I would say these pancakes require a little more effort than a regular batch but they are definitely worth it, especially if you make the syrup as well. They are much creamier inside and this goes so well with the sweet orange slices cooked on top. When the sugars in the orange caramelise slightly in the pan these pancakes just get even better. I’m completely in love with ricotta pancakes. Continue reading
It’s all we want in life really: breakfast that’s pretty good for you and gives you chocolate milk in return. I think the idea with granola is that you are supposed to sprinkle a little bit on your yoghurt and fruit but I am partial to a huge bowl of it with enough milk to wet the granola but not swimming in milk. I have milk issues, in that, the very idea of drinking a glass of milk makes me heave. Unless it’s chocolate milk, then I’m fine.
I really love the tahini in this. The finished granola doesn’t taste of tahini but it just brings out the flavour of the other ingredients really well without being overpowering. It goes so perfectly with the cocoa and coconut.
The problem with these tea cakes is that it’s really easy to keep eating them. There’s no muffin case getting in your way and all these pretty little tea cakes are just lying around whispering ‘ooh [insert name here] why don’t you put the kettle on and eat us all?!’.
What? You mean your cakes don’t talk to you?
I jest of course but cake definitely finds a way to call to me in some way. I know how to be stronger and resist. If I make sure I get more sleep and eat well in the day then I can turn cake down but if I’m tired and hormonal then it’s every cake for himself.
These are the perfect no frills tea cakes. Whipping up the egg whites separately means the batter is much lighter. Rose and rhubarb is a wonderful flavour combination and one of my favourites. Continue reading
I held back on the alliteration in that title – after all, I used brown bread, and British vegetables, and considered some bonus bacon. But I figured just the four Bs would be cheesy enough.
Having the time and space to make a proper breakfast feels like a funny little luxury to me. It’s the pottering around in a quiet kitchen, coffee brewing on the table while I whisk ingredients. It’s the joy of keeping one eye on what’s cooking and your mind on how the day might unfold. Breakfast is the reason I dream of having a big kitchen with lots of natural light – as much as I love the challenge of a layer cake or the satisfaction of making a complicated dinner, it’s those mornings sipping sweet tea and flipping pancakes in pyjamas that I fantasise about. Continue reading
“I,” I declared to my flatmate, four and a half years ago, “am going to get a waffle iron, to celebrate moving to London.”
Spoiler: I did not get a waffle iron. Until this month, when my lovely colleagues bought me one. I am an idiot, and it is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. Admittedly, I once said that about a pod coffee machine too, but we have all been young and foolish (and then older and foolish).
Anyway, a waffle habit is a hard one to sustain, due to the fact that a lot of the recipes out there use a load of butter. I mean…enough butter to make a 12-person cake with, some of them. A horrendous quantity.
So! Waffles, made fluffy with egg white, with minimal, and even then, optional, butter. A lil bit of sugar. A good basis for fruit and yoghurt, or avocado and eggs, or cheese, under the grill. Continue reading
The pub was where I realised it: with just over 100 days to go, I am on a crash course for relearning patience. 
Perhaps not relearning; perhaps stretching through deep breaths and pressing outwards, like yoga. 100 days until the referendum, I mean, of course. Referendum debate is unavoidable now, whether it’s through facebook — oh god, facebook — or thrust into your actual face by a man waving The Sun, in a strangely accusatory manner, in a south London boozer.
Because that’s how the conversations start. Not through a natural topic change, but as a result of one person brandishing their opinion, treating their anecdotes like knuckledusters, as if when they hit you enough, they’ll win.
It won’t relent over the next three months; the same old arguments will continue to be trotted out by the same people, often unprompted, and unnecessary when we both know neither will change their mind. And I will be there thinking, “We could be talking about books right now, or food, or anything, honestly anything, else.” So we breathe, and we press at the barriers of our tolerance, feeling them expand, and we let these next few months run their course.
This bread, too, requires patience, and the ability to know when it’s time to walk away and let things play out. All the grinding and rising and warming and soaking and blitzing that has to be done before you can enjoy the waft of butter and spice from the oven.
But it’s worth it.
Continue reading
Sometimes, the things you love most are the things you fear. I adore enormous bookstores but sometimes when I walk into them my heart beats faster, because Oh, excellent, there are so many books! but also Oh no. There are so many books and there’s no way I’ll ever be able to read even a small percentage of them all, why isn’t there more time in the day?
I love holding my niece, who is six months old and squishy, with big blue eyes and very little hair, and she is wriggly and I. Must. Not. Drop. The. Squirmy. Baby. I stand her on my lap, one tiny, ticklish foot on each thigh, and I do not know what to say to her. Small talk is hard enough with a fully-grown human.
I will always want crispy bacon on my burgers, but if I grill it, I will watch it, cross-legged and unblinking on the floor like I’m on the Bake Off, just in case the fat catches and bursts into flames like it did that one time when I was a kid.
There’s a big place in my heart for huge, fluffy muffins – the properly craggy-topped ones, not supermarket double chocolates, all sticky on top and dry at the bottom – and I am convinced that I can’t make them. Continue reading
A
couple of weeks back, on one of those many days when people were questioning if somebody had twisted the planet to place us back in February, with the threat of rain hanging over us, I went to a talk at Borough Market with Stephanie. It was based around what makes good food writing – the styles of recipe writing, how best to introduce a dish, how many ingredients is too many. The best bit of the night was probably the food after the panel, but as I tucked a blanket up around my neck and listened to how food writing should carry emotion and take a reader to another place, I couldn’t help thinking What if it’s just a recipe you like? What if it’s no more complicated than that?
So. Here’s something that I like. It doesn’t need a personal essay or a link back to childhood. The recipe is all about a sweet, pillowy dough that makes a light floof sound when you turn it out and the joy of painting with jam and studding it with chocolate. Continue reading