Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into the creamed butter mix, add the cherries and stir through. The chapters are divided into different time frames with recipes that take just a few minutes to more slow and relaxed cooking sessions. If you get them tasting spices and smelling herbs, that's really exciting for children, they just need to be engaged with food.

Then when you get back from work, you've just got to bang that in a hot oven - the longest thing to do is preheat the oven. The National Trust Family Cookbook is Claire’s new book and it’s full of beautiful and delicious family dishes with easy to follow recipes.Definitely try the Slow-Roast Lamb Shoulder with Flageolet Beans, Rosemary and Garlic and the Sausage and Tomato Pasta on Ricotta! It's really important to get them to help you, otherwise the food lands in front of them and they're expected to eat it," Thomson adds.

It's divided into timescale sections: quick lunches and suppers that take around 10 minutes, 20 minute reliable recipes, savvy family stalwarts that take 40 minutes at most, and unhurried and imaginative recipes that take between 45 minutes and an hour. I don't serve plain pasta and my kids would think it was weird," says Claire Thomson, family food ambassador for the National Trust, chef and mum-of-three. Add the rice, stirring for two to three minutes to coat the grains in the melted butter mixture and warm them through before you add any liquid. Her travels have shaped her love of food and the dishes she serves up at home, as well as when she cooks in schools.In this cookbook, the National Trust share their hugely popular, tried-and-tested dishes so you can cook your favourites at home. A mouthwatering collection of the nation's favourite puddings and desserts, from Chocolate Puddle Pudding and Sticky Toffee Sponge to Traditional Lemon Pancakes and Eton Mess. That’s how the rhythm of family life and cooking is — often you need to be quick, other days you have a bit more time to enjoy the process of cooking (at the weekends usually! Read more about the condition Very Good: A book that has been read and does not look new, but is in excellent condition.