Wednesday morning tea platter offering earlier this week.

I’ve set myself the task (aka fun) of creating a new recipe each time.

This was a baking dish chocolate cake, hollowed out and filled with chocolate rum custard with a hint of almond, this latter a tip of the hat to the flavour of the almond from the kernels in the stones – reminiscent of my Nan’s apricot and almond jam.

I’d arguably hollowed out a bit much of the cake, so crumbled some and sprinkled over the custard, then topped with whipped cream, preserved apricot halves, then finished with a glaze made from the light apricot syrup from the jar.

I am very pleased with those Moor Park apricots, which have held their shape and flavour extremely well in the preserving process.

Segments of cake from that hollowing out process were used for dessert for guests for dinner that evening, one of whom had picked a large bowl of blackberries for me.

So dessert turned out to be blackberry compote with chocolate sponge served with a hastily prepared blackberry/currant ice cream.