Almond and cranberry caramel shortbread cut into squares on a checked cloth with a knife

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What better way to take my mind off everything going on at the moment than baking! It’s still a difficult and confusing time, although great that the Coronavirus statistics are looking better in UK (as I am writing this on 9th June 2020). Supplies of baking ingredients, particularly flour and yeast are not always easy to come by, so I was really pleased to be able to order a massive 10kg bag of plain flour from the lovely Wessex Mill in Wantage, Oxfordshire. That should keep me going for a while! So, today I’m going to tell you how I made Ori Hellerstein’s Florentines, fromRead More →

small jar of carrot marmalade with 3 scones with carrot marmalade on and green background

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In these strange times when Coronavirus has necessitated lockdown, it’s a great time for trying something new and rediscovering previous joys. So I’m really enjoying having more time for baking and making new recipes. It’s also a time when sometimes I need to be a bit creative because, not being able to just pop out to the shops means supplies can be a bit intermittent. With this in mind I made sure I stocked up on carrots, because we love carrots, they are a regular staple. But then I ordered a salad box and it came with carrots and suddenly I found we had wayRead More →

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It’s summer and the fruit is ripening! Lots of luscious blackcurrants, gooseberries, loganberries, with raspberries coming soon. It’s so inspirational and I can’t wait to start baking. I think blackcurrants must be one of my favourite fruits, they are so flavoursome. In fact I have already made blackcurrant jam, and I might post the recipe here if anyone would like that. Looking back over the period of my A Teaspoon of Jam blog, blackcurrants may actually be my most-used fruit ingredient. See recipe for Blackcurrant ice-cream here. So here’s another one, Nectarine and Blackcurrant cake – it’s just a shame I can’t grow nectarines inRead More →

Dandelion and honey cake with yellow tulips in background

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I read an interesting post (thank you Robin) about dandelions, saying that every part of the dandelion is edible. That is something I didn’t know that before; I knew about the leaves, which I have had in salads, but not the flowers and leaves. If there is anything that grows brilliantly in our garden it’s dandelions and they are all coming out in their bright yellow glory in this sun. Someone else commented that they had a great recipe for a dandelion fricassee and it would be good to try that at some point, but I was inspired to make a cake:- it doesn’t takeRead More →

Gingerbread biscuits at Christmas by Helen Green Photography

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It’s feeling really Christmassy here, now the tree is up and I’ve made gingerbread biscuits. They smell divine! Somehow I always associate them with Christmas, although if you are reading this at another time of year, do go ahead and make some, in suitably seasonal shapes, of course.    Whilst you could experiment with different spices, I have kept to the classic recipe as I like them that way! You don’t really even need to decorate them and they’re pretty quick and easy to make if you don’t. Plenty of other decorating to do at the moment! They go really well with a cup ofRead More →

Ginger, rum and lime cake with sunflowers in the background by Helen Green Photography

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With the late summer sunflowers blooming and the weather turning chilly, a warm, seductive ginger cake spiced up with rum and lime seemed just the thing. Then blow me down but the next day #GBBO comes on and the first challenge is exactly what I had made the day before! Must admit mine didn’t look quite as impressive as Rahul and co.’s though: I kept it simple and left it undecorated, so no icing and unfortunately no miniature gingerbread house! (wasn’t that stunning! Kim-Joy’s Pear and Ginger Cake ). I’m not sure what Paul and Prue would have said about it, hopefully not that itRead More →

Blackcurrant pie with a slice cut out and before the pastry lid has been placed on top

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In this lovely sunny weather, the fruit is ripening beautifully! Loganberries to top off my morning muesli, gooseberries plump and ready to be made into jam and deep dark blackcurrants calling out to have something created from them.  Actually, there are so many blackcurrants, I could make more than one thing with them. I’m going to start with a Blackcurrant and Lemon Verbena Pie, as you really can’t go wrong with a pie. Method for making Blackcurrant and Lemon Verbena Pie I slightly altered a recipe in the Guardian, Feast section, which was adapted from The Farmette Cookbook by Imen McDonnell. Handy tip: You needRead More →

Huge Wholemeal Hazelnut Shortbread in oblong tin by Helen Green Photography

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It would seem from looking at Twitter that every day is some sort of special day! And obviously I believe everything I read on Twitter (!) A couple of days ago it was #biscuitday, today it’s #nationalsmileday, so I thought I would combine the two by making some biscuits (actually one huge biscuit!) and eating them, which certainly made me smile. It’s actually a straightforward shortbread recipe, except that in a radical departure from the norm, I used wholemeal flour and I also threw in a few toasted hazelnuts for bit of a nutty crunch. It wasn’t just any wholemeal flour, either, it was freshlyRead More →

2 jars of homemade marmalade with snow in background helen green photography

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With the weather so bitingly cold and snowy, there’s nothing better than warming marmalade on toast (home-made too of course!) or a marmalade sandwich – a la Paddington Bear. I actually didn’t think I would ever say that, because marmalade has never been one of my favourite things, but somehow having made it myself it suddenly seems delicious and I am now trying to put it in everything! So watch out for more recipes involving marmalade! I’ve never made marmalade before, so when I saw that the bitter Seville oranges were in season and reduced, I thought I would give it a go. It reallyRead More →

peach cake with crumble topping

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It’s so nice to cook again! Having not had a kitchen for so long, being able to mooch around in the kitchen cooking unnecessary things feels such a luxury. So, I had thought about doing a healthy January type recipe, but then I quickly recovered and I found some lovely ripe fresh peaches that made me think of Summer, so I decided to make a tasty-sounding peachy cinnamon yeast-based cake that I found in Anne Shooter’s “Sesame & Spice” recipe book. Method for making Peach Cake: I pretty much followed the recipe as given in “Sesame & Spice”, which is available in all good bookshops.Read More →