Green Tea, Honey & Pistachio Financiers

Sweet, soft & full of interesting flavours

‘Every time I’m forced to watch [my friends] eat egg whites, I feel bad for them. In the first place, egg-white omelettes are tasteless. In the second place, the people who eat them think they are doing something virtuous when they are instead merely misinformed’.

My attitude to egg white-only omelettes is pretty much in line with the Nora Ephron quote above. After a major custard or ice cream making spree, I’ve occasionally attempted to scale the mountain of leftover albumen by making an anaemic omelette, but I’m almost always disappointed by the odd consistency and insipid flavour which result.

Coffee Ice Cream Profiteroles with Hot Chocolate Caramel

Coffee ice cream, crisp choux pastry & hot chocolate caramel

Coffee ice cream will always make me think of the Caribbean.

I’m aware of how horribly pretentious that sounds, but bear with me. I’m pretty sure there’s a blog-worthy story hidden somewhere within that statement.

When I was about eleven, my parents took us on holiday to the Cayman Islands. My Dad spent part of his childhood living in Jamaica and still has some family on the islands. This holiday was the perfect opportunity to introduce us to a few distant relatives, as well as a wonderful excuse for a serious dose of sun, sea and sand.

Naturally Sweetened Sesame Tahini Granola

Naturally sweetened granola made with apple juice & tahini

On 31st March 1979, my parents got married. One year later they returned home from work, tired and late, to discover a small pile of envelopes inside the front door. It was their first year anniversary and, while a few friends and family had posted little notes and celebratory letters, the pair of them had completely forgotten.

Until today, I thought this was unlikely to ever happen to me. I’m organised and I’m excitable, two traits which mean that when it comes to birthdays, anniversaries and celebrations, I’m always in there early. You know the girl who complains that her boyfriend completely forgot her birthday/Valentine’s Day/insert any other day designed to make our men look bad? Not me. I’m the one reminding him at least three weeks in advance then gleefully (and noisily) counting down to the celebrations day by day.

Caramelized White Chocolate Brownies

Squidgy chocolate brownies packed with caramelized white chocolate

The simple magic of an oven will never cease to amaze me.

Subjected to its heat, pudgy rounds of dough become crusty loaves, liquid batter rises into golden-crowned cakes, pastry puffs, biscuits bake and incredible aromas escape around the edges of its door.

Normally baking requires some sort of skill, an understanding of the alchemy of ingredients and an ability to weigh, whisk, beat and blend. Butter, sugar and flour are combined, flavours and textures far greater than the sum of their parts created. Whether an amateur cook or a professional chef, it’s satisfying to know that baking is both a science and an art.

Double Chocolate Cookie Ice Cream

Rich milk chocolate ice cream with chewy chocolate cookie chunks

Food bloggers – in fact most people in the food world in general – tend towards exaggeration.

Every day we’re presented with the smoothest, creamiest ice cream, the crumbliest bars, unbeatable cookies and incredible bread, each recipe a must-make, a life-changer and better than anything that’s ever been eaten before.

Maple Walnut Banana Bread with Crunchy Cocoa Nibs

Banana bread with peanut butter is pretty hard to beat

It always makes me a little bit sad to read interviews where chefs explain that they can go days without eating a proper meal. I suppose it comes with the territory of working such strange hours and constantly tasting, testing and tweaking, but it does seem a shame to be surrounded by so much wonderful food and not have the opportunity to sit down and properly enjoy it.

In between school and university I spent six months abroad, working as a waitress beforehand to save money for my trip. Sixty-odd hour weeks and lots of late night shifts meant complete disruption of my body clock, compounded by the fact that the restaurant I worked in refused to serve their staff proper meals in between shifts (a practice completely counter-intuitive unless you want your waitresses wandering round ravenously eyeing up plates of food as they emerge from the kitchen).

Chunky Homemade Granola

Chunky homemade granola

Happy Valentine’s Day!

All around the world, in every corner of the internet, people are posting or googling recipes for things like chocolate fondants and profiteroles, planning in what they will eat with their other half this evening and exactly what it is that constitutes the ultimate romantic dessert.

So today I’m bringing you breakfast in the form of my favourite chunky granola . . .

Malteser Macarons

Malty macarons filled with milk chocolate ganache & chopped maltesers

There’s such a simple, primal pleasure that comes from playing with food or eating it with your fingers.

Most of the time (in the Western world at least, perhaps discounting fast food and TV dinners)we need a knife and fork, eat from a plate and at a dinner table, restricted either by the type of food or our understanding of what is acceptable in a social situation.

Squidgy Chocolate & Pistachio Squares

Squidgy little squares of nutty chocolate goodness

Before the age of about fifteen, I don’t think I’d ever made buttercream icing.

I’d eaten it, of course, at friends’ houses and birthday parties, spread over simple sponge cakes and smothered between the rounds of the ubiquitous caterpillar cake (one made an appearance at a 28th birthday we recently  attended, clearly caterpillar cake will never go out of fashion in some circles), but I’m pretty sure I’d never actually made my own buttercream at home.

Squid Ink Tagliatelle

A tangle of inky black tagliatelle

The first rule of getting married is: don’t talk about getting married.

Ok, I’ll rephrase. Do talk about it to a select few people, suppliers for example, without whom the big day is pretty unlikely to even happen at all. Talk about it with enthusiastic friends and family, people you’ve not seen in a while or as a subject to fill that awkward moment when you’re stuck somewhere like a lift with a stranger and need to make small talk. But don’t talk about getting married to excess.