Book Review: Annabel Karmel's Busy Mum's Cookbook!

This is the second book I'm sharing with you which talks about how to make great food for your family on days when you don't have a whole heap of time to wallow in the pleasures of cooking: Annabel Karmel's Busy Mum's Cookbook.

Annabel Karmel has got a good thing going. She was a front-runner twenty-five years ago in helping to create a whole new way of cooking: delicious, home-cooked meals that are great for all the family, which has earned our trust when it comes to knowing her food tastes yummy!

I weaned our children using many of her recipes when they were tiny....and now they're getting bigger, here she is again, helping us on the way to cooking nirvana with slightly more mature tastes...though there are still recipes that you know will bring them running...

Busy Mum's Cookbook is divided into seven chapters with names like 20-Minute Recipes, Storecupboard and Six Ingredients, and these definitely do have a different audience in mind from her Baby & Toddler Cookbook Days. Even the photography has gone all grown up!

Annabel Karmel has had three children of her own so she knows what she talking about when it comes to being a busy mum....and it shows! She's been there, done that...and written the cookbook!

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Book Review: Bake Me A Cake As Fast As You Can By Miranda Gore Browne

Miranda Gore Browne's second book (published by Ebury) is called Bake Me a Cake as Fast as You Can. This is currently one of my most reached-for recipe books for one simple reason...this book is crammed full of really yummy recipes that you can whizz up in no-time-at-all, taking literally a few minutes to put together.

Now, I do love a lazy Saturday cooking up a feast in the kitchen but there are plenty of other times when I have friends and family unexpectedly dropping in, or when I want to do some baking with my kiddiewinks, when Miranda Gore Browne's recipes, which are quick, easy and scrumptious, exactly hit the spot.

I'm still rooling over Miranda Gore Browne's amazing Chalon kitchen!

Full of ideas that need only store-cupboard ingredients, but look and taste just as good (if not better!) than if you'd spent all morning slaving over a hot stove, Bake Me a Cake as Fast as You Can is a total must-have!

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Mulled Cider and My Beautiful Pitcher

Tonight is Guy Fawkes night here in the UK. 

All over the country, children will be wrapped up warmly, bonfires will be burning and excited faces will ooh and aah at the sky alight with fireworks.

As you can't all be with me, much though I'd love it, I thought I'd share one of my favourite traditions with you, so we can at least be together in spirit:

Mulled Cider. 

So scrumptious.

So easy.

This is not a recipe that's fixed in stone;

there are a million variations. 

But this is the way we like it.

2 litres of cider 

(or apple juice for the children)

2 oranges, thinly sliced

3 cups of orange juice

A handful of cloves

6 cinnamon sticks

6 all-spice berries

Tip all the ingredients into a large pan and simmer until hot.

Drink and be merry.

{Did someone say easy?}

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  I'm serving it in my very handsome indeed tall ceramic pitcher.
  Isn't it beautiful?
  
  
  
  
  
  It's new and gorgeous and I think you can probably tell I am a tad excited about it.
  I found it in the Domestic Diva section on the Cox and Cox website. 
  
  
  {And if making mulled cider doesn't designate me a Domestic Diva, 
  then, frankly, I don't know what will..}
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Have a great evening, peeps.
  
  
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