This cake is like a lighter version of a Christmas fruit cake…many of the same ingredients, but without the stodge and the months of waiting.  It has all the same punchiness and body, but none of the heaviness. The usual medley of dried fruit is replaced by a single one – dried cranberries, plumped up in [...]

There are times when I hit a blogging brick wall, where there’s nothing left to say, or where the ideas and half-posts won’t form themselves properly. That happened this weekend, and after binning the third draft of something attempting to articulate what I think of minimum alcohol pricing (short answer: probably good, some reservations, could [...]

I’ve got a very chequered history with pastry. Sometimes, it works out OK, but not perfect, other times it’s a complete disaster. The number of times the pastry has shrunk back from the rim of the tin, leaving a flat disk of insipid pastry with a slightly upturned lip, is uncountable.  That flat disk with [...]

Ecclefechan, a small town in the Scottish Borders is famous for a few things, including being the birthplace of both the writer Thomas Carlyle and one Archibald Arnott, Napoleon’s doctor during his extended stay on St Helena, but also, and this is slightly more pertinent for a food blog, for the Ecclefechan tart, a rich concoction of [...]