Hello from the other side. With cake.
A little life update, some big personal news and a special celebration cake recipe
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Oh hello, my dear newsletter pals. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve truly missed you, and this. Can I just say how happy I am that you’re reading this? Landing in your inbox feels like such an intimate privilege (as does being, albeit briefly, back at my desk), and it’s one I don’t take lightly. With the flood of emails we all receive daily, your willingness to make time for mine means more than you know.
I want to thank you for your patience while I’ve been away having a baby – another profound privilege in my life. I’ve been thrilled to see so many new subscribers join us during my pause, and I can’t wait to welcome you into this space. Whether you're here for the recipes, the travel tips, or the personal insights, I promise this community will continue to bring you a delicious, life-enhancing mix of all those things and more. Expect stories from my kitchen, behind-the-scenes peeks into our everyday life and my job as a food/travel writer, and of course, plenty of mouthwatering dishes to inspire your next meal.
Becoming a mother again has been such a joyful, chaotic, and life-changing experience, and while I’ve been eager to reconnect and share what’s been happening behind-the-scenes these past few months, especially as we stand on the brink of another major life moment (more on that below), it’s only now that I’ve found the space to get back on here since I last took a ‘pause from pausing’ to share our happy news.
So what can I tell you about the past few months? Well, it’s all a bit blurry, to be quite honest, though I can say it’s been set to a soundtrack of Spotify’s ‘Fun Toddler Songs’ and ‘Relaxing White Noise for Babies’ along with many, many episodes of the Newsagents podcasts because, well, what a time to be alive. There’s been much comical creeping around our irritatingly creaky floorboards, multiple wake ups each and every night, lots of pasta, frittata and things on toast, washed down with vats of tea and coffee and wine. And cocktails. I’ve got even more into cocktails and I’m excited to share these here at some point.
I stepped away from Instagram altogether for a few months, which was LOVELY, and read this book about ‘breaking up’ with your phone which was uncomfortable and confronting and made me immediately distance myself from my smartphone. While it’s been slowly creeping back in, I’ve definitely become more conscious in the way I use it, and I think it’s quite essential reading. I also read Lucy Jones’ frankly seminal book ‘Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood’ which made me feel livid, vindicated and more seen than at any point of my pregnancy/motherhood journey so far. I devoured it in the days after giving birth to E, when he was so sleepy I could read pages and pages, and then I bought it for many of my mum friends, and I implore you to read it if you’re on the parenthood journey yourself.
In June we lost a dear, dear friend, my darling Am who I lived with for years in Brixton in my twenties, and who was just the most wonderful, kind, powerful, fantastic woman. Her death has been impossible to come to terms with and I’m still grieving - I will write about her properly here in future, she was a fantastic cook and baker and you can read my tribute to her here. I decided to write this on Instagram because it was a platform Am used herself, more latterly to share her far-flung adventures as she refused to be defined by her cancer. God I miss her.
In the wake of all this, we’ve been living a relatively slow, small, gentle life making the most of the long days together with friends and family on our special spot of the Kent coast, taking a couple of short trips to France, back to our beloved Le Touquet, and exploring Deauville/Trouville which I’m going to write about here very soon, and I’ve been gradually, gently coming back to cooking for pleasure after a long period of feeling totally exhausted by the very act of making food.
And because I always try and live and breathe the title of the this newsletter, lol, we’ve also decided to throw a house move into the mix. When number two arrived, it became clear that as much as we adore this charming house (bought before kids) it’s just not the right space for us any more on a practical level. So I write this to you from a crowded corner of our much-loved, half-packed up house that we’re just about to say goodbye to. The emotions are running extremely high – after all – this is the house where we started our family and made so many wonderful memories, and I keep looking wistfully out of our kitchen doors into the wild magic of our garden with its swaying mimosa and crazy, rambling fig tree, and feeling huge guilt that I’m tearing our children away from the ‘jungle’, though of course I trust our instinct that it’s for the best in the long run.
So it’s bittersweet to leave, but I’m also really excited because the new house is going to be an absolutely huge project, and there is so much to plan and create. We have bought somewhere that isn’t quite right on many levels, but that does have the scope to make it our dream home, and I’m both excited and daunted by it, and I can’t wait to share more about this with you in the coming months. While we’re getting everything settled with the move and childcare (which, as you know, is a minefield), I wanted to drop back in and share the recipe for this spiced apple cake with tahini buttercream and cardamom butterscotch. I made it to celebrate baby E’s six month birthday – I mean how the actual!?? Time is flying! – and because I knew it would be the last cake I would bake in this beautiful, beautiful kitchen, so it feels fitting to share it with you here.
Why Should You Make It?
Well, I’d be lying if I said it was a super easy, no mess sort of bake. It’s more of a project cake, a cake befitting of a big occasion, milestone or celebration, and it’s slightly adapted from the recipe in my cookbook The Joyful Home Cook. The time to make it is now, while apples are abundant and wonderful, as you’re going to bake them with cinnamon until the kitchen smells like autumn, and then purée them into a silken slick that will flavour and moisten the sponge layers, themselves shot through with fatty chunks of walnut, and also sit between the layers with plumes of tahini Swiss meringue butter
cream. Yes, that’s right. Tahini buttercream. You need to make sure you use fresh, super runny tahini for this so that it’s whippable into the glorious folds of the Swiss, and if you don’t have any that’s runny, it’s actually better to leave it out. None of the chunky stuff that’s been sitting in the back of the cupboard for a while please. I use the Belazu one religiously and it works a treat.
As if that wasn’t ENOUGH of a reason to make it, there’s also a molten, cardamom-laced butterscotch which is the stuff of my dreams. It’s sharpened with the apple purée and slathered over the cake at the very end, its caramel drips melding with the nutty buttercream and soft, tender, spiced sponge. Use my cardamom quantity as a guide - again it will depend on the freshness of your spices, and if it’s not pleasantly humming with cardamom up the quantity by a couple of pods. I can’t wait to hear how you get on with this one, and I hope it will become a celebration cake in your life for many years to come.
So, What’s Next?
In just a few weeks, I’ll be back to regular content with even more for paid subscribers—including some new recipes, travel guides, and personal insights that I’ve been saving up during my break. Here’s a little sneak peek of some of what’s coming:
Cosy, delicious autumnal recipes perfect for family meals and entertaining
Seasonal shopping ideas and cookbook recommendations
Exclusive travel tips from my latest adventures
And, of course, updates on the new house project
Paid subscriptions will be turned back on when I return in a few weeks, and I can’t wait to share all the exciting content I’ve been working on with you. Thank you so much for your patience, support, and understanding during this time. It means the world to me, and I’m looking forward to reconnecting with you all very soon. Now wish us luck with the move, and the vomitous job of packing… all tips greatly received. Also, if you have a second, please let me know what you’re most looking forward to about this newsletter restarting - I know Substack has been changing in the time I’ve been away, so it would be so helpful to hear from you.
For now though, I leave you with dahlias ( £2 from the market!), which are frankly bringing me all the joy atm, and a picture of my daughter washing a pumpkin: an important new past time. Big love! xxx
The Recipe - Spiced Apple Cake with tahini buttercream and cardamom butterscotch
It’s a PDF because I’ve rambled on too much.
Oh how wonderful you’re back 🎉. We’ve missed you and your fresh breath writing and pics. That cake is amazing - of course.
Have so missed you and so wonderful you are back 🎉🎉🎉🤩