A year or so ago I made a simnel cake, but it came out rather squat and a tad heavy. The squatness was easily remedied with a smaller baking tin, while the texture was improved through using a lighter recipe with more eggs. I have, also, used an id...
Read moreOne of my favourite Christmassy things is panforte and I, also, love Nurnberger lebkuchen. It hails from Siena which is probably my favourite city in Italy. There really is something special about sitting out in the Piazza del Campo, looking across...
Read moreI have been asked by several people to give some starting ideas for the various goodies within Laura Santtini's Alchemical Larder box that we provide to Fortnum & Mason, Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Selfridges amongst others. So while there is a...
Read moreIn this festive period, we have been asked out to various families for drinks, or the kids out to parties. And the question always is what to give people in a period of giving. So yesterday, the kids and I spent a happy day making sweets, much as w...
Read moreOnce in a while, I really need to go without meat of any form and I am going through one of those patches at the moment. So I have tweaked my Chicken Balti Recipe from earlier this year to be more tofu friendly and so usable as a vegetarian dish. At...
Read moreOne of my favourite Christmas cookies are spekulatius biscuits, or speculaas as they are called in the Netherlands. I remember we always used to get a special parcel from Lebkuchen Schmidt in Nürmberg from my Granny. In amongst all the beautiful ti...
Read moreI don't know whether it is when you really learned how to cook that determines what are your favourite books, or whether some books are just better than others. However, I noticed recently how I still keep on going back to a few cookery books that I...
Read moreI was pottering around the shops the other day and their was some good looking shoulder of lamb. They called out to me "Cook me, take me", so I asked the butcher for them and popped them in the basket. Back at home, I found some lemons that need us...
Read moreUsing Steenbergs relaunched organic peppermint extract, I made a few peppermint flavoured sweets the other evening for a Diwali meal that we were treated to by some good friends. They are really simple and quite delicious; the hostess loved the Pepp...
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