One of my favourite baking recipe books is Annie Bell’s Baking Bible. Its a fantastic book filled with straightforward, easy to follow classic recipes for cookies & biscuits, traybakes, sponge cakes, cheesecakes, chocolate cakes, tarts, pies, brownies, breads and meringues. One of my favourite recipes is this classic tearoom chocolate…
I have recently left my beloved London and moved to my hometown of Glasgow, Scotland. I was initially rather worried I would miss the sheer volume and variety of restaurants, stalls and markets that I was lucky to be bombarded with in London, but even in my first week, I have eaten some…
I recently bought John Whaite’s fab new book Perfect Plates In 5 Ingredients…in which each recipe has just 5 ingredients (plus the essentials of olive oil/butter/salt/pepper). The more baking and cooking I do, the more I love a straighforward recipe with as few ingredients as possible. As soon as I see…
Its cold and miserable outside so I thought I would post this seasonal recipe for gingerbread cake. Oddly, even though I’m no fan of ginger, I actually love gingerbread cake and just as I was thinking of making one, Barefoot Contessa came on the Food Network with her gingerbread cupcakes! There were…
Contrary to my last post about cutting out cakes and sweet stuff, and focusing more on a healthy diet, here is a recipe for chocolate-dipped pistachio madeleines! Even though I am not technically eating cake at the moment, I still love baking. So on Monday night I suddenly had an…
At the beginning of every month, I look forward to my copy of Delicious Magazine arriving on my doorstep. Its always packed with fantastic, easy to follow recipes and this month was no exception. As I read it on the tube the other day, I earmarked loads of pages containing…
Its almost Christmas, my favourite time of the year. Its the only time you are actively encouraged to eat as much as you possibly can, all rules go out the window. Not that I abide by many for the rest of the year, its just nice that everyone else joins…
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…
I spent a lovely afternoon in East Dulwich last Sunday with one of my favourite people, my beautiful friend Jan. She got married in June and I hadn’t seen her since the wedding so a catch-up was long overdue. I used to live with Jan in Herne Hill years ago…
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…
