Sometimes it is hard to blog when you are feeling sad and you may have noticed that my posting has been rather remiss over the last week or so. My beloved Grandma passed away the weekend before last and we all miss her very much. I hadn't wanted to write about it for fear of making everyone sad, but, having had time to reflect, I have so much to be grateful to my Grandma for that it feels wrong to not mention her as she was such a big influence on my life.

When I was on Masterchef, my Grandma was sooooo proud and told everyone that she had taught me everything I know. Now although I am not sure that my Mum would agree with this (as she taught me everything I know), I certainly learnt a lot of cooking tips from my Grandma and thought that I would share a few of these with you now:
1. When you have cooked bacon, drain the fat into a tupperware box and store in the fridge. Cook scrambled eggs in a spoonful of this fat for the most delicious eggs ever.
2. Simmer peeled whole onions for 10 minutes and then add to your roasting tin with your roast. After an hour they have a delicious caramel flavour.
3. Grandma's Christmas pudding recipe is the best I know but I am of course biased - the recipe is here on an earlier post. I know that when we stir it and make our wishes this year, we will all be thinking of her
4. Roast halved red plums in the oven for 30 minutes with a few tbsp of water and a drizzle of honey. These are lovely hot with custard or cold with natural yoghurt. A super easy pudding
5. Rose and Violet creams are the food of the Gods - it was my Grandma who introduced me to these and I use rose and violet a lot in my cooking now so this is definitely down to her.
6. Grandma's rock cakes - these were scrumptious and made it into my book. I am so pleased now that the publishers have let me call them Grandma's rock cakes!

Although I am not a huge fan of supermarket cakes, I just had to smile when I saw this cake last week and of course had to buy it. A giant french fancy!!!! Can you imagine anything nicer? Obviously now I have the idea, I will be able to recreate this at home myself but good old Mr Kipling for being so clever! Happy to report that the fondant fancy was yummy!

It has got me wondering what the difference is between a French Fancy and a Fondant Fancy - sadly Wikipedia has no listing for either. I imagine there is no difference but if anyone knows, I would love to hear!

Our village fireworks party

My latest article in Country and Town House December edition is out and is very festive - is it too early to be talking about Christmas at the beginning of November?

The sweet scent of freshly baked mince pies and Christmas puddings steaming on the Aga - this is my favourite time in the kitchen. If you are making a Christmas cake this year, try replacing brandy with amaretto for a lovely almond flavour. Decorate a wreath for the door with holly, fresh clementines and red ribbons to welcome arriving guests. For warming mulled wine, simmer 2 bottles of red wine, a carton of orange juice, 3 tablespoons of caster sugar, 250ml brandy, 3 cinnamon sticks, 15 cloves, a bayleaf and orange and lemon slices for 10 minutes. Serve with a slice of Christmas gingerbread, flavoured with orange, lemon and Cointreau and topped with festive cranberries – a perfect offering for guests and carol singers.

Cranberry Gingerbread

Preparation time 30 minutes cooking time 1 hour

Serves 10

170g/6oz sultanas

100ml Cointreau

500g/1.1lb plain flour, sifted

1tsp ground ginger

1tsp ground cinnamon

1tsp ground mixed spice

1tsp baking powder

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

zest of 1 orange and juice and zest of 1 lemon

255g/9oz butter

3oz treacle

8oz golden syrup

2 heaped tbsp ginger jam

200g/7oz dark brown sugar

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

142ml sour cream

150g/5¼oz cream cheese

400g/14oz icing sugar, sifted

dried cranberries and silver balls

Soak the sultanas in the Cointreau for 2 hours. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4 and grease a 25cm/10in ring tin. Mix the flour, ginger, cinnamon, spice, baking powder, bicarbonate, zests, sultanas and Cointreau in a large mixing bowl. In a saucepan, gently melt 170g/6oz of the butter, together with the treacle, golden syrup, jam and brown sugar. Allow to cool, then stir into the dry ingredients, adding the sour cream and eggs. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for one hour until the cake is firm to touch and a knife comes out clean with no cake batter. If the cake starts to brown too much during cooking, cover the top of the cake with silver foil. When cooled, whisk together the remaining 85g/3oz butter, cream cheese, icing sugar and 1 tbsp of lemon juice. Cover the gingerbread with the icing and decorate with dried cranberries and silver balls.

My lovely brother has sent me this picture from New York for inspiration - what a clever idea to make a flower arrangement that looks like a cupcake as a birthday present! I will definitely be trying this!

I thought I would share with you our Halloween celebrations! A ghoolish night was had by all! Baby pumpkin lanterns lit the fence. Rosie and Lily were scary witches. Josh was a spider and Miles a skeleton. Baby Zara, a pumpkin princess - how cute do they all look! We played pass the spooky parcel, had a Halloween pumpkin pinanta and ghost races and then feasted on some chocolate pumpkin nest cakes, spooky marshmallows, ghost cakes and a halloween cake with witches hat candles! After all that, the ghoolish revelers were rather sleepy and wandered off home up the lane with their torches and buckets of candy. What a fun evening!

Halloween tomorrow - is it me or does every shop seem full of halloween goodies this year - far more than I can ever remember. We are having our Halloween party for Josh Rosie Lily and Zara tomorrow evening. Lili's Mum says that she is looking forward to it as much as Christmas given the number of cakes there were last year. I hope she isn't disappointed! I have found some wonderful halloween finger puppets for parcel the parcel and curly halloween straws for supping on bats blood.
This is the table from our Halloween party - the invitations were whole pumpkins, with a green leaf attached to the top with green raffatia and a note saying please carve me and bring me to the party. There were some wonderful creations. We had great fun decorating the table with lots of orange berries, cobwebs, halloween crackers, streamers and flying pumpkin place names one of Martha Stewart's wonderful ideas.

Treacle Roast Pork with Spiced Red Cabbage

Preparation time 30 minutes, Cooking time 4 – 4 ½ hours

Serves 4 - 6

1 red cabbage, shredded

2 peeled red onions, one quartered, one sliced

2 cooking apples, cored, one cut into rings, the other grated

1 cinnamon stick

50ml sherry vinegar

2 tbsp caster sugar

1 red chilli, chopped

1 star anise

60g/2oz butter, cubed

1 tbsp treacle

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp wholegrain mustard

2.25kg/5lb loin of pork, skin on

2 tbsp olive oil

450ml port

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark2/150C/300F. Place the cabbage, sliced onion, grated apple, cinnamon, vinegar, caster sugar, chilli and star anise in a large casserole dish. Add the butter to the dish with 200ml of port. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and cook in the oven for 2 hours stirring occasionally until the cabbage is soft. To cook the pork, preheat the oven to Gas Mark 7/425C/220F. Mix together the treacle, brown sugar and mustard, score the fat of the pork and cover with the treacle glaze. Place the quartered onion and apple rings in a large roasting pan and drizzle over the olive oil. Sit the pork on top of the apples and roast in the hot oven for 30 minutes. Pour over 250ml of port, reduce the oven temperature to Gas Mark 5/375F/190C and roast for a further 1 ½ hours until crisp and golden.

The feathered friends in my life have been giving me cause to smile this week. Whilst every chicken I have ever had has enjoyed dust bathing, I have not have hens before who sunbathe. When I went into the garden the other day they we all lying under the apple tree basking in the sun, some even lying on their side with their legs streched out. Now there must be a reason for this 1) they suffer from S.A.D. and were making the most of the last summer days of autumn 2) they have all eaten too much porridge to be able to wander round the garden and now just lie around all day 3) they were trying to make the pheasants jealous by demonstrating what a lovely and relaxing life they have. This is Cerys (the name sake of David Hall from Masterchef's little Cerys) basking in the sun. Perhaps this is just normal chicken behaviour and I have just not spotted them doing it before!

The peahen is also becoming very tame and now sits at my office window all day, occasionally tapping on the glass for something to eat. With the window open, she looked ready to come right in!

Spot the difference!!!

Our new woodland lawn!

One of the nicest things about living in a village is that you know everyone and everyone knows you. Now, I can imagine that if you liked a lot of privacy or had secrets you wished to keep, a village wouldn't be the place for you. Luckily, I don't fall into either of these categories. I have often borrowed a cup of flour or sugar or other baking ingredient from one of my neighbours and there is a very nice community feel. In true village spirit, this morning the postman knocked on my door (he has recently been having a few samples from the book so knows I like to bake) to ask whether I could help him with cup conversations in a recipe he had. Having just "cup and stick" converted 365 recipes, I proudly knew the answers without even looking it up! In return I asked for the recipe and was so intrigued by the limited list of ingredients (no flour or butter?) that I made them in my lunch break today and can happily report that they are yummy, although very sweet! I added chocolate to the recipe in the hope that they would taste like my favourite Reeses peanut buttercups. Not quite...but they were nice all the same

Postman Howard's Peanut Butter Cookies

200g/7oz caster sugar
340g/12oz crunchy peanut butter
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
200g/7oz milk or plain chocolate, chopped into chunks.

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 5/190C/375F and grease a large baking tray. Cream together the sugar and peanut butter until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix again. Stir through the chocolate. Place small balls of the dough on the tray and press down. The cookies do not spread very much. Bake for 7 - 8 minutes until golden brown.

As you have all lived through the last three months of me writing the book, with many of you testing recipes and proof reading, I wanted to share my celebration with you that yesterday I submitted the final part of my book (on time!!!). What a huge relief! I am one happy bunny today - although I imagine by 5pm I will be twiddling my thumbs and wondering what to do with all the free time I now have on my hands!

Last weekend Mum and Mike attended the World Conker Championships at Ashton - you have heard it all now, I hear you cry. I just love these really "English" traditions! Lots of teams in fancy Dress - Little Britain, Gladiators, French Maids. I remember going to this when we were little and my brother taking part. As kids we would try everything to make our conkers harder - baking, pickling in vinegar, polishing - I am not convinced that any of these tricks made a difference. There are so many shiny conkers underfoot now when we walk up the lane to the fields - I like them best when they have just fallen and are still pristine in their prickly shells.

Rather belatedly, a short report on my trip to BBC Radio Northampton last week. I have to say that I loved being on the radio and surprisingly I wasn't nervous at all!!! Bernie and Anna were lovely and made me feel so welcome, as did Bernie's dog Riley who came and sat with his head on my lap whilst I was being interviewed. After over 10 minutes of interview, we had covered Masterchef, the book, magazine writing, how best to roast potatoes, cooking with an Aga, Jamie Oliver and the poor state of the Nations culinary skills and cooking with lavender. These are the cakes and cookies I took for them to try whilst we were on air - although I am not sure Bernie was convinced by cooking with lavender, he was definitely a fan of the edible glitter!!

Although I have spent the whole weekend trying to finish the book for my Wednesday deadline (nearly there!!!), I managed to fit in a little baking this weekend as it was Joshua's birthday. Panda Bear cupcakes (from Hello Cupcake) which Josh had seen and fallen in love with (Panda's are his favourite thing) and a Power Ranger cake as this was the theme of his party. Here are Wonder Woman and Supergirl in full party spirit and Birthday boy Joshua with his mum Jess playing pin the cupcake on the panda - Jess' creative game inspired by the panda cupcakes!

Monday evening was our village Harvest supper. This year I had to bake 50 potatoes and two apple pies! Luckily not the casserole!!! Rather than adding sugar in with the apples I made a toffee sauce with 2 tbsp of golden syrup, 2 tbsp of muscavado sugar and 1 tbsp of butter, simmered until the sugar dissolved and then 2 tbsp of cream added - Sticky Toffee Apple Pie! I will definitely be making this again! The auction was frenetic and I ended up paying £7 for 2 pork chops (orchard fed and locally reared - I felt as if I was buying part of someones pet!) - luckily it was for charity so I didn't feel too bad at my extravagant purchase. Wonderful marrows and baskets filled with home made bread and jam. Here are Lucy, Andrew Millie and David all enjoying the evening!