My favourite meal of the year is Good Friday Tea. Homemade, fresh from the oven, hot cross buns. Dripping with butter, or layered with homemade jam (usually damson). There is nothing tastier. I don’t often make hot cross buns because of M and not liking curranty things (also because they’re a once-a-year sort of thing… Continue reading Cooking with Mrs Crocombe: Saffron Buns
Category: Kitchen
Recipes
Easter Baking: Crème Egg Brownies
I’m not actually much of a fan of crème eggs. Too sickly sweet, I find. But a few weeks ago I was really wanting some brownies and I thought it’d be fun to have a go at crème egg brownies. Unfortunately, Mrs Crocombe doesn’t have a recipe for brownies, so I had to resort to… Continue reading Easter Baking: Crème Egg Brownies
Cooking with Mrs Crocombe: Victoria Sandwich
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s this: Always Start Simple. With this in mind, the first recipe I thought to try from Mrs Crocombe’s recipe book was for her Victoria sponge. It’s the sort of cake for which I’ve several recipes, and I have all the ingredients already in the cupboard… Continue reading Cooking with Mrs Crocombe: Victoria Sandwich
Cooking With Mrs Crocombe
During the first lockdown last spring, one of the things that I found to help me through it was English Heritage’s Mrs Crocombe videos on YouTube. If you haven’t already discovered Mrs Crocombe, she was the cook at Audley End House in the late Victorian period, and English Heritage has a series called The Victorian… Continue reading Cooking With Mrs Crocombe
(Almost) According to Mrs Crocombe: Gingerbread Cake
After Delia’s Jamaican Gingerbread, I was going to make Mrs Crocombe’s gingerbread biscuits. But the recipe calls for a quarter of an egg, and I can’t, at this present, think what to do with the remaining three-quarters, so I’m putting that off until I can. Instead, I turned to her gingerbread cake, with adaptations. The… Continue reading (Almost) According to Mrs Crocombe: Gingerbread Cake
Festive Cheesecake Experiments: Spiced Orange and Cranberry
The thing with Christmas, for me and M, is that traditional Christmas cakes and puddings are out, because M doesn’t like them. Fair enough, not everyone does. I do, the Christmas cake anyway, so I stick to a little one, but I like the chocolate chip panettones that we get as an alternative as well.… Continue reading Festive Cheesecake Experiments: Spiced Orange and Cranberry
(Almost) According to Delia: Dark Jamaican Gingerbread
Gingerbread is a very wintry sort of cake. There will probably be several more ginger recipes in the coming weeks. Also, I really like gingerbread. This one is very suited to an afternoon tea. It’s a very dense sort of loaf, best served with butter. Or maybe chocolate spread or a jam, if that takes… Continue reading (Almost) According to Delia: Dark Jamaican Gingerbread
Christmas Baking: Pepparkakor
Now that we’re over half-way through November, I feel like I can step up my Christmas preparations. Not the Christmas crafting – that’s all long been underway – but the other preparations. The choosing of festive foods that don’t require ordering. Getting a Christmas tree (although that probably won’t be for another week or so).… Continue reading Christmas Baking: Pepparkakor
Life in Isolation: Thinking About Christmas and Raspberry Cakes
I had planned, this weekend, to make a Christmas cake. They’re best made early, to mature. But, given the current Covid-situation, I’ve decided to work on the basis that we probably won’t go home for Christmas. It seems safest to plan for that since we’re in a Tier 2 area. That way Christmas plans won’t… Continue reading Life in Isolation: Thinking About Christmas and Raspberry Cakes
Autumn Apple Crumble
This time of year is apple-picking, cider-making season, for fruit just off the trees, and apples don't get tastier than that. At no other time of the year, do apples taste as good as they do from the end of August to the middle of October. It's also the time of year when that wonderful… Continue reading Autumn Apple Crumble