Welcome!

My name is Hayley and, as my motto expresses, I cook simply to live (basic equation: food=fuel=survival) but I live to bake. I dream of baking when I am eating and eating when I am baking, and sometimes I do both at once. Baking is in my maternal DNA, right next to my brown eyes, crafting, fidgeting and love of food. So now you’re thinking (insert Mrs. Doubtfire voice) ”Poor dear, she may love to bake, but someone should have taught her how to spell, it is right not write“. WRONG.

This blog indulges two of my great loves; baking and writing. While I am eating and baking (and baking and eating) I am also a passionate English teacher. Guilty pleasures admission: Literature is my Cake-cain and baking is my Ice(ing sugar).

While this blog will narrate my baking experiments and share my favourite recipes, from time to time you may have to allow me to drift into wordplay, puns, metaphors, stories, dad-style jokes, poetry and general word fun. One last word on this blog,

My Bakeosophy:

1. It is always a good time to bake

2. Use simple recipes; good flavour does not have to be pretentious (in other words to bake using my recipes you will not have to put on a pith helmet in order to source baby vanilla beans bred by the elusive white Anaconda in the depths of the Amazonian jungle)

3. Extra chocolate is always a good thing

4. Pastry and I are not friends. We never will be.

5. I don’t believe in healthy desserts, I would far rather have less of the good stuff, than more of the Brussels Sprout muffins that taste “just like double chocolate cream cake” (not).

Hope you enjoy my recipes, and the treats that you make, with a cup of tea, a slice of friends, a dollop of family and a lashing of love.