Yesterday I decided to make poppy seed cake. The cake is a favourite of Clare Hills the protagonist of The Hungerbourne. Clare normally eats her cake in a tea shop as her talents don’t extend to the kitchen. The recipe has American measures in brackets to encourage her friend and colleague Californian human bone specialist Jo Granski to bake it for her!



Clare’s Lime Poppy Seed Cake


2 oz. Black poppy seeds (4 tbsp)
4 oz. Self-raising flour (c.1/2 cup regular flour + 3/4 tsp baking powder)
3.5 oz. Butter (7 tbsp)
3.5 oz. Caster sugar (c.1/2 cup)
2 Large eggs
Grated zest 1 lime
Juice of 2 limes
2 tbsp Warm water
2 oz. Sugar (4 tbsp)


Preheat oven to 180C (350F)
Beat the butter and caster sugar until light and creamy.
Add beaten eggs gradually, adding a little flour with the last of the eggs.
Stir in the lime zest. Fold in the flour, water and poppy seeds.
Bake in a greased 1lb loaf tin for about 30 min.


Ten minutes before the cake comes out the oven, make the syrup as follows:
Dissolve the sugar with the lime juice in a pan over a gentle heat.
When the cake is baked, stab with a skewer or knife and pour the lime syrup over the cake.



I think it would have looked better if it had been baked in a 1lb loaf tin, but I only had a 2lb tin, so it’s a bit thin-looking.





It tasted very good with a spoonful of Greek yoghurt.






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Both of my landscape walks next week, around Avebury (18th) and Stonehenge (16th), are now fully booked. I’m hoping for fine weather, but we’ll be out walking regardless!


If anyone is interested in any of the archaeology courses that I’m teaching at Urchfont Manor, there are still places available. Check under Events link on the website menu. I’ll post an update here soon as know more details, the courses are always popular, especially the weekend ones.

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The Devil’s Feather by Minette Walters
Like virtually every other right-minded lover of crime fiction I’m a fan of Minette Walters, but until recently The Devil’s Feather had escaped my attention. In the Devil’s Feather Walters goes global in a tale that transports us from war ravaged Sierra Leone via post-Saddam Iraq to deepest Dorset.



Journalist Connie Burns is working in Sierra Leone when her suspicions are aroused that the perpetrators of a series of rapes and murders are not, as the authorities claim, three young rebel soldiers but the British bodyguard of a diamond trader. When she encounters the same man in Iraq two years later using another name and attempts to expose him he takes a brutal and harrowing revenge that leaves her terrified and psychologically crushed.


Retreating to the refuge of a dilapidated Dorset farmhouse she befriends the solitary and misunderstood Jess Derbyshire, a strong-minded young woman who, like Connie, has secrets she’s not willing to reveal. Taking her inspiration from her new friend she refuses to be cowed by her experience. But what starts as a long-distance pursuit of her tormentor ends terrifyingly close to home and draws the two women together to share one last secret.


So what makes Walters so good at what she does? Well no-one could accuse her of writing ‘cosy’ crime. This is a book that faces up to real issues while managing to avoid the trap of preaching to the reader. And one of the things I most admire about her is her ability to draw convincing characters in her depictions of modern rural Britain without resorting to stereotype: a skill that is very evident in this book. But I’m an old fashioned girl at heart and the thing I enjoy most in my crime fiction reading is the challenge of solving a well constructed mystery and that Walters’ plots never fail to deliver.



It’s difficult to become bored with Walters’ books. She famously doesn’t use series characters, writing each book as a stand-alone. I’ll certainly be adding her other titles that I haven’t read to my ‘To Read’ list And if you missed out on The Devil’s Feather when it was first published don’t leave it too long…


I’m currently reading an Ian Rankin Rebus omnibus…bit of a mistake really, no not the content but the weight of a three-novels-in-one book. Not easy bed-time reading – heavy weight! I’ll let you know what I think though.

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