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.

Autumn Days

Autumn always seems to be associated with nostalgia for me - in particular, memories of being at primary school. Maybe it's because life can be simple and comforting when you are seven and the only problems I faced were a lost pump from my PE kit or that my handwriting was never going to be as neat as Pippa A's.

Something in the drizzly dampness of yesterday's weather reminded me of my primary school days. A world organised by labelled drawers and coat hooks and rooms which smelled of powder paint and pencil sharpenings. I loved cosy afternoons curled up on the carpet for story time and morning assemblies spent singing hymns in the hall with its parquet floor. I spent a few years inadvertently singing some of the hymns with the wrong words. Did anyone else think it was 'Handstand where ever you may be' or was that just me..?

A lot of my memories of baking around this age stem from time I spent with my Nan. We would go for a walk around Stalybridge and as a treat I would either get to spend some time and some pocket money in the little cake decorating shop on a side street off the Market Hall or we would go to Mellors bakers and my Nan would buy me a gingerbread man.

I loved the spicy, hard biscuit man with his chocolate dipped legs. I would always eat his feet first and leave his head until last - I don't know what that says about me... My love of gingerbread started there, but I wanted to create seasonal gingerbread biscuits that would seem a little out of the ordinary. I live near a park so squirrels tend to hop in and out of the gardens from time to time. The idea of a gingerbread squirrel was born and the rest they say, is history...

Bramcakes

Brambles feature heavily in my childhood memories as I used to go brambling with my mum and in school holidays with my Nan. We used to walk along the tow paths filling up a motley crew of jars, Tupperware boxes and plastic bags with the inky berries to take home for my Mum's crumbles or my Nan's blackberry wine. I'm going through a bramble phase at the moment as they are more tasty than the blackberries in the supermarket, they're in season, fun to pick and free - always useful in a recession! Today I decided I wanted them to go with pancakes as an Autumn alternative to summery blueberry pancakes. Dan named them Bramcakes and the name has stuck. Why not go for a wander and pick some this weekend and give them a try?


1) I rinsed and drained the brambles then drizzled a teaspoonful of maple syrup over them and swirled the berries around the bowl to cover them in the amber liquid.

2) I lightly bruised the berries a little to encourage them to give up their beautiful claret juices.

3) Once the pancake batter had been ladled into the pan, I waited for 'pinprick' dots to appear on the top side and then used a teaspoon to drop some of the berries and their juices on to the uncooked side.

4) The pancakes were then flipped over to get burnished and golden on the other side. The brambles bleed their juices into the pancakes and lend a lovely jammy taste to their fluffy interiors. Serve with a dollop of creme fraiche or vanilla ice cream and a shake of cinnamon if you like. 

If I'm brutally honest, these pancakes are not as pretty as imagined they would look but this could be rectified by making a simple cooked sauce out of the brambles. You could just tumble the brambles into a small, heavy bottomed saucepan, drizzle over a glossy slick of maple syrup and swirl the two around over a low heat until the berries burst and create a syrupy Vimto hued sauce. Mmmmmmmm....

Keep Calm and Keep Counting...

It might seem very early to be posting about mince pies and indeed it is - even for a Christmas fanatic like me. However, there is method in my madness. I like to test out recipes a few times to perfect them before making them for other people. The twitchy, perfectionist gene makes it difficult to feel at ease with handing over goodies without being perfectly happy with them. Particularly as I feel that when I bake, I put lots of effort and care and attention into what I do, so it can be hard to put it on a plate for it to be judged. Judged it must be though, if it is to be tweaked to perfection.

The other reason why making some Christmas goodies early is because if you choose what you bake wisely, you can bake in a leisurely fashion and freeze things ready for your culinary rainy day. Or, you could order them from me...  ;-)

I can't ever remember making mince pies myself. It has always been a family affair. I used to make them occasionally with my mum, as part of a childhood baking routine which also involved rock buns, butterfly cakes and the occasional strawberry flan. My real memories of baking tend to revolve around my Nan though. My Nan was a good teacher, and if I'm honest, the central most influential figure in my love of baking.

As soon as I could hold a wooden spoon in my hand and stir ingredients in a big baking bowl, I was scooped up on to the counter top and my baking days began. My Nan also had a fetching assortment of 1960s Doris Day styles aprons which I would dress up in and I would write my own 'recipes' in her handwritten recipe book. Although not necessarily in the right order - "eat it, beat it and bake it' was one of my immortal lines!

My Nan would deviate from tradition with her mince pies by making flaky pastry rather than shortcrust pastry. This made the pies lighter than usual. I used to watch her make the pastry by hand, endlessly folding the pastry into thirds and dotting each third with shortening. She would roll the pastry out neither too thick nor thin and it would be my job to use a fluted cutter to stamp out the frilly edged circles and press each one into the cups of the bun trays. Together, we'd drop spoonfuls of mincemeat into each pastry filled cup and press a frilly edged hat on to each one. My Nan would tell me to 'dibble dabble' them an egg-wash glaze and  into the oven they'd go. It's a tradition I'm looking forward to carrying on with little ones one day...