Cooks Column

Once again we have come to the Christmas edition - and we thought we would repeat (yet again) that delicious no-cook brandy sauce that’s so good dolloped on your Christmas Pudding . . and in your Christmas coffee.

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Christmas is just around the corner. Assuming you have all your cakes and puddings sprinkled with a touch of brandy and well-wrapped, maturing away in your pantry, you might like to prepare some savoury treats for those unexpected visitors who call by.

Don’t you just LERV pesto? Well, here’s a treat for you: Pesto in five versions!

Here’s a date and apple slice that you can almost convince yourself is good for you. So much fruit and rolled oats - you can almost feel it doing you good.

Here’s a challenge for you. If you made the orange cake

Mei Goreng  This is a classic Indonesian dish using traditional flavours of

School holiday time means you should probably top up your cake tins for the hordes of children. Here’s a slice for you to try:

Versatile slice - so named because you can choose from such a wide variety of fruit for the filling. It makes a great Christmas treat to use fruit mince for a take on mince pies during the festive season. Slow-baked quinces was another very successful filling.

With oranges aplenty, this is a lovely citrus dessert cake.

We have a couple of recipes this edition, sent in by one

There are many ways to make an egg and bacon pie - but this way was new to me.

Pumpkin and apples aplenty? Put them together for this warming soup.