Shrove Tuesday is Pancake Day, it falls the day before Ash Wednesday and can be between the beginning of February and mid March depending on when Easter falls.

Pancake Day’s proper name is Shrove Tuesday and this is the night before the beginning of Lent. Traditionally an evening when families used up flour and eggs to mark the beginning of the fasting period before Easter.  This year Shrove Tuesday falls on 21 February.

Pancakes are a flat, thin batter cake cooked in a hot frying pan – hence the name ‘pan-cake’.  They are cooked on one side then flipped (or tossed if you’re feeling brave) to cook the other side.  They can be sweet or savoury and can be eaten at any time of day and not just on Shrove Tuesday.

I associate Pancake Day with longer days, more sunshine and spring flowers breaking through.  My childhood memories are of spending two weeks persuading my Mum to cook pancakes for Pancake Day, helping her mix up the batter and seeing if I could eat the pancakes faster than she could make them.  In the winter months pancakes are a standard Sunday breakfast in our house – what do you like on yours?  Lemon and sugar?  Maple syrup?  Freshly squeezed orange juice? Nutella?  Grand Marnier? Ham and cheese?  My vote is for lemon and sugar.

Pancake races take place all over Britain, this is one those classic British traditions like the Pantomime, Boxing Day Dips and Morris Men, slightly mad but lots of fun (I know Morris Men aren’t mad and there are amazing traditions to their dances, I love them so please no letters!).

The pancake race originates in a place called Olney in Buckinghamshire; the story goes that a housewife was cooking when she heard the shriven bell at church calling for the start of the service.  Not wanting to be late she dashed out of the house still holding her frying pan.  Olney has held a Pancake Day race since 1445.  In other parts of Britain men dress up in aprons and bonnets and run whilst tossing a pancake in a frying pan.  They have to toss the pancake at least once at the beginning and end of the race and the first across the line wins.

for inspiration please try some of my pancake recipes:

Basic Pancake mix

Blueberry Pancakes

Chocolate Banana Pancakes

Orange and Fig Pancakes

Drop Scones

The books was more suitable for Liz so Liz took it away to play with it and you read her review here, it’s fabulous, so thank you lovely ladies, I’m very proud and ever so thrilled that you like it and have found it useful.

I’m working on putting some more recipes up on the site so check back in a day or so and you’ll be able to try some out to tempt you to buy the book.

raspberry biscuits-2

500 Baby and Toddler Foods

To make sure I had the right quantity of rum I had to try the mixture (well, it would be rude not to) and it took me back to skiing, days before children, when we’d stop mid morning for a hot chocolate and rum. Actually rum ganache goes really well with porridge, with porridge in one hand and the spoon to lick out the bowl of ganache in the other it went down a treat.  A little dubious about rum at 9am but the sun is past the yard arm somewhere in the world and as long as I pretend I’m there it’s OK.

David was a fabulous guest as always, and give us insight in the invention of truffles and ganache by the world’s first celebrity chef, Augustus Escoffier, if you’d like the hear the show and the wonderful story of truffle invention and where the word ‘ganache’ came from you can listen again to the show on BBC Oxford

My edible Christmas recipes are up on the site too to download, I’ll be making some more of the savoury spicy nuts for a do tomorrow night, they’re yummy.

• Edible Christmas presents
• Christmas tree decorations
• Nibbles and canapes for Christmas entertaining
• Edible table centrepieces
• Lovely Christmas food

The photos tell the story and she did say that her profiteroles have never turned out as well as they did tonight – that’s an AGA for you.  She’s now realised that spun sugar isn’t difficult, it’s not even that fiddly but you do have to work quickly and you need to keep it company but at the end you have a real show off dish.  Wonder if I can get her to do pudding for New Year.

The profiteroles are filled with a blackcurrant cream and drizzled with blackcurrant coulis and chocolate shavings.  It tasted heavenly too.

‘Stir up, we beseech thee’, - hence the term Stir Up Sunday.

‘Stir-up Sunday’  is the Sunday before Advent – the end of November – and everyone in the family takes a turn to stir the pudding with a wooden spoon from East to West (clockwise) in honor of the three Kings making their journey, with their eyes closed whilst making a secret wish.  The sprig of holly is a reminder of Jesus’ ‘Crown of Thorns’.  Holly also was supposed to bring good luck and is said to have special healing powers.

Another custom is to put silver or gold items into the pudding; each has a special significance:

-    Silver coins are supposed to bring luck to whoever finds them in their slice of pudding on Christmas Day.

-     A gold ring signifies that the finder will be married before the year is out.

-     A silver thimble or button signifies that the finder will never marry and remain a spinster or bachelor forever, or if people didn’t want to upset whoever pulled out the thimble the meaning was changed to ‘having a lucky life’.

There should be 13 ingredients in the pudding to signify Jesus and his 13 disciples; my recipe has more ingredients because I think it tastes better.

Legends surround holly go back much further into human history.  It’s one of the few evergreen trees abundant in England in the winter and as such was considered magical as remained green and bore fruit throughout the darkest, coldest season.  The Druids believed that it kept it’s leaves and shiny red berries to help keep the beautiful throughout winter when the sacred oak lost it’s leaves.

It’s Stir Up Sunday today so gather the family together and make your Christmas Puddings and Mincemeat, I have some lovely recipes on my recipes pages, so check out

Chocolate and Ginger Christmas Pudding

Classic Christmas Pudding

Cranberry and Orange Mincemeat

Traditional Mincemeat