This recipe has been adapted from the Primrose Bakery recipe. Whenever I’m donating cakes I use baking margarine to cut down on costs but you can replace this with butter if you prefer. I would always use butter for buttercream though. I decorated them with silver balls and dragees, partly because my husband hates them and I seem to be over run with them. They could just as easily be decorated with sugar spiders and used for Hallowe’en.
Leon Spitalfields
The quirky interior of Leon is a mix of industrial metal and worn wooden furniture. You can imagine these chairs were probably in a draughty Victorian church or a school until they were reborn here!
Waitrose Cookery School – Macaron Class
If you ever wanted to make perfect macarons this beginners macaron class at Waitrose cookery school is just the biscuit.
Cobnut Pesto Pasta – and autumn in Walthamstow Village
Today’s dish of pesto pasta salad can be served warm or cold, it is ideal for making in bulk at parties, indeed it is my usual savoury contribution to short notice gatherings. If you make it with jarred pesto and keep a vacuum pack of olives in the cupboard and toss in some frozen peas you can make it entirely with store cupboard ingredients.
Itsu Canary Wharf
Itsu is pricier than Yo! with the average price of dishes being £4-5 (mostly £5) compared to £2-5 it’s cheaper counterpart.
Ajvar Serbian Red Pepper Salsa
Ajvar can be hot or not, so add red chillis if you want spice and leave them out if you don’t. Ajvar can be used to top meat, cous cous or my particular favourite, to mix with scrambled eggs as a kind of piperade.
My dream kitchen
We were never under illusions that this was a fancy kitchen; the oven is the smallest cheapest built in model possible, the cupboards poorly planned and space wasted.
Visiting Tivat Montenegro
Two weeks ago I returned from a very wet week in Montenegro. Long term readers (although admittedly I only had about 30 subscribers then) may recall this is not the first of my holidays in Montenegro as I went there 12 months ago. Last year we had glorious sunshine and 30c temperatures in early October. […]
Halloween cookies recipe for trick or treat
Make these easy Halloween cookies with my basic vanilla cookie recipe. Decorate with a supermarket Halloween cookies decorating kit for fabulous results!
Halloween Bat Cupcakes with Terry’s Chocolate Orange Ears
I love this cake as you can mix all the batter in a double boiler adding all the ingredients to the melted butter and chocolate. I don’t have a dishwasher unless you count the one I’m married to, so anything that stops him complaining about mess is good by me.
Beef Quesadillas
My favourite use of tortilla wraps is the quesadilla. You can put anything in a quesadilla, it’s the Mexican answer to toasted sandwich much like Croque Monsieur is for the French.
Sweet and Scary Hallowe’en Goodies
Having grown up celebrating Hallowe’en with little more than apple bobbing in a bin bag, the explosion of this spooktastic celebration still takes some getting used to. Trick or treating appeared in my neighbourhood some time after The Goonies rather than E.T., like carol singing only with menaces passing without event just in time to […]
