Bacon In the Oven

I love streaky bacon. I don’t particularly love cleaning up the mess on the cooker afterwards though. But there is an easy, mess-free way to do this. Pop your streaky bacon on a foil-lined baking sheet, and you’ll find that this same bacon hardly shoots a drop of fat anywhere. Yes, it will sizzle and…

Heston’s Perfect Roasted Potatoes

How-To-Make Perfect Roasted Potatoes Heston’s secret is two-fold: 1. Use fluffy roasting or baking potatoes. Red skin ones are best, and a large size so you cut them into to equal size chunks. Small ones won’t work well because you need three flat sides. If they’re too small, you’ll only have one flat side because…

How To Make a Starter and Sourdough Bread

SOURDOUGH STARTER AND SOURDOUGH BREAD After the kitchen renovation, and long months without any refrigeration or power, I was certain that Sedrick-the-Sourdough-Starter was gummy history. I couldn’t interest him in anything; nothing brought a rise out of the boy. I couldn’t stand the idea of chucking him out though, so I stuck a bit of…

Brydie’s Apple Spelt Cake

This is Brydie’s Spelt Apple Cake recipe, which I’ve slightly tweaked so my husband can eat a small slice from time to time. It’s lovely cake that just shouts autumn – it’s dense and moist, and scented with everything I associate with this time of year. Tweaks: I’ve reduced the cinnamon, which Mr Misky detests,…

International Scone Week

It’s International Scone Week, and here’s my favourite scone recipe.

English Muffin Bread

RANDOM RECIPE CHALLENGE 14: English Muffin Bread This is my first post for the Belleau Kitchen Random Recipe Challenge, and after counting out 12 cookery books, I started again at the beginning and continued counting another 5. Most of my cookery books are packed away; I only keep my favourite and most useful ones within…

Dan Lepard’s Superwraps

Short and Tweet Baking Challenge: Superwraps I’ve seen the word “quinoa” before but never realised that this week’s baking challenge would be a lesson in pronunciation. It’s not kwin-oha, which is how I’ve always pronounced it. It’s “keen-wah”. I carefully sounded it out several times in my head, hoping it would stick. It didn’t. I…

How To: Easily Measure Pastry Thickness

I’m new to baking, so this tip might be well known to everyone – in which case, apologies. I just discovered it the other day. A British Pound coin is 3mm thick. Two of them stacked measures 6mm. If you’re making a thin pastry or dough, its thickness is often stated as 3mm (millimetres), or…