This week my sister came home with the Bake it in a Cake book for me. It was such a lovely surprise and after one flick through the book, I knew I wanted to make this recipe for my Dad’s birthday cake. My Dad loves cherry pies (I made him one here) so I knew he would love to find one inside his cake. I scaled the recipe up to birthday size and used a cherry pie enough for two people so it would fit in the cake tin. If I had more time I would have made my own, but this one worked well and stayed intact inside the cake. I kind of expected the pie to …

Yes I’m aware it’s no longer Australia Day, but I was jet lagged then and wasn’t up (off the couch) to making these. One thing I noticed while in Australia was that pavlova is on every menu. Even the McDonalds McFlurry flavour was passion fruit pavlova. To recreate this dessert in a cupcake I made …

Melbourne was full of great food. But they don’t half make you work for it. You can’t really book anywhere so you have to be prepared to wait a bit (one place we went to said we could be seated at 9:30…it was 6:15!). Also everything seemed to be tucked away (certainly to a non-local), with cool bars on rooftops and under bridges. But the city is crammed full of brilliant places to eat and drink and I loved how centred around food Melbourne was and how serious they seemed to be about it too. We ventured to loads of different places and even managed to fit in an afternoon tea! …

I never thought I would like going to Australia as much as I did. Mostly because in my mind it was SO far. And it is. Like, really far. I also really didn’t know what else Australia had to offer. I’ve seen many pictures of the cute animals, heard about the amazing weather and seen hundreds of  Facebook friends’ travelling photos but I couldn’t imagine for myself what it would be like. Now I’m home I can say it really was worth the journey. Yes they have adorable animals and incredible weather (and yes, I was happy to be warm in January) but there was more. There were super friendly people, great art, beautiful scenery and most importantly delicious food.  …