Chocolate & Salted Caramel Shortbread | Easter baking

With extra time over the Easter holidays and lots of chocolate to use up from the lorry load of eggs, we finally got around to making these...

Homemade Beef Burgers

These burgers rival any Bunsen or Wow Burger - really!

Far Breton

This is a simple, delicious recipe from one of my favourite food bloggers, Mimi Thorisson. In this traditional French dessert prunes are added to a custardy base. There are so many delicious elements to this cake, from the silky smooth texture in the centre to the more flan like top and edge, with hefty rum-soaked prunes studded throughout. I never realised just how much I liked prunes until I made this. 

Imaginations

The sound of war. Grenades, shrieking, gunfire. Pew, pew, pew. Pew, pew. Noise and chaos, thumping sounds, shouting. Arms and legs flying in every direction.

Waiting for Snow

It's at this time of year I always remember the big snow of 2010. Not 1983 like some, I was just too small to recall the details, but the last big snow when my eldest was only four and I delighted in the fact that he could toboggan down the hill beside our house on a baking tray. It snuck up on me; I wasn't expecting such a big pile on the first day it fell, maybe it was because I didn't have an app back then to check the weather as often as I liked, maybe some people had an inkling it was on the way, maybe it was just one of those things that happen out of the blue for a reason that nobody knows. One minute I was preparing dinner and the next the snow came... Falling slowly at the start then picking up speed, gently covering everything outside with big, thick snowflakes until everything turned white. I don't remember much about yesterday but I do remember that evening, happy memories are as clear as day. Snow makes me happy :-)

As soon as the temperature starts to drop and I'm rooting out hats and gloves and scarves I secretly hope that the same will happen again. Hygge comes to the forefront of my mind. I want to curl up beside log fires while a blanket of snow quietly covers the ground, light every candle, sip on warming drinks and spend quality time with family indoors after the working day is done. Some people are summer people but I've decided I'm definitely a winter one.

Outside it feels cold enough for snow, but because there's no sign of any yet here's some photos from the web the get me in the hygge mood...