I’m not taking you back to your mis-spent youth wearing staypress trousers and Doctor Martin’s in a town called malice.

I am however referring to that delicious sweet fruity spread for which bread was invented. There is nothing more English than Strawberry Jam sandwiches and a cup of tea, or the epitome of Englishness, The Victoria Sponge.

I have been working today with some great new jam from our good friends over at Southdown Farm. Their preserves, all handmade and bursting with whole fruit make any sponge cake come alive.

Bramble and Apple made with juicy blackberries and bramley apples, Goosberry and Elderflower, Rhubarb with a hint of warming Ginger and in my opinion their very best, Strawberry Preserve. These cakes take me back to when I was a nipper and Mum would make a Victoria Sponge for Sunday tea.

What is your favourite jam recipe?

Do you have a penchant for jam roly poly and custard, or crave peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches.

My weakness has to be a slice of Victoria sponge and a mug of tea. All very English.

Now back to those boys from Woking, there is no better single than ‘Town called Malice’.

We’ll be making the white roulade this week, and filling it with whipped cream and fresh raspberries, anyone interested in sampling? These will be available very soon from our usual resellers’ stores and online through our webstore. We’ve more desserts up our bakery sleeves though, white chocolate cheesecake, raspberry and lime cheesecake, chocolate and cherry cheesecake and key lime pie.

I’m hoping to have all these gorgeous desserts into our stores by mid May, in time for late spring when the weather starts warming up and our thoughts turn to chilled desserts. To make life easy, these will be frozen, so they just need to thaw in the kitchen and no one will any the wiser that you did not knock this up earlier in the day.

For a taste of our new cakes, puddings and desserts follow us on facebook where we highlight all our latest bakes and let you all see our creations.

It was the recipe made in around Salisbury several hundred years ago, that has been accepted as the general basic Simnel Cake recipe that is now in use. This consists of a rich fruit cake with half the mixture spread into the bottom of a round cake tin, then a disc of Almond paste laid ontop of this mix. The trick is to keep the marzipan away from the outside of the tin. The remaining half of the mixture is then spread on top of the marzipan to finish the cake.

Once baked the cake will have a gorgeous almond paste seam running through the centre of each slice. The real skill is in keeping the marzipan in the exact middle of the cake and not disturbing the layer when testing the cake in the oven. It is a skill that Jamie, our master baker has off to a tee. Traditionally this cake would have been decorated with a marzipan topping that is scored and browned, just lightly, we use a giant gas blowtorch to do ours. The small chef torches just aren’t up to the job! The final touches were sugar flowers on the top.

As this cake now celebrates Easter we decorate or version with 11 marzipan balls to represent the eleven faithfull disciples, minus Judas of course, who some say doesn’t deserve a place on the top!

Whatever you believe, this cake, available for mail order and handmade by us is a fabulous tasting cake with a soft almond centre and chewy almond marzipan topping. With 11 balls per cake and a lot of cakes to decorate we have a hell of a lot of small balls to roll, all exactly the same size. We even manage to cram 11 balls onto the top of our small 4″ gift size cake.

What are you buying your Mother for Mothers Day?, go on rekindle an old English tradition, treat her to a handmade Simnel cake. It’s much better tasting than chocs from M&S food and will last a lot longer than fourcourt flowers.

Our new range of gorgous handmade puddings comprises two family favourites and two new additions.

First we have that great Birtish tradition of Sticky Toffee Pudding, a mega mixture of dark soft sponge loaded with soft chewy dates and all smothered in our own fabulous toffee sauce. Our second pud is a rich Chocolate Fudge Pudding coated in a dark rich chocolate sauce. Thirdly we have given the bonfire night tradition a twist and created Toffee Apple Pudding. This rich Bramley Apple and Sultana sponge in drenched in a gorgous toffee sauce. Finally and by no means least is Dad’s fabulous Sticky Stem Ginger Pudding. His dark Ginger sponge is topped off with a warming Stem Ginger Syrup sauce.

We’ve created these to be prepared at home as quickly as possible and within 3 minutes you can be sat in front of Saturday night’s trashy telly with a steaming bowl of Sticky Toffee Pud! All great stuff.

This afternoon I visited Pam in her kitchen and we chatted about the wonders of honey, surrounded by jars and a huge bucket of honey gently warming on her Aga, so she could filter out any nasties, to leave the purest clear yellow honey. It tasted amazing. And the best thing is that her bees forage on the crops and hedgerows along our lane and around our farm. A truly local taste unique to our little corner of rural Sussex. Pam told me she also has some hives 10 miles away, further south towards the downs, where the bees forage on oilseed rape and the honey is different again. I can’t wait to try honey from those hives when it’s ready. Our honey cake will certainly be made with local ingredients. The more I go looking for local ingredients, the more I find. Like minded small scale producers dedicated to their own crop or food ingredient, who are more than happy for us to use their excellent products. Sussex is teeming with small growers, breweries, farmers and dairies who make the most amazing food for any of us to enjoy. And the best thing, is that it is just on our doorstep.

Oddly enough, when we’ve been at shows or tastings and have been sampling ginger cake, the response has been as if we were sampling marmite. Some people thought there was not enough ginger and that a ginger cake should give you a firm thump in the chest, whilst others think it’s too strong. Dad’s ginger cakes fall into the former category as we are firm believers that a ginger cake should leave you with a warm glow. For a sneak preview of Dad’s sticky stem ginger cake, take a look at the picture below. This cake is only one of a range of everyday handmade cakes we will be introducing within the next two months. As you would expect, they are all made with Rob Bookham’s marvellous handmade Sussex butter, my Uncle’s free range eggs and the same luxury ingredients we always use in our artisan kitchen. Leave a reply to this post, we’d love to hear what your thoughts on ginger cake are. We can’t wait to have all our fabulous English handmade cakes online for you to try. We will have something  for your to enjoy with your morning coffee through to proper English homemade cakes to share with family and friends.

Dad's Sticky Stem ginger syrup cake, perfect with a steaming mug of tea, or served warm with custard or Creme Fraiche for a fabulous Winter pudding.

Even better, if like me you have a mate or a relative who is a bit of an awkward one to buy birthday presents for, then this is the perfect answer. Pre order and all the postage is paid upfront, everything is taken care of, we’ll do the rest. It certainly beats trawling the high street looking for inspiration. Perfect for Dad’s who have everything! Membership can begin at any time of year, to coincide with a birthday, an anniversary or even at Christmas.

We take Sam’s wine and mull our own wine to a secret recipe with various spices and citrus zests, this simmers all afternoon, filling the kitchen with the heady aroma of warm spices and rich red wine. I’m sure we’re all drunk just from the smell by the time we go home! This warm mixture is then poured over the vine fruits,apricots and cherries and stirred through. The resulting wine fruit mixture sits for 24 hours allowing the fruit to swell soaking up the spiced wine. The smell the following day on opening the vat is amazing and it is hard to resist taking a spoon for a taste. The cake is ready to be made. We start with the finest English Butter, handmade for us by Rob Bookham in East Sussex. Most butters are made on a continuous churning and extrusion process but Rob Bookham believes in traditional methods. His Southdowns butter is made from matured cream, then churned, ice washed and finally extruded into the butter blocks before being packed by hand. A real labour of love, but wow can you taste the difference.  After mixing with other select ingredients, dark muscovado sugar from Mauritius, free range eggs from my Uncle’s farm in the Surrey hills, we bake each cake in our stone based ovens at a very slow mellow pace. After all the hard work and patience the cakes slowly bake for two and a half hours. The finished cakes are then ready for you to enjoy.

Now all we had to do was create the correct image for each cake. The easy bit was over. I was now well out of my comfort zone, but luckily I had great advice from the team at Local Web Solutions and LWS Creative, www.lws-uk.com. Each cake had to tell as story, a culinary journey through Sussex and the surrounding counties and thankfully LWS were singing from the same hymn sheet! During an intense meeting in our office with Matt, Tim and Claire from LWS, Matt happened to mention that his brother was quite a good artist. There was our light bulb moment! Along came Adam Bowley, master artist, drafted in by his brother, Matt and the cake band concepts began. By this time Tim had the layout in mind we wanted to use, to capture the essence of the fruit cakes.

As each cake is made with fabulous local ingredients, we had to have a local theme to the images on the cake bands. We had 12 in all to create, from The Colonial Cake for January to The English Christmas Cake in December. Adam took Tim’s rough ideas and first created pencil masterpieces. I was blown away by these alone. The finished paintings would be simply stunning. Adam is a renowned local artist from the South coast, who specialises in bird life, but his ability to capture landscapes is amazing. He has just exhibited his work at a top London Gallery. Working through the night, Adam began painting each scene for the cake bands. Each one is a visual interpretation of the cake, it’s history and the provenance of it’s ingredients, telling the story behind the cake. The most local of all of the cakes is The Sussex Countryman’s Cake, This cake is made with dried fruits steeped in Madgwick Gold real ale from The Hammerpot Brewery, a microbrewery set at the foot of the South Downs in West Sussex.

The story behind this cake is that of old Sussex farm labourers working the fields high up on the Downs, and relaxing after a hard day’s graft with a pint of local real ale. The picture Adam created depict these men, high on the Downs with the Seven Sisters and Cuckmere Haven in the background.

Take a tour through Adam’s other paintings on the finished cake bands in our store.

Why not try our Gamekeeper’s Cake? Bursting full of plump fruits steeped in English Sloe Gin, it is a true taste of an English hedgerow. Plus whether you are only walking your four legged friend or braving the wilds of the moors, it is guaranteed to bring out the Ghillie in all of us.

Time for tea