This week is National Cupcake Week here in the UK. It runs from 13th – 19th September. It’s only the second year of this event organised by the British Baker Magazine to highlight the joys and delights of all things cupcake. Truth be told I’m not really a cupcake fan. I’d rather munch on a [...]
{ 17 comments }
Miss Masala and an Indian Summer The weekend before I headed off on holiday saw the return of the sun, or at least it did here in this quiet corner of rural Staffordshire. And, the return of the sun could only mean one thing – making the most of the opportunity to barbecue. Summer barbecues [...]
{ 6 comments }
Cooking From The Hart I must admit I have never been a big fan of nuts in brownies. They’re usually included to provide a crunchy contrast to the brownies fudgy underbelly. But, a really good brownie is nice when it’s fudgy through and through and doesn’t need a contrast besides a glass of cold milk. [...]
{ 9 comments }
Food From The Rye I’m going to make an upfront confession, although I’m not sure how wise it really is to do so. Right, so, I got the craving for jerk chicken not from research or distant memories but, wait for it, from watching Peckham Finishing School for Girls. Now before you ask, that isn’t [...]
{ 10 comments }
If Life Gives You Lemons … If life gives you lemons … make old fashioned lemon bars from Jim Fobel’s Old Fashioned Baking Book. Jim refers to these bars as a real taste of childhood. Well they weren’t a taste of mine, maybe that would have been different had I grown up across the pond [...]
{ 10 comments }
“Whilst August yet wears her golden crown, Ripening fields lush- bright with promise; Summer waxes long, then wanes, quietly passing Her fading green glory on to riotous Autumn.” Michelle L. Thieme, August’s Crown Cherries are at their peek in July, but still a tremendous find in August. One of the delights of the summer, cherries [...]
{ 13 comments }
My Family & Other Cheeses If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time. Marcel Proust When Aoife posted a recipe on her fantastic blog for feta cheese my mind was immediately transported back to holidaying in Corfu. Image Courtessy [...]
{ 13 comments }
Deep Purple The other evening I had a huge desire to bake something, no surprises there then, with the lovely punnet of blackcurrants I had sitting in the fruit bowl. Blackcurrants (ribes nigrum) have grown in the British Isles for over five hundred years and this year they have been grown in my garden! Now, [...]
{ 8 comments }
Hot Cakes It is Salford’s sachertorte, Bury’s brioche, Bolton’s baklava and Chorlton’s croissant. It is the Eccles cake, a deceptively simple Manchester-made confection that ranks with the world’s best baked goods. In 1793 James Birch’s shop on the corner of Vicarage Road in Eccles began selling small, flat, raisin-filled cakes. They sold, quite literally, like [...]
{ 19 comments }
Slim? Fat Chance Sometimes Sundays should just be about big old fry-ups and mugs of tea. With a fresh supply of both Clonakilty black and Clonakilty white pudding in my fridge, a large box of Bewley’s tea and some fresh from the farm eggs, what more of an excuse did I need? Clonakilty’s famous black [...]
{ 10 comments }
Bush Tea Beginnings Cake, of course, goes so terribly well with tea and has a universality that straddles the bush/China divide. Mma Ramotswe’s Cookbook (Stuart Brown) With a couple of overripe bananas sitting in my fruit bowl, what could I do but bake banana bread? I was about to trawl through my vast collection of [...]
{ 11 comments }
I absolutely love to hear from you all, so please do get in touch!
