The dish itself, the flavours, at least how I made it, that's a solid four star rating - it was delicious! Everything else - the time management, the style of writing, the layout, - oh, and did I mention time management? - is an utter failure, one star only.

Let's see why. This book promises you'll be able to prepare the recipes within 15 min. In these 15 min, you should: 1. make a curry paste, from scratch; 2. cook rice, with spices; 3. make a yoghurt sauce; 4. prepare and cook the actual curry (this includes grilling the cauliflower in batches before adding them to the curry); 5. heat up pappadums. Honestly, just from reading the recipe, I estimated it at about an hour.

It turned out to be way more than that, because the recipe does not state how long the vegetables (mainly the cauliflower, actually) need to cook. Looking at comparable recipes, such as this one, it's easy to see why - the cauliflower needs to cook for 30 min, and that's excluding all those other steps!

I didn't even have most spices for the curry paste in house; I just used about 1.5 tsp of ready curry spice mix. I skipped grinding everything in the kitchen machine and just fried it directly. And I also didnm't add the juices from the pineapple can, because that's sugar syrup, why for heaven's sake should I put that in a curry? It turned out to be on the sweet side anyway.

Serves 6 rather than 4, and this is a working link.

Not too bad. The reason why I'm giving a two star rating nonetheless is because although this recipe is actually titled "Nie wieder matschige Kartoffelpuffer! So werden sie garantiert knusprig" (something along the lines of "Floppy potato pancakes? Never again! This is how they'll get crisp, guaranteed!"), it doesn't say a word about two crucial factors: how much heat will you need, and how much fat. Admittedly, my guess is that spelling out how much fat you need would only unneccessarily heighten the risk of cardiac infarction, which is already high enough given how much fat you need for baking these pancakes - I noticed that they only turned out well if I used lots of fat, and I ended up using about half a pack of lard (ca. 125 g). I also had to add an extra egg half-way through the baking process as the pancakes kept falling apart.

Very easy, and fantastic in taste! We used spare ribs, as this was what our butcher recommended, and it was very delicious, albeit heavy in fat (obviously). I omitted the star anise and used 9 damson plums, and the dish could have used much more plums; I'm pretty sure you could also make this with prunes.

Served with rice and Sesame Pak Choi - while pak choi goed really well with the pork, the execution of that dish was awful.

I actually only had a little more than a pound (500g to be precise), so I reduced the amount of sugar and spices accordingly (I used 150 ml /115 g of sugar - 100 ml brown sugar, 50 ml white - instead of the 175 ml it should have been, but the brown sugar looked like it was finer, and thus denser than the white one). I also used piment.

To my surprise, the plum butter was already cooked and reduced just four hours later - I guess that's because I used much less plums, but probably also because I use a small slowcooker with a hole in the lid (supposedly to prevent overcooking), while I think I can spot an Instant Pot used as slowcooker (no holes) in the photos of the recipe, so that will probably also factor in regardless of the quantity.

Tastewise, it's a solid five stars, it's addictive! I'll try to make a larger portion next weekend, let's see how that goes. And it was also wonderful that I hardly had to do anything, much easier than most other jams.

Very simple, very delicious. Makes a soft chocolate glazing. Also usable as cake filling.

Very, very delicious! I only made the strawberry part, though.

I had a few issues with the strawberry recipe. After puréeing them, I put them through a sieve - and absolutely nothing got stuck in the sieve, all the little seeds passed right through. I tried again with a tiny tea sieve, but this time nothing passed through, so that didn't work either. I then used a folded cheese cloth, and that strained out about half of the seeds. In the end, they didn't really bother me all that much, so I might just skip that step.

Because of all that sieving, I measured and found out that I only had 120 ml of strawberries instead of the required 155 ml, and so had to purée another few (I even started out with more than instructed, and yet...). Next time I'd probably purée 220-250 g strawberries (though only if I'm planning to strain out the seeds).

Last, I thought it wasn't sweet enough (though this will definitely depend on your strawberries, so taste!), so I added another 2 tsp sugar.

Edited 25 July 2018:
I made it again, strawberries only, without sieving, and while the seeds were noticeable, they didn't bother me. And it's super-delicious, really!

Very nice! They even taste quite creamy (unless you take a bite, in which case you'll notice the water cristals). I used honey instead of agave syrup, and used nearly double the amount. The subtle honey flavour was very nice, but I think it could have been even sweeter, as the flavour of the peaches (well, nectarines) didn't really come out well. Maybe also add a little simple syrup next time?

Half a recipe was enough for four popsicles of 60 ml each.

I have a confession to make - this galette was so good I not only licked my own plate, but also those of my kids.

There are only two minor things we'd change; one is that it's too much sugar - we used a bit less than instructed, and even that was a bit too much once the galette had cooled down. The other is that my husband wasn't pleased that a bit of the starch was still visible (he's a perfectionist - I wouldn't even have noticed if he hadn't pointed it out). He suggested to use the starch directly on top of the (very impressive!) pastry.

Nice, but the dressing was pretty overwhelming, especially since we had only added half the anchovies (to the salad, and all anchovies in the dressing). Also, there's an anourmous amount of dressing, I don't think you'll need all of that. Last, just tell me again how much salt you're supposed to add to the potatoes - 1/2 cup?! 8 tbsp?! What for? Either you'll taste it and the potatoes are oversalted, or you don't, but then you're wasting money and polluting the environment.

Very refreshing lemonade! I think we used less lemon juice (my husband made it), but then again it's hard to tell when the amount of lemon juice is given in lemons, not in tbsp/tsp or ml.

Edited to add:
Hubby confirmed that he used one lemon less than indicated, and about double the amount of sugar. Tastes best diluted 1:1 with sparkling water.

We made these a while back, so my memory is slightly hazy, but I think we really liked them but found them unsuitable as a main dish because they're, well, an appetizer. Very delicious, but not very filling, and if you try and eat a main dish sized amount of these, you won't want to eat them all that soon again. Not to mention the lack of vegetables.

For some reason, cooked carrots and salad just don't work in my mind - but once I realized that I simply needed to mentally file this dish as a vegetable side dish, it was actually very nice. Personally, I prefer the carrots a bit more on the al dente side, so 10-12 min steaming is probably better, and I didn't need the whole amount of spices.

This seems to be an English version of Kapsalon - lots of things that are delicious on their own because they're heavy on the fat are thrown together in one dish, and the result is... not really delicious, because it's just to much. This pie is nothing but cheese, bacon, and puff pastry, with a fig leaf of potato thrown in.

Nice and moist coconut cake - even my husband enjoyed it, even though he isn't a big fan of coconut cake.

The cheese sauce was very delicious; but the recipe did't include a red sauce but just uncooked passata. While we are always grateful to skip any unneccessary steps, making a red sauce isn't one of them. The problem is that passata is quite watery and sour, which cooking solves by evaporation and caramelization. Unfortunately, we weren't able to taste either the cheese sauce or the spinach. It didn't help though that we used frozen spinach and seasoned it with lemon juice.

We served this as a lasagna instead of cannelloni, no need to fiddle around stuffing the pasta.

Surprisingly tasty, actually. There's one major flaw - the recipe only calculates half an aubergine per serving - that was what my one year old (12.5 months!) daughter ate in one sitting (admittedly, we think she's going through a growth spurt, but still...). My guess was that this was an trick to keep the calorie count down, so I was surprised that I didn't find any mention of calories at all (not that I would care).

Anyway, we roughly doubled the recipe and used five aubergines (we needed five servings instead of four), 500 g minced meat (a mix of beef and pork), one onion, four cloves of garlic, no garlic powder (why?!), about 450 g mozzarella, some parmesan and this Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter, and this worked out well.

Next time, I'd roast the aubergines a little longer; also, try to roast them immediately to prevent them fron turning brown (or add lemon juice). A melon ball spoon makes things much easier, and also allow your tomato-meat sauce to simmer longer and cook it until quite dry, as the aubergines will supply more liquid than you'd otherwise enjoy.

I actually merged this recipe with my usual recipe for red cabbage with apples, or rather: I made red cabbage as usual, but instead of cooking it on the stove for an hour plus, I cooked it in the pressure cooker for about 30 min (10 min pressure cooking time, but let's be realistic, it's more than just that).

And I'll have to say that I'm not impressed. For one, pressure cooking cut back somewhat on time, but absolutely none on workload, secondly, because the cabbage wasn't even as soft as I had expected, and last, because even though I had used nearly exactly the same recipe (I used 50 ml less water because I anticipated that less would be able to evaporate in the pressure cooker, and I forgot to add sugar, but added that afterwards), the cabbage tasted much blander than I'm used to. Next time I be back at the stove again.

Disgusting, just plain awful! Way too many flavouring ingredients, and to make matters worse, they weren't even fully cooked!

We didn't actually add any of the spices, we only used this recipe for parboiling and roasting carrots and parsnips as the spices wouldn't have worked well with the Finnish Meatballs with Allspice, Sour Cream and Lingonberries; but as such, it was a very nice side dish, and very easy, too, given that you could parboil them in advance and then just pop them in the oven when needed.

One-pot dish that you can easily prepare in advance; just follow the recipe, but stop before adding the yoghurt, pasta and feta. Too bad I only realized this after I had already added the pasta; (possibly) as a result, the pasta came out slightly overcooked while the rest had dried out a little.

We couldn't get orzo and used fusili and chopped cannelloni instead, (which might have been another reason the casserole dried out, if the fusili and cannelloni needed more liquid than orzo would have) and used quark instead of yoghurt.

I'm also not sure yet what to think of the flavours; three kinds of tomatoes can't make up for the fact that it's still just tomatoes as the only vegetable added, and I'm not sure I liked the balance between the spices (esp. cinnamon - generous 1/2 tsp too much?) and feta.

Not really a cake, merely a chocolate glazing, but simple and very good.

This is basically a two-part recipe: part one, cook otatoes in pressure cooker, part two, proceed to make mashed potatoes like you would with any kind of cooked potatoes.

For such a recipe, using a pressure cooker to cook potatoes is just plain silly. Because pressure cooking is less forgiving, you'll need to cook all potatoes more or less the same size, which will take more effort than plain cooking them on the stove, and because you'll need to factor in extra time for reaching and releasing pressuer (not to mention chopping!), you're not actually gaining anything.

As for part two, we used these amount as guidelines (though didn't measure anything precisely), and it turned out way too liquid. We threw it away.

Very nice, but you really must use fish stock, otherwise it's just rice with random shrimp in it. We used only half a pound small shrimp (large ones, to me, are prawn - or is that just me?), and seasoned with salt and a bit of sugar; the latter to counteract the balsamic vinegar. Be careful with the lemon zest. And no need to finely chop the anchovies, whole will do (they will indeed dissolve during the cooking process). I didn't use her recipe for the basic risotto part but instead stuck to the tried-and-tested Pressure Cooker Risotto in 7 Minutes. Served with Chargrilled Broccoli with Garlic (without the chilli).

DO NOT DO THIS.

Really, I mean it. The workload isn't any less than when making chicken soup the normal way, in a pot on the stove. The cooking time (incl. pressure building and pressure release, but excl. prepping!) is maybe half of what it would be on the stove, but then again simmering on the stove doesn't require any of your attention anyway (you could actually argue that doing a quick release requires more of your attention than the whole simmering on the stove-process would). The comfort factor is gone as you'll miss that smell of chicken soup filling your house during cooking. And worst of all: the chicken will come out tough! It was so bad that I actually threw out the bird pretty quickly.

I used only 2 tsp salt (as well as slightly different vegetables: onion, carrots, celeriac and leek), and at least that part worked out well.

Actually 3.5 stars - 4 from DH, 3 from me.

It tasted fine, but I thought it was a little bland texture-wise, it all seemed to be one big mush (it wasn't mushy, but I would have preferred the cauliflower florets to retain some bite, for example). Maybe adding a few chopped roasted nuts might help. I planned to add frozen peas, but forgot; I'm not sure adding them for the last few minutes would have cooked them long enough anyway. I also worried if this dish would be cooked within the given time frame, and it did.

I didn't have a 'mild curry' (I guess this is supposed to be one of those bland, non-descript spice mixes you can get everywhere), so I used 1.5 tbsp garam masala, 1 tsp turmeric and 1/4 tsp salt. DH later complained that it was too acidic, and when I couldn't come up with any really acidic ingredient (except for tomato concentrate, I guess?), he thought that maybe I should have used more salt. Point taken. I also omitted the pinch of cayenne, though adding that probably would have worked well, too.

One thong I enjoyed by this dish is that it is a one pot-dish, meaning that you don't need to make rice or anything else, and you don't even produce that much cookery ware that needs to be washed.

We served this with yoghurt stirred with mint and oil (Greek yoghurt would have been better).

Edited a few days later:
Nah, terrible. Not worth it.

This was brilliant! Easy to prepare and delicious to eat, and with the squid an impressive dish to boot!

These were nice, but as pancakes rather than crêpes; making them as crêpes didn't really add anything noteworthy. We had these for breakfast, without the brambles (or, gasp, the ice cream).

Very nice. The only problem was that after 30 min of pressure cooking, the beans (we used dried red kidney beans) were still undercooked, and we don't know why. According to the handbook they should even be done within 15-20 min, and they weren't even old. We pressure cooked them for another 10 min and they were fine.

Re: the beans. Apparently this seems to be a topic of some dispute. Most swear by 'small red beans', which in some cases turn out to be aduki beans, and in others as 'from the mexican market' and definitely not aduki. Some (fewer) go with red kidney beans. Because my only options were aduki and red kidney beans, I chose the latter as it felt more authentic; I might go for aduki beans next time.

Made with this Cajun Spice Mix.

Too much sauce, too much salt, and very few vegetables.I have no idea what the function of the gelatin is; the sauce was runny as if it didn't contain any gelatin at all.

Quite nice, but it needs to be way stronger saltier than you'd expect. I used about 55 g black olives, 40 g of butter and two anchovy fillets, and I think I should have used at least one or two more of the latter (and I'm normally always very, very careful with salt!).

Several things went wrong for us: the beans never cooked properly, there weren't enough of them, the garlic ended up being burnt, the chorizo was too strong in flavour, and the parsley wilted. Most things are probably nuestra culpa, except for the quantity of the beans and the wilting of the parsley.

100 g of dried beans just isn't enough for four servings, unless you're serving fine dining serving sizes with a starter and a dessert, and possibly a few dishes inbetween.

And why were we supposed to add the parsley to the frying pan - together with the garlic and other ingredients - and then cook it for another minute? That can't be right.

It's a nice dish, very delicious if you ignore the issues we had, prepares well in advance and is easy to serve nicely - and the padron peppers are a great talking point; did you know that apparently they are just normal mild small peppers, except for the fact that one or two out of ten will be really really hot?

Edited the next day:
Fry the ingredients added during step gently, and you'll end up with a great dish. Upgraded to 5 stars.

We made this a while ago, so I don't remember everything, but I think the gist was that it was nice but a little bland. We also thought this might work better with a white fish instead of salmon.

These are brilliant! I've just had a few right from the oven (they're not even done yet), but they taste great! Juicy, sweet, floral, way better than any raisin I've ever had. Definitely something that would be an excellent addition for a cheese platter. Or a healthy snack. Or anything really (though they would be a waste to use in baking).

Very nice, though not quite as nice as the Brioche we made these past two weekends - or maybe we're just getting spoiled already?

The dough was really sticky, and judging by the weight of the dough when I started braiding, I probably added snother 200 g or so of flour during kneading. With one full recipe, I made a three braid loaf with raisins and four single-braid loaves without raisins. I used 75 g pre-soaked raisins (for half a recipe, I divided the dough by weight), and it definitely could have had more; I think maybe 110 g of raisins. My husband even suggests 150 g raisins, and I'm pretty sure my toddler agrees with him, even though - or maybe because - then you'd have raisins with bread instead of bread with raisins.

Unfortunately, though, we used too high temperatures for baking. My dear husband let me sleep in (bless him!), and because I hadn't printed the recipe for him and he has ample experience with sour dough bread and very little with challahs and the like, he coated the bread with egg instead of milk and preheated the oven to 250 C.

Hard to rate this one. I really enjoyed the sauce, although we used only one orange instead of all three, and even that was way too strong for the cod. We used salmon the next day, and that worked a lot better, though DH forgot to use lemon or lime juice, which made the sauce a bit too sweet. I could also see this sauce go well with chicken or pork.

It looks like a simple recipe at the first glance, but it isn't, as you need to prepare quite a few individual components, not to forget vegetables (peas work really well!) and either rice or potatoes.

My MIL actually made this soup in my absence, but apparently it was really good.

Edited 3 January 2017:
We made this dish again. Actually, I had somehow expected something rather like the unpuréed version of this White Bean Soup with Bacon, so I was a bit surprised at the addition of the tomatoes and the pasta - my fault, of course. Still, the addition of the pasta (we used fusili) wasn't necessarily the best of ideas, though mainly because we prepared the soup in advance and then reheated it, thereby overcooking the pasta. Using tiny pasta (alphabet pasta and the like) might help with this problem.

Edited 15 January 2018:
Nah, don't like it; it's too much, too confused. Canned tomatoes, half-puréed white beans and savoy cabbage? It just doesn't go well together in my opinion.

Very, very easy, and quite delicious for such an easy meal.

We only had one problem: I used dried beans (I think cannellini beans), soaked them overnight, then cooked them for half an hour before adding them to the dish. Some of them ended up being a bit hard, others were softer. I'm not sure if I might not have cooked them in water long enough, and whether they then went hard when I cooked them in the acidic tomato sauce, or if the problem was that they weren't covered in liquid when I added them to the rest of the ingredients. Either way, next time I'll try to find canned ones.

Edited 26 January 2017:
I used dried beans again, other brand though, and this one recommended to cook the beans not for 1/2 hour, but 1 to 1 1/2 hours - of course I did 1 1/2 hours. And the dish was really nice, and supereasy!

Do not add salt, the sausages likely add more than enough salt.

I made this a couple of weeks ago and never really had the time to review it properly, so my memory is a little hazy. I think I omitted the stock cube, as tomato purée and Worcestershire sauce already contains more than enough salt, and added a few more carrots and celery sticks - though next time I'd only add more carrots, not also celery sticks (other additional root vegetables might work well, though). The result was fine, although you should remember to stir it once a while to make sure everything is evenly covered.

I groaned when I asked DH if he had any idea what to eat this week, and in return he presented me with a video. A video! How useful is that when you're standing in the kitchen, pans sizzling on the stove, toddler pulling at your leg, cat couched on the floor right in front of the worktop, and all you can think of is "err, where was I again?". So I watched the video beforehand and took notes (it's short, luckily!).

And the result was really good! I omitted the chilli and all salt except for the salt in the pasta water, and used one filet of bass instead of the grey mullet - one filet was just about enough for the two (two and a half) of us. I considered using cod, but that probably wouldn't have worked that well, too flaky - my fishmonger also recommended tub gurnard (rode poon).

It's quite similar to this Cod with Tomato Confit dish, though a bit better, and also way quicker - you can probably whip this up in 15-20 min total time!

PS: There's actually a transcription available of the video at http://www.allreadable.com/e059E6Di - though you'll miss his wonderful accent (passoley!) and some of the helpful subtitled hints.

I can't believe I've never reviewed this dish! This is the sparerib recipe we usually make, and it's really delicious. You'll need to marinate the meat for more than an hour, though. And better come up with a light dish for the day after!
We tried slow-roasting this time - 2 hours 15 min at about 150 C produced meat that was a tad dry, we'll try 3 hours at 120 C tonight.

It was quite nice, but it wasn't at all what was in the recipe. I forgot to buy sweet potatoes, so I simply omitted those; the dried apricots smelled off, so I replaced them with prunes; I had about 700 g of deboned chicken thighs instead of the 500 g of chicken filets required. And last, I didn't trust that 1 tsp of ground cumin would be enough for such a dish; also, with the green beans recommended as a side, it just sounded so French that I decided to omit the cumin and add a bit of bacon instead (you can never go wrong with bacon).

The result was very delicious, but quite different from what it would have been. Omitting the sweet potatoes was a mistake; I added new potatoes the next day when we had the second half of the dish; roasted pumpkin probably would work as well, when in season.

We used beef mince instead of lamb (does that make it a Milkmaid's Pie?), and about 2/3 of a can of tomatoes, as I had run out of tomato concentrate. We also served it as 'Deconstructed Shepherd's Pie' tonight, as I was in a rush and didn't have the time to bake it in the oven - as all ingredients were already cooked through, why not?

The result was delicious, but a little flat - unsurprisingly, if you've read the comments below the recipe. We ate half today and will eat the other half tomorrow, properly baked as it should be, with lots of cheese added, we'll see if that makes a difference.

Edited later on:
Yes, it does.

Edited sometime in autumn 2016:
Don't make the potato purée according to that recipe - it uses way too much butter! Just make it the way you always make it.

Very, very nice in taste, BUT:

- we made half a recipe as a side dish for the two of us (three including baby, but normally that doesn't really matter), and it wasn't enough at all! How is a whole recipe supposed to be enough for 4 persons as a main?

- we omitted the ham, and thought the gratin (other than the cheese crust) wasn't salty enough. Next time I'd either add salt or bacon.

- I only remembered to add the cheese once I took off the aluminium foil; which was useful, in a way, as I was able to spoon the stock mixture over the potatoes one last time. Once I had added the cheese, spooning liquid over the potatoes doesn't really work as you'd destroy your cheese crust.

- the online recipe only requires a 'carton double cream', without specifying which size carton. I image-googled a carton double cream and assumed that they meant a 300 ml carton; I only now read in the comments that the original printed recipes calls for a 142/150 ml carton. I might try it with less cream next time, but there is a danger that the potatoes will then not be submerged in liquid and therefore not cook as well as they should (see point above re: spooning over liquid).

- next time I'd definitely use double the amount of leeks and garlic

@ bunyip, if you read this, could you do me a favour and check the recipe in your edition? See below.
Thanks!

===

Not the very best I've eaten. In fact, it was quite plain before we added the yoghurt and coriander leaves, and also some mint. It contained too much tomato, either tomato concentrate or canned tomatoes (or both), which produced a slightly acidic flavour. Omitting the tomato concentrate and/or using fresh instead of canned tomatoes should help, though this was less of an issue once we added the yoghurt and herbs.

It also suffers from a few major translation errors, at least in my Dutch version. The introduction states that it is "also delicious with 'rode pepers' and aubergine"; the list of ingredients mentions '1 rode peper' to be added with the onions, and '1 rode chilipeper' to be added with the lentils and tomatoes. The thing is - all of the above mean chilli peppers, even though at least once (if not twice) I would have expected it to mean (bell) peppers. Also, it doesn't make sense to write 'also delicious with ...' if '...' is already in the recipe, does it?

Very nice! It was a bit of a pity that the instructions were scarse - I didn't know if I had to chop the gingerbread into pieces before adding it, if only 40 ml vinegar leftover for the marinade would be enough, if the braise needed to be covered, etc. - otherwise I would have given 5 stars.

To address the questions I had: I decided to add the gingerbread slices in cubes - I didn't like the texture, though, so next time I will probably chop them finely or even pulverize them. Because I probably used a much larger pan than they did, I had to add 300 ml water above what was instructed, so I decided not to cover the braise. I also decided that 40 ml vinegar would be quite enough, as the other 60 ml of the original 100 ml in the marinade haven't disappeared but have simply been absorped by the meat.

It does seem to be Rheinischer Sauerbraten, which is probably the version most Americans know, containing gingerbread or lebkuchen and sugar beet syrup or apple butter. The only exception here is that the meat is cut into cubes, which means that the time for both marinating as for cooking is greatly reduced, very useful.

Very easy and quite nice. We made them twice, once with kidney beans and once with black beans (both canned), and to be honest, I didn't really taste a difference. The kidney bean version might have been a bit creamier but other than that?

Served with guacamole, chopped tomatoes, corn and grilled chicken, and plenty of extra tortillas, this recipe for two is enough for four.

I do think the author missed a chance when she posted the recipe - I mean, why not Brilliant Black Bean Burritos? Come on...

Edited 24 May 2017:
225 g dried black beans, unsoaked, cooked in ca. 1l water, yielded about 480 g, a little more that 15 ounce (425 g). Cooked in about 2 - 2.5 hours. Should have used less water, about 800 ml.

Edited 5 July 2017:
200 g dried black beans, unsoaked, cooked in 700 ml water in a pressure cooker for 25 min; it took about an hour total. Could have used way less water, and less cooking time; maybe 20-22 min?

The cake is not too bad, actually. Of course, it's sugarfree, and therefore not (very) sweet, and I'd definitely be disappointed with it as my birthday cake, but what does my son know? (I don't think it'll pass with his three-year old niece. I guess we'll have to give her a piece of the adult's cake).

It didn't really rise, though, and I'm not sure why. Lack of sugar shouldn't have anything to do with it, should it? I used 2 tsp of baking powder for just two handsful of batter! Will probably make cupcakes on the big day, as the cake looks pityfully flat even in our smallest cake dish.

Edited 25 March 2016:
I forgot to comment on the baking process. This is another baking recipe, similar to this one, where I suspect that the author had little idea of what she was doing. First you are instructed to mix flour, spices and baking powder; then to add the butter and rub it between your fingers until the mixture looks like fine bread crumbs - this latter step is a technique for making shortcrust pastry (hint: banana cake does not contain a shortcrust pastry. Not even this particular recipe.). Then you are instructed to mix the mashed bananas and the egg (= the wet ingredients) in a separate bowl, and at the very end, fold them into the flour mixture - classical muffin making technique, with the exception that butter is a wet ingredient and was supposed to go into the second bowl.

To make matters worse, the raisins go in one bowl, the walnuts into another - that doesn't make sense. Also, the walnuts are optional and can be added either finely chopped or ground - but if ground, they would change the ratio of dry vs. wet ingredients, the same way you can often substitute part of the flour with ground nuts of your choice.

Sometimes I think it's too bad Ms Rapley didn't ask a cook or a nutrionist (or both!) to help her write this book.

Similar to the (original) Cranachan we made a year and a half ago, and about just as good.

Again, you need to be really careful with the oats - I let them burn on my first attempt, but luckily it's easy to just toss them out and start again. Remembering the other recipe, I didn't use the cheap clear, runny honey we had, but our good-quality heather honey, and that really made a difference (we used a cheap whisly, however - now I'm curious how it'd taste with a, say, earthy Tallisker).

I was surprised to see that you were supposed to mix the oatmeal through the cream, as I remembered that the other recipe differed in this respect - in the end that didn't matter, both versions are nice. And I noticed that this version used a mixture of single cream and Greek yoghurt (which we substituted with Quark), not solely double cream.

We actually used 2 oranges and 2 blood oranges (would have used 4 blood oranges if we had had them). I could actually see this recipe work with quite a number of fruits. For some reason, pomegranate is the very first that comes to my mind; mango would probably work as well.

Edited 20 March 2016:
I made this again, though this time I mixed all ingredients (except for the oranges and some of the oats) a few hours in advance instead of just moments before serving - and the flavours just disappeared! I could hardly taste any whisky, nor honey nor anything else! I think they used their time to meld into one big flavour, while I prefer to taste them seperately. So whip the cream beforehand, but assemble everything a la minute.

It wasn't too bad, but it wasn't particularly impressive either. And what else can you expect of pasta, a can of tomatoes and some flavouring?

I didn't dare cook the pasta in the sauce directly - I cannot see how that would work, as you'd need to add a whole litre of stock to the sauce - and then you'll end up with what, tomato soup? So I omitted the stock and cooked the pasta seperately.

Fine for a weekday dinner in a really busy week, but otherwise I wouldn't bother.

... hereforth known as 'Qumble' (or 'Quumble'?)...

This was a really nice dish. It's not a lot work, though peeling and cutting the quinces is always more than you'd expect it to be, but the best thing is that you can prep it so that all you need to do is just pop it in the oven (once the quinces are cooked you won't need to worry about them turning brown).

The recipe didn't mention whether or not you would need to cover the quinces while they cook; I believe they do need to be covered. I covered them partly, and found that they were close to being burnt after only 15 minutes. So close the lid, check regularly and perhaps add a little water (I also thought they tasted a little dry, which is no wonder when all the liquids had evaporated, but I was the only one at the table who thought that). The quinces might not need to cook the full 25 min anyway, but if you prepare them in advance, it's best to cook them till they are really soft, and add an extra 5 min baking time to warm them up.

I made these in a wide 32 cm pan, and I felt it could have used a little more crumble, but again, I was the only one at the table who thought so. Definitely serve with something on the side, ice cream or something like that.