🌿 Do you enjoy entertaining?In the Premium Area, I share my recipes, full menus, battle plans and all my tips for stress-free entertaining... all tested at home.
💡 The price of a cookery book... with new recipes, menus and ideas all year round.
Hi, I'm Caroline - passionate about cooking, an everyday cook and a hostess for... almost as long as I can remember.
This site started out as a personal project: an online recipe book, so I wouldn't have to rummage through my old notebooks, emails or loose notes.
Over the years, it has grown to include around 400 recipes, freely accessible, with no advertising, and always with the same idea in mind: to share what I really cook.
These are the dishes that I prepare for my family on a daily basis, the recipes that are a regular feature at our dinner table.
Sometimes a more festive touch is thrown in here and there - but on the whole, this blog has become my day-to-day kitchen assistant.
I use it more often than Google - because, to be honest, I don't memorise most of my recipes.
And I'm not the only one: my sons, my sisters, my aunts and uncles, my cousins and my friends regularly get ideas from it too.
But for me, cooking has always been much more than a matter of memory or organisation.
I grew up in Austria, in a big old house that has been in the family for centuries.
I'm deeply grateful to my parents for having given my sisters and me such a wonderful place to live, and for having passed on to us, through their example, a sense of welcome, simple beauty, good taste and shared cooking.
I still have vivid memories of Christmas spent in this house, the smell of cinnamon in the air, the candles on the Christmas tree, and tables full of carefully prepared dishes.
That atmosphere of generosity and caring has never left me.
Later, in England, I ran a small catering business specialising in pastries - mainly for christenings and parties.
It was joyful, demanding, sprinkled with icing sugar, and it taught me to love precision, detail and well-made sweets.
Even today, whether I'm cooking for four or twenty-four, I always try to find that same emotion - not through perfection, but through care, sharing and the pleasure of giving pleasure.
Over time, I've also come to understand one essential thing:
what really makes the difference when you're hosting is not just the takings...
but everything around it.
Organisation, anticipation, knowing what to prepare in advance and in what order - these are the key factors.
so you can finally enjoy the moment to the full.
It's this way of cooking and entertaining that gave birth to this space.
Today, it brings together everything I wish I'd had myself for years:
Every menu and every recipe is tested in my kitchen, often several times.
I adjust, I note, I repeat - until everything really works.
And above all, I'm also testing the whole organisation:
what to prepare in advance, in what order, when...
so that, on the big day, everything runs smoothly and stress-free, so that everything stays simple, even when you're entertaining.
It's not about making things more complicated.
On the contrary, to make things simple,
even for large meals.
You can, of course, simply pick a recipe from it,
a dessert or an idea for everyday life.
But for those who receive - even from time to time -
it's above all a way of anticipating everything,
and no longer have to think in the stress of the final moments.
Whether it's for a family dinner or entertaining twenty, thirty or forty people,
my objective remains the same:
have everything ready in advance
so that you can enjoy the moment to the full
Because deep down,
it's not complexity that makes a fine meal -
but to be able to share it in peace.
If you like entertaining,
you'll find exactly what you need to do it with peace of mind.
Hear from me from time to time - only when I have something special to share.