What I Ate Today

My friend Emma from work went away for a few days, leaving some bananas on her desk.  By Friday afternoon, they were brown and squasshy and headed for the bin – ideal for a banana cake I thought!  I didn’t know a recipe, so I searched through some books at home.  There is a great [...]

I’ve been meaning to post this for about a month so it’s a bit out of season now, but it was so good I had to put it up.  I decided to give mince pies a miss this year (although Belle’s were very tempting!), and have a go at some stollen from a recipe in [...]

Not to be confused with the closely related Slavic Pirogis, Russian Pirozhkis have more in common with English pastys. Pirozhkis are generally made with leaven bread and are either baked or fried. They tend to be about half the size of a standard pasty. Pirogis (from my little knowledge) tend to be more like dumplings, [...]

Jenny recently got given a new cook by Alice for her birthday – Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley. The book’s approach is to rejuvenate the British public’s view on Bread, showing how real bread is made and the flaws in current bread practice. Since Jenny had made a tasty Onion soup for our lunch I [...]

In these times of economic woe, I decided to avoid the shop bought ‘luxury’ Christmas pud and make my own based on a recipe by the multi-michelin starred Gordon Ramsay.  The recipe was from BBC Olive Magazine.  The recipe was incredibly simple and can be summarised in a Ramsay-esque way as   ‘…mix ingredients…pudding bowl…steam…done’.  As I struggled [...]

Only one month to go!  This weekend we had a bit of a mad Christmas baking session, we made quince mince pies, ginger and pineapple Christmas cake and the biggest Christmas pudding I’ve ever seen! The recipe for the mince pies is below and Paul will add the recipes for the other two later.   Quince [...]

My first attempt at soda bread and I’m quite proud of it – it tasted almost as good as Matt’s picture makes it look!  This was from a book called Diabetic Cooking by Bridget Jones.  So simple to make, no yeast or leaving it to rise or anything – just flour, baking soda and buttermilk.   [...]