Every Christmas I made a chocolate log. Last year I made Gemma Gannon‘s Salted Caramel Yule Log which was incredible, but takes a bit of time. This year I didn’t have time on my side so I went for an old favourite…Mary Berry’s Chocolate Roulade. It is made without flour or…
This is just a quick idea of something cute and Christmassy to make for Christmas parties or get-togethers. I had some friends coming round to mine last weekend and as always at Christmas, I had a pandoro in my kitchen. If you don’t know what a pandoro is, its an…
My lovely friend Sal’s even lovelier mum recently asked me to help cater for a party she was having. One of the desserts she asked for was a strawberry cheesecake so I adapted a Donna Hay recipe featured in her wonderful book Modern Classics Book 2. The original recipe is…
My favourite cake is a Victoria Sponge Cake. There is something so simple and perfect about it. I have been making Victoria sponge cakes since I was a child. Back then I thought my mum named them after me so I thought they were very special indeed! To me, it…
My friend Tony loves citrus-flavoured cakes and seeing as it was his 40th birthday at the weekend, I decided to make him a moist lemon cake. Pouring through all my cookery books, I found this lemon and polenta cake recipe in Annie Bell’s Baking Bible, one of my favourite baking…
It was my friend Tony’s 40th birthday party at the weekend and I was asked if I could make him a birthday cake. I always get a bit nervous when making friends cakes. I’ll admit I can sometimes knock out a good tasting cake but I’m not a great cake…
One of my best friends Janine, is getting married in June and last weekend we celebrated her hen party. Her sister Nataline, who was organising the weekend, asked if I could make a cake for her. The plan was for us all to meet up at the hotel and have…
As its the Easter weekend, and I’m back home visiting my family in Scotland, I wanted to make something special to eat on Easter Sunday, something to round off our Sunday roast. All of last week I was trying to think of what to make, then my trusted BBC Good Food weekly…
I was looking to make a cheesecake for a party I was throwing recently. Everything else I was making seemed to have a chocolate theme so I wanted something that the non-chocoholics could enjoy. I get regular emails from one of my favourite food websites, Food & Wine and last week…
Last month I was flicking through Delicious Magazine and this recipe for Salted Caramel Yule log, designed by Gemma Gannon, founder of Band Of Bakers, jumped out at me. I’m very glad I tried it out, it was incredible. It requires a bit of effort but its worth it. Oh and a…
Its cold outside…really cold. And when it gets cold, I want to eat lovely comforting food to cheer myself up a bit. So the other day, after a rather freezing walk with the dog, I fancied making a cake. I went through my folder of recipes that I pull out…
I was reading the Observer Food Monthly on the tube home the other day and was pouring over the recipes from Nigel Slater’s new book The Kitchen Diaries II when I saw this recipe for blackberry & hazelnut friands. They looked beautiful and running over the ingredients I realised that…
