When we go on holiday to France, there are always so many beautiful fields filled with poppies and wild flowers, nestled in amongst the vineyards. Imagine our delight that similar fields of poppies are now appearing close to our village. They just take your breath away with their sea of red bobbing heads swaying in the wind.

On my recent trip to Austria, I discovered pumpkin seed oil. It has a delicious nutty flavour and is perfect drizzled on pumpkin soup topped with a few toasted pumpkin seeds. It is also lovely as a base for pesto, replacing traditional olive oil, blended together with basil, parsley, lemon juice and zest, some pumpkin seeds for crunch, a garlic clove and of course a good few spoonfuls of parmesan. So if you see some pumpkin seed oil, why not give it a try!

The weekend saw our village fete! As we are a fairly small village it was held jointly with two other adjoining villages. Perfect weather, lots of lovely stalls and a candy floss machine - yum yum! I was put in charge of manning the cake stall (what a surprise) with lovely Jane where we dutifully sold cupcakes, cakes, flapjacks and punnets of fresh redcurrants for two hours until everything was gone - allowing us to pack up our stall early - what a result! My new enormous cake stand made its first appearance and I thought it looked lovely adorned with pretty cupcakes! The cherry cupcakes were my favourite - with their fizzy cherry decorations - closely followed by the yellow bee cupcakes! We left exhausted but happy and had raised lots of money for a good cause.

PS - sorry for the lack of posts - my internet has decided not to work properly this week : o ( and just won't upload photos...

I was busy clearing out one of our bedrooms last night (finally putting the Christmas decorations in the loft - shocking I know as it is now July!) and I spotted some unusual birds on the river bank in our garden. This is the latest area we are working on in the garden and it has been stripped and cleared ready for us to decide what to put there. I quickly got my camera and discovered that it was a family of 3 owls. They were all hopping round a hole that had cheeping coming from it so I think they might have some babies - although I wonder whether owls actually nest in the ground (hopefully one of you is an avid birdwatcher and will know the answer) or perhaps the fluffy owl is actually the chick. Anyway - it was a very special treat to see three of them together and I thought I would share it with you. If anyone knows what sort of Owls these are I would love to know - they look a little like a Barred Owl when I search on Google.

On Sunday we celebrated my Mum's birthday and had a lovely lunch at Flitwick Manor. My brother was visiting from New York which made the day perfect (I am biased as he bought me a giant parcel of cake decorations from Fancy Flours and Alice in Wonderland Hats for our tea party). My Mum has recently been diagnosed with diabetes and therefore told me that she absolutely didn't want a cake. Of course I completely disregarded this, but was cunning and made her a flower "cake" on oasis! Not an ounce of sugar, butter or flour in sight but just as much fun as a real cake. I think it took me longer to decorate this that it would have to ice a cake and the cake ended up being far bigger than I expected. I love the picture of Gareth carrying it over to my Mum - it looks ENORMOUS!!!!! My little birthday candles had to be replaced with dinner table candles so that they looked in proportion. Happy Birthday Mum xxx

Friday's trip to the Manoir Aux Quat' Saisons was a delectable affair. Such an amazing setting - the lovely manor house nestled in amongst abundant lavender and a walled vegetable garden that supplied the restaurant. We feasted on seared tuna with melon and vodka soup, roasted pork with crackling, summer vegetable risotto and the most heavenly chocolate and raspberry dessert - quite the nicest thing I have eaten in a long time and imagine my excitement when the dish arrived at the table and there was a gilded raspberry as decoration - just like the ones I made at the photoshoot for my book! Either Raymond Blanc is a follower of this blog (unlikely) or great minds think alike!!!! Anyway if it is good enough for "Le Manoir" it is definitely good enough for me! Thank you Paula for a wonderful day out xxx

I have been invited today by my friend Paula for lunch at the Manoir aux Quat' Saisons to celebrate her birthday - we are off shortly to meet a Champagne filled limosine to take us there. What a treat! As it is a special birthday - I wanted to take Paula a nice present. I always prefer to give a homemade gift on the basis that they require love and time being put into them, so this is the sampler I have made for Paula. I have charted a new poem for the sampler "In friendship's freagrant garden, there are flowers of every hue, each with its own fair beauty, bringing love and joy to you" as I thought these words fitted well with the garden and Paula is a garden designer! I also recorded our special lunch venue at the bottom of the sampler! I hope she likes it. I am working on another sampler at the moment and thought that I would show it to you in this stitching post - a red barn garden sampler from Just Nan. Although it is a long way from finished - I just love the colours and little birds and butterflies. It is progressing well as I am stitching it whilst watching Wimbledon - come on Andy Murray!

I was not expecting anything in the post yesterday. A large brown envelope arrived from London and I opened thinking it was the proof reading for the Sundae book. However inside lay an even nicer surprise - the advanced copy of my cake book! Seeing all the recipes together in an actual book brought memories of all the hard work flooding back and I shed a few tears of happiness at the achievement in my hands! You will have to wait a few months yet before it goes on sale but I thought you might like a sneak preview of Gregg Wallace's lovely foreword and my acknowledgments as you readers get a mention! Click on the photos to enlarge! There are a few more pages of the book on Duncan Baird's website - click here for a link.

You will recall the birdcage cake that travelled the monumental journey from Bedfordshire to Carslile in May. A few of you asked whether it made it there in one piece and I am pleased to report it did. Here is the lovely message I received from Lucy's Mum...

"I jennifer, was the recipient of the delicate expression of art displayed in the creation of my 60th birthday cake which traveled to Carlisle held by my daughter Lucy. The cake itself was delightful and melted in the mouth.The decoration of white and delicate pink lovebirds displayed a serene beauty ,which motivated compliments to flow in abundance,as it sat at a focal point during the celebrations. The birdcage,in the centre of the cake, which contained two birds appearing relaxed and peaceful which I hope is a symbol of what my future holds. Thankyou Hannah for the love,patience and care you created it with.
Jennifer"

Nectarine and Vanilla Jam

Makes 2 small jars

400g/14oz ripe nectarines, chopped and stones removed

400g/14oz preserving sugar

1 vanilla pod, split lengthways

Juice of 1 lemon

2 tsp butter

Place the chopped nectarines, sugar, vanilla pod and lemon juice in a saucepan with 200ml of water and simmer until the fruit is soft. Pulp the fruit using a metal hand blender or a masher and then bring to the boil. Boil the jam until setting point is reached and the jam is thick and syrupy, stirring to ensure it does not burn. To test for set, either use a jam thermometer or place a saucer in the freezer to chill and then drop a little jam onto it and leave to cool for a few minutes. If a film forms forms and the jam wrinkles when you press with your finger, the setting point has been reached. Add the butter to the pan and stir until melted, then decant the jam into sterilised jars, seal and store in a cool dark place. The jam will keep for about one year but once opened, must be store in the refrigerator and used within a month.

The lovely people at Abel and Cole (website here) have sent me one of their organic fruit and veg boxes to try. It arrived yesterday morning and was perfectly timed as I needed to write an article and hadn't been to the supermarket. The joys of home delivery shopping is definitely something I could get used to this. Gem lettuce, lovely cabbage, apples, fresh broad beans in the pods, a tiny melon, nectarines - so what to cook....I settled on some nectarine and vanilla jam and if I say so myself, it is rather yummy. We had it for supper last night with soda bread. Thank you Abel and Cole for the wonderful treat.

Last night I was searching through the files of photos on my computer with a friend as she wanted a picture of her children for a father's day card. We stumbled across the sample pictures of the cakes and cookies from the book and boy there were soooo many of them - 365 to be precise! It is easy to forget how much work went into that book. We then found this photo and it made us both laugh out loud so I thought I would share it with you. This was a weekend when I had made so many cakes that we ran out of homes for them and so the chickens had the biggest treat of their lives! I promise they do not eat like this all the time!

At the risk of demonstrating that I am a "one trick pony" this is the cake I made yesterday for friend's little girl Rosie who was three. The garden cake made a second appearance but this time as a round rather than ring cake, topped with a unicorn, transforming it into a magical meadow cake! I am sure that this shows the versitility of the cake, rather than demonstrating that I was being lazy and using up the sweets from the last garden cake!!!! Anyway Rosie loved it and it looked perfect for a whole 5 minutes while she blew out the candles and then almost all of the sweets and most of the icing were gobbled! Happy Birthday Rosie-Pea xxxx

An early morning (6.30am) visitor to our garden this morning. How I wish I had been more awake and focussed the camera properly but I thought I would share with you anyway! It was a lovely start to the day!

A nice little article appeared in Woman magazine last week about female Masterchef finalists - Emily, Caroline and myself as part of the lead up to Celebrity Masterchef (are you watching?) If you click on the photo you will be able to read the article. I am not convinced that I said Tony Blair wasn't "too fussed" but hey ho!

You will have to forgive the lack of posts at the end of last week - lawyering got in the way of nice cooking things. I finished work at 11pm on Friday and then had to ice three cakes ready for Saturday. Needless to say, they were very rushed as I was tired but everyone seemed happy with them - a christening cake for George, a tractor cake for Niall (the tractor is a bit small for the field and the enormous carrots in my view but Niall is 4 and didn't mind and at midnight I really didn't have anywhere to magic a larger tractor up from!) and a chocolate extravaganza cake for our nephew who was 13. The idea for the chocolate cake came from Rachel Lucas who reads this blog - thank you so much Rachel for the inspiration! The bottom layer was a ring cake so there was a hidden cavity of sweets and lollipops when the cake was cut and the kids were very excited about that (although you would have thought that with the huge number of sweets on the cake they wouldn't have needed any more)!

Kathy Brown came to visit last week to plan our Alice in Wonderland Afternoon Tea (we have sold 46 tickets already which means lots of baking!!!!) and given our shared passion for cooking with flowers, I tried some new floral recipes on her! Lavender lemonade and lavender and lemon curd cookies. Both were yummy and got a seal of approval.

Lavender Lemonade
1 - 2 tsp culinary lavender (pesticide free)
6 lemons
3 heaped tbsp caster sugar

Peel thick strips of zest from three of the lemons, ensuring that there is no white pith as this will make the lemonade bitter. Place in a heatproof jug with the juice from all of the lemons, the caster sugar and lavender. Pour over 500ml boiling water, stir and leave to cool. Taste for sweetness and add a little more sugar if needed. When cooled, top up with ice and cold water (or sparkling or soda water if you prefer) to serve. The lavender gives the lemonade a really delicate floral flavour and is a pretty pale pink colour - perfect for a summers day (although where summer has gone this week, I have no idea!)

In contrast to the wedding cake which took a few hours to decorate, this was a very quick birthday cake and cupcakes that I decorated in 15 minutes yesterday (the fact that I had overslept had something to do with the speed!) With some green butter cream rapidly piped over the top and the left over decorations from the wedding cake, my ordinary toffee sponge was transformed into a garden! It goes to show that even if you don't have much time, you can still create something quite pretty! With the cupcakes baked in my new American pink cake wrappers and the little ladybirds from a shop in Vienna - these cupcakes are very "International!"

This is a wedding cake I made today for Paul and Jenny. It was a little traumatic to say the least transporting it on my lap in the car but we made there with the cake in one piece! I didn't even need the emergency decoration icing kit I took with me. You can click on the picture to see the cake in more detail. Congratulations Jenny and Paul - hope your day was extra special xxx

I am not a horsey person - I find large horses quite intimidating - but even I was won over by the wonderful Lipizzaner Stallions at the Spanish riding school. They were so beautiful and elegant. The riders rode without stirrups during the jumps - I honestly don't know how they were able to hold on! Their stables were the ultimate in luxury - an elegant arched courtyard - and the indoor area was worthy of being the grandest of ballrooms! Lucky horses!

I am just back from a wonderful long weekend in Vienna. My lovely German friend Maren had organised the trip and we rendezvous'd at Vienna airport. With a visit to the ballet Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Opera House, a performance by the Spanish Riding School, a ride in a pony and trap around the town and a Mozart concert, it was certainly a whirlwind packed weekend. However the main purpose of the trip with was sample all the wonderful Austrian cakes. My favourite bakery (and there are literally hundreds to choose from) was Demel - the confectionners for the Royal household - founded in 1786. The shop and cafe was steeped in baking history, with vintage cake tins and moulds. We loved it so much that we managed 4 visits in 48 hours - impressive even by my standards!! If you go, take a seat in the cafe at the back of the shop as you can sit and watch the bakers working through the large glass windows. These are some of their wonderful cakes - my favourite was the GIANT pistachio macaroon. How yummy would that be to eat! Their sugar decorations were impressive too and we loved the sugar Eiffel Tower with tennis ball made to celebrate this weeks tournament at Roland Garros.

I am envious of anyone who lives in America! Cake decorating supplies there seem to be at a level way beyond what we have here in the UK. With cake decorating, I often find that all you need is the perfect decoration to transform a very plain cake into something very special. I have recently discovered Fancy Flours website and their products are just STUNNING (I am not on commission honest but this is just the nicest cake decorating website I have seen in a long time). Postage to the UK is a lot but luckily with my brother in New York I was able to send the items to him to forward on to me. My parcel arrived the other day and these were just a few of the delights - Rainbow candies, Edible coloured paper seed packets and birthdays cakes, cupcake wrappers (I just love this idea!!!). Everything wrapped in lovely brown and white stripy tissue paper! So nice. I also took delivery of edible clear gel that can be used to decorate the wafer paper pictures with edible glitter to give a 3-D effect. I can't wait to try these all out soon! Since placing my order the site now has Barley Sugar birds - so I am just itching to place another order - it is a good job my brother is coming to the UK soon!

These are some little cakes I made at the weekend for a friend's party - chocolate cupcakes, cherry and almond cupcakes with sugar butterflies, cherry and cinnamon viennese whirls, coffee mocha meringues and rose meringues. I thought they looked quite pretty with the variety of colours on the tray and they all disappeared fast!

Sometimes it is the simplest of dishes, that take no time at all to prepare, that are the best. This weekend I served frozen Greek yoghurt (500g of yoghurt whisked with 250ml of milk and simply churned in an ice cream machine) in cocktail glasses topped with orange blossom honey and nuts. It was a perfect end to our BBQ supper and looked very elegant in the glasses. As there is no sugar or sweetness in the yoghurt, you do need the honey on top! If you don't have an ice cream machine, place the yoghurt in a tub and freeze in the freezer, remove every 30 minutes or so and whisk with a whisk to add air. Repeat this until the mixture is completely frozen.

A sneak preview of my favourite sundae in the book - the combination of creamy panne cotte, ice cold sorbet and the crackle and pop of the popping candy makes me smile! I had fun guilding some raspberries with gold leaf for decoration and fell in love with the gold spoons and glasses with gold beading that Steve had managed to find! Kate's photos are obviously so much better than mine and the above picture really doesn't do the sundaes justice but it should give a hint at the wonderful styling the team are doing! I hope you like it !

I can safely say that today has been one of the nicest days EVER! I went to Shepherd's Bush for the photo shoot for the sundae book. Kate, Steve, Sunil and Aya have created just the most beautiful pictures and the book looks better than I could ever have imagined! I thought I would share with your these fun pictures from the day - the book has a very retro 1950's feel! We had great fun with the mannequin which ended up needing a little "padding" and a petticoat to make the skirt hang perfectly! Who would have thought a mannequin at a cook book shoot! But the end picture was stunning. Thanks Kate, Steve, Sunil and Aya for such a lovely day.

Props from the Sundae shoot - so nice that I could have taken them all home with me!

This is the cake I have made this evening - a buttermilk sponge with wild strawberry jam, all sugar pink with tiny birds and trailing ribbons. It is for a special 60th Birthday celebration for my friend Lucy's Mum. Somehow she is going to transport it all the way on the train tomorrow from Bedfordshire to Carlisle! I think that will be the furthest one of my cakes has ever travelled! Happy Birthday Lucy's Mum xxx I do hope she likes it! Off to London tomorrow for the photoshoot for the Sundae book. I can't believe that this book is almost finished now and am really looking forward to meeting Steve and Sunil who are transforming my recipes into pictures! Will post a few sneak preview pics on my return if I am allowed!!!

There are times when even though I should be cross with Peapod our kitten, she just makes my heart melt. Today she had pulled flowers out of the arrangement I did for a supper party last night. I should have been cross but she looked so cute playing with a tulip that I just forgave her instantly! She has also discovered that lying in front of the Aga is a good place to be as the stone floor is warm! Could she look any more at home I wonder?

I am sure after the afternoon tea extravaganza at Kathy Brown's garden in Stevington last year we both said "Never again!". After the RHS flower show, we said "Never again!" Somehow we have forgotten this and are busy planning a wonderful event for August - A Mad Hatters Tea Party - Kathy has even ordered some Mad Hatter hats from America! With "Eat Me" cakes and "Drink Me" lemonade - I am having a delightful time dreaming up our menu. Playing card biscuits with stained glass hearts and diamonds, popping candy cakes and possibly the little seeding cakes from yesterday - with their edible mud! So what would you serve for a Mad Hatters Tea Party? All suggestions gratefully received! Details of the event will appear here on Kathy's Website at some time soon I am sure - perhaps we will see one or two of you there!!