Last month, a neighbour lent me her school cookery book from the 1950s.  It is a wonderful guide to the basics of French cooking, and contains dozens of recipes that should be preserved for posterity. The book builds on previous recipes, assuming that students will work their way through from start to finish. Flipping through, the recipe for friands caught my eye - it requires a portion of puff pastry (covered earlier in the book), some ham, and a half portion of mornay sauce (also covered in a previous chapter). Later in the book, basic preparations for preserves, tarts, pâtés, and stews all build on the skills learned earlier. To cook your way through the book, from start to finish, is to get an education in traditional French home cooking. Unfortunately, I won't have access to the book for long enough to copy it out - and translate it - in full. I do, however, have time to present some of the greatest hits in the form of forgotten classics.

I'm not quite sure what makes this cake Mexican, but I suppose you could always add a few chili peppers to the icing...

4 eggs, separated, plus 1 yolk
125g sugar
90g flour
80g melted butter
35g cocoa powder
chocolate buttercream icing (make a standard buttercream, but add cocoa powder)
chocolate icing
3 tbsps apricot jam, melted

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Grease and line a sponge tin.
2. In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks and sugar together until the mixture is pale and fluffy. Sift the flour and cocoa powder into the mix and stir.
3. In a separate clean and dry bowl, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Using a metal spoon, fold the whites into the yolk mixture.
4. Finally, stir in the melted butter.
5. Bake the mixture for 40 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack and allowing to cool completely.
6. Once the cake has fully cooled, slice it across the mid-section so you have two layers of cake. Fill the cake with the chocolate buttercream icing and stack the layers on top of each other.
7. Using a pastry brush, cover the cake in the melted apricot jam.
8. Once the apricot jam has dried, cover the cake in chocolate icing.

2 eggs, separated
75g melted butter, kept warm
75g sugar
75g grated chocolate
50g flour

1. Pre-heat oven to 180°C. Grease a ring mould.
2. In a large bowl, combine the grated chocolate and sugar. Sieve in the flour and stir in the melted butter.
3 Add the two egg yolks to the bowl and stir well.
4. In a separate clean and dry bowl, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.
5. Fold the egg whites into the batter, and pour the mix into the greased ring mould.
6. Bake for 20 minutes, and then turn the cake out onto a wire rack to cool.

Serve as it comes, or wait for it to cool completely and then frost with a buttercream icing. You can fill the centre with creme patissiere and fruit for a more decorative finish.

One of the simpler pleasures of time spent in France is the small pots of vanilla yoghurt you can buy at any supermarket. The 125ml pots are just right for a small snack, and the glass jars have many uses. A few years ago, my wife and eldest daughter had a Blue Peter moment, and spent the day filling empty pots with sand and tealights, and stringing them up in the vines along the terrace.

But until the weekend's feast, I didn't realise that the locals use them as a unit of measurement when cooking.

The French version of the classic English sponge uses a mix of oil and yogurt in place of the butter. The result is an incredibly light cake, with a firm crumb and lots of air. My daughter has vowed to throw away her sponge cake recipes and use this as her basic cake mix in all future baking.

Yoghurt cake is as versatile as it is delicious. The recipe below is for a lemon version, but any citrus fruit could be substituted. Line the cake tin with berries, pineapple, or peaches, and then turn the cake upside down before serving so the fruit sits on top. Make a simple version by cutting out the fruit entirely and adding a teaspoon of vanilla, or swap the vanilla for cinnamon and ground ginger, for rum, for a maple syrup...

The beauty of this recipe is that it's so basic to make, you can let your imagination run wild and eat the versions that didn't work quite as planned.

The original version of this recipe calls for jars, as you can use the empty yoghurt pot to measure out your flour, sugar, etc. But because not all yoghurt comes in French glass pots, I have converted the measurements to mililitres. Americans, 125ml is equivalent to ½ a cup.

125 ml plain yoghurt
250 ml granulated sugar
3 large eggs
375 ml plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp grated lemon zest
125 ml olive oil
juice of 2 lemons
60 ml icing sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 180° Centigrade. Butter a 9 inch cake tin with deep sides (not a sandwich tin).
2. Put the yoghurt, sugar, and unbeaten eggs in a large mix bowl, and stir vigorously, until the eggs have been fully incorporated.
3. Add the dry ingredients - flour, baking powder, and lemon zest - and stir well.
4. Add the olive oil and stir until you have a smooth, silky batter. Using a wooden spoon the entire mixing process shouldn't take more than a few minutes, and barely any elbow grease is required.
5. Pour the batter into your buttered tin and bake for around 45 minutes. The accuracy of your over will mean that cooking times vary - the original recipe called for 30-35 minutes, but my daughter's first attempt was in the oven for 50 minutes before it was ready to come out. The last 15 minutes were spent cooking under a tin-foil tend to stop the lovely browned top from burning. Check your cake around the half-hour mark to see if it is ready by inserting a skewer or sharp knife. It's not cooked until it comes out clean.
6. Cool the cake in its tin for 20 minutes, then turn it out onto a wire rack to finish cooling completely.
7. Meanwhile, make the glaze. The traditional recipe calls for lemon juice and icing sugar, but any tweaks you made to the cake will need to be reflected here. Use icing sugar, 50 ml of water, and a glug of booze (rum, Kaluha, and Frangelico would all work well), or pour 2 tbsps of maple syrup over the top. Whatever you do, spoon the glaze over slowly once the cake has been allowed to cool completely.



Recipe adapted from www.orangette.com.