Baby it's cold outside... time to settle down with some healthy comfort food

When it's grey and dreary outside,  cook up some healthy, nurturing comfort food, and settle in for a cosy meal with the ones you love. The Winter 2017 issue of Liz Earle Wellbeing Magazine is packed with recipes including my new take on comfort food, inspired by childhood favourites. Cheese fondue, Lamb souvlaki platter, a broccoli pasta bake and an extremely good blackberry bakewell tart are all on the menu, and it won't be long before you feel warm inside and out.

Summertime cooking with a hint of lavender..

Lavender brings a delicate floral flavour to summer dishes. As well as adding it to dressings and rubs, you can use it to create light, creamy shortbread biscuits, bouncy cakes or gently-scented fruit puddings.

In this Summer 2017 edition of Liz Earle Wellbeing, for a special occasion meal, I've used lavender to make a simple marinade for a rich roast lamb and as the background flavour for a vibrant citrus tart. 

Cake central at London Design Week

London Design Week is the biggest fixture on the design worlds calendar, with events running across the capital all week, and designers visiting from every corner of the globe. My contribution to this Perfect-house party was as the baker-in-residence at the swanky Espresso Design showroom in the gorgeous Design Centre Chelsea Harbour.

Over the last six days, I've baked mountains of zingy lemon drizzle cakes, National Treasure apple cakes  (from Food for your brood) and stacks of gooey, fudgey brownies for hungry journalists, designers, architects and clients who've been visiting DCCH for ideas and inspiration. We've also been making use of the teppanyaki grill at brunch time to serve up steaming hot sweetcorn fritters, spicy quesadillas and my Chelsea Cakes, a kind of hybrid drop scone- pancake-Chelsea bun with chocolate, hazlenuts and cinnamon that I created for for London Design Week.

It's been a crazy, exciting few days, feeding the cake-hungry at the cutting edge of the design world and I'm so inspired by my front-row sneak preview of forthcoming design trends, that I'm off to do some very contemporary recipe testing... 

Feeling chilly? Check out five wonderfully warming weekday suppers in the latest sparkly issue of Liz Earle Wellbing

It's been a very frosty few days. The kind of weather that makes you want to curl up on the sofa with a big bowl of comfort food and a magazine. For great ideas for cosy winter food that won't spoil any resolutions, have a look at my Weekday Supper recipes in Liz Earle's wonderful Wellbeing magazine. Not only are they all super tasty - each one is under 500 calories per portion too. Take your pick from five great recipes including a quick spinach and mushroom lasagne,herby chicken and baby roast potatoes or my favourite  super-fiery sage, squash and sausage traybake. Get cooking, kick off your shoes and relax...

My baked eggs are perfect for Boxing day, say Fieldsports Mag

Very cool to see my recipe for breakfast baked eggs in the winter issue of Fieldsports Magazine, alongside Sarah Monier-William's delicious ideas for festive snacks and cocktails . 

Can't wait for my sushi demonstration at the WI!

I know next year seems a long way off, but I am so looking forward to a demonstration I'll be doing in January. The local WI is a busy, lively bunch, and they have lots of great speakers, so I was delighted when they asked me to come along and have a chat. I'm planning on showing them how to make my favourite types of sushi, and hoping for lots of volunteers who want to have a go themselves. Watch this space for an update on how I fare!

My new job: Baker-in-residence at Espresso Design, Chelsea Harbour

This week I'm the official baker-in-residence at one of London's coolest locations.

It's the London Design Festival from September 17th-25th and at Espresso's stunning new showroom in Chelsea Harbours famous design centre, they're laying on afternoon tea every day for weary design pundits, press and trade visitors.

So every day my cakes will be flying out of the ovens at Espresso, and although I've made sure that there's plenty of the nations favourite lemon drizzle cake,  I'm adding a few new recipes of my own to keep things interesting. So far, the most popular bake has been my Almond and blueberry traybake, with walnut chocolate brownies coming in a close second.  Towards the end of the week things are turning savoury, with a Greek filo goats cheese and spinach tart in the morning as well as  chocolate and hazelnut pancakes. We're expecting a hungry crowd every day, so it's going to be pretty busy.

Simple lemon drizzle cake

Walnut and double chocolate brownies

National treasure apple cake

Greek filo goats cheese and spinach tart

Every day is a Lemon Drizzle day

Easy Dim Sum : Hoisin Duck baskets

From time to time, I work with a group of hard working GCSE Food Tachnology students at a local school. At our first session together we made sushi, and I was amazed at how quickly they picked it up and were able to turn out perfect California rolls within a few minutes.

So last week, for their final practical session we decided to have a crack at making Dim Sum. Dim Sum means ‘touch the heart’ and is a dazzling array of small dishes that were originally created as snacks or tasters, rather than a whole meal. As the lessons are just under two hours, and I wanted to make at least four different dim sum dishes, I needed at leats one to be very simple and easy to assemble. This little beauty was the answer, and it turned out to be the most popular too.

For this recipe you will need spring roll wrappers, which you can buy at any Oriental supermarket, or you can  use Filo pastry. This recipe makes 12

Vegetable oil

3 spring roll wrappers or 2 sheets of filo pastry

12 tbsp cooked duck meat ripped into small pieces

12 tbsp finely chopped cucumber

2 spring onions, finely chopped

3 tbsp hoisin sauce mixed with 2 tbsp water

few drops of lime juice

sesame seeds to sprinkle on top

Heat the oven to 190 /fan oven 170 and grease a 12 hole muffin tin with vegetable oil

Cut the spring roll wrappers or sheets of filo pastry into 12 squares and place into the muffin tin, pressing down to make a ‘basket’. Bake for 5 minutes or until golden and crisp. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.

Mix all the filling ingredients together and very gently tip two tablespoons of the mixture into the baskets, taking care not to break it.

Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve.