This is one recipe that I will be making on a regular basis! The dough itself is very good. It’s a basic sweet dough, very easy to do and the texture is outstandingly good. I 100% recommend this recipe for the sweet dough and the filling is delightful.

The filling is simple but glorious! Roast 150g of whole almonds, then (once lightly golden), blend them in a food processor. In a bowl, cream 150g butter and 150g caster sugar together and once the ground almonds have cooled -which is pretty much straight away- mix this all together. In another bowl, whip 300ml double cream until there are soft peaks. Add a few tablespoons of cream to the almond mixture (to loosen it up), then add a quarter of the remaining cream and mix. This is very simple but it will blow your mind at how good it goes with the buns and cream!

I’ll warn you now, that they are very sweet! Delicious but sweet. However, the cream does make a difference because it softens the sweetness but doesn’t overpower the almonds. The dough is splendid because it is very airy and light and almost fluffy. You don’t feel bloated after these but you might feel sick after too many, so I would recommend only eating one or two.

Please email me if you would like the recipe and if you make them, tell me how they went 🙂


Last week I made floury baps, and they were incredible. They are basically rolls but they aren’t crunchy on the outside and they have a beautiful texture within.

We ate them with a full English breakfast and it was perfect. Truthfully, I didn’t know what to expect because I had never eaten them before but this will be a recipe that I will make again. I used the same recipe as the everyday bread (you just have to shape them differently) and then they cook for a shorter amount of time than the bread.

These are very easy and simple to make. However, you shouldn’t make them if you’re in a hurry because you need to constantly monitor them. If you know that tomorrow you will be busy,  then you can make the dough the night before and in the morning you’ll only need to shape it; allow it to rise for around 45 minutes and bake it for 20 minutes.

These floury baps could work with anything. Sweet or savoury, toast or bread, for breakfast, lunch or dinner. You could change the recipe to your liking (possibly) and add cinnamon, or sometimes I love adding cheese and chilli. Or just leave the actual baps plain but eat them with an exquisite topping.

This is one of the reasons I love baking. You can adapt the recipe to your liking; change out some ingredients and recreate you favourite desserts from restaurants. Literally, you can do anything! The other day, we went to our friends’ house for lunch and they asked us to bring a dessert. I made a mocha cream desert but instead of coffee, I switched it with half cinnamon and half ginger and oh my word it was very, very delicious!  Be creative. Don’t always bake the same cakes simply because you know how to make them. Switch up the cinnamon; use cardamom; or add an extreme spice like saffron. It could be weird or it might be heavenly but it won’t be the same

Yesterday I made honey madeleines and I had no idea what to expect! I have never had a madeleine and truthfully, I didn’t even know what one looked like (or tasted like) before yesterday.

The honey in them brings out a lovely flavour and the sweetness is delicious in the muffin. Firstly, I had to make brown butter and I had no idea what I was doing. The recipe said I had to keep stirring the butter until it turned a light brown colour and then immediately take it off the heat. In my saucepan, I saw little brown individual dots and I started to worry, but once I had done a little research on the internet, I saw some other pictures like that.

Now, I had never heard of brown butter before! I was pleasantly surprised! The brown butter adds a  lovely caramelized flavour to the madeleines and it smells divine! However, in the oven, the ends started to fold in and look a little unusual , and then once I had taken them out, they all had their middles sticking out because they weren’t in the traditional madeleine tin, instead they were in a muffin tin.

Overall, they turned out fabulously and I will definitely make them again 🙂

This week was very exciting because we were invited to a friend’s wedding and they asked my mum to bake them their wedding cake. I obviously asked to help and was very happy to be baking such a massive cake! In the summer, my eldest sister got married and my mum made their wedding cake and I helped with the icing.

Making a wedding cake adds a lot more pressure to your shoulders because everything has to be perfect. We made a three-tiered cake. Each tier had three layers and the flavours were a perfect combination. The first tier was chocolate; the second was banana and the third was coffee. Making the cakes was the easy part, but the icing ended up being a nightmare!

We followed a recipe called ‘The Italian Meringue Butter Cream’. This recipe is better than regular butter cream because it’s not as sweet. We made this butter cream before, for my sister’s wedding, but we made it at my grandpa’s house. Yolanda (the lady whose recipe this is) has an electric mixer, where there is no lid, so the air can come and cool the butter cream whilst mixing. However, we have a food processor and it won’t start mixing until the lid is fully on. This means that it takes longer for the air to cool it down! We obviously didn’t know this, and so we added the butter when it was still hot. I think it melted the butter, causing it to become runny instead of thickening up!

Temperature has a monstrous impact on the end result when baking. We found out that we had to allow the cream to completely cool before adding the butter. The second time round, we made sure it was fully cooled, added the butter and at the end, it looked just like in the picture. The cakes turned out amazingly! I was so grateful to be a part of this day and to make the main cake.

Custard is one of those recipes, that I don’t see much point in making from scratch! You need loads of time. You need lots of patience and you need to do everything perfectly, or it will be a disaster!

I made custard on Saturday and oh my goodness, it was a complete disaster! Honestly, my family said it wasn’t bad but in my opinion, it was the worst. It was all lumpy (probably from the corn flour or over-beating the eggs), too thick and just horrible. I made a crumble to go with it and (might I say) the crumble was 100 times better than the custard. I only made the crumble, so that my family and I didn’t have to eat pure, boring custard by itself; I’m glad I made that decision!

However, I decided to make it again today, hoping it would at least look presentable. It wasn’t so bad! I had to put it through the sieve but it was edible.

To me at least, custard is a difficult, hard and annoying thing to make. If the temperature is too high, then you’ll turn out with black, lumpy gooiness; but if the temperature is too low, you’ll be standing by that stove for hours. Also, you mustn’t to beat the egg yolks for long, because then they will split. However, the egg mixture won’t be fully combined (and  won’t have the right consistency) , if you beat it for too little time! You need to be precise with time and temperature.

If you’ve made custard and it turned out deliciously, please give me some tips on how to get that smoothness and shine.

Ingredients:                                                 

200 ml full-fat milk

2 large egg yolks

3 tablespoons caster sugar

2 teaspoons corn flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Pour the milk into a saucepan. In a bowl beat the sugar and egg yolks together for minimum 2 minutes. Add the corn flour and beat till all combined.

2. Once the milk is scalding, pour it in slowly to the egg mixture, whisking constantly.

3. Once all the milk has been combined, pour it back into the saucepan and keep on low temperature for 5-10 minutes, mixing constantly.

4. Do not beat this now, because you do not want to separate the egg yolks. Using a spatula or a spoon, create an eight shape, so the custard won’t burn.

5. The liquid should start to thicken, so stir constantly so you won’t get lumps.

6. Pour the ready-made custard in a jug, and serve immediately.            

It was really pleasurable baking something savory this week. For starters, I have never liked aubergine. Since I was little, my parents told me I had to eat what was put in front of me, whether that was at a friend’s house, or at home. I don’t like the texture of this vegetable, but I always eat it!

In this pie, the aubergine adds a lovely taste and it’s not the main flavour. Instead of Swiss Chard, we replaced it with spinach. The flavour combinations are very well thought out, because everything goes together very well. In the pie there is a layer of carrot and garlic puree, thinly sliced aubergine with a little olive oil and seasoning, fried onions with spices and spinach and then pastry all around the sides of the pie and on top of it. The pastry is always a challenge for me, because I’m always afraid that it will collapse, or once I have served it up, I realize that it isn’t all cooked through. We served this pie with some salad and roasted butternut squash and sweet potato.

 This recipe is really good for when you have guests round (like we did) or if you need something that will fill you up! This is easy, but you need to have time to make it. To make it easier, you could buy the pastry and just make the filling! If you would like the recipe, please email me. Enjoy!

This morning I attempted to make croissants and personally, I don’t think it went too well. I have made them once before (with my sister) but they tasted just  like one big lump of dough, all squished together.

I made the dough the night before and allowed it to rise in the fridge overnight. Once I had finished combining all the ingredients, the dough was sticky and very moist, when it should have been dry! In the morning I rolled out the butter, placing it on one half of the rolled out dough. I followed the instructions  but somewhere along the way something very bad happened, that caused the  finished product to have hardly any layers. After I rolled out the Danish pastry a couple of times, and allowed it to cool, I cut the pastry in triangles and rolled them up into their shape.

The recipe says it needs to rise between 1 hour 30 minutes – 2 hours, depending on the temperature of the room. I ended up leaving them to rise overnight (which is where I think I made a mistake)! Leaving them for such a long period made the outsides of the pre-baked croissants dry and firm. Once they were in the oven with their egg glaze, I popped them in the oven, really hoping they would rise like the pictures in the recipe book and on Pinterest .

They didn’t really rise at all! I rolled the pastry too thinly, so there wasn’t much dough start with and then I left them out to rise overnight, making their crusts harden! I just don’t know how bakers do it! What’s the trick? What’s the secret ingredient to have the perfect Danish pastry croissants? I would love to have more airiness in them and less chunks of dough next time.

Please let me know if you have made croissants and if you have any, what you’re tricks were. I would love to know how they turned out.

I love this recipe. However, next time I make this dessert, I don’t think I will add the whiskey, because (to me at least) the whiskey was a little bit too overpowering and it might taste a little better without. That being said, it was a really good and easy-ish pudding  to make.

I had a few problems. One of them, being that once I had poured the cheesecake mixture to the pre-baked base, it all stated to leak. I don’t know if it leaked because the tins were old or just that I didn’t put the bottom of the tin in correctly! I ended up using an oval pie dish (if that’s what you would call it), so there was no possible way for the mixture to leak. On top of that though, because I had already pre-baked the base and then because it was all leaking and I ended up changing the dish, I had to break up the nearly fully-baked base and place it into the new dish. The base didn’t harden like I would have wanted it to. Because of that, when I poured the batter into the dish, hoping it wouldn’t overflow, you could see some of the base in the liquid.

Nevertheless, what a great cheesecake! If you’re the kind of person who has no room what so ever in the fridge, this is perfect for you, because all you do is bake it in the oven. You only need around 30 minutes to clear up and mix all the ingredients  together, and then for 1 hour 30 minutes, you are free . Later, you just need to decorate with some raspberries and enjoy a slice of this goodness whilst relaxing!

The splendid mix of cinnamon, a little ginger and ground nutmeg = amazing!! I add cinnamon to everything: tea, cookies, hot chocolate, porridge etc. Literally, nothing can go wrong!

Today I added this mixed spice combination, and OH MY WORD, it was delicious. Every time I go to my grandpa’s house, whether that’s at 10 a.m.  or even at 3 a.m., he makes some tea and warms up some hot cross buns and we eat them in his living room!  These sweet dough buns taste very similar to those!  To make these you need lots of patience. You first need to make sure all the ingredients are well combined, then wait 15 minutes. After that, knead for 10-15 minutes and once that’s done, leave to rise for 1-2 hours. Later, bake for 20 minutes, and next clear up, allow to cool, lastly cut and add jam or butter, and then finally you can enjoy these scrumptious, cinnamon buns.

Always in my family, we take around 30 minutes -2 hours preparing a meal and then it only takes us around 10-15 minutes eating it! This recipe makes 12 buns. So, if you’re making them and you live alone, you’ll have plenty but if you’re baking for a 10 person group… good luck!

The trick is to not add flour when kneading! The flour is incorporated into the dough, making it heavier. If you want light-fluffy dough, then take your time kneading it. Baking without getting messy, to me at least, is not really baking. You need to have fun, get the cake batter or dough all over your hands. Get flour everywhere!

Basic sweet dough buns should be eaten, simply. Make sure you don’t overpower it, because that’ll remove the mixed spice flavor.  Simple, doesn’t always mean boring! These buns with butter are simple but delicious 🙂

Enjoy! Please give me a shout if you would like the recipe and I would love to hear about how your baking turned out and how you spiced-it up!

I like baking biscuits because they are easy, simple and quick! Everyone has at least one specific biscuit that is their favourite. I know, that sometimes there are  some biscuits, that are either rock hard, extremely chewy, falling apart everywhere and making a mess… many things can go wrong in the kitchen whilst making biscuits!

I love ginger. These are the perfect, easiest, but delicious ginger biscuits. They would be great for taking round for a party, after a simple meal, or a celebration. These biscuits have the perfect texture (hard on the outside and warm and soft in the middle) and  are just delicious! If you love ginger and love that after kick, make this recipe, because it will blow your mind. I managed to make the dough, allow it to chill, wash up and bake them all within 1 hour. These ginger biscuits are very quick, and you don’t need massive equipment. Therefore, these are really simple.

Makes 28-32

250g plain flour

125g unsalted butter

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

200g caster or granulated sugar

1 large egg

5 teaspoons ground ginger        

100g black treacle

1. In a bowl, rub the butter with the flour.                               

2. Add ginger, bicarbonate of soda and sugar to the bowl.

3. Whisk egg and treacle, then add to the dry ingredients.

4. Use the back of a fork to combine these ingredients together.

5. Place the bowl of dough in the fridge for 30 minutes.

6. Once chilled, place balls of dough on a lined baking tray and bake for 15 – 17 minutes at 180 degrees C/fan 160 degrees C/ gas mark 4.

7. With the leftover dough, place in the fridge, whilst waiting for the free baking trays. Allow to cool and there you have some easy, quick and delicious ginger biscuits.

This might sound really gross, but the sweet-spicy biscuits with the kick at the end is beautiful with some cheese. Any cheese you want (probably not blue cheese) like cheddar, Wensleydale with Cranberries, Red Leicester. Enjoy 🙂