Sometimes it is really difficult being so far away from friends and family, but I'm ever so grateful for technology which helps to bring us a bit closer. Whatsapp and zoom calls are amazing and have become part of the norm, especially during covid. 

Sadie, in England, sent me a picture she had taken of her own oreo millionaires that she'd bought from a local baker. They were delicious-looking, but a bit grey on top instead of a rich chocolate colour, and overall a bit disappointing, she said, because they smelled of the paper they were wrapped in. Still, they looked amazing and I wondered if we could easily find a recipe online to replicate these little morsels of oreo yumminess here in Abu Dhabi. 

In short - yes, you can find just about anything on the internet. There's a really scrumptious and easy recipe over on Jane's Patisserie blog (here) which is everything an oreo millionaire should be. 

Isn't it amazing that an idea that starts in the snowy east of England can make its way to the deserts of Abu Dhabi and settle eventually in the warmth of the Cape all the way at the furthest tip of Africa? It is like magic!

For example, this week we arranged to have some suits dry-cleaned. With two presses of a button on an app, we had scheduled a collection on the same day. You then fold up your garments into a pre-provided bag and leave them outside for collection. Two days later they're returned to you at a specified time, completely dry-cleaned, pressed and neatly left outside your door. All of this happens without even having to talk to anyone else.

Another luxury is the incredible availability of things. I've been able to get Dutch yarn delivered to me from a yarn shop in Dubai. I've bought amazing American bakeware in a local hardware store. I found a Kiwi-made youghurt Maker from a vegetable shop in Abu Dhabi. I've also managed to find Yorkshire Tea in some local stores on the main island, which is only a short drive away. Before I moved here, I worried about how easy it would be to find things that I was used to - things like toiletries, groceries and even fresh fruit. I needn't have worried; the UAE is like an oversized global marketplace if you just know where to look.

When we moved into our flat, we got an enormous gas-burning oven - another luxury that is considered the standard size here, where catering could be considered something of a national pastime. It's double-width, and I've discovered that it takes two very generously-sized baking trays side-by-side. I can bake an enormous birthday cake with four layers in just one oven session. Or, 48 cupcakes. It is truly a thing of beauty. And I've been using it. A lot. I've baked across the globe this past year, trying all sorts of recipes every week and making Southern biscuits for dinner (it's a bit like a savoury scone, rather than the sweet snack you'd have with tea), Australian lamingtons for tea, South African snowballs as a treat, and most recently an Irish tea cake - because, well, it reminds me a bit of home.

Granny's Irish Tea Cake

This was my husband's late grandmother's recipe. She had an enormous collection of amazing recipes - both indulgent, and war-time. This one was one of her regular makes, and a firm favourite in our house. I'm incredibly grateful that I managed to write down a number of her recipes which we now use quite regularly. Making fresh tea cake for (well) tea has been a little luxury for us too, in this time of Covid-19 isolation. It is proper comfort food.

Elice's Irish Tea Cake (our family recipe)

• 1 teacup of cold tea

• 1 teacup of brown sugar

• 2 teacups of self-raising flour

• 1lb of raisins (450g)

• 1 egg, beaten

1. Put the sugar and the raisins into a bowl, add the tea, and soak overnight.
2. The next day, add flour and a well-beaten egg, and mix well.
3. Pour mixture into a well-greased small tin and bake on the middle shelf of an oven at 150'C for 1 1/4 hour - 1 3/4 hours (or until brown and baked through). Mine took about 2 hours.

Yorkshire Tea in Abu Dhabi

I thought you might like to see that while things are certainly available here, they sometimes look a little different. I think you have to be open to accidentally trying new things as you go to make sure you find what you're looking for!

School holidays are nearing an end. I didn't think I'd make it this far without holiday club (school during the holidays) or babysitting, but I have. We have. We've done days out, adventures, sleepovers, play dates, painting, slime-making, finger-painting, gardening, swinging and sliding, swimming, crafting and baking.

Oh, the baking.

We've baked everything - bread, this apple cake using our own apples, cakes in various guises, brownies, these cheese scones (a lot), and these chocolate biscuits. It's Nigella's recipe for Granny Boyd's Biscuits. It's available in various places online, but I got mine out of a very well-used copy of How to be a Domestic Goddess. 

They're delicious. Properly yummy melt-in-the-mouth ala chocolate shortbread delicious. The only way that you could improve this recipe would be to add chopped hazelnuts. Finnlay loved these so much that he carried around the airtight container everywhere he went, shaking them with an insistent chant of mama to get my attention so that I might just possibly open up the tub and give him one or two. They didn't last long at all!

Granny Boyd's Biscuits

Ingredients:

300g Self-Raising Flour
30g Cocoa Powder
250g Unsalted Butter (room temperature)
125g Caster Sugar

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C.
• Sieve Flour and Cocoa Powder and set it aside.
• Cream butter and sugar till light and pale in colour.
• Mix in flour mixture, it might look like it needs liquid, but keep working the ingredients in and it will form a dough. [Just keep going. Don't give in to the temptation to add something. It's going to work out, I promise.]
• Roll into walnut-sized balls and arrange these on the baking sheets.
• Flatten these balls with the back of a fork.
• Bake for 5mins at 170 degrees C and then turn the temperature down to 150 degrees C for a further 10-15mins.
• The biscuits should feel firm on top although not hard. Remove from the oven and transfer to cool on wire rack, before storing in air-tight container. [or eat straight away. I won't judge you.]

Yum, yum, yum.

I used Ina Garten's recipe (here) for Lemon Yoghurt Cake. It is really delicious; I was so impressed with how moist the sponge was, and how the lemon syrup made this super sweet and lemony despite not actually using all that much sugar compared to other similar recipes.


I didn't glaze the loaf, it really doesn't need it. My little helper insisted on some sort of decoration though, so we decorated with some leftover sugar nibs.

I made this as a light breakfast/brunch cake to have with tea. It's pretty much just yoghurt and fruit, right? That counts as breakfast!

Our second Bake Box arrived through the post a few weeks ago and I was absolutely delighted that it included loads of goodies that I actually wanted to use. It was themed "bear necessities" or I suppose more aptly, "a teddybear's picnic" with a teddybear silicon cake mould, toadstool and owl cookie cutters, cherry cutters and a lattice pastry roller. Do I need any of these? No. Do I want to use them right now and produce millions of picnic snacks? Yes please!


We were invited to a friend's house for a playdate and tea, so Isla and I made a quick teddybear cake using the silicone cake mould included in the box. When I say quick, I really do mean it - a toddler's attention span is not best suited to intricately-decorated cakes. This bear looks a bit rough and ready but he was lovingly received and delicious to eat.


The recipe included with the box was super quick and we made it the afternoon before our playdate, leaving it to sit overnight. It was too much for the mould so it spilled over during baking, and needed neatening up before demoulding. The next morning we spent half an hour decorating it using a quick buttercream in "light chocolate" and "more chocolate" flavours. We used buttons for eyes and a nose, and giant red peanut M&Ms for his bowtie.

The end result was an instant hit with Isla who insisted on pointing at the cake and chanting ted-dee, ted-dee. If you ask her what a teddy does, she responds by giving herself an enormous hug and saying awwwww. This girl.


I really like this mould and will definitely use it again, ideally spending more time on the decorating so the poor bear doesn't look so frazzled. The recipe was good too, and tasted better the next day after cutting.

I made these muffins using this recipe for basic muffins from BBC Good Food. I replaced the milk chocolate chips with white chocolate chips, the pulp and seeds of one passion fruit / granadilla, and a cup of fresh blueberries (first rolled in flour to stop them from sinking).


Isla helped decorate them with sugar nibs before we baked them.

This recipe is great. It's such a simple go-to recipe that is easily customised to what you have on-hand, or in the fridge. It's also extremely toddler-friendly and can be made in one bowl with a large wooden spoon for mess-free stirring.

Isla's idea of baking with blueberries is "one handful for me to eat while we bake, one blueberry for the muffin". Thank goodness I had a secret stash behind the mixing bowl that she didn't notice.

This is a great flavour combination but next time I'll leave out the granadilla seeds: they gave this batch an unexpected - but not unpleasant! - crunch which resulted in a game of muffin-bite roulette.

We're still finding our rhythm here - new baby, new routines, new rooms, new garden, new oven. I've been getting to know the oven's quirks; it is a gas oven, which is new for me. It makes the most extraordinarily delicious roast potatoes. The top shelf bakes brilliantly, but the bottom shelf barely gets any heat. Not ideal for large cupcake baking marathons.

I've tried out some of my go-to recipes: banana bread, chocolate cake.
And these: snowballs.


Snowballs are coconut-covered balls of pink deliciousness. A proper South African treat. I use this recipe (link) which is ridiculously easy and takes less than half an hour. They're Dad's favourite, so I made him a batch for Father's Day this past weekend. It's such an unusual recipe: a somewhat scone-like mixtured, baked into soft sponge rounds, and then sandwiched with jam. They're then dipped in jam syrup and rolled in pink coconut. It must be pink!


Very quick and easy to make, even when a toddler is "helping" you in the kitchen. Once done, I cut them in half (they're hardly dainty morsels at around 3.5inches across) and serve them with tea. Dad has two at once. I've thought about making them smaller but I suspect you'd lose that lovely spongey texture inside.

And so, snowballs in spring. They are such a summery and bright treat with their pink coats, they almost seem to be an essential (visual and delicious) part of lazy weekend snacking while the sun shines - or, to brighten things up with a pot of tea while the rain pours.

Isla insists on feeding herself. Spoons are banned. Purees are too. It's a phase, I keep telling myself. Baby cannot exist on cucumber sticks and biscuits alone.

Baby biscuits - the type you buy in a box from the supermarket - cost a fortune. There are all of these new rules about what you can and can't feed a baby, but I figure that we all got by without Organix and Kiddylicious and Annabel Karmel, so there must be some baby-friendly recipes out there.

I've tried out a couple, and these are the first ones that got the baby-seal-of-approval. Katy's carrot and squash biscuits from I Can Cook.

I spent most of Saturday making home-made sweets and treats for the Christmas Market. I stirred and pulled and whisked and beat. I had an army of taste-testers to make sure everything was just fine.


I made Rosa's Rice Krispies Bixies, which is a treat that my mother and aunt used to have when they were little. It's a combination of butter, rice krispies and melted marshmallows.

Today I am thankful for just-warm cakes cooling on a breadboard in the kitchen. The smell of the iced Spiced Honey Loaf cake is intoxicating, and you'd be forgiven if you can't help but break off a bit of Boiled Fruit Cake when you walk by. The crusts are the best bits. Best served warm on a cold wintery day, when the rain is pouring outside and the smell of warm traditional cake fills the house.

EVERYTHING is better with nougat.


Huge, giant slabs of it. Cut into itty bitty bite-sized pieces. Om nom.

And so, that was yesterday. I made nougat, with pistachios and almonds - lightly roasted, gently chopped. Whipped sugar syrup that forms boiled sweets if you drop bits on a plate to check the soft-crack stage. A giant, foaming nougat base in your Kenwood Mixture that really can't get any bigger, can it? Rice paper. Which shouldn't be as delicious as it is. Is it just me?

We've moved, and the internet has finally been connected up. I'm back online! I have really only missed the internet because I work online... but it's nice to have that information-at-your-fingertips superpower on call again.

A carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

Date and caramel scones.

I have been thinking about sourdough for an awfully long time. I get cravings for it on a Saturday morning, and then quickly regret not having any sourdough yeast around to quickly whip up a delicious floury loaf for breakfast. I occasionally treat myself to a loaf of sourdough, but I know better. I should be making it myself.

But of course, to have sourdough bread, you need a sourdough yeast or sponge. To have a sourdough sponge, you need a starter.

And that's a lot of hard work and patience.


It's only really hard work because you have to wait a whole 7 - 10 days before you can use your magic sourdough starter to actually produce bread. That's a whole lot of holding back and being patient. You have to love it and feed it every day, at 24-hour intervals. You have to whisk it and monitor it. You have to be patient.


It really does grow and take on a life of its own. How very clever. I've been peeking in from time to time, lifting up the clingwrap and taking a whiff to smell whether it is fermenting well. It is.


I'm using Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe for the sourdough starter, which is 100g of wholemeal flour mixed with enough water to get the texture of thick paint. You need to scoop out half of it every day and feed it anew, which initially really put me off (all that waste!) but now, as I watch it ferment, it really makes sense. You need to let it grow.

You can find Hugh's sourdough starter recipe here.

So, in 7 - 10 days it will be ready to bake. In 7 - 10 days we will be in a new kitchen. A small little kitchen nook in our lovely new home. T-minus 4 sleeps.

Packing is dreary work. Making home-made ice cream from an easy peasy no-churn recipe is an infinitely better use of time. Vanilla ice cream with swirled maple caramel and chopped pecans, by the by.