you do many smaller blobs than piling it all in the middle).

- Place in oven and bake for 45 minutes to an hour (mine took around 1 hour 15 minutes I think) until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

- Remove to a wire rack and allow to cool.

As you can see from the picture above, my carefully planned layer did not materialise. I honestly don't know why not, I very carefully made a layer of dark in the middle. The only thing I can think of is that the edges of the cake started to heat up and cook more quickly than the middle, leading to a sort of convection current effect where the edges rose up and fell into the cooler middle. Anyhow, it isn't important - it's quite a pretty effect at the end of the day!

So to taste... the spice was subtle - if you want something more obvious you'd have to increase the amount. I couldn't really taste the cocoa, but that was ok because I only really wanted it for the colour anyway.

I have to admit I wasn't madly keen on this cake. (My personal preference is this buttermilk cake!). The cake is very rich and buttery - you can really feel the smooth butteriness of the soured cream. However, this was very much a personal opinion, as my colleagues quickly snaffled it with much praise and delight!

Butterfly cakes for Comic Relief

How can you resist these gorgeous little butterfly cakes, ready to fly away (into the mouth of a passing colleague more than likely!). These were an on-the-spur-of-the-moment type cake, and consequently must be extremely easy. The recipe was a standard vanilla sponge cake mixture with a vanilla buttercream icing. Simple is beautiful and these were really popular with my colleagues. I'm also raising money for Comic Relief at the moment, and these cakes are part of that effort. Why don't you do something funny for money for Red Nose Day on Friday 13th March???

Butterfly cakes
Ingredients
120g butter
120g caster sugar
120g self raising flour
2 large eggs
1tsp baking powder
1tsp vanilla extract

Method

- Preheat oven to 180C/Gas 4 and line a muffin tin with 12 cases.

- Place all ingredients in a large bowl. NB butter must be very soft, or use margarine.

- Mix well using an electric hand mixer until thoroughly combined, light and fluffy.

- Divide between cake cases and bake for 20-25 minutes until light golden brown.

- Allow to cool.

For the buttercream. Cream 90g softened butter (not margarine here, it's important to use butter for flavour) with 180g icing sugar and a dash more vanilla extract until very light and fluffy.

Cut a circle out of the top of the cake and then cut it in half to make two wings. Place a blob of buttercream in the hollow of cake you've created, then gently but firmly squash the wings back in place as in the photo below.

Complete your creation by dusting with icing sugar. Irresistible.

Gingerbread

This is one of my favourite recipes (with a smeary and spattered page in the book - How to be a Domestic Goddess), and fortunately, extremely easy to make. I love recipes that don't require you to have softened butter, because firstly I never remember to take it out, and secondly, even if I do take the butter out my house is sufficiently cold that it never softens to proper soft consistency to allow easy creaming. I always have to cream the butter on its own first to make sure it isn't going to kill off my electric hand mixer.

Anyway, enough of the moaning and onto the cake. You can probably guess that this cake is made with a melted butter method - so quick, so easy and smells so delicious as you do it. There really is something about the smell of melting butter, sugar, syrup and treacle that is sublime.......

Gingerbread (adapted slightly from Nigella Lawson)
Ingredients
150g butter
125g dark muscovado sugar
200g golden syrup
200g black treacle (I ran out and used about 150g treacle, 250g syrup)
2 heaped tsp ground ginger (or to taste if you don't want it as strong or like it hotter)
250ml milk
2 large eggs, beaten
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda, dissolved in 2 tbsp warm water
300g plain flour


Method

- Preheat the oven to 170C/Gas 3.

- Grease and line a 12 x 8" (20 x 33 cm) tin with parchment paper. DO NOT use a loose bottomed tin, or anything with cracks in it. The reason will be apparent later.

- Gently melt the butter, sugar, syrup, treacle and ginger in a large-ish pan.

- Off the heat, add the milk, eggs and bicarbonate of soda with its water.

- Pour the melted mixture onto the weighed flour, beating well until no lumps of flour remain. Or, if you're me and misread the recipe - add the flour to the pan (less washing up....) and beat with an electic whisk to remove the lumps - the electric whisk is necessary - just beating with a spoon doesn't work.

- The batter will be liquid - think double cream consistency (which is why you can't have any cracks in your baking tin) so pour it into the lined tin and place in the oven.

- Bake for 45mins to 1 hour until risen and firm. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

- When cool, you can ice the cake with a simple icing made from 175g icing sugar and 1tbsp lemon juice plus a little water as necessary to make a thick icing. Spread this on and allow to set before cutting.

- This makes 18-20 squares.

Fabulously sticky and gingery with lovely hints of treacle adding to the warmth. I love the magic of pouring the batter into the tin, placing it in the oven and removing a cake an hour later! The cake itself is light and moist and utterly delicious.

I didn't make the lemon icing this time, because it can get a little messy when transporting the cake to work etc, but if you want to, the sharply sweet lemony icing is the perfect contrast.