Travel tips-Restaurant reviews-Recipes
I’ve never made madeleines before. They seem to have been in my life for as long as my memory goes back, like scones and clotted cream, the bread pudding and Christmas puddings I used to make as a child with my grandmother. I guess I perhaps ate madeleines for the first time in France. I […]
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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 […]
Read MoreThis post was an act of sheer determination; well, the cooking was. I’d heard Pastéis de Nata were difficult to make, but clearly a certain amount of hubris took me over: just how difficult can it be to make custard tarts! Well, I was soon to discover … There were a few moments when I […]
Read MoreGreengage tart does sound so much nicer in French: Tarte aux Reine Claudes. In France, greengages are named in honour of the French queen Claude (1499-1524) who was also Duchess of Brittany. They came originally from the Middle East and were brought to England from France in 1724 by Sir William Gage, who, as you […]
Read MoreFor a non-baker I seem to be doing a lot of baking at the moment. I often tell people that, no, I don’t bake cakes … I’m no good at things like Victoria sponges; I only ‘do’ dessert cakes. With family from north Wales to the south coast coming to London for grandson Freddie’s first […]
Read MoreI had a slice of delicious rhubarb & almond cake from Your Bakery in Whitton last week and thought I really must try making some myself. So when I saw an assistant carrying a tray of packs of fresh rhubarb in Waitrose yesterday, I couldn’t resist following and claiming a pack for my basket. My […]
Read More‘Muffin’ has become something of a generic word for small cakes. Once it was used only for those light, fluffy small cakes that contain a lot of air but now it’s more or less used for any individual cake cooked in a muffin-sized tin – larger than a fairy cake but definitely for a single serving. […]
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