It's apple season. I know this because there are adverts for the Brogdale Apple Festival across the Kent countryside. If you haven't been, do go. It really is an experience. But apple season means cooler weather, which requires a sweater and warming food. Comfort food. Like baked apples with a crumble-style filling. No, they are not high fashion but golly they are delicious. And so easy that your children can make them. All you … [Read more...]
{Recipe} Triple Chocolate Caramel Shortbread
All this Great British Bake Off talk has been adding inches to my waistline. I keep feeling the urge to bake. Most of my offerings get burned to a cinder in the Aga or snaffled so quickly that I have few pictures to show for my work. But this is too good not to share. You take a basic Chocolate Caramel Shortbread- these days referred to as Millionaires' Shortbread- and whack up the chocolate. Chocolate shortbread base, salted caramel … [Read more...]
How to cook the perfect Christmas Turkey
This week I got to spend time in the kitchen of Marco Pierre White whilst he told me how to cook the perfect turkey ahead of Christmas Day, thanks to the #leanonturkey campaign. This meant eating Christmas lunch in September. Just to check that it was indeed excellent turkey. Who was I to say no? It turns out that Marco recommends the domestic cook buy a Turkey Crown. He demonstrated in a very caveman fashion how to cut up the bird to get the … [Read more...]
Eton Mess Eton Mess.
I don't pretend to understand how my mind works, but when I was recently given a bar of Hotel Chocolat Eton Mess, I thought "Wouldn't it be great to make Eton Mess with Eton Mess? A kind of Eton Mess Eton Mess?" Catchy name, I know. So I did. I took a punnet of hulled strawberries and a handful of raspberries and I mashed them with a fork I added a measure of Howard's Of Kent Blackcurrant Hit Vodka. I left them to macerate until … [Read more...]
Royal Baby Cookie Pops
Hot on the heels of our sweet little Royal Baby Welcome Cards, and whilst we await the arrival of the #royalbaby, come the Royal Baby Cookie Pops. The Girls suggested that I make them "some cookies that are babies too." They wanted Royal Ones But frankly I didn't have any yellow fondant icing, so instead I made Baby Cookie Pops as a tribute to the imminent arrival of the World's Most Famous Baby*. They are fairly simple. Honestly. I used my … [Read more...]
How to make cupcake cookies
Cupcake Belle came to visit DG Manor this week, bringing with her a delightful selection of pink baking tools and the promise of fun in the kitchen. Sadly she visited on the day that my Girls decided baking was 'boring' and could they play Lacrosse in the garden with Daddy? (How middle-class do I sound right now?) Which left me, in a pink spotty pinny too small to do up round my ample frame. Fortunately I am pretty good at cookie making. I had … [Read more...]
{Vitamix} Cocktail recipe: The King’s Peach
I was unexpectedly sent a few samples of iced tea from Hampstead Tea. The warm weather and my new Vitamix made me think I should use them in cocktails. And so I did. My favourite tea- the Raspberry, I added to a tin of frozen peaches- more specifically I should say that I emptied a tin of peaches into a tub and froze them. I topped it up with a hefty whack of the fabulous Raspberry Vodka from Howards of Kent and blended until smooth. It really … [Read more...]
