Blackberry nectarine galette

A very quick pudding to use some of the deliciously juicy, plump blackberries from our garden, this uses ready-made puff pastry so is ridiculously quick to assemble after a long day at work.

Cranberry, apricot and amaretto mince pies with almond, orange and cinnamon pastry

It's Christmas Eve-eve and I've spent a very happy day baking - a couple of cake commissions for friends for Christmas, sausage rolls, ginger biscuits, and these fantastic deep-dish mince pies. Made in muffin tins, they have lots of room for really good filling, so I spruced up some mincemeat with dried apricots, blanched almonds, amaretto and fresh cranberries.  The pastry has ground almonds, orange zest and juice and cinnamon in too for extra festive flavour. Merry Christmas everyone!

Pecan pie

To go with our American cornbread and chilli today, I made another classic American dish for dessert – pecan pie.  This was delicious and lasted well for days.  In fact, I think it got better over time, as the filling solidified more.  I’ll definitely be making this again – even if I’m not so convinced by the concept of cornbread!

Rhubarb, orange and cinnamon crumble pie

My mum came to stay at the weekend and arrived with a great basket of wonderful fruit and veg from her allotment. The most amazing globe artichokes, the biggest yellow courgettes I've ever seen, and great long stalks of rhubarb. This evening I turned the rhubarb into a pie with a nutty crumble topping, and flavoured the fruit with the zest and juice of an orange and spiced with cinnamon. Served, of course, with lashings of custard!

Rhubarb, rum and walnut pie

This was a quick after-work invention for a pud. In the shop on the way home, I picked up some ready-made pastry for £1, and a few stalks of rhubarb.  Within 20 mins of getting home, this was in the oven, filling the house with delicious smells.  If you wanted to make the pastry from scratch – it is very easy to do – I’ve a recipe for it in the post about my Spiced Apple, Rum and Pecan Pie.

Rhubarb and ginger marmalade turnovers

On the way home from work this evening I popped into a supermarket and spotted some shiny pink rhubarb in the reduced section for 25p!  It was too good to walk past but I was too tired to do anything too complicated, so I also grabbed a pack of ready-made puff pastry and when I got home made these turnovers – just adding a little of my mum’s home-made ginger marmalade and a little freshly grated root ginger.  We ate them with some shop-bought custard for the most simple and scrumptious after work pud!

Spiced apple, rum and pecan pie

It's been a few weeks since I last posted anything here, partly because we've been away on a lovely Greek island holiday, to Symi. I have also had a couple of baking disasters since being back - a cake inspired by the holiday made with Greek yoghurt, olive oil and figs turned out just too gooey inside, and another made using a tin of mango purée tasted great but had a really rubbery texture. I was beginning to worry I'd lost my baking mojo - but then I made a fantastic chocolate sponge cake when I had an almighty hangover - I was just too hungover to remember to photograph or blog it! So here we are - I'm back with this deep dish apple pie, gently spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice, full of chopped pecans and a dark rum and brown sugar filling. Baking mojo is well and truly back!

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!

Apple and elderflower crumble pies

Our fridge was empty this morning, which always makes both me and Lu feel sad!  Languishing on an otherwise empty shelf was a packet of ready-made pastry.  This was a way to make it, and a slightly tired looking bag of granny smith apples, go a long way, and cheer us all up on a wintry day when everyone in our house is feeling under the weather!  The pastry was enough to make 12 large muffin sized pies and 12 mini ones.  A bit of spice, some elderflower cordial and the juice and zest of a clementine helped make them a bit more festive, what with Christmas only days away now.  A mouthful of a mini apple pie like this can't fail to make you smile!

Rum and raisin mince pies

It's beginning to feel even more like Christmas...  The rum-and-raisin mincemeat was too good to wait until it's even Christmassier to use, so I made some mince pies.  I used the same pastry recipe as the one I used for my recent pecan, rum and chocolate chunk pie - it's so easy I'm not going back to shop-bought pastry!

Pecan, rum and chocolate chunk pie

I've made this for a weekend away with old friends from uni.  What better way to spend hallowe'en than eating scrumptious pud made of rum and chocolate!  This is best served warm when the chocolate is slightly melted and deliciously gooey.