On a family holiday in Sussex in a restored priory belonging to the Landmark Trust, complete with ruins, rambling garden, walls to climb, places to hide in and plenty of books to read, I was flicking through a weekend newspaper when my eye was caught by a photograph of the most delicious-looking macaroon.

My daughter Phoebe, who was sitting next to me reading yet another Enid Blyton story, asked me what it was. When I told her it was a macaroon, she said that, although she’d never eaten or seen one, she knew about macaroons because the characters in her Enid Blyton books were often eating them, and could we make them ourselves? By coincidence, only an hour or two earlier, I’d suggested we make scones and lemonade for afternoon tea and Phoebe had reminded me that these were also favourite treats in Blyton’s books.

Together we started to recall and discuss the different foodstuffs and food occasions in children’s literature. Out of our collective memory tumbled all sorts of wonderful teatime treats, suppers, picnics, tuck boxes and parties. We were so excited, we started to make a list of these foods and it wasn’t long before it occurred to us that we were looking at the possibility of a cookery book based on the real, delicious food of classic children’s fiction – food that most readers only ever consume on the page and never taste in reality.

Children’s literature contains a feast, a banquet, a menu gastronomique of treats and lovely foodstuffs. So how to choose what to include and what to leave out? As I worked on the book that would become Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer, I decided to focus on the titles most likely to be found still on bedroom bookshelves, in libraries and attics. When it came to the period to be covered that too turned out to be straightforward.

There is little in the way of tantalising, delicious-sounding food in children’s books published before the later part of the 19th century. Until that point books tend to be vehicles for delivering religious and moral messages; amusement, entertainment, imagination and food are secondary considerations. But by the second half of the 19th century Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women (1868) and Susan Coolidge, who wrote What Katy Did (1872), are not afraid to include the everyday details of their characters’ diets.

I found I was focusing on more or less a century of children’s literature, what some might call a “golden age”. For food and treats in children’s literature change dramatically around the same time that, as Philip Larkin puts in his poem “Annus Mirabilis”, sexual intercourse began in 1963. Few books after that date contain the evocative, real, home-made foods that feature so prominently in ones up to the 1950s. Novels become grittier, more concerned with realism and specific and social issues, and they begin to reflect the changes taking place in the home, the workplace and the kitchen. With fewer mothers and cooks making traditional cakes and biscuits, food becomes faster, branded, more convenient, and the lavish teas and suppers enjoyed after non-stop adventuring disappear as children’s lives become more restricted and guarded.

Accomplished children’s writers are usually careful not to overindulge their readers: a chapter that features a meal or treat is rarely followed by another chapter containing food. A surfeit of indulgences and delicacies is not good in real life or fiction. Billy Bunter, Frank Richards’ “fat owl of the Remove” who flourished from 1908 to 1940, is one of the greediest boys in literature. His lack of self-control is made all the more unpalatable by his habit of stealing other boys’ food and eating it in secret.

The food in books where the characters are truly hungry is much more appealing. What reader could resist this meal from Enid Blyton’s The Ragamuffin Mystery (1959)? “Breakfast was as good as supper had been. Cold ham, boiled eggs, hot toast, home-made marmalade, creamy butter and scalding hot coffee ... Miss Pepper looked at the table with much approval.”

Breakfast is taken very seriously in children’s books. Writers can’t afford to have their characters fading by mid-morning, their tummies rumbling and their commitment to the plot fading rapidly due to a deficit of energy and calories. Even Mary and Colin in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1909) can’t refuse the delicious breakfasts brought to them despite their plans to starve to death – how else could they cultivate their garden, if not on porridge, ham, jam, cream and raspberries?

At the time of these novels, most houses lacked central heating and children were expected to be outside and active. Hearty breakfasts had to be filling and energising. In Elizabeth Goudge’s The Little White Horse (1946), Maria’s first breakfast at Moonacre reassures the reader that although she is a fluttery, ethereal child by nature, she is very corporeal when it comes to eating.

“They didn’t only have sausages for breakfast. Digweed brought in as well as a huge home-cured ham, brown boiled eggs, coffee, tea, new-baked bread, honey, cream with a thick yellow crust on top of it, freshly churned butter, and milk so new that it was warm and frothing. So wide and delicious was the choice that Maria excelled herself in the way of appetite.”

Hard-boiled eggs have a special status in the books of Enid Blyton. When she writes about them, she always manages to make them appear ultra-exciting and appealing rather than a boring and predictable element of teas and picnics. If I had to choose my favourite new treat after all my research, it would be hard-boiled eggs with a screw of salt.

Funnily enough, though I never came across any mention of the famous phrase “lashings of ginger beer”, which is so often attributed to Enid Blyton (not even in the Famous Five books, which are awash with ginger pop), I did find a reference in Five Go Down to the Sea (1953) to “lashings of hard-boiled eggs”. It was this that led me to consider an otherwise apparently very plain treat in a new light:

“The high tea that awaited them was truly magnificent. A huge ham ... a salad fit for a king [including] lettuce, tomatoes, onions, radishes, mustard and cress, carrots ... and lashings of hard-boiled eggs.”

No matter how delicious this eggy salad sounds, though, it’s when hard-boiled eggs are eaten outside as part of a picnic lunch that they start to take on a new image. When The Adventurous Four: Shipwrecked! (1941) opens, the three siblings are running wild on the north-east coast of Scotland while mother knits all day, until they meet up with a local boy and go on sailing adventures fuelled by pineapple chunks, Nestle’s milk, chocolate and hard-boiled eggs.

“It was a most peculiar breakfast, but the four children thought it was lovely. They had three loaves of bread with them, and some butter and they dabbed the butter on to the chunks, took the eggs in their hand and bit first at the egg and then at the bread. Jill put a paper of salt down on the deck for them to dip the eggs into.”

The delight is in the detail of the “paper of salt”, a thoughtful and perfectly proportioned touch, like the little blue twists of salt you used to find in packets of plain crisps. In Blyton’s books, cooks regularly pack a screw of salt to go with each egg. I can’t think of anything nicer than unpacking a picnic and finding these miniature makeshift cruets sitting neatly with the eggs.

Hard-boiled eggs

Ingredients
2 large free-range eggs per person
Rock or sea salt

Method
● Bring a large pan of water to the boil. Take it off the heat while you gently lower the eggs, one at a time, into the water. Put the pan back on the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.
● Drain the water and cover the eggs with cold water. Leave for a few minutes until cool enough to handle, then take the eggs out.
● Rip the greaseproof paper into small (approximately 10x10cm) squares. Place a square of paper in the palm of your hand and pour a little salt into the centre. Curl your fingers and bring up the paper so you can twist it into a little screw that won’t undo. Make a screw of salt per egg or per person. Greaseproof paper is good because it doesn’t untwist but you could also use newspaper.

In fact, a crossword puzzle is the perfect size for a screw of salt, and useful entertainment after lashings of boiled eggs.

. . .

A century after the publication of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, the River Thames above Reading in Berkshire, where the story takes, place remains outstandingly beautiful and is still one of the finest places for a river picnic from a “fat, wicker luncheon-basket” like the one Rat brings on his outing with Mole.

When Mole asks Rat what’s inside, his reply is as crammed as the hamper:

“‘There’s cold chicken inside,’ replied the Rat briefly; ‘coldtongue-coldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkins-saladfrenchrollscresssandwidges- pottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater’

‘O stop, stop,’ cried the Mole in ecstasies: ‘This is too much!’ ”

Among this litany of treats, the pleasures of a good cress sandwidge (sic) could easily be overlooked but it would be a cruel loss to abandon it altogether. For the cress sandwidge is simplicity itself and I would guess that everyone, young or old, sailor or landlubber, would enjoy one while sitting in a boat or on a checked wool blanket under a shady tree as time, and the river, go by.

And since I am talking about living life at a more leisurely pace, why not take the time to grow your own cress to put in dainty sandwiches for a picnic? If you want cress for Saturday, sow some seeds on the Monday and within five days you’ll be able to harvest your own spicy, peppery filling.

Cress ‘sandwidges’

Five days before the picnic, you will need:
1 large plate
1 packet cress seeds
1 roll or pleat of cotton wool

Method
● Cover a large plate with a layer of cotton wool. Soak thoroughly with water then pour off the excess.
● Scatter the cress seeds over the surface of the cotton wool.
● Leave in a bright, warm place (a kitchen windowsill is ideal). Do not allow the cotton wool to dry out. The cress is ready to eat when the leaves are fully formed.

On the day of the picnic, you will need:
Soft, salted butter
Thin slices of white or brown bread
Freshly harvested cress
Salt (optional)

Method
● Spread the butter thinly on the bread.
● Cut the cress and scatter it thickly on half the slices. Add a sprinkling of salt, if desired.
● Cover the remaining slices, remove the crusts and cut the sandwiches into triangles.
● Pack in a hamper and take the sandwiches to the river.

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Paddington Bear’s favourite marmalade buns

Paddington is one of an illustrious line of hungry bears in children’s literature and many youngsters are first introduced to marmalade by his passion for it. One of the joys of coming to London from Darkest Peru, where marmalade is scarce and regarded as a special treat, is that he is allowed by the generous Brown family to have marmalade every day (and honey on Sundays). So Paddington is able to buy his favourite marmalade buns with his pocket money, take marmalade sandwiches to the theatre and bring a jar of marmalade to the seaside.

While marmalade sandwiches may be too much of a good thing for younger palates, marmalade buns are more gently orangey. So here is a recipe for marmalade buns that would appeal to Paddington. The kind of bun he might enjoy for elevenses with his good friend Mr Gruber, who keeps an antique shop on Portobello Road in London: “Mr Gruber usually had a bun and a cup of cocoa in the morning for what he called ‘elevenses’, and he had taken to sharing it with Paddington. ‘There’s nothing like a chat over a bun and cocoa,’ he used to say, and Paddington, who liked all three, agreed with him even though the cocoa did make his whiskers go a funny colour.”

How wonderfully cosy sounding and utterly irresistible.

Recipe

This recipe is very flexible and can be made as buns (small sponge cakes) or a single cake in a loaf tin. I ice my buns/cake with icing sugar and fresh orange juice but they are also delicious without icing – and make far less mess in suitcases. It’s worth reinstating elevenses simply as an excuse to eat them. It makes one large cake or 12 small buns. You need a 12-bun tray and 12 paper cases or a large (25x11x7cm) loaf tin, greased with butter and lined with baking parchment.

Ingredients
175g butter
175g soft brown sugar
3 eggs
Grated zest of 1 orange (unwaxed)
Juice of ½ orange
2 rounded tbs thin-cut marmalade
175g self-raising flour

For the icing
200g icing sugar
Juice of 1 orange
Orange food-colouring paste (optional)

Method
● Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4. Place the paper cases, if using, in the bun tin.
● In a mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one by one until fully incorporated into the mix. Add the orange zest, juice and marmalade and stir in thoroughly.
● Add the flour and fold in gently with a metal spoon.
● Divide the mix equally between the paper cases and place them in the bun tray or spoon it into the loaf tin.
● If you are making one cake, bake for 40-50 minutes but check after 35 minutes. Use a metal skewer or sharp knife to test if it’s ready. Insert it in the cake and if any trace of uncooked mixture comes out on the skewer or knife the cake is not fully cooked. Return it to the oven and bake until the knife or skewer comes out clean. If you find your cake is browning a little too quickly, place a sheet of foil on top to prevent it burning.
● If you are making a dozen small buns, bake for approximately 20 minutes.
● Transfer the tin(s) to a wire rack and leave the buns/cake to cool. Do not begin to ice them until they are completely cold.
● To make the icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl and add half the orange juice and a tiny amount of orange food-colouring paste, if using, and mix. Add as much juice as it takes to make the icing thick and glossy and spread the icing over the buns/cake.

‘Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer: a Golden Treasury of Classic Treats’, by Jane Brocket has just been published by Hodder & Stoughton and is available through the FT Bookshop at the special price of £13.59 (RRP £16.99) not including P&P, tel: 0870 429 5884