I’m not normally what you’d call a cupcake person. Rugged muffins, buttery financiers and slabs of brownie I can get behind, but American-style cupcakes weighed down with buttercream and covered in sprinkles? Not so much. Yet try as I may, there’s something so birthday-appropriate about a cupcake and with two to celebrate this weekend just gone, I’m going against my better nature and sharing these peanut butter beauties. Continue reading
Peanut butter and jam is something I’ve come to later in life. I grew up on butter and Marmite for breakfast, melted and scraped over slightly burnt toast or mashed together and spread on bread (which will sound delicious or disgusting depending on your love/hate stance). My Dad would mix peanut butter into his Marmite (which definitely sounds disgusting, regardless of your stance) but combining it with jam just isn’t something that happened in our household. Continue reading
Every week when my blog goes out, I’ll get an email from my Dad. Aside from the spelling and punctuation which, as an ex-publisher, he always picks up on, the messages range from complimentary to longing: ‘looks delicious’, ‘definitely not on my diet!’, ‘reminds me of our trip to X’ or ‘I wonder if your mum might make me that.’ Dad, I’m afraid to say this definitely falls into the ‘not on my diet’ category. Everyone else, if you’ve given up sweet stuff for Lent you might want to look away now . . . Continue reading
‘Any soft drink plus popcorn only £7’. That was the sign we passed as we ascended the escalator to the cinema on Saturday night. Everywhere I looked, people were filling up on sweets from the pick and mix, tiny tubs of ice cream and those slightly scary looking nachos with their lurid toppings and takeaway odour. If you’re in the market for making money, cinema food is a serious business.
Rich, chocolaty & packed with peanut butter flavour
Eight years ago last Friday, I met my husband-to-be. The next day I baked him brownies.
Back then, the thought of writing a food blog hadn’t even entered my head. The online world was a very different place: basic WordPress was only just up and running, Facebook in its infancy and YouTube launched that year. Blogs like Delicious Days and Seven Spoons might have just got started, but the idea of writing about food on the internet was still just the seed of an idea in the minds of Joy the Baker, Deb Perelman and numerous other bloggers we know and love today. Continue reading
A pile of beautiful, buttery croissants
With just a few hours left until the new year, there’s little left to say other than thank you.
Thank you for your comments and support, for continuing to be interested in what I have to say, for reading and sharing my recipes and for sending me your amazing pictures when you make them.
Rather than posting anything new today, I’ve included a round up of your five favourite (by page views) little loaf recipes from the past year, followed by five of mine.
2012 has been incredible. Here’s to an even more amazing 2013. Continue reading
Everyone wants to be happy. Whether it’s that lifelong happiness that comes with from great friendships and falling in love or a fragment of joy found in the briefest of moments, if you’ve ever wondered what life is all about, this is it. Happiness is what you need, guaranteed. Continue reading
Edible engagement rings made from modelling chocolate
This weekend just gone, we celebrated our engagement for the second time in as many months (with a big group of people, that is, I can’t even begin to count the number of times we’ve raised a glass in smaller circles), inviting just over sixty of our favourite friends to drink, dance and generally make merry whilst using our upcoming wedding as the perfect excuse to do so. Continue reading
Creamy peanut butter, crunchy biscuit & crisp feuilletine
This post started life as something very different. Very different and infinitely more virtuous.
While the content of this blog will most likely have helped you arrive at the correct conclusion that I’ve got a very sweet tooth, eating healthy food is also important to me. At the weekends I’ll bake with abandon, often experimenting for meals with family and friends or rustling up the ultimate in comfort food to ease us back into the working week come Sunday. The other five days I’m a little more restrained, as likely to enjoy a bowl of Greek yoghurt and honey or something simple and fruity as anything more button-bustingly flamboyant. I’m therefore always on the look-out for interesting ideas for sweet treats to enjoy mid-week: recipes that are wholesome enough to eat every day but every bit as delicious as their more calorific counterparts. Continue reading
Squidgy chocolate cake with creamy peanut butter frosting
David Lebovitz once said that the best thing about being a pastry chef is that your kitchen colleagues have to be nice to you 364 days a year. Why? Because on the 365th they want you to bake them a birthday cake. While I’m no pastry chef and have never worked in a commercial kitchen, when it comes to baking cakes for friends, I know exactly where he’s coming from.
One of the things I love most about baking is being able to share what I make with those around me. A cake can be a talking point, a celebration in itself and (for me anyway) often a better way of expressing love for the person in question than any other present might be. Birthday cakes are particularly personal, the one opportunity each year to take centre stage, to call the shots, to cut yourself the biggest slice, eat seconds and thirds and lick off extra icing if you should so choose (not, of course, that I’d ever do something like that . . .) Continue reading