Rocky buns in memory

Tomorrow, I will gather with my family to pay tribute to a wonderful, dear lady, my sweet, gracious, loving and greatly loved Granny. I will miss her so much and her amazing home baking.

I’m going to follow her often used recipe and take comfort from the sticky, sweet, imperfect dough.

Children, grandchildren, neighbours, colleagues, friends and even a friendly pheasant came tapping at her window for these tasty cakes. She also believed every home should have a Bero book, so if you don’t have one, invest in some flour and send away! Simple pleasures.

Makes 10 ish.

You will need:

225g Self raising flour

pinch salt

100g margarine (my Granny used Stork, you can of course use butter if you're feeling flush!)

75g dried fruit

25g mixed peel (not essential, you can add glace cherries or dried apricot as a variation)

50g caster sugar

1 medium egg

milk to mix

Heat oven to 200’C and grease two baking trays (my Granny gave us ours as an engagement gift).

Mix the flour and salt, rub in the margarine.

Stir in the dried fruit, mixed peel and sugar.

Mix to a stiff dough with the egg and milk.

Place in rough heaps on the baking tray and bake for 10-15 minutes.

For best results, eat warm with tea served in a china cup.

Be comforted.

Festive Thoughts

*

Just taking a quick break from menus and preparations to say, things here are just wonderfully busy and, twelve suppers in we have learned so much and have so many ideas of where to go next that we're really craving our wee late October escape. This will (hopefully) give us a chance to drink lots of tea, wrap up warm, toast crumpets and put our thoughts in order. And then, we'll share them.

Also, no sooner has Autumn crept in with its grey skies, comforting crumbles and warming soups but it's also time to begin to get our heads around all things festive. After a long, hard think about what Charlie and Evelyn might be up to in December we have reached a decision.

We will be offering just two early December dates, Friday 3rd and Saturday 4th. So please email us today if you'd like to reserve your place and bear in mind, we now have a mailing list which will keep you posted with 2011 dates as soon as they are decided if you'd rather wait.

For us, Christmas is a family time and while we absolutely LOVE welcoming curious supper club diners to our home, we're going to take a short break, refuel, decorate our tree, bubble vats of chutney, and above all eat, lots.

*Image courtesy of Cox and Cox, their latest lovely catalogue arrived this morning. I've already listed the toasting fork (above) and chestnut roasting pan to my list for Mr Claus.

Guest Post: Erin’s Indulge Me Goddammit Weekend Breakfast

I still have one meal left to go today but I'm already onto thinking about Saturday's breakfast. Sometimes simplicity is all and, I am so frying my crumpets. The only other thing is to have enough wine tonight for a teensy hangover as Erin suggests: "So this is barely a recipe really but it’s so bloody good for Saturday late-morning breakfast, when you’ve got a teensy hangover and want something substantial, but you’ve got enough zip to get into the kitchen and faff about for ten minutes."

Thanks Erin, I just wish you were the right side of The Atlantic to share this with me.

Serves two (or one if the person is as greedy as a bear in a salmon filled river):

4 crumpets
4 large free range eggs (courtesy of Uncle Joe)
Big chunk of salted, good quality butter
Fresh flat leaf parsley
Black caviar
Crème fraiche

Either toast the crumpets or do what I do and fry them slowly in butter in a frying pan. This is disgracefully fatty but so delicious. In the meantime, fork your eggs about and oh I don’t need to tell you how to make scrambled eggs do I. So, in the meantime, make scrambled eggs to your liking (I like them just-cooked). When the eggs are done, put two crumpets on each plate, divide the eggs between them, then add a dollop of crème fraiche on top of each. Top with a teaspoonful of caviar, then sprinkle with torn-up parsley. Might want a squeeze of lemon. Yuuuuummmmm.

Happy weekend x

Exactly Full

C is away from our home this weekend and I am too. I'm so looking forward to being surrounded by my family, eating with them all weekend long. And, I just love the thought of being "exactly full."

Wishing you all a very happy Bank Holiday and leaving you with an excerpt from a Craig Arnold poem from his collection Made Flesh, found, with lots of other beautiful words and feelings, here.

Here is a small cafe
opening for breakfast
a zinc counter catching the light
at every angle in bright rings of glitter
A cup of black coffee is placed before you
brimming with rainbow-colored foam
a packet of sugar a pat of butter
a split roll of bread
scored and toasted and still warm
The butter is just soft enough to spread
the coffee hot and sugared to perfect sweetness
the bread grilled to the palest brown
crisp but not quite dry
You tear it nearly into pieces
eat them slowly when you finish
you are exactly full

Nothing succeeds like excess

It really doesn't take much to convince me, at anytime, that my need for cake is great.

This website is excessive. Excessively brilliant. Despite the incongruous name.

Just when I thought I'd narrowed it down to this one


Up pops this delicious looking sweetness
The man behind these is a genius.

If you're keen to try and like me, easily confused by the whole "cup" thing, go here, your problem will be solved. (I already have my own, about to be put to excellent use, thanks Erin.)

Is it wrong to lick the screen?

Giant Onions

If you're lucky enough to get your hands on onions this size*...

...then we can recommend reaching for Delia Smith's "The Collection: Soups" and creating a vat of sweet, warming French Onion Soup with toasted baguette and gruyere crutons.

This soup is sure to help you forget the cold outside, or, as was the case for us, provide a culinary hug after our return from The Great Outdoors - skiing at Glenshee. (It proved especially comforting for me as I returned shaken and bruised.)

What's more, there's plenty left for the freezer, so the goodness of this soup, the richness of the flavours, sweetness of the giant onions, sogginess of the crutons and stringy nuttiness of the cheese, can be enjoyed over and over, for as long as this cold weather lasts.**

*ours came courtesy of Uncle Joe and his secert supplier
**maybe