Another month means another book yet again in my Cooking The Books Challenge.  I’ve found it hard to choose for this month as it is going to be an extremely busy time.  May is always a busy month in our house so I had to choose a book with much fewer chapters to bake from.    The recipes themselves also had to be ones that weren’t too complicated and would be suitable to donate to cake stalls at both my village Open Gardens and at the neighbouring village’s Spring Festival.  On top of that I wanted a nice cake for my own birthday although I’m not really celebrating it this year!

So after much choosing I finally came up with the lovely Delia’s Cakes.  I’m a huge fan of Delia Smith and have been ever since I first got my own home.  I tried to impress my husband with her recipes when we first started going out together and over the past eighteen or so years I return to her cookbooks time and time again.  I didn’t have her original Book of Cakes but bought a copy of the Baking book she published a few years back as part of her collection.  So, when she brought out an updated version of her Cakes book last year I just had to have it.  I enjoyed baking two of her large cakes but there are so many more I would love to try.  So Delia it is then!

So which recipes am I going to bake? Decisions, decisons!  Well Delia’s Cakes has nine chapters, so that means nine bakes.

Sponge Cakes: So many to choose from here but I wanted to bake something that people would eat at the Open Gardens so I’m going for the Coffee and Walnut Sponge Cake.

Chapter two in the book is all about Loaf Cakes:  I couldn’t make up my mind what to bake here but have chosen to bake the Sticky Toffee Loaf Cake with Fudge Icing for the Open Gardens Cake Stall.

Family Cakes: Another winner here is definitely the Double Lemon Drizzle Cake with Poppy Seeds for the Open Gardens Cake Stall.

Little Cakes:  For our neighbouring village’s Spring Festival I’m going to donate some of the Iced Hidden Strawberry Cupcakes but going to use raspberries instead as strawberries aren’t in season yet.

In the Muffins chapter it just had to be the large Blueberry and Pecan Muffin Cake.  I know I’ve baked something similar from Jo Wheatley’s book recently but I do love blueberries.

Biscuits: I love the sound of the Chocolate Orange biscuits. Wonder if they’ll make it as far as the cake stall?

Chocolate:  I’ve been keen to try out the Chocolate Marbled Energy Bars but will leave the nuts out. Instead I’m going to add small pieces of digestive biscuit.

Celebration Cakes: I adore Carrot Cake so I’m going to bake The Ultimate Carrot Cake for my birthday cake.  Unless someone else offers to bake it for me….

And finally…  in the Dessert Cake chapter is the most sublime looking cake I’ve had my eye on ever since I saw it in Delia’s How To Cook Part 3, it’s the Venetian Zabaglione Cake and I’m determined to have a go at baking it for a Sunday lunch pud. Wish me luck, it looks fiddly!