I was intent on getting some tender, sweet and dense Bosc pears for a dessert that had been running round and round inside my head and wouldn't leave me alone; a pear and candied ginger cheesecake. The family had been complaining about the dearth of desserts lately. Mutiny was in the air and I honestly had run out of ideas for tarting up vanilla ice cream.

After trawling three markets and two supermarkets and coming up empty, temptation presented itself in the form of canned pears. Ordinaril...

After weeks of being a shadowy presence, my kitchen "mojo" seems to be returning, judging by the number of times my eyes have strayed to my pantry cupboard door and the mounting desire to use my KitchenAid mixer. So, yesterday, I made the very easy peach and blueberry crumble you see up there. I saw some slightly bruised blueberries going cheap at my usual supermarket and vaguely recalled a clutch of rose-flushed, yellow peaches rolling around in my fruit drawer. True enough, when I got home,...

I woke up this morning still thinking about a friend, and her sour cherry cake. She is you see,a frightful brainiac, but, by her own admission, almost completely out of her element in the kitchen. My blog, so she told me, had induced her into actually using her "cake frame" - her term of endearment for her cake tin, to make the said cherry cake, yesterday, for tea. Brava bella! So here, inspired by her newly gained kitchen gumption (she did it, in minutes, with a spoon, little else and no dir...