Baking

Discover beginner-friendly home baking essentials with must-have tools, pantry staples, and tips for easy affordable baking success.

I bought a punnet of plums from Aldi, these were an impulse purchase based on price and the fact that the plums looked so pretty! There were only 5 plums and I decided that cutting them up into slices was the way to go. The buttery pastry base is easy to make and likewise with…

I wonder if the Olympians can indulge in a pudding this week as a reward? Or maybe they are programmed never to go anywhere near sugar. For those of us who like an indulgent dessert/pudding this is one of my favourites because it is as light as a feather to eat, quick and easy to…

These little cakes remind me in taste and texture of almond macaroons which I ate as a child. They are easy to make and taste delicious. My tins (in the photograph below) have removable bases and were given to me by an elderly lady who had been an avid baker but found she was baking…

I’m always looking for that extra special pizza recipe and now I’ve found it. I’ve tried numerous recipes, had struggles rolling out pizza dough, I have cooked my base on a pizza stone/pizza tin/baking tin for that ultimate crisp base. I have had pizza bases that refuse to cook because they are loaded with toppings…

Do you remember the quiche I made a while back? I’ve taken the same pastry recipe because it works every time and the same savoury custard filling because it’s delicious. This time, however, I’ve used a combination of spring onions which saves cooking onions, Leicester cheese for colour and because I grew up in Leicestershire…

Strawberries from the garden, egg whites from the freezer, chocolate from the store cupboard – I only had to buy the whipping cream. I nearly got away with a free dessert! The slightly adapted recipe is by Mary Berry and one I have used many, many times and in true Mary Berry style – I…

This cake uses tinned crushed pineapple but a tin of pineapple slices or cubes can be used, unfortunately fresh pineapple wouldn’t work because you need to use the juice from the tin. The topping is a cream cheese icing and I know recipes always say cakes can’t be frozen with this icing but I find…

Some days it’s easy to misjudge how long things are going to take and I didn’t allow enough time to make my cake, hence the Black Forest cake is a ‘little messy’ on the sides of the cake. Once the cream was ‘set’ I couldn’t clean up the outside of the cake. On the positive…

The last three cakes I’ve made have used tinned crushed pineapple and thankfully I have now used up the last tin………..I chose to make this cake because I love the name Hummingbird Cake! Apparently this cake recipe has been around since the 19th century and is a tradition in the Southern United States. Hummingbird cake…