UK Food Bloggers Association

This Post was written by Naomi from Straight Into Bed Cakefree and Dried

I am just delighted to be hosting this month's retro recipe challenge and have been racking my brains for something suitably challenging. Rather than go with the obvious Yuletide theme, I thought I would go back to my childhood - the source of all things retro. Being of Irish descent, there were some pretty un-fascinating foods consumed during my childhood - butterscotch angel delight, smash, fluffy eggs (a bizarre speciality of my mother's which actually deserves its own post), and beany mince (yes baked beans with mince), and I think you'll all agree they don't hold much culinary merit or really deserve to be resurrected. Apart from the squidgy bitter-sweet Guinness cake I used to frighten my school friends with - that is truly the stuff of legend.

Instead I turned to the real culinary inspiration of my childhood - story books. From Maurice Sendak's In The Night Kitchen, through Maisie Middleton and her amazing home made breakfast to Brambly Hedge's hedgerow delicacies, I would dream about foods completely unknown to my humble tastebuds.

So my challenge to you is to revisit your childhood story books - it might be Paddington's marmalade or the tiny cake bearing the invitation, 'eat me', that Alice ate in Alice and Wonderland. Then find a way to recreate that dish using those retro recipe resources. The only stipulation is that the original recipe must have been published or originally made before 1980 (seems pretty recent to me!)

Make your story book dish and write a blog post about it - with pictures if possible and maybe even a link or image of the book you used for inspiration. Let us know where you got your recipe from too - even if it is something you remember your mother making. Then send the post to me at: naomidevlin (at) f2s (dot) com - by midnight on December 14th and I will post all the entries on my blog at the end of the month. I look forward to hearing all about it.