As a child I loved Pop-Tarts™, those saccharine toaster pastries thick with white icing and multicoloured sprinkles that, when eaten greedily from the toaster, would scald your tongue with red-hot jam. I decided to see if I could make my own version from scratch, pastry and all, and here they are. They’re not an everyday breakfast but they’re definitely a […]
Pancakes became something of a tradition in my household when Small Boy started school; our lazy days of laconic love-ins giving way to 6am alarm calls, nervous breakdowns in the morning about where the bloody hell the latest school jumper could possibly be, finding every left shoe in the house and not a single right one. Weekend breakfasts became a […]
This loaf first appeared in my first cookbook, A Girl Called Jack, and is a favourite weekend recipe of mine. It was based on a similar loaf from Economy Gastronomy, by Allegra McEvedy and Paul Merrett, using mashed chickpeas and sun dried tomatoes, but mine is, as ever, the more austere version. It is delightfully accidentally vegan, and robust enough […]
This beautiful recipe was born of a Sunday morning trying to impress my still-quite-new but comfortingly familiar paramour, that settling in period where weekend pancakes with the newspapers have become a routine, but I still want to pull the proverbial rabbit (!) out of the hat every now and then. She had never had banana bread – never – and […]
I first made this for myself as I love peanut butter in the mornings, but not having a toaster, popping bread under the grill inevitably goes wrong when you have a three year old to get washed and socked and shoed in the mornings – so I cobbled this together and bunged it in a big jar. Perfect with hot […]
Apparently we don’t bother with pancakes on Pancake Day any more. That’s what a press release that landed in my email inbox this afternoon told me; that we, as country, aren’t all tossers. We don’t flip out. We no longer belong in the gang of whisk-pour-fry-flip-lemon-sugar-munchers. I simply don’t believe it, and I hope you will all prove me wrong. […]
I never seem to get the porridge quantities quite right in the mornings, and have recently embarked on a series of experiments with teacups and measuring cups, trying to work out the exact amount of oats and water and milk needed to make two small bowls of porridge for two small children – but no matter how carefully calculated, there’s […]
The quantity given for the tin of pineapple chunks is approximate. Some tins are 200g, some are 227g, so don’t worry about weighing and measuring – just throw about half the tin in! you can put the remaining pineapple chunks from the tin into an airtight container with just enough juice to cover and pop into the fridge to snack […]
Courgettes give off quite a bit of liquid when you grate them but don’t worry about draining it off in this recipe because the courgettey water will help to flavour the bread and add moisture. when you will be adding water to a recipe later anyway, it doesn’t make sense to fanny about taking liquid out only to put it […]
Ingredients: (makes one portion) 40g rolled oats 100g natural yoghurt 100ml milk (10g milk powder and 100ml water) 100g broken mandarin segments Mix the oats, yoghurt and milk together in a small bowl, and chill in the fridge overnight to soften the oats. In the morning, serve with the mandarins on top, and enjoy! A drizzle of honey, if you […]
This decadent-tasting breakfast is simple to make, and almost feels like starting the day with a dessert! It’s easy to customise, use any combination of fruit and spices that you have to hand. Frozen berries with chunks of white chocolate, banana and cinnamon, even grated orange rind and dark chocolate for a luxury twist… Here’s a simple apple crumble combination […]
Serves around 3, depending on age, appetite, and how much of a pancake fiend you are… Ingredients: 100g flour (SR for light fluffy pancakes, but plain is fine too) 100ml milk 1 egg 1 apple, very finely sliced Handful of sultanas (50g approx) 2 tbsp oil Finely slice the apple, I used a vegetable peeler, and pop to one side. […]
I MADE POP TARTS! Makes 6-8, mine are bigger and thicker than the originals, but still reckon on two per person ;-). Obviously these aren’t an everyday breakfast, but they’re a ‘what the hell why not’ breakfast… Ingredients (makes 6-8). 200g flour 100g butter 5 tbsp cold water 6 tbsp jam 6 tbsp icing sugar (60g approx) Another tbsp water […]
My ‘berry bircher breakfast pot’ (foreground) costs a sixth of the price of its coffee shop counterpart (background), even with the pumpkin seed and cranberry adornment – which I included to try to be as consistent with the original as possible – they’re nice but by no means essential! And to be accurate with costs, I counted the pumpkin seeds […]
After last weeks porridge experiment, several of my readers got in touch to tell me that they do something similar, but with dried skimmed milk. Well, I rushed to the supermarket to pick up a bag, to solve another household problem. So Thankyou dear readers for this ingenious idea – I’ve made a Super Express Portable Porridge pot from a […]
