The Baking Book

Left-hand photograph: My Nan and my Dad in the 1960s.
Right-hand photograph: I'm on the right working the highly fashionable chocolate cake face
Background recipe: Spicy Buns - watch out for it featuring on here soon...

When people ask me where my passion for baking came from, the question is always simple to answer: My Nan. My earliest memories of my Nan's house come from playing bakery in the kitchen with a tray full of magnets that I would pretend were biscuits that I had baked. There were also times where I would pretend to be a TV cook with my cousin and we would make up recipes which we wrote in The Baking Book.

As soon I was old enough to hold a wooden spoon and stir ingredients in a baking bowl, I was lifted up on to the kitchen counter and my baking days began. I would watch how my Nan would rub dots of butter into her pastry, fold the pastry into three and roll, roll, roll to create light puff pastry or she would let me stir the cake mixture in the big baking bowl and put the paper cases into the bun trays for fairy cakes.

Waiting patiently for the cakes to come out of the oven, I would often flick through the pages of the cookery books stored in the baking cupboard. My favourite has always been The Baking Book as I loved to read the familiar recipes written in my Nan's flowing and sloping handwriting.

My Nan has recently let me borrow The Baking Book and I have decided that I will bake some of the recipes contained in the book and share them with you over the course of this year as a sort of thank you to her for inspiring me to bake.