I am in full swing of writing my new cheesecake book - 31 recipes done, 29 to go - I am over half way woo hoo!  I am not sure however that I can eat much more cheesecake!  Luckily my work colleagues and neighbours are doing an excellent job of being taste testers!  At the weekend I made honeycomb cheesecake which was great fun as I got to make fresh honeycomb.  Being impatient, I couldn't wait for it to cool down as I needed to put some in the cheesecake filling (coated in whipped egg white - a useful tip from Masterchef winner Mat Follas of the Wild Garlic) so I hung it over the kitchen door to cool.  Strange I know but it honestly seemed like a good idea at the time.  I imagine the passers by wondered what on earth I was doing!  It did cool and very quickly and ended up being an amazing curl of honeycomb (see below).   Obviously I won't be recommending this method in my book!  Luckily with a few bashes of the rolling pin the curl was gone and I had lovely honeycomb ready to stir through the cheesecake.  More cheesecake making this weekend - cheesecake Alaskas are on the menu!!!!  Can't wait!

My brother phoned earlier this week and said he had just seen my milkshake book on sale in the shop opposite his flat in Brooklyn.  That's impossible I say - its not out for another month yet.  But then I checked on Amazon and he was right - it is out a month early!  What an unexpected treat.  So here it is - my new milkshake book.  This was such a lovely project to work on - how could anyone not like drinking loads of milkshakes!  Here are a few of my favourite pictures - don't you just adore the watermelon "telephone" on the recipe page and these are my mini milk milkshakes served in old style school milk bottles.  Too cute for words!  

 Yay - my popcorn book is on sale now!  It was featured a few weeks ago in the Washington Post Express magazine in an article on popcorn to eat for the Oscars with a couple of my recipes - click here if you want to read the full article on their website.  I was also made to do a popcorn video by my publishers to promote the book.  Eeek!  Have not dared to watch it back but if anyone you want a peek at my making popcorn in my kitchen - here it is!!!  Try not to laugh too much                                          

It was my Step Mum's birthday at the weekend and this is the cake I baked for her - billowing roses (including some unusual  orange and yellow stripped ones), pink tuile fabric and pretty pink beads and ribbons.  I finally got the chance to use the copper food colouring with my airbrush kit and it looked quite fine indeed!  It is the second cake in a week that I have made that looks a bit "hat" like! I am wondering if that might perhaps be a future topic.  Actually my next book - I am sure you will be pleased to here - is Cheesecakes - 60 recipes!  My word - what a lot of cheesecake.  I have done 8 recipes - 52 to go.  Anyway Happy Birthday Liz - hope you had a lovely day xxx

 Here are the latest pictures of my beautiful niece Hunter - isn't she a peach!  What a happy smiley baby.  I can't wait to meet her soon xxx

Three translations of my gluten free book have arrived - if I had to guess I think they are Italian, Dutch and Swedish (or Norwegian).  Linguistic blog readers - feel free to correct me!  Very cool to see my recipes in words I can't even read!

 I have two new books out at the moment - this is the first which has been published by Cico.  Technically speaking it is not "my" book as I only wrote the cake pop chapter but I am proud of my contribution all the same.  It is such a cute book and has lots of other recipes by people I admire such as Annie Rigg and Suzannah Blake so my little recipes are honoured to be in such esteemed company.  Below are a few pictures of some of the pops - aliens and sheep - the sheep are my favourite!   The book is very child friendly and has great step by step methods with illustrations and also uber cute cartoons - don't you just love the sheep with the mixing bowl!!!!  It is available to buy on Amazon and in good book shops - click here for a link

I have a lovely afternoon on Saturday baking this cake for my friend Tena's birthday - it was such a pretty project to work on and my baking Mojo seems to have returned.  The cake itself was lemon drizzle with lemon curd and vanilla buttercream and it was sprayed pale turquoise with my airbrush kit -  I do love my new toy so much - I even sprayed small sugar flowers the same colour to match and covered the top of the cake with them.  The end result was quite pretty indeed (even if it does look a bit like a large wedding hat!)  Tena loved the cake and I didn't stay long enough to see it being cut (which would have been just too sad) - instead I went and took part in a 2 hour Zumbathon (I must be mad) to raise money for charity.  I think I might have been better off staying to eat cake as I am very stiff today!  Hope you all had a lovely weekend.

Given my Dad's recently interest in stain glass windows after our birthday present to him, we decided to take a slight detour on the way back to Hamburg to visit the Minster at Bad Doberan - just breath takingly beautiful and so very old -  I think it was built in the 1300's.  The swan sculpture outside the entrance, may have eluded to the potential inside the building but I don't think anything prepared us for the sheet beauty of the glass and ceiling paintings.  Hopefully the pictures of the glass will be a nice inspiration for my Dad who may, if I ask nicely, one day make me a little piece of stained glass for my cottage!  If you ever find yourself on the North German coast - not too far from Rostock -  I definitely recommend a visit to this very special and beautiful place.

The positive when life deals you a bit of a rough patch is that it makes you realise how lucky you are have lovely friends and family to pick you up and dust you down.  The last few months have not been particularly good ones (as you may have gathered from the complete lack of blog posting on any form of regular basis - so sorry to all your lovely blog readers).  I have however just returned from a wonderful trip to Germany with my lovely friend Maren who took me for a rest and some much needed TLC at the most amazing spa I have ever stayed in (actually I have stayed there once before so a return trip makes me doubly lucky!)  There was something about swimming in a mother of pearl lined pool and luxuriating in the 35 degree whirlpool bath that made problems just melt away and I am feeling soooo much better.  There were many highlights of the trip but my buttermilk pancake breakfast was the best bit (not a brilliant photo as I was trying to be discrete in such a posh dining room) - so light and fluffy and I so wished that they would have given me the recipe (sadly not an option!).  My room had a perfect view over the sea with a desk at the window and if I ever needed somewhere to sit and write a novel, this would be the place!  Thank you Maren for a lovely weekend - I am now ready to get back to blogging again!

 This weekend's baking project was a 70th birthday cake for my friend's Aunt Kath.  I had a new edible ink airbrush kit for Christmas and I finally plucked up the courage to try and understand the instructions for using it!!!  They are in 4 books!!!!  I shouldn't have worried as, despite the many instructions, it was actually very easy to use and it meant that making the requested green and white cake was easy.  I made sugar butterflies and topped the cake with a few butterflies on wires and overall the cake looked quite pretty indeed!  Now I can't wait for my next opportunities to use the copper colour ink which looks amazing and I think would make very spectacular cupcakes!!!!

 Wilfred the peacock has been majestically enjoying the snow - his feathers looked even more vibrant than usual against the crisp white snow.

Sometimes life can be so beautiful, it takes your breathe away.  I should have know on Friday night when it was minus 13 as I drove home that it would be a bit frosty the next morning, little did I know how stunning it was going to be.  I can safely say that I have lived in my cottage for 7 years now and I have never seen the lane look as beautiful as it did on Saturday morning.  It was as if the cottage had somehow been transported overnight to Narnia - sadly no appearance from Mr Tumnus but lots of beautiful snowy scenery!  I wrapped up warm and spent an hour taking photos and then had hot chocolate in front of the log fire to warm up - what a perfect start to the weekend!

With this cold snap of weather, I am so pleased with my latest purchase - a little red wood burning stove - which has been installed in the new snug lounge (my office has been transformed into a dining room and the old dining room has become a second lounge - it is so nice not having an office at home any more!)  The stove may  be small but it sure packs out a lot of heat and given this really cold weather it is one of the wisest investments I have made.  With a twee wreath hanging over the mantle and a large footstool for feet toasting, it is a very inviting place indeed and has become my favourite room in the cottage!

Some pretty white doves (at least I think they are doves and not white pigeons!)

There has been a bit of excitement in my office today.  A parcel just arrived from Paris for me.  I hadn't ordered anything from Paris!  Well you can imagine how loud I squealed with delight when I opened the box and saw the nice letter from the people at Pierre Herme saying that my friend Maren had sent me a gift.  Macarons!!!  For those of you who may not have heard of Mr Herme - he is the No 1 patissier in Paris and an utter hero of mine.  Such a lovely present and they were 100% perfect - not one crumb out of place even thought they had travelled such a long way.  They must have flown or taken the Eurostar!!!!  They even had their own ice pack to keep them perfectly chilled and came in a super cool box!   We have just eaten one and my word - it was delicious!  The others will be eaten sparingly over the next few days.  What a lovely start to the day and thank you Maren for your very kind present xxx

On Sunday, Sarah from Ryland Peters and Small came to visit to make a short film of me making popcorn for the RPS website.  As you can imagine, trying to film popcorn popping without a lid on was a bit of a challenge!  We made toasted coconut popcorn with lovely multicolour kernels from Zaramama (the last bag left over from the photoshoot - which means that we have made a vast amount of popcorn given the size of the box of corn we were kindly given by Zaramama - thanks again Amelia).  So soon you will be able to see a little clip of me making popcorn on my Aga - I will post the link when it is available!

Sarah with our coconut popcorn!

Ingredients

I know that this blog is meant to be about cooking and not really about my new niece but I just had to share these two latest photos with you - firstly my lovely brother and Hunter asleep together - what a peaceful looking picture (shame she isn't this quiet all the time!!!!!) and also her dressed up as a reindeer in her car seat - how totally adorable does she look?  Happy Days xxxx

 
My bargain acquisition in the sale this year was this basket full of little bottle vases that hold just one flower each.  With a few pretty narcissus and anemones it looks truly lovely on my kitchen window sill and at £10 it was definitely a wise buy.  I think it will make a lovely centre piece for an afternoon tea party in the garden when the weather is warmer.