Like many of you I'm sure, I am so excited about the Royal Wedding tomorrow. I have spent this evening hanging bunting and flags ready for our Royal Wedding Brunch tomorrow. What fun! I have baked a little cake (with sultanas and coconut soaked in gingerbread liqueur - delish) and have lots of other goodies on offer. I will be making red white and blue popcorn tomorrow for us to munch on whilst waiting for Kate's dress to appear! Have fun with your celebrations xxx
It seems to be not just raining but pouring cook books in my life at the moment. This is definitely not a complaint and something I welcome with open arms! Sadly it means that the other loves in my life, blogging, sewing and seeing friends are all taking a back seat at present. In addition to having to finish Sweetie Pops and Milkshake bar by early May (I only have 7 recipes left to do before writing everything up - woohoo) both my Gluten free and Mini cake books are also in the final stages before going to print. I am spending every hour that I am not lawyering, working on books. I can't complain as it is so much fun to see my little books coming to life! I am pleased to be able to share with you the cover of my Mini cake book which is now available to pre-order on Amazon - I do hope you like it, particularly the little sugar strawberry decorations on top of the cakes which I made and sent by courier down to London wrapped in bubble wrap for the shoot! 
You may remember my German friend Maren who regularly features on this blog. Maren loves all things English and has now bought herself a cottage in Norfolk - isn't it pretty! Just a few miles from Wells Next the Sea with its lovely beach huts - I know she will get to spent many happy holidays there. She picked up the keys this weekend and we went with her to help her "move in" (this consisted of unpacking a kitchenaid mixer, blender, kettle and some beautiful strawberrry crockery - a woman after my own heart). Happy Housewarming Maren xxx
Channel 4's food website now has a few of my whoopie pie recipes on if you want to give them a try - click here for a link to the recipes - popcorn caramel pies, ice cream pies and classic chocolate marshmallow fluff whoopies! 
Earth to planet Hannah...Earth to planet Hannah...is there anyone out there? Yes is the answer - I have not disappeared but I am snowed under with recipe testing at the moment. I don't think I have mentioned it but in addition to my Milkshake book I am also writing a book of "Sweetie Pops" - yummy cakes and biscuits and sweet treats on sticks. Baked alaskas and jam tarts and profiteroles as well as some cute decorated cakes and biscuits! I have just reached the half way stage in recipes - 37 done, only 33 more to go (what a relief). These are some little carrot cakes I made last week with piped icing leaves and fondant carrots. This is now my 7th book which is still quite hard for me to comprehend - 7 books!!!! - if you had told me this when I was on Masterchef I would never have believed it! The book is being published by Anness and should be out later this year or early next year - will keep you posted! 
Today I can give you a quick sneak peak of my lovely Gluten Free book - The Gluten Free Baker - which is just about to go to print! I am so, so thrilled with the wonderful pictures that Megan, Joss and William have taken and I really hope that this will give people suffering from Coeliac disease some nice new recipes to try! It is a book that I am very proud of - achieving puff pastry and bagels that work without gluten was no mean feat I can tell you - I am sure Heston would be proud of my lower bagels into a jug of boiling water on a spoon technic! Out in August 2011 and available to pre order on Amazon now - plug plug!
For the last few weeks my life has been taken over by Milkshakes - one of life's greatest pleasures. What a hardship it has been (not!) It is the topic of my next book (The Milkshake bar) and I don't need to tell you how excited I am to be working on this project. Lots of lovely thick shakes, thin shakes, fruit cocktail juices and ice cream floats! Last weekend I made 32 drinks - by Sunday evening we were all feeling just a little sick! The problem with a good milkshake is that you think you will just take one sip to taste but somehow one sip becomes three and before you know it the glass is empty! I dread to think how much ice cream and milk we consumed. Luckily I had some helpful milkshake tasters on hand - Sacha (pictured here with a mango lassi - it is his recipe and he was very proud!) tasted every single one (that is true dedication to your wife!) and our other neighbours tried lots too - including baby Josef who was keen to try the watermelon cooler! I have one milkshake left to test - a doughnut milkshake - and the recipes to write up and then the book is finished - out new spring published by lovely Ryland Peters and Small, hurrah
!
I suppose this tale could start something along the lines of "you can't consider yourself to be a cake decorator until you have made a compost site cake" except that would probably leave me in a category of one as I can't imagine that there is much call for cakes in the shape of compost sites! Jason was however delighted with his cake - what a beaming smile. The "compost" was crushed oreo cookies and even had aeration pipes made with liquorish tubes and litter netting. It was a far cry from my usual pretty flowery feathered cakes but fun to decorate all the same!
I recently spent a lovely afternoon with budding young cook, Kate. She is only 8 and yet is such a good cook that I am sure she could give some of the Masterchef contestants a run for their money. Kate bake two cakes (with a very tiny bit of help from me) - a cute teddy bear cake that she iced and decorated all by herself - don't you just adore the little necklace with the ladybird locket in the centre and the cute iced paws. We also made her dad a birthday cake. Kate was very good and planned out the design of the top of the cake by laying the decorations out on a plate before she put them on the top of the cake - John Torode would have been so proud of her. I held the icing bag and she piped all the green grass on top of the cake herself. What a lot of work for little hands! The cake looked very lovely when it was finished. Her Dad has since reported that Kate decided to cook again last week but this time took her planning to a new level designing her presentation layout for the dish (Haddock Mornay) on the computer! I was seriously impressed! Everything was plated up perfectly and everyone was ready to tuck in when Kate said she had forgotten the last detail - she then sprinkled a little edible glitter over the fish for extra decoration - a girl after my own heart - you can never have too much edible glitter, even with fish! Well done Kate for your wonderful cooking! 
This weekends baking projects - an 18th birthday cake for our niece Devina decorated with mad feathers, orange birds, tiger ribbon and chocolate crunchies (the only orange and brown sweets I could think of. She celebrated with a crazy bollywood party - complete with dancing - soooo much fun! When wrapped in film for transporting to London, the cake looked enormous and I don't think the staff at the venue had ever seen anything like it! I also made a pretty little cake for my friend Tina who came to visit this weekend - not quite as flamboyant but still a few feathers and I think Tina liked it very much. Both cakes were made with toffee yoghurt to keep them moist (I had a moment of inspiration in the supermarket) which gave them a delicious caramel flavour and I packed them full of milk, white and dark chocolate chips too. Yum yum! 
Are you following the new series of Masterchef this year? We have been avidly watching! Tomorrow is our "previous finalists" episode which I am on (don't think I will dare watch in case I say anything wrong - watch out for the pomegranate ice cream - it was STUNNING!) This is what the Radio Times says about the episode "The remaining 12 contenders face a daunting challenge as they cook for previous finalists and winners of the competition, working under head chef John Torode in their first restaurant-style service. They are asked to design a stand-out dish for the three-course menu and have just 30 minutes to deliver their food once the orders have been taken. The diners include Dhruv Baker, Mat Follas, James Nathan, Steven Wallis, Peter Bayless and Thomasina Miers." [and me too!] So tune in at 9pm on BBC1 tonight to watch us all! The below is a snap shot in the hotel the night before filming. We had a lot of fun and it was so strange to meet people for the first time who I felt as if I already knew personally.
I thought I would share with you my February article in Country and Town - we liked this article as we got to eat all the macaroons at the end of the shoot - yum yum! 
A few photos from our Christmas day "take 2" last weekend - we all felt very festive and listened to Christmas music all day - I have been humming "Simply...having.. a wonderful Christmas time" and "Do they know its Christmas"! Poor brain is a tad confused that it is not my birthday and New Year in a few days!
Thanks Mum for a lovely day!
Many men I know complain that Valentine's day is just a commercial gimmick. Personally I think this is just an excuse for not having to bother buying anything!!!!! The sentiment of showing someone you love them is however a nice thing to do and I admire Valentine's day for that. So lovely blog readers - he is my home made Valentine for you all - a heart gingerbread cottage that I made at the weekend. I used this recipe for the gingerbread - click here - but added 2 teaspoons of cinnamon and the zest of an orange. You need to wait for the mixture to cool down before being able to roll it out (it doesn't say this in the recipe but if you try before it is coolish, the dough is way too sticky and you are tempted to add more flour which would make the gingerbread quite dry). To decorate I used 900g royal icing sugar whipped up with 150ml water and 1 tsp vanilla extra and then decorated it with lots of lovely pink sweets. I cut a little triangle in the back house panel at the base and inserted some fairy lights so that when you plug it in the windows light up. The peppermint glass was made with 10 glacier minuts crushed in a blender to a fine dust. Cut out window shapes in the gingerbread before baking and fill with peppermint dust which will become glass like during the baking. It is best to bake on silicon mats so that the glass doesn't stick!With the sheets of gingerbread only taking 12 minutes to cook, you still have time to bake one today! Have fun if you do!
We have a very nice postman in our village. He is super helpful (perhaps because if there are spare cakes or cookies on offer I give them to him) and always smiling! Yesterday he made me smile with an arrival of two unexpected parcels - both presents for me - hurrah! The first was this lovely pictures of ice cream sundaes that my super kind agent Heather Holden Brown had seen in a shop and "had to buy for me". It goes perfectly in our kitchen although I think it would look equally good in our sheperd's hut too - decision decision! It is totally kitsch and I just adore it! 
The other parcel was from lovely Bree who competed in Masterchef with me - she is such a brilliant cook and I know would have give me a run for my money if we had not met in the first round when unfortunately only one of us could stay. She had been on holiday to St Agnes and found these floral chocolates - so very me! I have to confess that the pink one disappeared not long after opening the parcel - rose geranium chocolate - it tasted superb. Thanks Bree and Heather (and Elly toox) for such lovely thoughtful gifts.Tomorrow my brother arrives from New York. I haven't seen him in ages and I am so excited. As his flight was cancelled at Christmas due to the snow, this weekend it is Christmas again in our household. Roast turkey and all the trimmings and a gammon ham is simmering on the Aga ready for glazing this evening. Mum has redecorated the Christmas tree which they have kept in water since Christmas. I think we are just a little mad but Christmas is such a wonderful day, why not have it twice? I am contemplating putting on the Christmas carol CD but our cleaners are about to arrive and I think they might question my sanitity if when they open the door Hark the Herald Angles sing is tinkling from the lounge! Perhaps later!
For any fans of Masterchef, the wait for the next series is almost over and there are big changes afoot with a whole new format - auditions in front of John and Gregg and then 20 contestants are chosen to compete - I would not have stood a chance! If you can't wait for the show to start on 16th Feb (9pm BBC1), there is a preview trailer on you tube - click here to see - you will catch the tiniest glimpse me in it towards the very end with all the previous Masterchef finalists as we are involved in one of the tasks! I am sure you will spot quite a few faces you know in the above photo. I am not sure if I can say yet what we got up to but our episode airs on 24th February at 9pm BBC1 so only a few weeks to go now! You can't miss me in the photo as I am wearing bright pink!!!! Needless to say being in a room with the other finalists for the day was amazing if slightly surreal for everyone involved!
Earlier this week I was invited to Kathy Browns for a tea party. Regular readers of this blog will know how fond I am of Kathy and her passion for cooking with edible flowers. Needless to say when I arrived, the table was set with many yummy things to eat - after the day I had had at work it was like stepping into a really nice dream! Delicious hazelnut, goat's cheese and fennel pate, chorizo bread, two different types of jelly - blueberry and violet and orange jellies served in orange skins like we used to have when we were children and ginger cake. I took a gluten free plum and blueberry cake and it got the seal of approval (which is a good thing as it is going to be on the cover of my gf book!) My favourite of all was of course the violet jellies - they looked so pretty in the elegant glasses topped with violet flowers and fresh blueberries. Kathy had just used a blackcurrent jelly and had flavoured it with violet syrup - so simple but utterly delicious and I had forgotten how nice it is to eat jelly! Served alongside was fresh cream flavoured with violet liqueur. Heaven! Thank you again Kathy xxx Kathy has been making honey marmelade with her own honey and has a lovely post about it on her blog if you want to drop by and have a look http://www.kathybrowngarden.blogspot.com/
I am sure that shop owners sometimes have things on their shelves that they imagine noone will ever buy. I am sure that was the case with the biscuit pans I bought at the weekend. To be fair the box was in the sale at a bargain price of £8.65 and I just had a feeling that it would be useful one day. So here are my new giant sandwich cookie pans - aren't they cool! I love the instructions on the side that 1 cookie + 1 cookie = a sandwich cookie (sadly they missed the filling out of the equation - I did A Level maths you know and am quite good at equations!) Anyway needless to say I am itching for a reason to christen the pans - it is our nephews birthday at the weekend so he may get a large cookie as a treat!
If you love sweet things and are going to buy yourself one cook book this year (other than mine!) then it has to be Laduree Sucre - oh my word - if it is possible to be in love with a book, then I am head over heals! It is packaged up in a Laduree macaroon box, nestled in tissue paper, with a velvet cover and gilt edged pages. 
It is so beautiful to look at, even without opening the pages! Inside are all Laduree secret recipes for perfect patisserie - macaroons, tarts, cakes. This is definitely a book to drool over. Whilst it has a steep price tag - £28 - it is definitel
y worth it as a special treat!
raisin, and chocolate and berries. I took them down for a meeting with my lovely editor Julia on Monday and we munched out way through the box (with a little help from Megan and Steve too). The slogan is something along the lines of "Happiness should be small, but please 9 times" I can certify that they definitely lived up to their claim on the happiness front - we thought they were delicious and how amazing that they posted so well all the way from Germany with not a crumb out of place when they arrived. Thanks Maren xxx
It is hard to put into words the thrill when an envelope drops through the letterbox and I know it contains my first copy of my book. Although I have always seen the photographs before and proof read black and white pages, nothing quite prepares you for seeing the actual book. A few days go my Whoopie Pie book arrived - and to say I am pleased with it is a HUGE understatement. Steve and Maxine have done such a lovely job and all the pies are completely OTT and very me - lots of glitter and colours. So I can finally share with you a few of my favourite pages. The one I am proudest of is the rainbow tower as I made these pies and carried them on a 3 1/2 hour journing to Hastings for the photoshoot - it is suprising that they still look nice after such a long journey including two changes of trains! The other pictures are pumpkin pies, perfect for Halloween; Oyster pies (not fish flavoured I hasten to add) on their own little beach and Vanilla Dream pies complete with jammy spoon (the photo just makes me want to pick the spoon up and lick it). I hope that you like my little book - out quite soon - hurrah!
