banana and bran muffins

Who stole the muffin? We always have a surfeit of bananas here – Riverford deliver them regularly, and I’m not a big fan.  We generally make banana bread or banana muffins, and I found a new recipe on the back of the bran flake box that I tried out yesterday for breakfast. I suspect they…

Sunday breakfast

Home made scones are lovely, but until I came across this recipe I was utterly unsuccessful at scones. But now I’m not. Hurrah! p.s. the dough freezes really well.

when the going gets tough

The tough get … cooking. perlmonger has been up to his eyes today configuring servers; that’s not something that I can really help with, so I had a cooking frenzy. I made Some soda bread for lunch – my Irish grandmother made a loaf of this every morning, and it’s delicious. I actually use a…

breaking with tradition

Every year, towards the end of December, I buy a bag of cranberries. I don’t know why – I don’t like cranberry sauce, and anyway, we always eat goose for our festive dinner, but there you go; it’s part of the Christmas Tradition. And so, towards the end of February, we generally have an equally…

I said I wasn't much of a baker

But I’m quite pleased with this – it’ s a work in progress, but it’s coming along nicely. it has a sort of amateur charm, don’t you think?

Go me!

I’m a good cook, but I’m not great at baking. And I’m lousy at pastry. however, inspired by this recipe which claimed to be “easy flaky pastry”, I thought I’d give it a go. I had to get perlmonger to come and grate for a while – it was hard work. But *I* rolled out…

Stepford Wife

Today, I have been mostly baking. I made a fabulous gruyere and cracked peppercorn bread. Or, at least, it would have been fabulous had I had a decent loaf tin instead of the ancient old things I use. It wasn’t quite cooked through, but we toasted it, and it was delicious. And I made some…

yum

We had homemade walnut bread for lunch.

pastry …

Pastry and I … we don’t get on. At all. I can barely manage with bought pastry, and if I try to make it myself it’s a disaster. I’ve tried everything – food processor, mixer, by hand. It all goes grey and shrinks, and is as unappetising as you might imagine. I’ve been hunting for…