As Strong As Soup

OK, I admit that this recipe isn’t truly Spanish any more. It started out life as a Spanish walnut cake recipe that I came across in the early nineties, but it’s wandered a bit since then. As it happens, I could tell you an interesting story or two about a Spanish nut, but that was more than thirty years ago and I’m sure Carmen will have calmed down by now. I know I have. This cake is great with tea but, I think, goes even better with coffee. Or maybe even a small sherry. It will also work well as a dessert with a little dash or two of something creamy. Although the walnuts and pecans combine well in this cake, you could adjust the ratio and type of nuts as the mood takes you and, if you don’t have any Frangelico, feel free to substitute another liqueur or even a flavoured syrup. This cake is pretty filling so expect to get at least 12 slices unless you’re really hungry. 125 g butter, softened 250 g caster sugar 5 eggs, separated 125 g plain flour, sieved 1½ tsp baking powder ...

For this month’s Random Recipe challenge Dom of Belleau Kitchen has asked us to select a recipe from our newest book – maybe one we got for Christmas. I'm not trying to be difficult but it's a few years since I bought a genuinely new cookery book and I don't really do the Christmas present thing. So I've interpreted this challenge a little freely. The book that's newest to me is one I bought from a charity bookstall – Sophie Grigson’s “Sophie’s Table” published back in 1990. Opening the book at random I was faced with a recipe (originally an American recipe, in fact) for Pecan Puffs, which bizarrely enough I saw Ms Grigson cook on a TV show just a few weeks ago. So that means that she's been making these same biscuits for more than 20 years and you can't get a better recommendation than that. She describes them as “devastatingly good” and, having tried them I absolutely agree. This recipe should produce at least 35 puffs but I made around 45 smaller biscu...