Cooking with Freddie: Frozen Lemon Yogurt Cream

My grandson Freddie (7) loves lemons. He likes lemon drizzle cake, lemon sorbet, slices of lemon in drinks. For my birthday lunch at Masaniello last Saturday, when nine of us gathered around the long table, his chosen dessert was lemon sorbet. Not strawberry, chocolate or vanilla ice cream, but lemon sorbet. And he loved it. […]

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Cooking with Kids: Welsh Cakes

My son Jonathan’s wife is Welsh, hence the boys – Freddie (7), Ben (4) and Alex (1) are half Welsh. This fact is mainly discussed in relation to rugby when Freddie is involved. He’s seriously into rugby at the moment – well he was born in Twickenham and lives within walking distance of the famous […]

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Cooking with Kids: Chocolate Chip Muffins for Halloween

When it comes to cakes, I don’t have a great repertoire as I’ve never been a big cake maker. I do make banana muffins a lot due not only to their simplicity but also because they seem reasonably healthy, and all the family love them. Cup cakes aren’t something I usually make but when I […]

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Cooking with Freddie: Olive Focaccia

Well it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to cook with Freddie, my gorgeous 5½-year-old grandson. With the pandemic lockdown, for weeks we couldn’t see each other and then only at social distance, which Freddie was very strict about! ‘The virus’ is part of his new vocabulary. One has to hope there won’t […]

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Cooking with Freddie: Seville Orange Marmalade

Freddie (nearly 5) often asks me for marmalade sandwiches – ‘like Paddington Bear’. So, quite a few weeks’ ago, I promised that when marmalade oranges arrived in the shops, all the way from Seville in Spain, we would make marmalade together. Thus, when I spied a box of ‘marmalade oranges’ in Waitrose on Friday I […]

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Cooking with Freddie: Making the Christmas Pudding

Cooking is a family affair for me: we talk food; we talk recipes; we cook together when we can. My parents introduced me to good food very early in life and my son started cooking at such a young age he had to stand on a stool to reach the worktop. Now he’s one of […]

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Christmas Gingerbread Stars & People

Christmas is coming and I thought it would be fun to make gingerbread people with grandson Freddie. At just two and three-quarters he doesn’t quite understand Christmas but he certainly understands the excitement. This morning when I went over to the family’s home, Freddie was eating his breakfast. ‘Would you like to come to Nonna’s […]

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Never Too Young to Learn to Cook …

This morning I was emailing my friend, Di, who I stayed with in France recently, and told her I was about to go and pick up grandson Freddie to look after him for a while. I also explained that as heavy rain was forecast for the entire day, I’d have to be creative about how […]

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