For those who follow this blog please note I've moved from blogger to wordpress, you can find a less emasculating, though no less delicious version here: www.signejohansen.com

Last year's holy buns (photo by Fiona Beckett) This year's hot cross loaf (the buns were all snaffled up before photos could be taken) Being of Norwegian-Irish-Scottish-Jewish-Lithuanian-German extraction I've stopped crossing my buns. What inspired such subversive behaviour in the week leading to Easter? Misplacing my piping bags. And out of...

Those who know me will tell you few things make me happier in life than good bread slathered with indecent amounts of butter. When time permits the ritual of baking and breaking of bread is one of this cook's favourite pastimes, but more often than not I'm racing around like a whirling dervish and the bread baking goes by the wayside. So it was...

I want a log cabin. A modest Norwegian log cabin of course, heaven forfend none of those plush Alpine chalets. Just a quaint log cabin with a few basic amenities: workable kitchen, a fireplace and a sauna. Moose antlers to grace the front door, a polar bear rug on the floor and a few choice pieces of vintage Norwegian furniture to lend the cabin...

spelt cardamom bun with vanilla cream and marzipan It's Ash Wednesday and even a girl of Lutheran-Jewish-Catholic-Heathen extraction understands the basic human need to mark certain days in the calendar with a confectionary blowout. There's much talk of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday but I already checked that 'Heathen pleasure" box on Sunday when...

An apple a day they say, keeps the doctor away. Be it the common cold or a nebulous norovirus, everyone seems to be down with some debilitating ailment at the moment. As far as I'm concerned, winter can end now. Much as I love Nordic skiing and the winter Olympics snow does not belong in London, and I would quite like to pack away my thermals, ear...