Double dark chocolate shortbread cookies

Today I made two batches of shortbread cookies - the first were peanut butter milk choc chip ones, and these are double dark chocolate - loaded with cocoa powder and chunks of dark chocolate. I used Cadbury's Bournville, which is my favourite dark chocolate - so dark and bitter it makes quite a grown-up, truffly cookie. These are absolutely amazing, I promise!

Peanut butter milk choc chip shortbread cookies

OMG. These are amazingly good, melt-in-your-mouth, salty, sweet, chocolately, peanutty shortbread cookies. They are also incredibly easy and quick to make. You stick the dough in the fridge for an hour or so and when you're ready to bake they take no time at all to produce delicious, crumbly, soft cookies full of flavour. Even if you're not a big fan of peanut butter (and I'm not especially, normally) you will LOVE these, I promise!

Lemon Earl Grey cookies

These are lovely crumbly cookies with fragrant flavours of Earl Grey tea and lemon.

Apricot, blueberry, orange and almond soured cream cake

We're having Sunday lunch today with some friends and their kids, and I've been asked to bring dessert.  This is a version of my blueberry, lemon and almond soured cream cake, but with orange instead of lemon, the blueberries mixed into the cake batter, and baked with fresh apricots, blueberries and flaked almonds scattered on top.  This vanished within minutes and everyone had at least one second helping!

Rhubarb, ginger and walnut bread

I went to stay with my mum this week and visited her new allotment.  It's a lovely place and made me jealous of her green fingers.  One day I'd love to have a proper fruit and veg patch in our garden, but I've never been able to keep plants alive for very long - and when we planted flowers last summer Doug the Pug took great pleasure in biting the flower heads off every single one within minutes of us finishing planting them!  Anyway, I came home armed with a bag of fresh rhubarb pulled from her allotment, and this was the result - a lovely moist rhubarb, ginger and walnut loaf cake, made with stewed rhubarb and glazed and iced with its juices.  Delicious!

Plum pie

Perhaps it's all the thoughts of grandmothers in the last few weeks that subconsciously made me want to eat plum pie - my own grandma used to make delicious plum pies from the fruit of the plum tree in her garden.  Walking past my local green grocer's today I couldn't resist buying a box of shiny red plums for a pound, and came home and made plum pie for pudding.  I'm not sure I will ever be able to make a plum pie (or pastry) as well as Grandma could, but this wasn't a bad attempt!  It's a version of shortcrust pastry to which I added a couple of spoonfuls of caster sugar - I'm sure this breaks all the rules which say you should use icing sugar for sweet shortcrust pastry, but it worked fine!

Kitchen sink cookies

These cookies are so-called because you can chuck in any mixture of chocolate, nuts and dried fruit you have in your cupboards.  I used a mixture of Galaxy chocolate (milk and cookie crumble), toasted macadamias and pecans, dried cranberries and natural glace cherries.  You could substitute this for anything else - white chocolate, dark chocolate, crystallised ginger, pistachios, peanuts, hazelnuts, dried apricots, pears, peaches, fudge, mini marshmallows... These are lovely chewy, soft cookies and will disappear quickly!

Cranberry beetroot heart-shaped scones

My lovely wife Lu is very sad at the moment after her nan died this week.  I've been making lots of comfort food like stews and casseroles, and for my Saturday morning baking session today I made her some heart-shaped scones for breakfast in bed.  These are coloured pink with beetroot powder - I bought some in the farmer's market a while ago and haven't known quite what to do with it, but discovered using it in these scones that it's a brilliant natural food colourant.  The beetroot powder has very little taste, just a slightly sweet earthiness to the overall flavour which goes beautifully with the traditional nature of scones.  I also added dried cranberries which have a lovely sweet tartness and bright red colour.  Finally, I added a little of the beetroot powder to whipped double cream, which gave it a lovely pale pink colour and a slight sweetness.

Red wine, blueberry and chocolate brownie cupcakes

It's been a stressful couple of days.  I decided we needed chocolate and red wine.  Then thought - what better than brownies made with chocolate and red wine?  I also had some blueberries in the fridge so chucked them into the mix.  And used my silicone cupcake moulds rather than a brownie tin.  The result?  Red wine, blueberry and chocolate brownie cupcakes!  Sounds weird maybe, but tastes gooood.  Best served still warm with icecream!

Pimms cupcakes

It's the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and our friend Farree is having a big garden party.  These Pimms cupcakes are my contribution to the festivities!