It’s rare for us to make cakes the traditional way any more; creaming together butter and sugar, beating in the eggs and folding in the dry ingredients by hand is not only time-consuming but tiring on the arms too. Instead, for the last several years we’ve mixed most cake batters directly in our food processor, ... Read more »
These delicious individual marzipan cakes are thanks to my friend Lisa, who made them recently using a Nigella Lawson recipe for a full size marzipan cake. Lisa decided to pour the batter into a muffin mould to make individual cakes instead of one large cake, which appealed to me hugely. I took note of her feedback ... Read more »
I’ve been trying to nail Southern Fried Chicken for quite some time. Some recipes call for the chicken to be brined before cooking. Others marinade the meat in buttermilk instead. Some recipes don’t feature brine or marinade at all. Some cooks coat the chicken with nothing but flour and spices; others use buttermilk or an ... Read more »
Surely it’s impossible not to love soda bread! Not only is it soft and delicious, it’s ridiculously quick and easy to make. When I talk about soda bread, I am using the term to cover any bread where bicarbonate of soda is the rising agent, rather than yeast. This type of bread making is ... Read more »
A few months ago, after yet another session of making jam (with cherries from the Brogdale National Fruit Collection) that added fifteen more jars to the already-full-to-groaning jam cupboard, Pete decided some simple and tasty scones were just the ticket to make an inroad into the jam lake I cooked into existence. This recipe is ... Read more »
Camilla Stephens began her culinary career developing food for (UK-based) coffee chain, the Seattle Coffee Company. When it was bought out by Starbucks, she stayed on board creating tasty treats to be sold across the chain throughout the day. Somewhere along the way, she learned to make really tasty pies. Fast forward several years to ... Read more »
I love autumn – the early half, when the leaves on the trees create a riot of my favourite colours and there is still a good chance of sunny days that are chilly but not freezing cold. And it’s apple season too. As I discovered recently, the apple isn’t a native fruit, but it’s become ... Read more »
Husband and wife team Katie and Giancarlo Caldesi are well known for their eponymous Italian restaurant and caffe in London, their second restaurant in Bray and their London cookery school, La Cucina Caldesi, at which Katie is the principal. The couple also starred in a BBC series called Return to Tuscany, about the cookery school ... Read more »
When we headed up to Islay for a week’s holiday recently, I took along a jar of my home-made apple pie filling, canned a few months ago using apples from our allotment trees. The plan was to make a pie for dessert one evening. A fruitless supermarket search for ready-made short crust pastry (and a ... Read more »
Do you ever envisage a new dish in your head, hoping it will be as delicious as you imagine? And when you make it, it’s even better? I can’t pretend it’s something that happens all the time – more often there are tweaks to be made… or rarely, the idea is quietly binned and never ... Read more »
The Place of Onions, in old Lille. After last night’s rainstorm the intense sticky heat has broken and today is cool, breezy, fresh… I love it! A drop of… [more]
We went to Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire at The Void this morning, an amazing VR experience where we got to be Rebel Alliance members going undercover as… [more]