In anticipation of Easter, Lorraine Pascale taste-tests chocolate eggs, hot cross buns and simnel cake, while the Green Kitchen supplies great everyday vegetarian recipes, and five women chefs relate how motherhood has affected their lives in and out of the kitchen
I first started cooking at Easter, a birthday treat of making butterfly cakes with my mum. To this day I have a fondness for Easter baking, the cinnamon-scented stickiness of a hot cross bun and the excuse to make another fruit cake so soon after Christmas (though I have only once decorated it as it should be, with the 11 marzipan balls to represent the apostles without Judas) and as someone who likes his chocolate dark and very thin, then Easter egg chocolate is right up my street. With Easter not far away, we decided to send Lorraine Pascale onto the high street to see what treats they have in store for those who would rather buy a bun than make one. She gives us the lowdown.
I wish I had photographs of those early attempts in the kitchen but it seems the only time we ever got the camera out was at the beach. Now, I feel bombarded by pictures of cooks and their food. Instagram, Twitter and magazines are a cornucopia of images of people and their plates. In this month’s OFM, Professor Charles Spence looks at the science behind what appears to be something of an obsession with looking at pictures of food. Could it be that all this culinary ogling is actually doing us harm?
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