First questions: do you love cakes?

(If you said no then just leave now. Come on.)

Second question: do you like being charitable?

This is a trick question as clearly it’s not really OK to answer no to this one.

You will be pleased to know that this year you can combine these two loves to help provide vital support to those who have suffered life changing injuries and their families, for life. All you have to do is take part in the Colossal Cake Sale, which has been set up by Help for Heroes, the charity which help those who have been wounded in Britain’s current conflicts.

Colossal cake sale

Help For Heroes are asking every community to get together between 19th April and 5th May to raise money by holding a cake sale, either at their local school or shopping centre or just making cakes to sell around the office or to friends and family. This year the event is being sponsored by Whitworths sugar and they have loads of recipes on their website to get you started. View Post

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If you enjoy these chocolate and peanut butter cookies why not try my homemade bourbon biscuits?

Belle is a bit of an entrepreneurial baker. Quite often, if she’s feeling a bit short of cash, she’ll whip up a batch of cookies and go door to door around the square selling them to our neighbours. She hasn’t quite grasped the idea of the costs involved, preferring to see the ingredients in the cupboard as fair game, but I admire her spirit.

This weekend we had friends coming over, so I set Belle to work. We decided to make chocolate and peanut butter cookies, a recipe we found on the Flora website. A few people I know have started using Flora Cuisine for baking lately, and singing its praises, so we thought we’d give it a go. It’s basically runny margarine, so is ideal for kids to use in cakes, biscuits and flapjacks as it’s already nice and soft. View Post

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Today my very funny and clever daughter Bee is guest posting for me. (I’m not just saying that so she’ll keep making me apricot and almond cookies. Honest). If you enjoy these, try our chocolate and peanut butter cookies.

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I am quite good at baking. I also really want people to like me. Luckily the two go hand in hand – as Homer Simpson says, “you don’t make friends with salad”.

As I’m quite new to baking things other than sloppily made fairy cakes, I’m finding I don’t have a lot of the right equipment or ingredients needed for some of the more advanced bakes. I don’t even have a cooling rack, I have to take one of the shelves out of the oven, wait for it to cool down, and then use that.

However, I have found one product that gives great results every time. We were sent a parcel from Whitworth’s that contained all the types of sugar I could think of and more. I was starting to feel like a real baker, with at least 8 different types of sugar in my baking cupboard. View Post

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Do you believe in God? Or angels? Or technology? Or yourself?

According to a recent survey, around 17% of the UK population have no doubt about God’s existence. Another 18% are sure the whole idea is nonsense. That leaves an awful lot of people in the middle, the people who think perhaps there is something, that we can’t just be doing all this alone, unsupervised by something or someone bigger and more powerful, but unable to put their fingers on exactly what that might be. View Post

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An hour ago, Belle left for her very first sleepover.

A few months ago I did pose the question, how old should a child be before they go to a sleepover? I was a bit concerned about Belle’s rather dubious sleeping habits, and was imagining having to do a mercy dash in the middle of the night to rescue her.

I’ve decided though to take the chance, partly because we are five days into the Easter holidays now and quite frankly I could do with a break. This afternoon, after listening to her sing ‘snood, snood, snood, look at my snood, snood snood’ for what felt like five years, and consequently snapping at her to ‘shut up, please!’ I think someone else’s house is really the best place for her. View Post

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