When royal chef Mark Flanagan unveiled his recipe for the Coronation Quiche last Monday, I was delighted to read that it had been chosen by the King and Queen Consort due to it being ‘a good sharing dish, can be served hot or cold, suits a variety of dietary requirements and preferenes, can be adapted, and is not too complicated […]
This luscious, dense, simple little number was thrown together this afternoon in the midst of a craving for something hot, stodgy and comforting while I worked from home in the bitter cold. I love my beautiful (rented) house with its views of the sea, but when the temperature drops and the wind kicks up it is devastatingly cold, and I […]
Firstly, for the budget-conscious among you raising eyebrows at the use of a bottle of the authentic black stuff in a batch of brownies, fear not, for this recipe makes 24 of the little tinkers, and uses a little over half a can at that, so you could stretch to 40ish from a single can if you’ve a crowd to […]
This is an ideal bread recipe for newcomers, no fancy equipment needed and the bare bones of a recipe. I tricked Mrs J into making this last week; she who famously doesn’t cook but hovers helpfully around the washing up, trying not to gwt roped in with my wily ways. “Can I do anything?” she asked. “Yes darling, could you […]
This simple recipe is a must for any peanut butter lovers. Its first incarnation was as peanut butter-flavoured yoghurt – made by mixing two of my staple food items together for a sweet treat – and it went from there. I don’t add sugar or syrup to sweeten this recipe when I make it as I like the slight tang […]
This cheeky little number is a cross between a pie and a crumble, a hot sweet pile of stewed fruits beneath a crumbly puff pastry topping. I admit to approaching my pies with borderline religious fervour; that is, in order to qualify as a pie, it must have a base and walls and a lid. This does not meet my […]
This cake is a cheap but luxurious twist on my original banana bread, slightly more moist and gooey than the first iteration, with a home made sticky syrup sauce to drizzle over the top, ideally warm from a jug. I have made this as a loaf cake and also as a round, Victoria sponge type cake, split in the middle […]
As a child I loved Pop-Tarts™, those saccharine toaster pastries thick with white icing and multicoloured sprinkles that, when eaten greedily from the toaster, would scald your tongue with red-hot jam. I decided to see if I could make my own version from scratch, pastry and all, and here they are. They’re not an everyday breakfast but they’re definitely a […]
Courgettes in cake came into fashion a few years ago, but I only really bothered with them when I had a glut of the green blighters one autumn. Desperate to get rid of them, I made them into wholesome soups, pestos, pasta sauces and smuggled a few into this big chocolate cake. The courgettes are virtually indetectable – a novel […]
Granola is one of my most favourite breakfasts to have on standby, usually slung in the bottom of an oven that already has something else going on in it, in order to utilise the hot air already swilling around in there to create something else, practically for free, from storecupboard ingredients. My Small Boy loves this with his milk warmed […]
In case you ever find yourself wanting pancakes, but not having any eggs in the house (or bananas, or chia seeds, or flax seeds, or vegan egg replacer), here’s a cheeky cheaty recipe – because some things are just too good to keep to yourself. Serves 4-6, depending on appetite, from 6p each 150g plain flour, 7p (65p/1.5kg, Sainsburys Basics) […]
I very rarely advocate the use of specialist equipment in my recipes, but there is simply no way to make a crumpet without the use of an egg poaching ring. I retired mine when I went vegan, and had to properly search through my kitchen to find them again, but it was worth it. I picked mine up for £1 […]
I very rarely advocate the use of specialist equipment in my recipes, but there is simply no way to make a crumpet without the use of an egg poaching ring. I retired mine when I went vegan, and had to properly search through my kitchen to find them again, but it was worth it. I picked mine up for £1 […]
Sometimes all you need is a little nursery-soft sloppy comfort food, and for me, rice pudding usually does the trick. Over the years I have made rice pudding in many kinds of ways, on the hob, in the oven, and scooped from a tin, but last night I decided to give the slow cooker a go. And my oh my […]
Last weekend, Small Boy and I headed out to a small area of marshland around a mile from our home, on a blackberry picking mission. We had been promising ourselves for some time that we would do it, and so, armed with tough gardening gloves and plastic bags, we set off. However, pickings were slim, and despite hunting for an […]
This afternoon one of my readers got in touch via Twitter to ask me how to make these cookies vegan, for a friend. This is one of my favourite recipes for a rainy-day activity with my small boy, and as the weather draws in around us and we will be looking for more baking days than beach days, it seemed […]
This beautiful recipe was born of a Sunday morning trying to impress my still-quite-new but comfortingly familiar paramour, that settling in period where weekend pancakes with the newspapers have become a routine, but I still want to pull the proverbial rabbit (!) out of the hat every now and then. She had never had banana bread – never – and […]
I first discovered brown bread ice-cream in an old copy of Mrs Beeton’s Everyday Cookery, and as an avid maker of simple ice-cream and brown bread, decided to combine my two recipes. You don’t need an ice-cream maker for this one, I don’t own one. If you have an electric whisk or cake mixer, it will come in handy, but you can make this without – you just need a little patience and a firm hand. Makes around 8 portions at 24p each. Prices based on Sainsburys, Basics where available, and correct at time of writing. 100g wholemeal or brown bread, 5p (40p/800g loaf, Basics) 200ml milk, 9p (44p/litre) 3 egg yolks, 56p (£2.30/12 eggs, free range) 100g sugar, 8p (80p/kg, Fairtrade) 300ml double cream, £1 (£1/300ml) A fistful of sultanas, 10p (£1/400g, Basics) For the topping: 2 tsp breadcrumbs 1 tsp sugar, <1p (80p/1kg, Fairtrade) Few pinches ground cinnamon, <1p (80p/100g, Natco) Soak your bread in a little milk and stand to one side for an hour or so. Separate your eggs – I pour my whites into a jar and use them for meringues, egg-white omelettes and egg-fried rice – and beat the yolks in a large mixing bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the sugar and beat well. Pour in the cream and whisk until the mixture has almost doubled in size. Run a finger through: it should feel airy, light and fluffy, and not fall off […]
These little weighty wistful whirls of whimsy came about entirely by accident. I was going to stay with friends in Manchester for the weekend, to all fling our small boys at one another for a raucous time, and I never like to accept hospitality empty handed. So, I set about making a hulking great fruit bread big enough to energise […]
Last night I really, really fancied cookies, in that way that sometimes the sweet tooth takes a hold. Usually it’s late at night. Usually when I have resolved to be healthier, and better, and eat less baked goods in the smallest hours. Like, on New Years Day. Succumbing, I pottered downstairs to the kitchen, and rummaged in my […]
If you have some leftover pannetone or stollen kicking about from the recent festivities and you’re wondering what to do with it, of course you can slice it and freeze it, or fold it into a simple bread and butter pudding. But for a luxurious twist on a low budget, I made a stollen ice cream. This is […]
This Christmas period I have so far cooked four enormous meals in four different houses as four Christmas presents for friends and family – in mutual opinion and after the shitty bank fraud episode that still isn’t quite sorted, it’s the best Christmas present I can offer – swooping in to someone else’s kitchen and taking the stress out of […]
Last night I found myself with an urge for chocolate chip cookies. I was a bit miserable, the gas meter was running out (and even more so by the time I type this…), my tiny flat was cold and I was generally feeling a little bit grouchy and blue. Usual distractions don’t apply – I don’t own a television […]
The idea for this came after midnight on a very cold November evening. In my current home, I sleep on a sofa bed in a bay beneath a set of single-glazed louvre windows – you know, the kind with the slats that overlap but don’t quite meet. Which means when the temperature drops, my goodness I know about it. I’m not complaining, though, as I love my small, beautiful, idiosyncratic home; it just means that one of the last things I do of an evening is curl into bed with the hottest drink imaginable and burrow under my duvet. And so, with no milk in the house of any kind, but half a block of coconut cream in the cupboard, this was born. I made a big batch, seeing the weather was only going to get colder, it’s good to be prepared for this sort of thing. Makes around 8-10 portions: at 9p each 100g dark chocolate , 35p (Sainsburys Basics) 100g coconut cream , 45p (Sainsburys, 200g/90p) First take the smallest saucepan you have, and fill with barely two inches of water. Pop a mixing bowl over the top, and bring it to the boil. Break up your chocolate and add to the bowl, and reduce the heat to medium. Stir as the chocolate melts. If it starts to split (usually because water has touched the bottom of the bowl and scorched your poor choccy), simply add a […]
One afternoon in the all-hours flail-and-flurry that was this-glorious-top-secret-for-now-project, I emerged from my writing corner (apologies to Virginia Woolf for not managing an entire ‘room of my own in which to write’ but, recession, gentrification and a dislike of cleaning mean I basically live in a nook. Anyway, when there is a small child around all rooms are rightfully theirs […]
This beautiful bounty of Sunday morning baking was based on the vegan banana bread in my first book, A Girl Called Jack, but uses some wholemeal flour and coconut oil for extra goodness. If you don’t have coconut oil, fear not, as the song almost went, Any Oil Will Do. Vegetable, sunflower, light or mild olive, groundnut, rapeseed, whatever you […]
I’ve made corn bread about nine times this year and every time I do I think to myself “I must blog this recipe” as it’s one of my favourites. But the kitchen needs cleaning and the children need entertaining and there’s a wash to put on and a week goes by and I forget all about it. So this […]
Here’s something I do a lot, like my juicing-without-a-blender post last week, that I do so regularly and unthinkingly that I didn’t realise I’d never written about it on my blog! This is where all the soft or sad or straggly vegetables end up that aren’t juicing material. Like the Mooli I bought last week in a fit of curiosity […]
This came about as most of my favourite things do, with a musing to myself about something I’d eaten recently and a wonder if I could recreate something like it. The ‘something’ in this case was a jar of Tonkotsu’s ‘Eat The Bits’ chilli oil given to us by Emma Reynolds of Tonkotsu fame, but it was polished off weeks […]
COOKING ON A BOOTSTRAP 