Last night I was lucky enough to have a ticket to the Paralympics closing ceremony.  What a night!!!!  Mum and I had one of the most amazing days of our lives.  To say it was EPIC would be an understatement and it was such an honour to see all the amazing Athletes.  I can't tell you enough how brilliantly organised the whole thing was.   It is a night I will remember forever!  Here are a few photos but they really don't do it justice.  It is incredible to think that each little colour dot represents a person as we all had a light paddle on our seats - the effect was incredible.  They even burnt a crop circle into the sports field!!!!

 

 

 

A 6am visitor to my garden - who stopped to admire the bunting!

I thought I would share these delightful pictures of my niece Hunter with you - isn't she growning up fast.  It is good to see that despite living in New York she is being taught the traditional English values of the importance of a good cup of tea!  In November I am finally going to meet her properly (Skype is brilliant but not quite as good as an in person cuddle) so I am really looking forward to my trip.

A few weeks ago, I spent a lovely evening with Kathy Brown learning how to properly crystalise edible flowers.  Before learning Kathy's tricks mine never looked very dainty and always had clumps of sugar on where I dipped the petals into the caster sugar (dipping was where I was going wrong I now know).  So here is what I learnt - whisk an egg white until light and foamy.  Using a clean fine paint brush, coat the petals in a thin layer of egg white, painting both the front and back of the flower.  Hold the flower in one hand and sprinkle a light dusting of caster sugar onto the flower using your finger tips at a height of about 20cm above the flower so that the coating is very fine.  Leave somewhere warm to dry overnight (on top of my Aga was ideal) on a silicon mat or a sheet of greaseproof paper.  I was so proud of the pretty results.  We used the sugar flowers as decorations on our desserts that evening.  Thanks Kathy for teaching me so well xxxx

Two new books of mine are now available to buy - Cake Pops and Doughnuts - both came out in the same week which was amazing for me!  They were such nice projects to work on and I hope you lovely blog readers approve xxx

My poor neglected blog and blog readers.  I am so ashamed not to have posted in such a long while.  My excuse is a new laptop and ipad, neither of which seem to want to work with Blogger, so I have had to revert to my old laptop to be able to log in.  Not ideal when I have so little free time!  Anyway - I have very nearly finished my next book - Sweet Things from the Aga which Absolute Press (an imprint of Bloomsbury) are kindly publishing for me. Here are my two favourite "tastebuds" Joshua and Rosie, tasting the giant sweet and salty pretzels from the book - you will be pleased to know they got the thumbs up!  I am just finishing the final write up now and introduction and then will be moving on to another nice project - will be able to hopefully tell you about that very soon.  This year is flying by in a whirl of recipe writing and baking!  Christmas will be here before I know it!

This was our lovely beach hut in Wells last week - you can just see my Mum reading on the balcony!  It was so quaint and a really good thing that we had somewhere to shelter from this endless rain.  Luckily the sun shined a lot as well and I was able to make a sandcastle and sunbathe a little.  More photos to follow!

In the meantime I have some exciting news about a new book that I have just started working on.  It is called "Sweet Things from the Aga" and will be published by Absolute Press/Bloomsbury next Summer.  The recipe list is very lovely (if I say so myself) with lots of new and delicious ideas and very excitingly the photos for the book are to be shot in my cottage!!!   I now have the perfect excuse to buy lots more cake stands and pretty plates - so that I can use them in the photos of course!

Last week I met one of my top food heros - Galton Blackiston after a delicious dinner at Morston Hall - The menu - Canapes: Herb mousse with smoked salmon, tomato spheres with basil oil (served in the herb garden!) followed by warm summer vegetable salad (so simple but delicious) with chanterille cream and a poached yolk (poached at 62 degrees for 1 1/2 hours (I asked!!!)) delicious skate which had arrived off the boat 3 hours before, duck with peaches (delicious), rhubarb jelly and lemon grass pannecotte for dessert and then coffee and chocolates!  It was all so utterly yummy.  Galton came to say hello after the meal and I was literally speechless - luckily Maren was on hand to talk to him whilst I regained my composure.  All in all it was a truly magical night and hopefully I will get to go back again one day!

It was Rosie's 6th birthday this weekend and her Mum asked me to bake cupcakes for her party.  These were my offerings - cookie monsters, rainbows and some pretty meringues (these were an experiment to see whether sugar sprinkles on the meringue kept their colour whilst baking and it worked - am sure I will be able to use this idea in a book at some point!)  Happy Birthday Rosie xxx

 I do hope that you all had a lovely Jubilee weekend.  It has been a non-stop celebration in our village, finishing with a firework display last night.  Despite the rain the whole village turned out for our historical parade, complete with vintage tractors and land girls, Queen Victoria and our current Queen on horseback!  It was a great site to see.  The Gingerbread Buckingham palace was won in the raffle and I also made this Jubilee cake which raised £100!   It was a new recipe that I made especially for the jubilee with lots of coconut, coconut rum, cinnamon and cherries and was topped with a crown candle. Sunday saw me making canapés for about 100 people which was a lot of work but definitely worth it as everyone loved the concert and stayed for a long while afterwards to enjoy the food and Pimms.    Even baby Hunter got into the spirit of the Jubilee all the way over in New York with her Emma Bridgewater mug!  She is such a cutie pie!

It is only a few weeks now until my new doughnut book goes on sale.  I haven't seen my advance copy yet but from the proof pages I know I am going to love it!  The doughnuts on the cover are black forest, tangy lemon, coconut ice and triple chocolate - I could definitely eat a few of these now!  Thank you lovely Ryland, Peters and Small peeps for, as always, making such a pretty book xxx

 A few days ago I had meetings in London and managed to take these snap shots of the jubilee bunting from my cab window!  How lovely - it makes me so proud to be British

The Jubilee weekend is finally here and I have put up my bunting.  Most houses in the village are decorated now and it is looking very patriotic.  I am busy planning my canape menu for the concert on Sunday - mini yorkshires with roast beef, tomato and white bean tarts, smoked salmon pate, quails eggs with sumac - yum yum!  Yesterday my palace made a little appearance in the Times as part of their cake competition.  They described it as an "immense buckingham palace made of gingerbread, complete with waving monach and electric lighting" - how lovely is that!  I am looking forward to putting it on display over the weekend for everyone to see and eat!!  Hope you all have lots of fun this weekend!

The icing had set on the Palace and so last night we moved it for the first time and hurrah it stayed in tact!!!!  It looked lovely in the sunshine and I am confident now that we will be able to carry it up to the village church for the concert on Sunday without the roof collapsing.  What good news!

To say that I have spent a few hours this weekend baking would be an understatement!!!! After 10 hours of solid baking and icing, I can now proudly unveil my gingerbread creation - hopefully you can tell that it is meant to be Buckingham Palace!  It is a meter long and is completely edible other than the cardboard Queen and Prince Philip on the balcony.  The windows are made of sheet gelatine which give a very pretty stained glass effect (future church gingerbread house is planned - but that's another story).  The crown decorations were made with ready roll icing and sprayed gold and the bunting is cut from union jack sugarettes.  I am hoping that it will still be OK by the weekend!!!!  My village is fully entering into the spirit of the Juliblee with 3 days of events!!!!  Quite inpressive given the limited number of houses in the village - with a parade, organ recital of Coronation music with Pimms and Canapes, fireworks, dog show, cake decorating competition (I am the judge and no my Buckingham palace is not entered!), hog roast - I can wait!

Lovely Kim from Naturally Gluten Free blog has very kindly published a nice interview with me about my Gluten Free Baker book.  To read it click here

The good thing about the British is that we never let bad weather get in the way of a good old fashioned tradition.  These were the rainy May Day celebrations this morning at 6am in Ampthill Park near where my Mum lives.  Have you ever seen Morris Dancers dancing with Umbrellas?  Priceless!!  They danced as the sun rose (what sun you may ask!!!)  I have to confess that at 6am I was tucked up in bed and it was my Mum and Mike who went but I thought you would like to see the photos all the same!

I have finally joined the modern technology age and am now the proud owner of an Ipad.  I am not sure whether it is right to be in love with a machine but I am utterly besotted!  Peapod - who usually runs I mile when I point a camera at her (unless she is asleep) was completely unphased by the ipad and I managed to snap this cute picture of her on my patchwork quilt.  What a cutie!  I have had a fun weekend trying out the voice recognition and amazingly I can dictate recipe methods with hardly any mistakes at all!  I knew I would be able to justify the purchase somehow - the trick will be however how to avoid the ipad becoming covered in cake batter and other kitchen mess!!   I managed to make another 8 cheesecakes this weekend - baked vanilla, mini blueberry cheesecakes baked in jars, brownie cheesecake, fresh fruit glazed cheesecakes, 2 banana cheesecakes (I really do not like banana so had to outsource the tasting of these two!), popcorn cheesecake and peppermint bark cheesecake (which looked very Christmassy and completely out of season).  All passed the taste testing panel so only 19 recipes left to go now on the book!

The Dutch translation of my popcorn cook book just dropped through the letter box!  It is so cute!  This is my new favourite foreign word!   

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