About Me…
Hello and welcome to my site, here you will find everything from new recipes, anecdotes from my time on the Great British Bake Off, Blogs, and much more! I’m guessing most of you know me from a certain big white tent I appeared in back in 2023, and here I am with my own website sharing the things we love together, baking, cooking, family and life as we know it! Here is how my passion and interest in all things food came about…
My interest in cooking began when I went travelling in South America and South East Asia in 2007. I took a gap year, I was living at home at the time and my Dad said to me as i was saving, “you have two choices – get a house or go travelling whilst you can”. Needless to say I took choice two! And it was on these travels where I really caught the food bug, steaks in Argentina, Ceviche in Peru, Endless amazing fragrant Curries around Asia, I was hooked. I came home and started cooking. I’ve always loved eating food, but had never cooked. Now after travelling my now wife and I were saving for our house, and like most first time buyers we were shacked up with parents for a while. It was here that I honed my skills being taught by my now mother in law how to make perfect simple shortcrust Pastry and my love for pies and then desserts went from there! Subsequently, my passion for pies has evolved into a penchant for patisserie! I still love a baking challenge when I have the time, I am an avid cookbook collector and still love getting in the kitchen and will often find the hardest or most interesting bake in one of my many (more than 300 and counting!) cookbooks and start there, hoping it turns out as good as it looks in the book! When I’m not baking, I love to play football with my two young sons Rory and Sam, work out in the gym, or forage for edible treats in the countryside around my home.
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Danes Moss is a historic peat bog and rare wildlife habitat which holds massive amounts of carbon in its soil. This place once extended across a thousand acres to the south of the Cheshire town of Macclesfield. After centuries of destruction by humans less than 500 acres remains of this former wilderness.
Now, Cheshire East Council and others are planning a massive housing and retail development on 200 acres of the Moss.
One project is called the ‘South Macclesfield Development Area‘ – 950 homes, a supermarket, retail sheds and a link road that would devastate this sacred place, the last refuge of an ancient landscape.
There are also other attempts to build on the Danes Moss peatland. On 26 July 2023, Jones Homes and Redrow were refused planning permission (21/4113M) for their attempt to put 92 homes on peatland connected to Danes Moss.
Sadly, this land is still allocated for housing by the Council and we believe the developers will be back trying to profit from this peatland…