It's NOT a gas.

I've just come back from Thorpeness. Regular readers of this blog may recall that this is an annual and eagerly anticipated family holiday, and a great excuse to bake copiously for the fourteen people who attend each year. As usual I spent more time planning my baking schedule than packing, and upon arriving at the new house (where we haven't stayed before) headed for the kitchen to check out the facilities.

I was buoyed by the presence of a massive double oven, and imagined getting two or maybe three things on the go at once. How was I to know of the wiping of sweat and wringing of hands that would ensue?....

Saturday: Poppyseed coffee cake.

This was a recipe from the Guardian magazine a few weeks ago. I apologise for my naked bias towards that publications food columnists, but there is no doubt that I am singing from the same culinary hymn sheet as messrs Hugh, Yotam and Dan.

So the prep began with soaking the whole bag of poppy seeds in sour cream overnight, which for some intangible reason, thrilled me to my core. The recipe also required a hefty shot of double- espresso, which I proceeded to imbibe at regular intervals throughout the rest of the day causing a minor caffeine psychosis. Perhaps then, it was the eye-bulging, nail-biting, teeth-grinding effect of the coffee which contributed to my first diva-esque tantrum of the week; the cake didn't rise properly. It tasted nice enough, though oddly not as strongly of coffee as I'd have liked or expected. But the dense poppy seed mix gave the cake a lovely texture, and the assembled masses gave it a thumbs up. I wasn't happy though. Something wasn't right. 6/10

Sunday: Rye hazelnut brownies.
I've banged on enough about these brownies in previous posts, and feel no need to mention again how great they are, how utterly foolproof and, because they are prepared entirely in the pan, how they keep the washing up to a minimum too. The plan was to have them for pudding with some vanilla icecream and summer fruit salad. I've made them a million times, and was therefore horrified when I checked on them after the usual 20-odd minutes to find them overdone. No gooey centre (essential for a decent brownie), but a crumbly cakey texture.

It was when my friend Louise checked on the roast chickens a little later to find that the one on the left side of the oven was basting nicely, but the bird on the right looked like it had only just left the abattoir, that things starting shifting into place...we had a gas problem. Lunch was subsequently 3 and a half hours late, by which time no one really gave a toss whether the brownies had a perfect finish or not. And they did go brilliantly with the icecream and berries. But I wasn't happy. 5/10

Tuesday: Sour cherry and beetroot cake.
I've made this once before - for my friend Rachelle's birthday. It's a madly eccentric cake - topped with crumble and held together with a thick layer of cream whipped up with cherry jam. It shouldn't really work but it truly does. Or did. Having boiled the beetroot (I will always do things the hard way), grated it, prepared the crumble and put the two halves of vividly pink batter in their tins in the oven, I was dismayed to then discover that the one on the right had not risen. Not even a teeny bit. But it had cooked, so I was stuck with a bottom layer that resembled some sort of carmine tortilla. Or a raspberry naan bread. I did my best to repair the damage by adding a little cosmetic improvement, but as soon as it was sliced, the whole thing more or less fell apart.

The critics, however, were undeterred and raved about its flavour. One of them even went so far as to declare it one of their favourites ever. But by now my confidence was plummeting - this was not the perfect result that I'm accustomed to, and I was about to get extremely stroppy. 4/10.

Wednesday: Honey treacle loaf cake.
This was a recipe that appeared in Dan Lepard's column quite recently, and not making it was simply not an option. Rye flour, lemon icing and packed with a whole raft of spices? Bring it on. I have to say this was a joy to prepare - everything just smelt so damn good - and again, a lot of it involved merely melting the ingredients in a saucepan. So this time, I put the cake on the hotter left side of the oven, and hoped for the best.

And at last, something went right. It was a truly yummy cake, with a real kick. But it was overdone - the edges were distinctly crusty, but I was relieved that it at least resembled a loaf, and the middle bit was a spicy, treacly delight. 7/10.

Thursday: Apple berry almond tart.
So this was my swan song for the week. And in the spirit of facing my demons all at once, I decided to attempt some shortcrust pastry. Rolling dough, dicky oven...what could possibly go wrong? But actually, five days in and I think I had at at last got the hang of the oven's strange idiosyncrasies. The tart - which is pretty much a bakewell, only nicer - came out really well. You can see it at the top of the page. I added some fresh blueberries to the base to give it an extra fruity dimension, and you can spot them straining for freedom through the frangipane. 8/10.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/07/apple-berry-almond-tart-dan-lepard

Contrary to appearances, I did - from time to time - escape the kitchen in order to wander down to the beach, stand at the very edge of the sea, which on that particular bit of coastline remains cold and grey even when the sun is shining, and daydream about my childhood, with my parents, and Paul and Joanna and our friends. And consider how lucky I am, despite everything.

Cakes for Paul

On February 13th, my older brother Paul died after battling cancer for 3 years. I'm not keen on words like 'battling' - there is very little option but to fight under those circumstances - and I have always objected to the expectation that anyone with a terminal illness is judged by how 'brave', 'courageous' and 'positive' they happen to be about the whole wretched business. If ever there were a justified reason for despair and self-pity it is surely this. But Paul was indeed all those affirmative things and more, and I miss him terribly.

As anyone who has experience of cancer will know, the illness itself and the toxic treatment used to control it, can have a horrible effect on digestion, appetite and the patients overall approach to food. Chemotherapy induces dreadful nausea and sickness, and mouth sores are common, making the simple act of eating an arduous and unpleasant chore.

This was especially harsh with my brother, because he absolutely loved food - the eating, the mealtime rituals, the need to recover afterwards! In fact, this applies to my whole family - not in a 'foodie' sense - occasions when we'd all get together were never spent discussing ingredients and comparing recipes (God forbid!) - I'm talking about something a lot less pretentious than that; Seaside fish & chips, Chinese takeaways, Christmas dinner, or even the unique pleasure of a bowl of salty tortillas and jumbo bags of Haribo's shared out whilst watching the Eurovision Song Contest!

Paul also loved my cakes. He was always the first to head to the kitchen at one of my kids birthday parties to see what I'd come up with, and would praise loudly if there was something that particularly impressed him.

It was therefore a lucky coincidence that the one thing that he was able to enjoy for longer than most other food, was cake. He could stomach sweet, stodgy puddings and buns and even craved them. I therefore became mildly obsessed with baking him different muffins and cookies every time I went to see him. I wanted to make stuff that he could manage but which would also provide some vaguely nutritious benefits too; so I would replace white flour with wholemeal, rye or buckwheat, add nuts and seeds wherever possible, use oil instead of butter and pack as much fruit in as was humanly possible.

You don't need to be a shrink to recognise that baking for Paul took on a greater, more symbolic significance for me than merely providing something for tea. Watching him become weaker, and feeling powerless to really do anything useful to help, I employed one of the only skills that I was capable of. And of course, being Jewish, the habit of throwing vast quantities of comfort food at a problem is both common and often pretty effective (our cousin Xanthe was tipping up with vats of chicken soup on a weekly basis). His ability to eat, and more importantly, his enjoyment, became a wider barometer for how he was feeling. He (and I) would be hugely buoyed if a muffin were wolfed down. I'd often give him half of one, and if the other half were requested, this was a considerable triumph. Conversely, it was heartbreaking if he were unable to get it down, even if he wanted to.

Two recent recipes that hit the spot were some deceptively virtuous blueberry bran muffins and a truly delicious wholemeal orange and apple cake from an old Nigel Slater book. He also loved some raspberry, white chocolate and cinammon blondie's made with rice flour and butternut squash, lifted from the same tome from which my favourite chocolate cake originated - incredibly moist and moreish. I remember him grumpily batting away his wife Vivi's hand when she tried to nick a bit off his plate - the last time I saw him do this I think.

The weekend after he died, I saw a recipe for a hemp and ginger cake with cinnamon icing (top photo). He would have loved it, so I made it anyway for Vivi and their girls and it was magnificent. An edible tribute.

White chocolate, cinnamon and raspberry blondies

Ingredients: 3 medium eggs, 120g unrefined caster sugar, 250g butternut squash - finely grated,
50g rice flour, 100g ground almonds, 1 tsp cinnamon, 2 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt, 150g fresh raspberries, 100g white chocolate, chopped, 30g flaked almonds, a little icing sugar for dusting.
Method:

1. preheat the oven to 200c/gas mark 6. Line the base and sides of a 20-23cm square tin with baking parchment. Brush with a little oil.


2. Beat the eggs and sugar in a large bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the squash and beat again before adding the flour, ground almonds, cinnamon, baking powder and salt. Beat it all together.


3. Pour half the mixture into the tin and scatter over the raspberries and white chocolate before covering with the remaining mixture.


4. Sprinkle over the flaked almonds and bake in the top of the oven for 25 minutes.


5. Cool the blondie in the tin for 20 mins, then sieve a little icing sugar over the top before cutting into 9 squares.
   

Sugar and spice.

So Christmas came and went in a haze of icing sugar, dried fruit and mixed spices. It's an odd one, that. Are we all pre-conditioned to start craving strange seasonal anomaly's the moment the clock strikes midnight on December 1st? Is our sudden desire to add handfuls of cloves and grated ginger to everything some primal response to the certain knowledge that at some point in the ensuing weeks we will catch a cold? Or is it merely a sinister marketing ploy by the likes of Starbucks to ensure that our custom remains constant as long as the aroma of a gingerbread latte wafts forth every time we pass their door?
Whatever the reason, I embrace the inclusion of festive ingredients very happily indeed.

So I began my countdown - unremarkably - with a Christmas cake (pictured above). This was another wonderful Dan Lepard recipe which distinguished itself by using as its base a creamy caramel, and was, as you'd expect, packed with tons of fruit and nuts (though I actually forgot to add the walnuts due to a sudden violent eruption between my sons in the room next door which required immediate attention. This despite the fact that the nuts were sitting , weighed and chopped, blinking at me on the kitchen counter.) I iced the cake with a cardamom infused lemon drizzle, and decorated it with leftover glacier cherries and those discarded walnuts. It was really good, though also the heaviest cake I've ever made - it must've weighed half a stone. My arm literally ached from carrying it!
http://www.danlepard.com/front-carousel/2010/11/3017/caramel-christmas-cake/

The build-up to Christmas is universally stressful, but my month was further complicated by Eli's 9th birthday and his insistence that we have a family tea party to celebrate it (this is something that I've always managed to swerve, based on its proximity to December 25th). So I gamely set about concocting a menu which would honour the occasion but with a seasonal twist. Thus, little stem ginger macaroons spiked with almonds and dusted with icing sugar were produced, as well as those marzipan, cinnamon and plum muffins which I tried last year (but worked much better this time around), and also from Ottolenghi the most decadent chocolate fig bars ever which elevated the simple tray bake to a new and exciting level (pictured on the right). I also knocked out that seminal apple loaf again (any excuse) as well as a birthday cake (obviously).

At some point, I had the bright idea of making a Stollen. I personally love Stollen, but acknowledge that in some households its right up there with bread sauce, brussel sprouts and Christmas pudding as something which is tolerated rather than enjoyed. It is also a cake which can often be found, half eaten, at the back of a cupboard sometime in April.

Making the Stollen was really good fun - like baking bread but without all the tedious hanging about. And rolling out the marzipan to create that perfect almondy circle at its epicentre was a challenge. The final stage was dredging it (I love that word!) with tons and tons of melted butter, brandy and icing sugar before wrapping it tightly and leaving it for the best part of a week. That last bit was torture. I'm far too greedy and impatient to bear such a lengthy period of 'resting', and couldn't resist prodding the thing every time I wandered into the kitchen. It was finally unveiled on Christmas day, and although everyone were suffering the groaning pains of over-indulgence , several generous slices were force fed at tea time.

The Stollen subsequently accompanied me on every visit to family and friends for the remainder of the holidays, a bit like a needy pet that couldn't be left alone, shrinking slightly every time.


I polished off the final dregs a few days later, accompanied by an indecently huge glass of Baileys. The main course of this last supper had been a stack of stilton, cranberry sauce, ham and cold red cabbage tottering precariously between two fat bits of bread. Heaven. But thank God Christmas only comes around once a year.

My Top Five

My family love making lists. Nothing is considered too obscure or mundane to fashion into a Top 10, given half the chance. Hours have been spent ruminating over our collective favourite comedy films, the 50 greatest singles from the 60's, Beatles love songs, iconic soap characters...Rainy afternoons are enlivened by intense debates about who would make it into our Ultimate Spurs Vl, and recently my sister and I were delighted to receive an email from our brother which took each of our family cats through the ages, and gave them a pop star alter-ego (eg Rusty - Captain Sensible, Tinker - Diana Ross. You get the drift).

So it seems only fitting to apply this slightly fanatical and undeniably nerdy principle to my baking. In time-honoured tradition, I've been mulling over this list for several days, so here it is: My Top 5 ingredients!

1 Cinnamon

My favourite spice by a mile! There is barely a cake in my repertoire that doesn't benefit from a teaspoon of cinnamon, and it is the perfect companion for oranges, pears, sultanas, dates, honey...I could seriously go on and on. Its presence in banana bread and malt loaf is mandatory, and I should add that it's my preferred accompaniment for porridge as well. If a recipe includes cinnamon, I will almost certainly try it. It's a kite-mark for yumminess.

2 Figs

I know I've mentioned them before, but I'm passionate about figs. Fresh or dried, their sticky, natural sweetness can't help but thrill. And I know that some people struggle with their texture, but I absolutely adore it. Also, unlike other fruits, they are rarely seasonally inappropriate; they can work as happily in a tart for a picnic on a summer's day, as they do a traditional Christmas pudding. I will always consider purchasing anything with the word fig in it: lipsticks, sweaters, body lotion, candles - if it's the colour of fig, or mimics the smell I'll wear it, sniff it or slather it.

3 Almonds

Of course, I laboured over this decision as I'm mad about nuts en masse. So I included almonds based on their extraordinary multi-tasking skills, and cunning ability to create lightness and moisture once ground and stirred into the batter. My healthy chocolate cake would not be half as nice without 80 grams of them mixed in with the rice flour and butternut squash. Shards of toasted almond flakes always look gorgeous scattered over the top of a cake and though adding a delicate flavour, never overpower. The cherry and polenta tart pictured above illustrates this rather well, I feel. And of course, almonds provide the basis for marzipan and this can only be a very good thing indeed.

4 Apples

Or pears or plums. Which I know is cheating, but it's hard to pick just one orchard fruit in preference to another. But apples just get the edge based on their unsurpassed greatness in a classic tatin or crumble. And they feature heavily in two of my all-time favourites - both to bake and eat, the rye apple cake and apple and olive oil cake - both of which I've eulogised over on these pages before. An apple in a recipe always provides comfort and a promise that all will probably go well. They are the friendly family GP of the fruit world.

5 Dark chocolate

There is surely nothing more uproariously enjoyable than stirring some decent dark chocolate in a pan and marveling as it begins to melt and take on that velvety sheen. Shove in some butter or cream, and it's enough to make you swoon. My wonderful, seminal rye brownies and heavenly ginger and treacle biscuits use tons of the stuff - chopped roughly in the latter. Not to mention countless muffins, layer cakes, cookies and most things which say fudge. And occasionally I experience what I can only describe as a proper craving for one singular square of Green & Blacks 70% on the bus home.

So here is a recipe which features #1, #2 and #4 on my all-time list. They're not pretty, they're not clever, but quick and delicious.

Apple, brazil nut and fig muffins.

Ingredients:

250g plain flour, 11/2 tsps baking powder, 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, 50g brazil nuts (chopped), 175g unrefined caster sugar, 1 medium egg, 300ml buttermilk, 50g unsalted butter (melted), 1 medium apple (cored and diced), 75g dried figs (organic ones taste nicer).

Method:

1. Sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon into a bowl and stir in the brazil nuts and sugar.


2. Beat together the egg, buttermilk and melted butter until blended, then stir into the dry ingredients to make a smooth batter.


3. Fold in the apple and figs and spoon the mixture into 8 paper cases. Bake for 25 - 30 mins at 200C, gas mark 6 until risen and golden.


4. Leave to cool, but serve on the same day as they went a bit gloopy once left.

Just the job if you're feeling a bit listless. (Sorry).

Chill?

This post is little more than a thinly disguised cry for help to fellow bakers. Those perhaps who, unlike me, paid attention to the 'science bit' during their cookery classes, and are therefore much more knowledgeable on why certain extraordinary things occur when you bake a cake.

Happily, things rarely go wrong in the kitchen these days, but it always feels like its more by luck than judgment. I guess it's just an instinct thing; I feel my way around the process with a kind of bakers braille, relying on my senses to know when something needs to come out of the oven, or when enough mixing has taken place. However, why kneading dough in a particular way, or folding ingredients into a bowl rather than stirring them, or the ratio of baking powder to soda should affect the outcome remains a mystery to me. And as at school, if somebody starts to patiently explain the facts to me, my eyes glaze, I start to fidget and my brain effectively shuts down.

Ditto with cookery shows on TV. I'm rapt by the drama of a souffle sinking or a pudding failing to rise, but the minute an explanation is proffered, I drift away.

Generally, it's not a problem. I almost feel inclined to celebrate my ignorance and just enjoy Not Knowing The Answers, and not caring to know. Whilst knowledge and information are so easily accessed, it's kind of liberating to wallow in one's own daftness. I feel the same way about this as I do about faith and spirituality; As somebody wiser than me once said on the subject: 'All we know for certain about the existence of God and the afterlife is that we'll never know, and we should glory in that' (or something.).

Which segues perfectly into whether or not to put a finished cake in the fridge! For this is my dilemma. I have noticed recently - especially while I've been baking so very many cakes - that some can sit quite happily in the fridge for a day or two, and as long as they're allowed to rest at room temperature for an hour or so before cutting, they lose none of their texture or flavour. My healthy chocolate cake with mascarpone icing for example, can be made way ahead of time and might even be improved by its fridge gestation. Ottolenghi actually advocates chilling his apple cake wrapped in cling film for a couple of days before icing it, and Omari at work, who has commissioned two such cakes, reported back that he left his in the fridge and ate a slice a night for the best part of a week!

But the Coffee and ginger cake with pistachio icing was a disaster once chilled - it completely hardened, and never recovered. It actually tasted stale. When I made it again, I avoided the fridge completely and the difference was immense.

I've never put a banana bread in the fridge, or come to think of it, any of my loaf cakes. I was concerned that the Pear and cardamom loaf which was jammed full of very ripe fruit from my brother's pear tree, would suffer from being left for several days, wrapped in greaseproof paper in an airtight container. I imagined that the pears would all ferment, and that it would taste strangely medicinal, but it was delicious - better, in fact. Equally flapjacks and brownies benefit from a day or two of idleness before being scoffed.

Even I can surmise from the ingredients in these various offerings, that a certain theme emerges; Neither the chocolate or apple cakes contain butter, and I guess its the butter which is likely to harden up again in the fridge. But the chocolate custard muffins, and the little lemon tarts (pictured) - both crammed full of fat - survived in the cold without a hitch. So bang goes that theory.

So any hard and fast facts on the subject will be welcomed. Though I can't promise to stay awake whilst I try to disseminate the information.

And on the subject of instinct, I made a vegan cake last week (below), replacing some of the ingredients which I felt would make it taste too hippy-like, and deploying an icing recipe from another source entirely - it involved crushing fresh blackberries through a sieve and mixing the juice with icing sugar. I then spread the pulp over the top of the cake with a few whole fruits, gave it a dusting of sugar and it was glorious! This was something of an epiphany for me: not following a recipe slavishly and being satisfied with the results. Maybe it will signal the dawn of a new baking era - one where I am more maverick and carefree in my approach. Chilled out perhaps.

I'm still (cake) standing.

I liken my first experience of bona-fide cake-selling, to giving birth. At the time it felt like an endless, and very stressful, labour. But with a few days passed since I sold the last slice of apple cake on Saturday afternoon, I reflect on it all with misty affection and quite fancy doing it again!

Of course, the whole thing would have been a lot less arduous if it had been possible to suspend my other parental and day-job duties and just stay home and bake till it was all done. As it was, and with the inevitable intervention of the Rest Of My Life, I found myself icing chocolate cakes and slicing brownies at 3am for several nights on the trot, and was so sleep-deprived that I actually burst into tears during the baton-twirling task in Ultimate Big Brother. And it wasn't all about the baking; I also had to get my head around other perplexing issues, such as how to provide enough napkins, paper plates and forks without actually buying them. (I was virtually chased out of Wholefoods Market by a security guard after wandering back onto the high street with 50 serviettes stuffed into my bra), and how on earth I was going to transport everything in the boot of my car without it all hurling sideways. Oh, the perils of trying to set up a little cottage industry!

But nonetheless it happened, somewhat haphazardly, and it was good fun and also, as I had hoped, an incredibly useful exercise in what works, what doesn't and who buys cakes when they're wandering around a film festival getting sloshed on cheap red wine.

For the record, the Tahini flapjacks, Rye brownies and Honey and orange syrup cake all went quickly, as did the two lots of cookies (the Dark chocolate and sour cherry variety are pictured below). The cupcakes, which I included rather grudgingly, were ignored by the adults at the evening event, but sold out during the kids' screening (though I did discover that one little girl of about three, who returned to the stall several times, was systematically dropping them on the floor and stamping on them! I had to fight the urge to march into the cinema and demand that she sit on the naughty step until an apology had come forth. I think I'll have to seriously de-sensitise if I want to carry on with this selling lark). I also learnt the hard way that toiling over an admittedly lovely, but quite complex Blueberry and creme fraiche cupcake recipe is not a good use of time, as 3-year olds are unlikely to notice the difference.

The Light chocolate cake (pictured) went well, and was a great talking point due to its virtuous ingredients. And the Apple cake with maple icing was a slow-burning, word-of-mouth triumph - people were coming up to me asking for a slice long after I had sold out, having seen other satisfied punters roaming around with enraptured expressions on their faces. As I've said before, I take no credit for this. It's a wonderful recipe which really has the wow factor.

I'm doing it all again next weekend, and have already started to plan what I'm going to include for Round 2. Being a glutton for punishment, I don't intend to repeat anything! After all, where's the fun in that? So I'm going to make some little lemon and poppy-seed tarts that I've never tried before, and having trawled through my scruffy old recipe folder, have decided to revisit one of my absolute perennial favourites - a Cherry and polenta cake. Yum. I'm excited already.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2007/jun/30/foodanddrink.recipes13

Window shopping.

I'm bricking it. After months of blathering on about my intention to make a business of my cake obsession, I'm finally being forced to do something about it.

Encouraged by my friend Jan, and emboldened by the consistently favourable response to my last few offerings, I contacted the Portobello Film Festival http://www.portobellofilmfestival.com to see if it would be possible to set up a stall at their launch party in September. The festival director's enthusiastic and unhesitating "er..OK then", has made it necessary for me to consider all the practicalities of baking on a grander scale than I've ever attempted before, not to mention the vexing question of what and when to prepare it. I am also having to turn my thoughts to the acquisition of a trestle table and enough stands, trays and other motley paraphernalia required to make it all look half presentable.

I'm sure it will be a worthwhile experiment though. I've long been intending to test my capacity beyond the usual tea parties. And they can be stressful enough.

So on my way to the office this morning, I pressed my nose up against the shop window of Ottolenghi in Kensington. In fact, this is a daily ritual and the staff tend to regard me as they would a rather tiresome stray cat who hovers meaningfully around the door in the hope that some scraps might be thrown their way. But the manner in which they present their patisserie is beautiful, and a good (if not somewhat lofty) yardstick as to what works visually.

I'm thinking that a reasonable amount of chocolaty treats should be on offer; some brownies, and my light chocolate cake smothered in raspberries. And something slicked in gooey pale icing - the apple and olive oil cake perhaps, carrot cake or that wonderful coffee and mascarpone cream delight that I used to do a lot. Some cookies - easy to consume on the go, and as it's my current obsession, I won't be able to allow the event to pass without some crowd-pleasing muffins. Bursts of vivid colour are essential to a mouth-watering display, most effectively provided by arrangements of summer fruit sitting atop the cakes, or perhaps constrained by caramel on an upside down tart.

I adamantly refuse to acknowledge the cupcake craze. I hate those little buggers, and no amount of sickly Krazy-color frosting will persuade me otherwise. The same can be said for macaroons and whoopie pies; A baked good is no place for a fashion fad, it's just not dignified. Sarah Jessica Parker endorsing the Krispy Kreme donut was enough to ensure that I would never allow one to pass my lips.

But I digress. I might be tempted to include some of the more esoteric recipes that I've tried lately - the Tahini flapjacks that I made last weekend were yummy, as was the date cake with a tamarind drizzle. The coffee, ginger and pistachio cake pictured above was no slouch either. I'm guessing that the festival patrons will be a reasonably discerning bunch, and will expect something more sophisticated than a few iced yum-yums. And if not, they'll be too drunk to notice, anyway.

I also made some cookies on Monday for my God-daughter Claudia who has just given birth to her second baby. Based on the certain fact that for the foreseeable future she will only have the use of one arm (due to the permanent carrying and feeding duty of the other), I scoured the net for a recipe that would provide something vaguely nutritious in a low-maintenance bite-sized format. I was not remotely surprised that the winning formula was found on Dan Lepards site (I know I know, but he's the gift that keeps on giving) - his one-a-day cookies, which appeared in the Guardian a few years ago, were little nuggets of goodness, packed with wholemeal flour, seeds and grated apple (and butter and sugar, of course - how could it call itself a cookie otherwise?), and they fulfilled the job nicely. http://www.danlepard.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=11784&sid=32dbeeda625aca05cae6bb80c92f44dc In the recipe Dan mentions that he got 12-14 biscuits out of the dough, but I managed around 20 - reducing the calorific value considerably!

So I'm off on holiday next week, and no more baking till I'm back. I'm approximately five days away from wearing a bikini and it's keeping me awake at night. But upon my return, I'll be planning my first commercial spread, and may even have to treat myself to an Ottolenghi purchase instead of just gazing at it. For research purposes, obviously.