Making hot cross buns is a lovely way to spend an afternoon. These are well-behaved, with an easy dough, quick rise and simple but very effective glaze. My recipe has 200g apricots and 200g marzipan for 300g flour, plus classic hot cross bun spices, vanilla and almond extract. They are absolutely bursting with flavour, which is exactly what I want from a hot cross bun. These are at their best warmed through (if not still warm from baking) and topped with apricot jam. I also love a hot cross bun toasted with salted butter but you may need to slice these into 3 to fit them in your toaster. T ..read more

Sometimes I bake to recreate something wonderful (especially when I can’t get it again). Other times, a food disappointment can set me off trying to right the food wrong.  This time, it’s the latter. I was on holiday on the south coast of England earlier in the summer. My sister and I bought some fudge from one of the few shops that was open. We were excited to dive in, only to find it to be a very sad approximation to real fudge. Bars of sea salt fudge, clotted cream fudge and rum & raisin fudge, all as tasteless as each other … I’m even more cross about it, thinking back now, than I ..read more

I have been making fudge all summer. Watch this space for more about what set me off and my favourite recipe for traditional fudge. In the meantime, I wanted to get this recipe for easy chocolate fudge out into the world ASAP. It’s the result of my quest for a good cheat’s fudge. I imagined myself back on a self-catering holiday by the sea, wanting to be able to rustle up a treat, when the local offering was not what it should be. It needed to be quite quick to make and not require any fancy equipment. It would avoid a saucepan of boiling hot sugar when there are little children inevitably ru ..read more

One of the very first recipes I published here was for a chocolate cake. The result was wonderful but the method was a bit complicated. A couple of good friends tried the recipe themselves and told me they had accidentally left out ingredients or forgotten a step. I made a mental note to see whether I could improve it when I had the opportunity. The opportunity presented itself last Sunday night when I needed to quickly whip up a chocolate cake for my daughter to take into school. We had arrived home late after a long car journey back from visiting family and I was desperate to get into bed as ..read more

The internet is amazing. Instead of trying to imagine which recipes would bring maximum baking happiness, I can actually find out what people want (or at least what they type into a search engine!) Last month, a number of people came to my website after they looked up ‘golden syrup scones’. When I discovered this, I was worried as I knew the recipe they would find is actually for ginger scones. (I had written about a wonderful food memory of ordering ginger scones served with clotted cream and golden syrup in an old-fashioned Devon tearoom many years ago.) I highly recommend splitting the scon ..read more

Butterfly cakes always take me on a trip down memory lane. A close relative of fairy cakes, they were also a staple of children’s birthday parties and a very early experience of baking. These simple little butterfly cakes can be made with children as no skill is required to make very effective ‘butterflies’. However, they can also be decorated with finesse: fit to grace any grown-up event. The following is a step-by-step guide to the basic method to get you started. Making butterfly cakes First, bake a batch of fairy cakes (you can find the recipe here) and leave them to cool completely. Usin ..read more

Fairy cakes are where it all began, for me, at least. They were probably the first thing I ever made – we made them at the playgroup I used to go to, at Brownies, at home and in Home Economics classes at school. No children’s birthday party or fete was complete without them. The magic of combining basic ingredients into sweet, golden, miniature sponge cakes has never worn off. They are the perfect thing to start with if you want to take the plunge into baking. And then there’s the fun of icing and decorating before demolishing them. During the cupcake craze of 10 years ago, I felt quite prot ..read more

The internet is amazing. Instead of trying to imagine which recipes would bring maximum baking happiness, I can actually find out what people want (or at least what they type into a search engine!) Last month, a number of people came to my website after they looked up ‘golden syrup scones’. When I discovered this, I was worried as I knew the recipe they would find is actually for ginger scones. (I had written about a wonderful food memory of ordering ginger scones served with clotted cream and golden syrup in an old-fashioned Devon tearoom many years ago.) I felt I needed to right this wrong b ..read more

Butterfly cakes always take me on a trip down memory lane. A close relative of fairy cakes, they were also a staple of children’s birthday parties and a very early experience of baking. These simple little butterfly cakes can be made with children as no skill is required to make very effective ‘butterflies’. However, they can also be decorated with finesse: fit to grace any grown-up event. The following is a step-by-step guide to the basic method to get you started. Making butterfly cakes First, bake a batch of fairy cakes (you can find the recipe here) and leave them to cool completely. Usin ..read more

Fairy cakes are where it all began, for me, at least. They were probably the first thing I ever made – we made them at the playgroup I used to go to, at Brownies, at home and in Home Economics classes at school. No children’s birthday party or fete was complete without them. The magic of combining basic ingredients into sweet, golden, miniature sponge cakes has never worn off. They are the perfect thing to start with if you want to take the plunge into baking. And then there’s the fun of icing and decorating before demolishing them. During the cupcake craze of 10 years ago, I felt quite prot ..read more