Category: Childhood
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Toffee Apple Pie with Easy Homemade Pastry
The beginning of November is marked by a sudden chill in the air, cold hands and feet for people with poor circulation (including yours truly), conkers and shiny toffee apples. Or at least, the toffee apples make an appearance in the UK, the same can’t be said for here in France. So, to recreate that…
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Moist Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting
Unlike many bakers, I didn’t grow up baking at my grandmother’s knee. In fact, my most regular activity in my granny’s kitchen was drying the dishes (can you even qualify that as a skill? – ‘oh her baking is delicious’ ‘you haven’t seen anything, just watch her dry up’). My granny was of the generation…
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Cheat’s Prawn Ceviche with Avocado
Our evening binge-TV is Modern Family. There are 11 seasons so it looks like we’re covered until next summer (who am I kidding, we’ll be finished within a month). In an episode we watched the other night, a character lamented, ‘Do you remember when summer meant fireflies, cut-off shorts and ice cream trucks?’ Do I…
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No place like home
Yesterday, my parents moved out of the house we as a family have lived in for twenty-seven years. It is white and has bumpy roughcast exterior walls, and when I was younger I would find a soft section and dig my finger in, dislodging the occasional pebble. I apologise to the new owners for the…
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Chocolate self-saucing pudding
We’re all children at heart. Do we really need anything more than chocolate self-saucing pudding? Imagine me aged seven. ‘What’s for pudding?’ was my favourite expression (has anything changed?). Along with a winning grin, minus a front tooth, I would enthusiastically chant this along with my table of classmates, in an infuriating sing-song voice every…
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Memories of food
Food triggers memory so poignantly and some of my most treasured memories are deeply entrenched in flavour and the act of eating. Hot chocolateWhen the weather is like this – the sky, the bare trees, the wilting hedge are all roughly the same colour, and rain drips half-heartedly (also known as miserable) – I remember…
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A&E and Gooey Honeycomb and Sea Salt Chocolate Brownies
Today I have been thinking about cake. Generally speaking this is a normal day for me. Cake is satisfying, whether to eat or simply think about; the softness of the crumb, the smooth crack of icing under your teeth. Ok, I appreciate eating cake is much more satisfying than just thinking about it, especially for…
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A good apple
My family were never one to stock the kitchen full of junk food. Of course, as a grumpy 9-year-old I was furious about this as I was missing out on all the delicacies my friends would smugly recount to me at school. Of course, now I am grateful. Maybe I’d have a mouth full of…