Dad's Cuisine

Christmas spice cake Laced with deliciously warming spices, this Christmas spice cake is the perfect way to kick off the holiday season. Mum would spend the weeks leading up to Christmas frantically getting everything ready. Food, gifts, decorations: no-one did Christmas like my Mum. As was traditional, she would get the Christmas pudding started weeks in advance, on Stir-up Sunday ; one of my earliest memories is standing on the stool at the kitchen counter and giving the Christmas pudding the traditional stir while making an earnest wish. That was the start of Christmas when I was a child.  Christmas is one of the hardest periods of the year since Mum left us - it's never been the same as when I was a child. But I'm determined to make sure my kids have the same special memories of Christmas traditions that my Mum gave to me, because they last forever and bring comfort on some of the darkest days. So, I find myself running around frantically getting everything ready, just lik...

CHRISTMAS GINGER CAKES Looking for an alternative to traditional mince pies at Christmas? Spice up the holiday season with these mini ginger cakes. These ginger cakes are part of my rebellion against mince pies. I hate mince pies. There, I said it. I don't hate them completely: I really love the buttery pastry, I love how they smell, and I love the mulled wine that often accompanies them. But I loathe the sticky, sweet stuffing of a mince pie. Despite all my best efforts - and there have been many - I can't bring myself to enjoy them, much to my mother's despair. But these ginger cakes are a fantastic alternative - or even a complement - to mince pies. They're not overly sweet, have a nice spicy kick and combine orange zest, ginger and cloves for a real Christmas flavour.  A few years ago, I offered to host Christmas on the condition there were no mince pies or Brussels sprouts. Mum, being a stickler for tradition, was aghast. I explained that I would be ...

PUMPKIN CAKE You don't have to wait for Halloween to enjoy yourself this tasty pumpkin cake! Spicy and moist, it's the perfect treat now that the nights are drawing in. We invited Dad round for some Halloween fun with the kids. We never really celebrated Halloween when I was a child, so this was a bit of a novelty for him. And since we only really started celebrating Halloween a couple of years ago, it's a bit of a novelty for me too - at least if my pumpkin carving skills are anything to go by. They were truly horrific, and not in the right way. After telling Dad that we were busy carving pumpkins (badly), he told me how much he dislikes pumpkin. Under no circumstances was I to make pumpkin soup. Or pumpkin pie. And if I did, I was not to expect him to eat it.  So instead I made a pumpkin cake and didn't tell him what was in it until after he had exclaimed how delicious it was. After briefly grumbling about being hoodwinked, he asked for the recipe. S...

APPLE CRUMBLE Looking for some serious comfort food? A traditional apple crumble always hits the spot! The comfort that a traditional apple crumble brings cannot be over-estimated.  Whether you're feeling poorly, a bit down, chilly or just fancy a quick treat, apple crumble always delivers. Just one spoonful of the hot, sweet apples and crunchy crumble whizzes me straight back to my childhood. No matter how stuffed we were after a roast dinner with all the trimmings, we always had room for crumble. Mum would spoon out generous helpings, the steam from the apples rising from the dish, and our eagle eyes would make sure no one had been served a bigger portion of crumbly bits than anyone else. As we took the first bite, the hot apples almost burning the roofs of our mouths in our haste, the table would fall silent in awed appreciation of this traditional English dessert.  Never mind chicken soup for the soul; this is apple crumble for the soul, and a d...