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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
“The Only Thing to do with Good Advice is Pass it On” Oscar Wilde Clodagh McKenna’s Cork Beef Stew from The Irish Farmer’s Market Cookbook is a real favourite of mine and is a frequently made winter warmer of a dish. Generally I’d served a big bowl of it alongside some fluffy mashed potatoes or [...]
The Baking Guru of Israel A few weeks back my fabulous and incredibly generous Israeli friend, Francesca, sent me a copy of Sweet Secrets by Carine Goren. Carine Goren is Israel’s best known pastry chef. According to my friend her book Sweet Secrets and accompanying television show of the same name were massive hits. So [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
The Water Mirrors A Still Sky Quite a while back I acquired a signed copy of Richard Corrigan’s excellent first cookery book: The Richard Corrigan Cookbook – from the waters and the wild. I’m incredibly ashamed to say, that despite the having a delightful collection of recipes, from the traditional Irish (Irish spiced beef) albeit [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
