Even better Brownies

Well hello there. Long time, no see. Hope you've been keeping well? And how was your summer? Grab a coffee & a piece of brownie and tell me how you've been.

Over here at Recipe Junkie HQ it feels like it's been the summer of many things. The summer of all things Dutch, as we headed East for the Haarlem Jamborette, an international scout event that takes place not far from Amsterdam every 4 years. 

In fact, when we went 4 years ago, I'd just started this blog... As well as chaperoning 20 fantastic scouts & explorers for 10 days of 'scout type' fun and adventure (lighting fires, hiking, singing, camp firing, water games, plenty of outdoors), we visited Amsterdam and Utrecht, 

experienced amazing coffee art

visited a big Dutch theme park called Walibi World, and consumed vast amounts of Dutch mayonnaise, Vla ( a type of flavoured custard that is just ambrosial) &amp Sprinkles, and prawn crackers (don't ask).

Vla & Sprinkles. A true delicacy

Back home, it's been the summer of sheep, as we welcomed 26 woolly lodgers of the Shetland and Herdwick varieties to act as ovine grass cutters, and general providers of amusement with their surprisingly idiosyncratic sheep-like ways - especially their propensity to escape and nonchalantly stroll around the garden nibbling the roses & looking for human company...

Can you see why we needed the grass cutting?

It's been the summer of seizing the moment, and heading to the beach whenever possible - of the children choosing to go to the beach as 'the best thing ever', 

Of seeing dolphins, of the exhilaration of the waves, the joy of watching everyone else go home and know that you have the beach to yourselves; 

The summer of the ghillie kettle

Turns out that brewing up on the sand after a swim, usually wrapped up in a fleece (it may have been sunny, it hasn't always been warm), and then drinking it with a home made welsh cake or other bake, is one of my favourite things (funny that).

It's been the summer we finally made it up Cadair Idris - not the highest mountain in Wales, but one that's been on the Husband's bucket list for sometime. 

A view!

Which way?

And it's been a summer of sunsets

Sunset over the River Teifi

It's been a summer of family and friends as people finally sussed out that we really do live in a fantastic place, and we've welcomed visitors - some for an hour, some for a week and everything in between.

It's been a summer of fruit as the garden we have inherited has revealed gooseberries, red currants, blackcurrants, plums and now apples. The greengages are on the way too. There has been much rejoicing and jamming; stoning, freezing and the promise of crumble to come as Autumn creeps in.

It's also been a summer of community - starting to get to know our neighbours; working out who can sell you eggs in your hour of baking need; knowing that in times of crisis, like if you get the lawnmower stuck & set fire to the grass, at least 3 people will come running with buckets of water (ahem); working out how you can help them back; and the summer of understanding that there's stiff competition in the village in all things produce related.

And on that note, it has been the summer of the brownie. Not just any brownie though - the summer of my even better PRIZE WINNING chocolate brownie. Indeed. 2nd prize in the Ferwig Show. The final detail of flaked almonds on top came after the show. I'll nail it next year (not that I'm competitive or anything). Sadly, my jam came nowhere...

Chocolate Brownie

Due to a dinner party earlier in the summer when we had a coeliac amongst our guests, I had a bag of gluten free flour in the cupboards and have been experimenting. I'm not sure if it makes any difference, but it's good to know that it works supremely well in this bake - bring on the gluten free! What undoubtedly does make a difference is the presence of ground almonds which adds to the squodge factor in a most delightful way. After all, there's not much more disappointing than an insufficiently squodgy brownie - at least in culinary terms. Finally, the combination of milk & dark chocolate nails this recipe, as it means it's chocolatey enough for me, but not so dark that Pink won't eat it.

375g unsalted butter
200g milk chocolate
175g dark chocolate
100g gluten free (or just plain) flour
125 g ground almonds
a good pinch fine sea salt
6 large eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
350g caster sugar
50g flaked almonds

Your tin needs to be approx 33 by 23 cm and around 5 cm deep.

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan.

Line the tin with greaseproof paper.

if you're using blocks of chocolate, chop them up quite finely - or buy drops. 

Put the butter & chocolate in a large pan and melt gently together, then leave to cool for a couple of minutes.

Sift the flour and combine with the ground almonds and salt.

Whisk together the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract.

Once the melted butter & chocolate has cooled for a bit, beat in the egg mixture, then the flour mixture, making sure everything is combined.

Scrape into the prepared tin, sprinkle the flaked almonds on top, then bake for 25-ish minutes, but check at 20 - you don't want to over cook these beauties. 

You're looking for light and a little cracked on top, but still dark and dense underneath. if you're a brownie virgin, I'd recommend making these a few times, just to get the hang of it, you understand...

By the way - a good tip for slicing these babies - put the cooled brownie in the fridge, and then after it's cold, use a hot knife to slice cleanly through. A great tip that I pinched from the fabulous Vicky North - who also planted the idea of using the ground almonds in my head...

Gammon Cawl and Cheesey Garlicky Scones

So those of you who may have become just a teensy weensy bit sick of the photos I keep posting up here of the clear blue skies and sun-kissed beaches of the West Wales coast during what has been, on anyone's view, an absolutely fantastic summer, will be pleased to know that as I write (07:36 on a Sunday morning) the wind that has been howling around the house for the last 36 hours is still doing a good job of trying to blow us off our hill, the rain squalling in torrential downpours. The stormy - and post stormy - skies have their own special appeal, but granted it's not everyone's cup of tea and I haven't exactly welcomed the reappearance of my waterproof trousers into the daily dog walking routine with joy...

The change in the weather is not all bad (honestly!) - it's like that bit that Nigella writes in, Domestic Goddess, when she talks about the Norwegian Cinammon Buns -  "I've always thought that bad weather has its compensations, most of them culinary."This is a view I subscribe to wholeheartedly. While I'm all for tasty salads and delicate desserts in their place, my cooking comfort zone is in soups and casseroles, big dishes of crumble, jugs of custard... Summer and hot weather can be something of a challenge for me in the kitchen, so bizarrely, while I'm (mostly inwardly) weeping at the inability to get the washing dry and gnashing my teeth at having to pull on waterproof trousers and wellies to walk the dog instead of slopping about in flipflops, my kitchen heart sings for joy as I pull out the slow cooker and stock up on bay leaves...

Cawl is very much back on the weekly menu these days. You may remember a couple of months back, I took the opportunity to wax a bit lyrical about how fantastic the kids had been in the immediate aftermath of the move here. Having spent most of the summer term going to a language centre to be taught on an intensive Welsh course, they are now speaking Welsh with what appears to be alarming fluency (especially when they are bickering), and well versed in all manner of Welsh customs, including bursting unprovoked into renditions of Sosban Fach and Ar Hyd y Nos, Blue will be off to the Millenium Stadium to watch his first international rugby match in a few weeks' time wearing a Welsh rugby shirt...

They are loving their school, and the dinners continue to be a big hit. They enjoyed the school dinners at their old school, but they always came home ravenous. Here, though, there are seconds and thirds on offer. It is not unusual for them to refuse the treat that I meet them with from the bus because they are still full from lunch. So my longheld dream of being able to provide an easy tea on school dinner days is realised. And while making scones is not everyone's idea of an 'easy tea', bear in mind that while the kids would be happy with the cawl alone, I also have the Husband (and myself) to feed, and a little fiddling about in the kitchen is actually quite enjoyable, especially when the majority of the meal is in the slow cooker.

Gammon Cawl

500g piece of unsmoked gammon
150g soup mix (dried beans and pulses)
1 large onions
2 carrots
1 leek (it is Wales after all)
1.2 litres vegetable or chicken stock
1 bay leaf
4 cloves

The night before, remove the gammon from the packaging and put in a bowl. Cover with water and leave to soak. Measure the dried beans and pulses into a measuring jug and add 5 times the volume of water. Leave both overnight.

In the morning, get out the slow cooker and heat to high.

Peel and chop the onion and carrots, and wash and slice the leek. Drain the pulses.

Put the chopped veg and the pulses into a pan, add the stock, bring to the bowl and boil rapidly for 10 minutes, scooping off any scum.

Meanwhile, remove the gammon from the soaking water and add to the slow cooker. Once the stock has boiled for the requisite time, pour the contents of the pan over the gammon, chuck in the cloves and bay leaf, pop the lid on and leave till dinner time.

When you're getting close to dinner time, make the scones.

Cheesey Garlicky Scones

100g plain flour
100g spelt flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp English mustard powder
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp caster sugar
1 clove of garlic, mashed up
50g unsalted butter diced quite small
150g mature cheddar cheese, diced quite small
1 large egg
4 tbsp low fat natural yoghurt

Preheat the oven to 200C and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.

Sift the flours, baking powder, mustard powder and smoked paprika into a bowl and combine, then stir in the salt, sugar and garlic.

Add the butter and begin by 'cutting it in' to the flour mix with a knife, then move on to rub the butter in with your fingers till it has almost disappeared.

Stir the cheese through the flour mixture, then whisk together the egg and yoghurt, and combine this with the flour to make a soft dough.

Flour a work surface and your hands, then shape the dough into a rough rectangle/oval (I'm not fussy) about 4 cm thick, then cut into 6 pieces.

Use a palette knife to transfer the scone pieces onto the baking tray and mak sure they have a bit of space between them to expand.

Bake for 25-30 minutes till golden.

While the scones are baking, remove the gammon from the slow cooker to a board or large plate and pull the meat apart using a couple of forks.

 Once shredded, return it to the pot ready to serve.

Serve a steaming bowl of cawl with some cheesey garlicky scones on the side. Rainy day dinner time heaven. 

Enjoy with a side helping of Welsh folk songs. Take it away, Cerys...

Onion & bacon upside down pie

For reasons I will not go into here, I ended up with a massive amount of bacon and onions the other day. Not that I'm complaining, but it wasn't the result of an online shopping fail or anything exciting like that.

Sticky onions, smoky bacon. What's not to like?

I was trying to work out a good way to use it all up and hit upon a variation of Nigella's Supper Onion Pie. It's not reproduced anywhere on the web that I can find, but it's in Domestic Goddess if you are interested. I've made it before, unadulterated, and it's met with a mixed reception, but everything tastes better with bacon, so I thought I'd go off piste. Everyone loved it, there was nothing left, which pretty much says it all. It's also fairly straightforward to knock together, and fit it in around the various demands of the after school routine.

I've called it an upside down pie, because it's made alongside the tarte tatin principles - the onions (and the bacon) are cooked slowly till they are soft and a bit carmelised, then you whack a scone base over the top, and bake before flipping over onto a plate so the onions are back on top.


In my capacity as a member of the Tefal Innovation Panel, I should also say that the Ingenio pans (the groovy ones with the removable, interchangeable handle) really come into its own for a dish like this. The pan goes from the hob to the oven, so no need to get 2 dishes dirty, and the removeable handle means there's no worries about it fitting in the oven.

Spot the difference...

Onion & bacon upside down 'pie'

olive oil
4 rashers of smoked bacon, chopped up
around 700g onions, peeled, halved, and each half cut into 4
leaves from a few sprigs of thyme
250g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
100g cheddar, grated
100ml milk
40g butter, melted and cooled a little
1 large egg

Ideally, you need a pan that can go from hob to oven, but not, you need a 24cm (or thereabouts) pie dish for the oven part of this dish.

First, heat a splash or two of oil into your pan over a medium heat and add the bacon. Fry for a couple of minutes, then add in the onion chunks and sprinkle over the thyme leaves.

Cook this gently for 30 minutes or so, giving it a stir every now and then, till the onions are soft and sticky.

Pre-heat the oven to 200C.

Make up the scone base - mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, and cheddar cheese in a bowl, then in a separate jug of bowl combine the milk melted butter and egg. Tip the liquid ingredients into the flour mix and stir together with a fork to make a dough.

Tip the dough out onto a floured worksurface, and press into a rough circle that will fit over the top of your onions and bacon. If you need to, transfer the onion mix to the pie dish. Place the dough over the onions and bacon, and press in to seal the edges.

Pop your dish/pan into the oven and bake at 200 C for 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to 180 and bake for another 10 minutes, when the base will be golden brown.

Remove from the oven, put a late over the top of the dish and turn it so that the scone is then on the bottom and the golden onions are on the top of the pie.

Scrape up any onions that have either stuck to the pan or fallen off, and serve.

Sorry - have to use the same photo because the gannets ate it too quickly...

Birthday Brownie

I should be telling you about another great meal last night which used up another of the can of left over kidney beans (the ones I failed to put in the chilli for the Husband's birthday). It was a healthy bean salad type thing, all the more succesful because both kids ate it and enjoyed it. I also made some cheeky toasted cumin flatbreads to go with, which made me feel all domestic goddess-y again because - a confession - I haven't made bread of any sort for a good couple of months now.

But healthy suppers and flatbreads will have to wait for another time, because I cannot get brownie out of my head.

I don't have much that's original to say about brownies. It's mostly been said before, some of it by me, here, but when has that ever stopped me? Badly made, they can be one of the most disappointing things on earth - dry, unyielding - just, well, disappointing.

On the other hand, get it right and you have absolutely one of the best types of chocolatey treat you can, in my humble opinion, ever eat. Rich, damp, squidgy, revealing the hidden treat of a nut or carefully chosen nugget of dried fruit (cranberries and cherries are my favourites, bringing an edge of sour to the party), a good brownie is absolutely to die for.


When I was wracking my brains to think of a suitably birthday-ish treat to take with us last week end and stick candles in to allow for the purposes of singing 'Happy Birthday', brownie was the obvious solution. As it's not actually the Husband's birthday till December, I didn't want to go all out with a bells & whistles birthday cake (plus, the obvious difficulty of keeping something (possibly elaborate) intact on a campsite was vexing me), but I wanted something celebratory. 

Flapjack would absolutely NOT have done.

Nigella offers brownie as a birthday cake solution, and I have to say, she's right. Stacked up, with candles in the pieces, it looks very festive. It's also dead easy to make. Marvellous.

La Lawson reckons you can get 48 out of this quantity. I got 24 (admittedly fairly generous) pieces, but I wouldn't have wanted to go much smaller, and as we were 45, I made 2 batches, one with walnuts, one with dried cranberries. Do watch them like a hawk once you've baked them for around 20 minutes. I set my timer for 22 mins, and probably did take them out at around 25 minutes, but they will continue to cook in the tin, once you've taken them out of the oven, so don't leave them too long in the oven.

Chocolate & Cranberry Brownie

2375g unsalted butter
375g dark chocolate (70% cocoa)
6 large eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
450g caster sugar
225g plain flour
1 tsp salt
300g dried cranberries (if you prefer, use 300g chopped walnuts)

Pre-heat the oven to 180 and line a tin with greaseproof paper (I have a roasting tin which is approx 27 by 23 cm and 4 cm deep. Nigella's is bigger (33 by 23), so her brownie is probably thinner and so more easily cuttable into 48. It's up to you. I won't judge you...)

In a large pan, gently melt together the chocolate and butter, then set aside to cool slightly. 

Beat together the sugar, eggs and vanilla, and in a separate bowl, combine the flour and salt.

Beat the eggs and sugar into the melted butter & chocolate, then the flour, then stir through the cranberries. 

When it's all combined, scrape it into the prepared tin and bake for around 25 minutes. It's worth checking a little earlier just to see how its doing. The top will be paler and may have started to crack, but make sure the middle is still a little squodgy when you take it out of the oven.

Cut into pieces and serve - with or without candles.

Raspberry Polenta Cake - Forever Nigella 25

The sun! What a glorious thing it is to cast off the tyranny of winter. This seems to have happened all of a sudden too - one minute damp, gloomy, miserableness and then all of a sudden SUNSHINE. The bats are back in the garden at dusk and I heard a cuckoo while I was out walking the dog in the early morning. I want to cast caution to the wind, shave my legs, paint my toenails and swish about in a dress and flipflops for the next 6 months. I might even add a sunhat, just for good measure.

Can you tell I'm in a good mood?

So anyway, one of the things that happens round here when the sun comes out is that everyone gets more sociable than usual, and our plans for a quiet Saturday evening were thrown out of the window with an invite for a general get together with some friends.

Beer, a fire pit, marshmallows. What could be better? 

My contribution was a hastily rustled up cake, loosely based on Nigella's rhubarb cornmeal cake from Domestic Goddess. Based on the fact that I had no rhubarb, but plenty of rasperries in the freezer, I adapted heavily: used the raspberries pretty well frozen, replaced cinammon with the zest of a lemon (I happen to know for a fact that the Goddess would approve of the rasp/lemon combo), used self raising flour rather than plain (none in the cupboard) 0% fat Greek yoghurt rather than bio yoghurt. I also used a rather unconventional cake making method, having mixed up all the dry ingredients including the sugar together in a bowl as a result of recipe-blindness, leaving me nothing to cream my butter with. Not that I'd necessarily recommend it as a method, but there doesn't appear to have been any harm done.

And the colours - well gorgeous - a rich yellow batter partly from the cornmeal, and partly from the eggs that the chickens obligingly produced, studded with the deep ruby raspberries, and that was just before it was cooked... 

Just right for this month's Forever Nigella, hosted by Elizabeth at A Girl in Her Kitchen for Sarah at Maison Cupcake, with the theme 'colourful'.

Raspberry Polenta Cake



500g frozen raspberries
300g caster sugar
150g self raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
zest of a lemon, finely grated
155g fine polenta
2 large eggs
1tsp vanilla extract
75g soft unsalted butter and 50g Stork margarine 
250g 0% fat Greek yoghurt

23cm Springform cake tin, buttered and lined

Pre-heat the oven to 180C



Mix together the dry ingredients (sugar, flour, bicarb, salt, lemon zest and polenta). Whisk together the eggs and the vanilla. Beat together the butter and marg till soft and fluffy then add in the egg mixture a little at a time, After each addition, add a little of the dry ingredient mix to prevent the egg curdling. Once the eggs are added, alternate between yoghurt and the rest of the dry ingredients mix until everything is just mixed. Fold in the raspberries (still frozen) and bake. This is quite a long process - Nigella's original cake is supposed to take 1hr in total, but I remember it taking longer when I followed the recipe. My version, well, I checked after 40 minutes and covered the tin with foil to stop the cake catching, then checked again at an hour. I gave it another 20 minutes, then an additional 15 minutes. And then 10 minutes more...

The resulting cake had quite a crisp outside layer as a result of the lengthy cooking, but a lemony cake inside with a lovely raspberry layer at the bottom.

The general consensus was that the crispy outside was a pretty good contrast with the inside of the cake, and all in all pretty good.

And with a good dollop of cream it was really rather good.

And after chilli, and cake, we lit a bonfire, let the kids rampage around the fields next door to the garden and watched the moon. Perfect.

Passion Fruit Curd

It's getting close to Easter and close to the end of the deadline for this month's Forever Nigella.

Although I have my 'main event' in mind for this, I'm getting twitchy that I won't get it blogged in time (let's face it, I haven't even baked it yet at the time when I'm writing this post), but never fear. As a teaser, a sneaky peak, I can bring you one of the component parts, made on Friday evening, in readiness for said main event. I'm not going to give the game away entirely, but I'm sure you can guess what I might end up doing with this gorgeous jar of passion fruit curd.

Now before I go any further, given that it's Palm Sunday when the final product of my labours are to be eaten, and it's for this reason that I made passion fruit curd rather than lemon curd for the purpose for which it is intended, I thought I would explain that the passion fruit comes from the passion flower (no really!) and is so called because it was used by Spanish missionaries when they were trying to explain the crucifixion of Jesus - also known as the passion of Christ - to the indigenous population. The success of this is not so well documented, but in case you were interested, the missionaries likened the stigmas of the passion flower to the nails in Jesus' hands and feet, the threads of the passion flower were like the Crown of Thorns, the vine's tendrils were likened to the whips used to beat Jesus, the five anthers represented the wounds he sufferes and the ten petals and sepals resemble the Apostles (excluding Judas and Peter). Whether you subscribe to that or not, it's a beautiful flower

But I'm digressing. So Passion Fruit Curd from How to be a Domestic Goddess and also in Feast can also be found on Nigella.com so if you are so inspired you can find the recipe there. It uses 11 passion fruit and I suppose you could extend the metaphor to suggest that Nigella was thinking of the 11 faithful apostles when she dreamed this up, although I suspect she was more likely thinking about cake...

There's a very fiddly bit which is sort of glossed over which is the bit where you have to sieve the pulp and juice from 10 passion fruit to separate it away from the seeds, but if you whizz it all in a food processor briefly, this can help.

Once you've done that, it's pretty straightforward as far as making curd is concerned. You just need the time to stir it all constantly over a very low heat and it can take a bit of time. believe me, I have been that person with a pan of lemon flavoured scrambled egg before (obviously, when I was making lemon curd that time). Don't be tempted to put the heat up or stop stirring, even for a second - it will come good in the end. Fortunately, Nigella doesn't promise that it will all be done and dusted in 10 minutes (unlike others I could mention, and naming no names, Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall). I was a little concerned that she made no indication whatsoever of how long it might take, but in the end it was about 35 minutes to get the orangey curd thick enough to coat the back of the spoon. 

After that, it was but a moment to whisk in the contents of an 11th passion fruit before putting into a jar (unless you have an immediate use for it...)

This month's Forever Nigella is hosted by Jen at Blue Kitchen Bake on behalf of Sarah at Maison Cupcake

Millionaire's Shortbread - and self restraint

Now. why on earth, when I am trying to lose weight, did I make something as dangerous as Millionaire's Shortbread? Well, the answer is the Rainbows Cake Sale in aid of Comic Relief. Pink's Rainbows troop had already contributed 2 fantastic bunting flags to Helen Skelton's challenge to break the record for the longest string of bunting, and they had to raise £50. Cakes it was, then -and a family quiz and a raffle. I'd already siphoned off half the cakes we made for the school Comic Relief Cake Sale, so had 12 cupcakes to take along, but I was flicking through How to Be a Domestic Goddess - idly, as one does when one is restricting oneself, and came across the Millionaire's Shortbread recipe in the 'Baking for the School Fete' section.





You know, I'm not sure I have ever made Millionaire's Shortbread before - that glorious combination of shortbread, caramel and chocolate. I love it, but I never buy it when we're out because it is always disappointing. It's also far too dangerous to make just because. Like the Peanut Butter Squares (also in Domestic Goddess). Having some of it lying around in a tin would frankly, be a recipe for thigh expansion on a colossal scale, and I am hoping to achieve the opposite. However, with the prospect of  cake sale to dispose of the offending end product, and with the Husband away for the weekend leaving me at a loose end on Friday night, I decided to lose my Millionaire's Shortbread cherry. I know how to live.

My goodness but it's divine stuff. Buttery shortbread, golden caramel and a layer of chocolate on the top. Some might say it's too much, but to them I say, you only live once, and if you have a  cake sale coming up to prevent you eating all of it, what's the harm. In my half starved state, I managed to only eat one small (well, small-ish) bit - just for quality control purposes you understand - on Friday night when it was all done, before restrainedly boxing it up ready for fundraising purposes.

Millionaire's Shortbread

You will need

225g plain flour
75g caster sugar
375g unsalted butter
397g can of condensed milk
2 tablespoons of golden syrup
200g plain chocolate
150g milk chocolate

Greased & lined tin 23cm square or similar (mine is rectangular, about 21 cm by 24cm)

Self-restraint

Preheat your oven to 170C. Combine the flour and sugar in a bowl, then add in 175g of the butter, cut into cubes, and cut into the flour, then rub in with your fingers till it clumps together. Squodge this into the bottom of the tin, flatten it out with your hands, prick all over with a fork and then bake for 5 minutes before turning the heat down to 150 and baking for another 30-40 minutes till golden brown. Leave to cool.

To make the caramel, melt the remaining butter in a heavy based saucepan, then add in the condensed milk and sugar and whisk until the butter is all mixed into the condensed milk and syrup. Bring the whole lot gently up to the boil whisking all the time, and simmer for about 5 minutes whisking all the time to prevent burning, until the mixture is thickened and golden looking. Resist the temptation to stick your finger in for a lick, and pour the caramel over the cooled shortbread and leave to set on a flat surface (to avoid uneven spreading of the caramel!)

Once set, melt the chocolate in a bowl over a simmering pan of water - make sure not to let the bowl touch the water. Pour evenly over the caramel and leave to set. Once set, cut into squares, put into a cake tin and seal with a combination lock. Better still, deliver immediately to a cake sale.

So how many calories are there in a mushroom?

There's been a lot of cake recently. Red Nose Day brought it all on with it a cake decorating competition at school:

He did it all himself - results out on Monday!

Cakes for the cake sale in return for wearing mufti (so not only do you buy the ingredients and make cakes, you then give your darling children money to buy more cakes. Not that I mind really, but let's just think about the logic of that for a moment...)

Cherry & coconut? or chocolate & blackcurrant?

Cakes for the Rainbows cake sale and family quiz.

And no, I didn't bake them all...

This is all very well, except that I am on a diet. Yup. The time has come, as it inevitably would, to talk about skinny food.

I'm trying really hard to think of skinny food as exciting. You see, I am not a skinny person - never have been, never will be. Generally, though, I am happy (ish) with my size (12-14) and shape (pear). Well, I always was until about 5 years ago when I woke up one morning and realised that I was size 18 pushing a 20 and needed to do something fast. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with being that size if that's the size you are, but for me and my build, it wasn't right.

Of course, I can absolutely attribute the weight gain then to a whole host of factors: 2 pregnancies, spending huge amounts of time in hospital with my poorly Blue and comfort eating like crazy. I sometimes wish I was one of those people who starve when stressed, but no. I did try it, not eating under pressure, but headed back to the Norwegian cinammon bun page in How to be a Domestic Goddess (it's page 322 in my copy - make a note of that) before you could say 'celery stick'. Not only that, but when Blue started to lose weight about 9 months into chemotherapy, looked like some malnourished shadow of the boy he was, and I had to start talking feeding tubes with the doctors treating him, I threw myself wholeheartedly into cooking with cream. And cheese. All full fat. And then, when he didn't fancy it, I threw myself wholeheartedly into eating it. As Billy Connolly once said (and I paraphrase) "I wasn't retaining water, I was retaining chips!" (to be spat out in a strong Glaswegian accent). Not just chips but cheese, and brownies, custard, mash, fishpie all made with double cream in an attempt to get Blue to eat and put on weight. Of course, we managed to avoid feeding tubes, and I will always be thankful for that, as I am for his continued good health, but it didn't do me much good.

And I know it sounds bizarre, but I really had no insight into the fact that I was getting bigger. I just carried on wearing my maternity clothes after Pink was born and never really got out of them. After all, I was either at home or at hospital - I had a small child with a life threatening illness and a new baby. Did it really matter? And then one day, I saw a picture of myself helping Pink on a slide and I had a crashing reality check. I was fat.

I know 'fat' is a sensitive issue, and when I write this, please know that I make no judgements about anyone else here. I am simply saying that for me, I was too big, and I needed to do something about it. I lost 3 stone following a Slimming World type regime (I borrowed a couple of books from a friend). 3 stone. It was a lot that I'd put on.

To be honest (and this may sound a little bonkers)I probably lost a little too much, and after a brief spell as a size 10, I settled back comfortably into a 12. But the last year or so, it's been creeping ever so slowly back up. Not 3 stone up, but definitely a dress size. Fortunately, the realisation came sooner rather than later, so skinny food it is.

It's not just about what I'm eating, though, it's also about resetting my attitude to food, which is what I had to do the last time. I like my food a lot (you migh thave noticed). I am also incapable of leaving food on my plate. I was brought up to eat every last morsel - and I find it impossible to break this. So portion control is important, and self restraint not to take seconds.

So in the midst of all this cake, I am rocking a combination of what I remember about Slimming World (red days and green days, quite good fun. Really. It is) and also, just to bring in a little bit of a frisson, some 5:2 fasting days. I quite like the challenge of this, although I have never before paid any heed whatsoever to the calorie content of food - I tend to look more for fat & sugar content.

I'm probably the last person in the world to try this. I became aware of the 5:2 diet last year - there are lots of people doing it. the premise is that you eat normally for 5 days a week, and then fast - having only 500 calories (600 for men) on the other 2 days. There appears to be lots of good science behind it, and even Hugh F-W is a fan.

My breakfasts have been looking a lot like this:

Banana, yoghurt, walnuts & honey?

and this

or does madam prefer stewed apple, yoghurt and dates?

and there's been some rather interesting soups going on for lunches.

I must confess to only having done one proper fast day so far - I've been working my way up to it, but it was OK. Banana, 0% fat Greek yoghurt, some chopped walnuts and a teaspoon (sob) of honey, a Thai type soup with peas, broad beans and chilli for lunch, and a mushroom souffle omelette for supper.

get me with my mushroom souffle omelettes

I was madly busy that day anyway.

But consider the irony of restraining myself as I baked a cake for Blue to decorate (the amount of notice we had for the competition meant that I had to bake the cake or we wouldn't have had time, but he decorated it all himself.) No bowl licking for me. In fact, I was so restrained that I did what I mocked Jane Asher for doing once - as soon as I had finished scraping the mixture out, I squirted washing up liquid into the bowl and filled it with water.

All that lovely mixture - unlicked :-(

The following day was cherry & coconut cupcakes and some chocolate/blackcurrant cupcakes. I managed to resist the cherry & coconut, but cracked totally at the chocolate cake mix. Still - it wasn't a fast day...

And is it working? Well, yes it is. I am losing weight and despite the chocolate cupcake bowl licking frenzy on Thursday (and an accident with a pack of oatcakes and the peanut butter and an unfortunate incident with a bar of Green & Blacks Maya Gold - but over the last couple of weeks - so not so bad), I am doing pretty well. I may even let you have some skinny recipes soon. I haven't had much variety yet so as/if (it's early days!) I get more into this, I'll be on the look out for lots of interesting 5:2 recipes - because I think trying to work out how many calories there are in a mushroom for myself may just prove too much like hard work.