When Florentine decides that it is a perfectly sunny day for a picnic, she sets about making her plans…

There will be Apple & Carrot Muffins, Rainbow Sprinkle Cookies, Cheddar Cheese & Pumpkin Seed Bites, Sticky Red Onion Hummus With Cucumber Dunkers, Green Pea Picnic-time Tarts and Home-made Pink Lemonade with Fresh Berry Ice Cubes. There’s only one problem: pig has eaten the very last apple!

The protagonists head out on a mission to find a perfect apple for their muffins, then set about the cooking. They  variously “baked, caked, mixed, whipped, slurped, sloshed, chopped, chunked, diced, stirred, sliced” – a veritable glossary of cooking terminology – before laying their blanket beneath the apple tree and enjoying the fruits of their labour.

Florentine is a Pippy Longstocking-style character – all wild reddish curls ambitiously tamed into two rowdy plaits, while pig is an adorable little pink hog wearing his green jumper (and little else).

Florentine and Pig are two endearing characters who would be well and truly a treat on their own, but the brilliance of this delightful tale is that it adapts the storybook concept and nurtures it one ever-so-pretty and practical step further, delivering a recipe book and picnic planner all-in-one

All the recipes are delivered in a beautifully illustrated manner, with a Picnic Bunting crafting recipe to boot, so now you can have a picnic all your very own… after you’ve picked those apples, of course.

Fun Fact Apple picking doesn’t have to be a ladder and long-legs affair, most apple picking farms have dwarf trees that are very close to the ground, so that all the family can be part of the action.