Look I am sorry this has been a bit of a food week, but to keep a promise from a kind commenter I just thought I would share the recipe for my failsafe Lemon Drizzle Cake. This is the cake which Little B always wants to make if we have time and way back in November I blogged about the fun we had together making it. Now I really can’t remember where it came from, but it sits on the dirtiest, stickiest page of my recipe notes. Here goes, I hope you enjoy it.

For the cake: Zest of 2 unwaxed lemons, 100g butter, 175g self-raising flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 175g caster sugar, 2 large eggs, 4 tbls of milk.

For the topping: 100g icing sugar, juice of 1 lemon

Preheat your oven to (180 C, 350 F, Gas Mark 4) Line a 450g loaf tin. Place the lemon zest and all remaining ingredients in a large bowl. Beat well until blended. Pour into the tin and bake for 30mins until golden. Turn out onto a rack to cool. Mix the icing sugar and lemon juice together and then pour over the cake.

It is sticky, gooey and a little bit zesty – yummy x

A dear friend of mine had a significant birthday this year and her darling husband gave her the opportunity to attend a cookery school with a friend for a day. Generously, she asked me if I would join her. Immediately I said ‘Yes’ and then immediately my husband said, ‘lets make a weekend of it!’

Now the cookery school is based in the Lake District in the north of England. If you don’t know it or anything about it, I have to say that it is truly one of the most beautiful landscapes which we have in this country. Mountains, lakes, pastoral green fields, views, woolly sheep. It is the landscape of Wordsworth, Ruskin and Beatrix Potter. If you saw the Beatrix Potter film a few years ago then the beauty of the countryside seems little changed from its rural charm shown on the film. Whenever we go, our spirits are lifted and especially in the winter it has a dramatic grandeur which takes your breath away. The photo above was taken from where we were staying near Ambleside as we left in the morning.

OK, OK, cooking! Well when it actually dawned on us that we were doing a full day of cooking, both A and I felt quite nervous. The cookery school is set in lovely countryside, and as we arrived we were invited to sit in the ‘Aga Room’ to help ourselves to fresh coffee and some lovely fruitcake. The day was a full on experience of teaching us recipes and then going straight away to stand by our stations and cook it ourselves. The two chefs, Ryan and Tim were very kind, and excellent teachers, so you didn’t feel under pressure at all.

Now if you are vegetarian please look away now. The funniest thing was the second task of the day was learning to bone a chicken. I will not be blogging this as part of ‘Lessons Learned’ because, I couldn’t faithfully repeat how you do it accurately and I wonder if I will ever manage to repeat the feat again. I got the fit of the giggles half way through as I held my poor inflicted chicken up high, grabbing it by the leg and thinking, I am actually in that film, Julie and Julia. People who know me, know I love to mimic and I started doing the Meryl Streep accent whilst unskillfully butchering this poor bird. Well the accent didn’t help, but I did do something I would never in a million years have attempted before.

We came home at the end of the day, with more food than we could carry, lovely lasagna, Spanish Chicken and the most awesome Sticky Toffee Pudding – yummy. But, boy were we tired. The boys had as much fun, with walks, scooting and laughter. A good weekend, with kind and generous friends and a beautiful place.

Big B took these photos, due to the concentration on the food on my part and a romantic vision on his.