When you have accidentally bought too many packs of medjool dates which need to be eaten before you go away on holiday, what do you do? Do you ration them out as healthy snacks, or do you mix them with butter, flour and sugar and make a sticky toffee pudding? I’ll let you guess which […]
butter
- Baking
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Getting steamed up – steamed suet and sponge puddings
When I was younger I never really wanted what my Mum cooked me for dinner. As a child of the 80s I wanted the kind of food that Iceland still seems to sell: crispy pancakes, mini kievs, chicken dippers, potato waffles, beefburgers with processed cheese ON THE INSIDE, and lots and lots of chips. MacDonalds […]
- Baking
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Stir it up Sunday
Note from the idiot: I thought stir it up Sunday was on 17 November, so I made my cake – and wrote this post – on the 17th. Someone kindly pointed out on my Facebook page that I had the dates wrong – whoops. So I had to leave the post for a week to […]
GBBO challenge week 10 – pretzels
Oh woe is me – it was the last GBBO of 2013, and the last GBBO challenge blog post for me. I might have been feeling more sad about the end of this era of the blog, but I have been distracted by boiler problems, accepting a new job, and going on holiday. Well, after […]
Sour grapes
Andrew and I detest gardening … not only because we are extremely lazy and are quite clueless about plants, but also because this year there are supposed to be poisonous spiders crawling amok in the gardens of the UK. If ever there was a perfect excuse not to garden, that was it. However, because we […]
GBBO challenge week 6 – apricot couronne
Find out more about by Great British Bake Off challenge. I fall in love with the bake off a little bit more each week – although when trying to describe the show to others it is hard to explain it’s charm, as it sounds like it must be so boring … watching people bake three […]
GBBO challenge week 3 – trifle
Find out more about my GBBO challenge. Ooooooh, desserts. Well I love them, but Andrew pretty much hates them all … and he has a particular hatred for meringue which meant that week 3’s technical challenge of Iles Flottant was a definite no-no for me. I was tempted by the idea of petit fours, but […]
Going nutty over Nutella
Nutella is a dangerous thing. A very dangerous thing. I cannot have it in the house because once that jar opens, I can’t resist eating it straight out of there. I don’t understand the appeal of putting it on toast or bread, although I do like it spread on a crepe (does rather stick your […]
Sausage rolls and brownies make a party (plus booze, obviously)
It was my birthday last week, and so slightly depressingly I had to update my ‘about’ page on this blog to aged 37. But getting another year older has great advantages, most particularly of the present variety. Oh how well my friends and family know me – almost every present was food-related, and every card […]
- Eating out
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A comfort food: fish pie
One of my biggest restaurant disappointments was when I visited Richard Corrigan’s Bentleys for a much anticipated meal many years ago. I had come across him on the first series of Great British Menu and was immediately drawn to his simple style of cooking: using the best fresh and local ingredients, fussing with them as […]