Breads and Baking

As James Brown tells us, so importantly: I am hot like an oven for your loven.

Soda Breads

Yeast-free breads made with baking powder to make 'em rise. Easy, straightforward and just the ticket to serve with that thick chowder, vegetable soup or dark, meaty stew when the wind is rising and the rain is battering against the windows.

Cakes

The trouble with cakes is the time they take and no, I'm not about to claim that I've got a foolproof way of making cakes in seconds. It's not the making, anyway. It's the clearing up afterwards.

Although all that flour all over the place and a warm oven filling the kitchen with homely childhood smells is a peachy thought, at the end of the day it just doesn't seem to fit in with modern life. So cakes are a rare pleasure reserved only for things that are so exceptional that you occasionally just have to make the time for them. And these are them things.