F
inally, finally, finally, we’re out of the cold. As I type this, I’m looking out on grey skies (oh, England), but there’s solace in the fact that the streets are increasingly lined with the bright colours of summer fruits with “British” on the sticker.
Related to all this, you can now browse recipes by ingredient (up….^^^ there) on this little ol’ blog. There’s even a dedicated salted caramel section, along with the less indulgent fruit and veg bits.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m unashamedly a feeder. Pretty much anyone who has visited our flat will attest to that. It’s a trait that I get from my mother, and which means that no-one escapes through those doors without having been fed at the very least a custard cream, because this is the level at which we like to keep our biscuit tin. Continue reading
I
t was the spring of 2012 and I was crying. Not the elegant kind you see in films, no quiet single tears rolling down a cheek: it was full on snotty, heaving, gasping crying. There was cold wood under my feet – the piece of wood between kitchen and living room where, if we got up early enough, we’d see slugs on their morning commute back to the garden – and a scrunched up Freddo packet on the counter of our pokey student kitchen.
I wasn’t crying about the slug wood.
For what felt like weeks – but was actually only about ten days – I’d been following the Dukan diet. You know, the one where you basically only eat chicken and yoghurt. There are photos of me tucking into, and, amazingly, finishing, an entire roast chicken, with a face of utter dejection. I lost weight, but also nearly lost both some friends and all of my marbles. Continue reading
W
e’ve all been there – the end of summer is nearing and your calendar features more barbecues than it does weekdays beginning with S as us Brits clamber to get the last of the rays before they disappear for another six months. Caught up in the traditions, the Pimms is flowing and beers are chilling, and it’s fruit juice only for the designated drivers and non-drinkers. But skipping out on the alcohol doesn’t have to mean making do with warm lemonade hastily dug out from the back of a cupboard. Continue reading
As a natural ginger, I often find summer kind of tough – I’ve got skin that burns quicker than a slice of toast if I’m not careful, and would rather be caught in autumn drizzle than stuck in the stifling heat of midday sun bouncing off buildings. This used to mean a) browsing in supermarket frozen aisles for a long time, and b) clutching an iced coffee more frequently than anyone’s bank balance can really take.
Homemade iced coffees just weren’t the same, with the drink getting weaker with every drop of melted cube. Enter coffee ice cubes. Made with coffee stronger than what you’d actually drink, they stop your drink from losing its power. They do tend to be a little sticky – you can encourage them out of the tray by running the back of it under the tap before popping them out. Happy bank balance, happy inner thermostat.
T
his cake was borne of a feeling that told me, Yes, okay, it’s time to bake now, stop claiming lack of inspiration and just look around you. Eggs that supposedly went out of date days ago (still fine!), tubs of yoghurt, and a couple of limes. I desperately wanted to be back on the baking wagon right away; to be able to say, Whisk, whisk, fold, oven, done – victory! But my first attempt at this cake was honestly poor.
My ever-so-polite colleagues ate it even though the glaze was too thin and soaked through to make the cake the texture of gummy bears, so moist that it sat heavy in your stomach. But I knew it needed a lot more work – I knew I’d made mistakes, and I almost decided not to admit that on the internet.
Growing up alongside the invasion of social media makes it amazingly easy to have a skewed view of everyone else’s lives. It brings you to just a few clicks away from being fully mired in grass-is-greener delusions and gives you the tools to compare yourself to every single friend or stranger that pops up your feeds, while you sit there thinking, Oh my god, I know at least three people with book deals and I couldn’t even find a matching pair of socks this morning. (True story. I only have socks in three colours and I still struggle.)
Buuuuut of course that’s ridiculous. We all have different paths, and this small segment of mine means I can tell you guys what changes absolutely should not be made to this recipe (see notes!). It took a couple of tweaks – and a couple of batches of cake forced upon those colleagues – but it’s finally just right. Continue reading
It’s August. How did that happen? A couple of weeks ago I was celebrating my spring birthday and now it’s less than 20 weeks until Christmas (okay, I’m pretty happy about that part).
I sort of hoped I’d never be one of those people who’s all, “Hey, look, time’s passed, how about that?” but here we are, and the next thing you know I’ll probably be seeing my younger cousin and saying, “Look at you! Haven’t you grown!” like an idiot.
Because that’s what happens – time passes, children grow. Spring turns to autumn and…wait. That’s not how it works. Summer. It’s still summer. It’s August and it’s sunny* and it’s England and we are all most confused. Continue reading
I never have been, and never will be, sporty. Not just in terms of partaking in sport, but in terms of watching it. I don’t “get” it. Even when the Olympics were going on just a hundred miles down the road, it was still just a bunch of people jumping about in shorts to me.
At school – the last time sport was compulsory for me – PE lessons meant one of three things: chatting while walking around the circuit for cross country, recycling a selection of sick notes and then…having a chat, or playing ping pong over the top of 6 tables set up in the hall. PE lessons contained very little actual PE. We liked it that way. Continue reading
Like many recipe ideas, this one started on Pinterest, but it was so hard to find a recipe that was based on “normal” ingredients, which led to an early-morning investigation into what America’s oft-used cake flour actually contained (answer here). Just when I thought I’d have to modify a chocolate avocado cake and hope for the best, I found Joy the Baker’s avocado pound cake. It wasn’t quite right, but close enough to work with – I reduced the sugar content, swapped out buttermilk for yoghurt and milk, and translated the recipe from cups to grams, before topping it with a sweet honey buttercream that perfectly compliments the subtle avocado taste.
Morrison’s supermarket currently has avocados for sale for 4 for £1, proving that they’re not always too expensive to justify (just avoid Waitrose!). They’re for ripening at home, but nestling them in a fruit bowl with some bananas will decrease the ripening time. Continue reading