Breton Gateau

Like I always say at the start of each recipe (all together now) . . . 'This one's very easy.'

I guess I just can't be bothered with too much cooking because, let's face it, fellow-coeliacs, we have to prepare our own food 99% of the time, and it's time-consuming. Three meals a day, year in and year out, never a day off. So to have to prepare long, painstaking recipes to boot, with dozens of steps, after a 50-60 hour work week, is just too much (for me at least). Quick and easy.

So, I was sitting in the sun today (roasting hot -- hard to believe this is England in September!), shuffling through odd recipe clippings I'd stuck into my little hand-made recipe book (I've glued my favourite recipes to blank pages, found some lovely paper for a cover, and tied it up with a ribbon), and saw this recipe I'd cut out from a Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine a couple of months ago. I just substituted my Doves Farm flour for regular, had to add baking powder since the recipe called for self-rising flour, used a bit less flour, and it came out fine.

So, here's the adapted recipe.

Put the following into a food processor and pulse until well-mixed: 200 g flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 110 g icing sugar, 110 g white sugar, 250 g. butter (or substitute), 5 egg yolks, and 1 tsp vanilla extract.

Divide it into two equal balls. Press one into a spring-form pan, put clingfilm on top, smooth it out, and pull off the clingfilm. Add 125 g strawberry preserves, and spread to within 1 cm of the edge. Roll the other ball between two sheets of clingfilm, remove one sheet, place it over the jam, and remove the last piece of clingfilm. Brush the top with an egg yolk beaten with a tsp water, and bake for about 45 minutes at gas mark 5 (190 C). (There were steps like 'chill the dough for two hours,' etc, but I handled it just fine without chilling.

Dividing it into 12 slices, 8 WW points per slice. Obviously not a daily treat!