So I was just chatting to Pam about tomatoes, how fun it is to grow them from seed and how lovely to have such a huge crop for various dinners, not just salads either, this sweet cherry tomato and sausage bake is definitely a fave.

However, now the weather has turned the tomatoes started rotting on the vine so I picked all the good ones this weekend and made some green tomato chutney.

I found a great recipe here simple and delicious, it actually tastes pretty close to Branston Pickle to be honest, but SO much better of course!

Another Christmas present to go with the jam for our family and friends. Plus I gave all my leftover jars to a lovely lady from the WI as we are cleaning out ready for the new kitchen, (eek!)

They are currently engaged in the Hackney Harvest, where they collect fruit from peoples gardens who are doing nothing with it, make jam/chutney and give it back to them – how cook is that. She did try to recruit me so I might go along…

I made this on holiday in Switzerland visiting our lovely (if knackered) friends from Ruffles and Ribbons. I got very over excited when we went to the market and found deliciously ripe figs, yumarama!

This is a fun afternoon’s activity, first: make the pastry, chill for one hour. Make the frangipane, chill for one hour. Roll out the pastry to practically transparent thinness, line the tin, chill for another hour. (I hope you’ve got a good book on the go).

Bake the pastry then add the frangipane, push the split oozing figs into the mixture and cover with orange zest, falked almonds and drizzle over sugar syrup.

Bake, done. Serve with creme fraiche.

It’s bloody good.

Last weekend in the sunshine Simon and I went berry picking at Parkside Farm in Enfield, sensibly we arrived early, before the rush which was descending as we left at 11am!

Arriving home with a decent haul of strawberries, raspberries and blackberries I rolled my sleeves up for an afternoon of jam making. As ever I pulled out the preserving bible that is The National Trust Book of Jams and Preserves for guidance.

The bramble jam was a quick make, equal amounts of fruit and sugar plus the juice of two lemons, and was done in 20 mins. It is a delightfully tart jam and due to the short setting time still has large bits of whole fruit in it. In a blind taste test (which basically meant me feeding Simon breakfast) Simon rated this lowest of the three, but given that they are all delicious I think that sounds harsher than it should be.

The raspberry jam is easily my favourite, slightly sharp, very fruity and great texture (unless you’re the sort of weirdo who likes seedless jam), I left this to mingle with the sugar overnight before boiling and it really helped with the consistency. I’m also slightly partial to this as I potted it into some of my favourite jars…

The strawberry jam took four days to make, yup, 4 freakin’ days! But who am I to argue with The National Trust?

The first day you layer the fruit and jam sugar in a dish, cover and leave to soak, on day two you boil it for 5 mins, then cover and leave in the pan for another two days, on the fourth day you can finally bring to setting point, pot and cover.

So is it worth it? I would say yes, I got the best set I’ve ever had with this jam and Simon rated it top in our blind taste test, plus I would say the strawberries were not the best I’ve ever picked so definitely a success.

So that’s cream teas, victoria sponges, steamed puddings and a number of christmas prezzies sorted – shout now if you have a preference, I’m not sure how much will be left by then.

I’ve been meaning to make this for ages, this is another gem from my Italian classics cookbook that Simon got me a while ago.

Should have done it sooner – they are freaking’ amazing. I might have made them slightly too large but I’d only eat more if they were smaller.

I also used some of my delicious vanilla sugar (made from the empty vanilla pods as suggested by Nigella, I do everything she says you know) which I’ve been saving for just such an occasion and as far as I’m concerned that really made the difference (yeh so I’ve got nothing to compare it to, give a shit, I trust Nigella!)

Anyway I quite like the idea of making these every weekend to have with coffee, that’s probably unrealistic but I will certainly try these chocolate ones next time.

I also made these for Alex’s hen high tea but I feel they deserve their own post as they are so god-damned delicious. If you don’t know what a blondie is, (and it turned out no-one at the hen party DID) they are white chocolate brownies (geddit?), a genius idea.

As with all baking it’s the quality of the ingredients that makes these and so I obviously used Green & Blacks white chocolate, drooooool, best quality vanilla extract and some delicious whole pecans.

I used this recipe from The Times ‘inspired by and adapted from’ Gale Gand, the pastry chef of Tru restaurant in Chicago. She suggests serving them as 2.5cm cubes with coffee, and really, I think these were perfect for afternoon tea, delicious, light and sophisticated.

It was nice to have an oven that worked and meant I probably ever-so-slightly overcooked them, they could have been a bit squishier. However, they had my whole family coveting the tin and I had to let them try some the night before the hen party or there would have been blood, even my mother who professes to hate white chocolate was seen snaffling one whilst making the tea .

You may remember that I made profiteroles for New Year’s Eve dinner, and to be honest it was so simple I wondered what all the fuss was about.

So for my lovely friend Alex’s hen party I decided to make chocolate éclairs – yum. We had a full on high tea so it was the ideal situation to show off.

I made the crème patissière the day before, all lovely and yellow and vanilla-y, and decided I would get up early on the day to make the pastry so the éclairs would be nice and fresh.

I used this recipe by Raymond Blanc as he’s supposed to be the king of all things pastry, the creme patissière was delicious but the éclairs were a total disaster, the paste looked good but they came out the oven completely flat and were unusable. At this point I had my usual tantrum and decided to make the scones to calm myself down.

After that I went back to trusty Delia for the choux pastry, you know where you are with Delia.

The second batch of pastry was the wrong consistency so I binned that without even cooking it but the third batch was perfect, they rose and came out of the oven a perfect golden brown (well, nearly – the oven doesn’t cook evenly!). The shape wasn’t bad either given that I had to use a sandwich bag to pipe them.

Unfortunately not having the correct piping equipment meant I had to make a slit in the side to fill them but you couldn’t tell and I made the glaze from a Rachel Allen recipe as it looked easier (and I had run out of time remaking the sodding pastry!).

Anyway in the end they were bloody amazing and everyone loved them – especially our beautiful hen, and that’s the main thing!

Obviously I had a shit load of egg whites left so I also made some meringues, we had some small, dainty ones for the afternoon tea and then my mother made the leftovers into this monster of a dessert for a dinner party.

It has a meringue base, then crème patissière, then fruit, cream, more fruit, mini meringues cemented with more crème patissière topped with a chocolate strawberry. Crazy I tell you.

You might have seen these on the first episode of The Great British Menu, a pretentious programme but I’m enjoying the variety of celebrity chefs and there are some good recipes to be had too.

This is one of them (this link may expire after a while, I know they are limiting how long the recipes are up for, presumably so they can flog you a book of the series), I made this for dessert after Sunday lunch and it was amazing, unfortunately it didn’t quite set like Michel’s and I had to make it in cups as my ramekins were too small but they taste so good, I can’t describe to you how good, you should just make them. Really easy to do too and you don’t have to do the brioche/bread mix, just use what you’ve got knocking around, the flavour is all from the vanilla and the rum, delicious!

On Sunday I visited the Creative Stitch and Craft show in Brighton, I have to say it was better than we (my sister and I) thought it was going to be. We have previously attended the Knitting and Stitching show at Alexandra Palace which was far to big, busy and crowded for us, it also had a lot of repetition in what was available with the smaller more specialist stalls getting lost amongst the hundreds of card making and magazine stands.

The Brighton centre was rather more civilised (it probably helped that we went on a Sunday), it was smaller and there were less knitting stalls but there was still lots to see and buy and, to my sisters delight, there were ‘bargains to be had!’ which is really what you want when you’ve paid to go into a show. We also got some good ideas of things to make and had a nice picnic in the bar, annoyingly they had massively overpriced the wine (and couldn’t sell me a whole bottle, ‘we only do it by the glass’ – why?) meaning they had only sold one glass all day, idiots. But overall it was really good and we will certainly go next year.

We went with the Denmead Knit and Bitch Group who all got very excited at the mountain of discount yarn on one stall, they were diving into the pile and pulling out half price cashmerino by the bag, much cash was parted with and we all went home happy. However, I would still recommend the Iknit Weekender as the best show I’ve been to so far.

Anyway I arrived home, wet, bedraggled with aching feet and needed a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake. Fortunately I had made this delicious lemon drizzle cake on Saturday which provided the perfect accompaniment to tea and rummaging through my new acquisitions.

It’s a very simple recipe from Tana Ramsey on the BBC website, I used the zest of two lemons rather than one to make it really zingy, delicious!