I love a sweet and salty combination.  Bacon caramelised with honey and sprinkled over a salad; sweet, butternut pumpkin and olives or feta in a savoury tart; salted caramel ice cream; salted chocolate crème brulee - and the list goes on ….

One of the few herbs in my garden which does not make a lovely dinner for the local possums, snails and other hungry varmints is French tarragon. It’s a champion. I like to keep a pot growing as it’s not always available at the market and I’m addicted to our Tarragon Salsa ….

These decadent morsels, originally named Millionaire’s Shortbread due to their rich ingredients, are our gluten-free version of a recipe published by Andrew McConnell a few years ago. As they are not too sweet and use couverture chocolate, they are a bit more grown-up than the commercially made caramel chocolate slices found in cafés and shops everywhere ….

Beetroot chutney is very popular in our family and my sister, Sue, is particularly fond of it. With her birthday dinner coming up I decided to develop a recipe using this tasty and colourful condiment and came up with the idea for Gluten-Free Beetroot and Bocconcini Tarts to serve as an entrée ….

Our Gluten-Free Ricotta Souffle Cake is the perfect treat with which to spoil your mother on Mothers’ Day and just like our mothers, it’s not too sweet but just perfectly sweet enough ….

Here’s another pastry to add to our repertoire. It’s a Gluten-Free Flaky Pastry and is rich with butter yet light and airy. Just perfect for crowning savoury pies, encasing delicious fillings to form pasties, or cutting into shapes and baking ‘naked’ ready to be topped ….

Miso is categorised as having umami flavour and indeed does have that savoury, rich deliciousness which is hard to put a finger on. Soy sauce, apparently, has umami flavour too, and anchovies ….

When we were testing this recipe, we all agreed it reminded us of our childhood. Was it the coconut, the dates, the golden syrup, the lovely sweet and chewy texture or did it just remind us of that lovely smell of sweet baking in the family kitchen ….

Family brunch gatherings can be tricky occasions with the catering requiring some serious tactical thought. What to cook to satisfy everyone’s tastes from the eight to eighty year olds, coeliacs, vegetarians and the rest ….

At home on a summery Saturday evening.  Husband proposed a deal.  A cake for a cocktail.  Done I said ….

There are many stories about how the heart came to represent love, and of course Valentine’s Day. One suggests it came from an illustrated verse, written in the 13th century, that depicts a poetic lover handing his beating heart to his beloved. The image shows his thumb making an indentation in the top of the heart, thus creating the symbol we all know today ….