COOKBOOKS GALORE

Inspired by my friend Lynn on http://www.lynnscookingblog.com/ I decided to make a cake. This is a recipe from my Mum's handwritten notebook and is in ounces. Here's the recipe: 4oz butter 6oz caster sugar 3 eggs finely grated lemon zest 6floz natural yoghurt 8oz sr flour 2oz chopped dried apricots preheat oven 325F/160C.gas 3 grease a 2 lb loaf tin Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time and beat well between each. Gently fold in the lemon zest, flour and apricots. Spoon into the tin and bake for about 35 - 40 mins rill golden. Cool on a wire rack. This is delicious with a yoghurt topping - mix 1 tbspn natural yoghurt with 3 oz icing sugar. Spread over top of cake when cold and sprinkle with some more grated lemon rind. I found this icing very thin and it ran down the sides of the cake. Think I'd use more icing sugar next time. Talking of icing sugar, this is my French icing sugar. I love the container. They make a spec...

I'm not very imaginative when it comes to cooking fish. I had some hake and wanted a good recipe so tried this one here  ; it was very tasty and an ususual blend of flavours.  I didn't have any broad beans so left them out. Luckily I had some chorizo left over from a pizza. I'm surprised that the parsley in my garden is still growing after the cold winter we've had. I like Simon Rimmer on 'Something for the Weekend'. but this is the first recipe of his I've tried.

Over the years I've enjoyed doing embroidery of all sorts. In the UK, my friend and I went to Evening class and we were lucky that our teacher was doing a City and Guilds in Crafts and taught us lots of different types of work such as shadow, drawn thread, Florentine etc. The only snag was that she taught a new skill every few weeks, not enought time to complete the previous one, as I was teaching full time and had 2 children, so little time to catch-up at home. I saved it all 'for when I retired', but I still don't seem to have enough time to finish those projects! This is a cushion I made for our bedroom. I've done lots of birth samplers, one for each grandchild, wedding cushions etc I made this Kaffe Fassett 'Victorian Cats' cushion for my daughter, supposedly for her 21st birthday, but actually got finished for her 30th! This is the kit before I started. All the shades of the cats were so difficult to see in the evening. I'm making my son ...

We didn't want any presents for our Silver Wedding anniversary, but I wanted to do something as a keepsake, so I've decided to do a sampler. My favourite flowers are lilies and we received a lovely bouquet of them for our anniversary. So I decided to design a sampler with a lily like this one as a centrepiece. Am in the throes of designing the chart, so will update this as I go along.

When we came to France nearly 7 years ago, we brought 2 Bramley apple trees with us, as the variety isn't known here. They've been prolific and have given us apples for the freezer every year. I'm always looking for new recipes to use them and found this one in an old exercise book that I used in a cookery evening class in the 70s. 100g soft margarine or butter 100g caster sugar 1 tspn vanilla extract 2 eggs beaten 150g sr flour milk if needed 350g apples, peeled, cored and sliced [and defrosted if frozen] topping 75g hard margarine [I used soft] 100g sr flour 75g caster sugar 1 tbspn water Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas 4 Make the cake first by creaming the fat and sugar till light and fluffy then beating in the vanilla and eggs. Fold flour into the mixture and if necessary add a little milk to make a stiffish dropping consistency. Grease a 21cm loose-bottomed tin and line base with parchment. Put cake mixture into tin and smooth top, then put the apple o...