welshcakes recipe savoury welshcakes leek and cheese baking

Welsh grandmothers say it like it is

“I’ve had three heart attacks, love, and I’m still here, no point in being miserable”. There’s nothing quite like a Welsh woman of 92 to put this lockdown into perspective. Read Ella’s story and try these welshcakes.

french grandmother france sponge cake vintage family photo

Something about lists

A couple of years ago, the year my grandma finally passed, my grandad found her recipe for Gateau Paulette. Gateau Paulette was a cake she baked so often it had acquired her namesake. A golden loaf, presented on a rectangular china platter, perfectly risen. She’d serve it with tea, coffee, sometimes bowls of hot chocolate,

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Granny Corbett’s Queen of Puddings

This month, I’m handing over to home-cook, Clare Shirtcliff, who shared with me her Granny Corbett’s hand-written recipe book, written in the 1920’s in Lancashire. Find also her delicious zesty, jammy, meringuey Queen of Puddings recipe here

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Find it in the cupboard: spices and sabji

“If I had an onion, a clove of garlic and a tin of tomatoes, I could make a good dinner just by relying on my spices. That’s it, that’s a meal!” says Harvindar on the necessity of a well-stocked store cupboard. She shares her recipe for a cabbage coconut thoran and herby Punjabi chutney.

mrs beetons lemon flourless potato cake curates pudding

What wartime thrift can teach us now

While the challenges of Covid and those of the world wars are fundamentally very different, there are parallels we can draw between them. Wartime cookbooks can teach us so much about the thrift we’re re-learning now.

waste free recipes cheese bread pudding welsh grandmother

Mary’s Welsh cheese bread pudding

This costs about two quid to make, says Mary over the noise of her food processor, pulverising day old bread into crumbs. My husband and I spend no more than £30 on our weekly shop. Maybe it’s the mathematician in me but I am a great weigher of things, I don’t waste a thing.

welsh rice pudding pwdin reis recipe wales food

How to bake nostalgia, Welsh rice pudding

I interview 80-year-old Dee from south Wales who likes her pwdin reis with black skin on it. Rice pudding was once eaten for Sunday dinner all over Wales, slow-cooked overnight to make use of a hot oven after baking bread.

potato cakes recipe

Potato cakes and square-shaped soups

My first efforts at cooking were to open a tin of soup and a tin of baked beans and combine them. I called it STEWP. Chrys is laughing her head off, listing her first forays into cooking in early 1970’s Southport, northern England.