It’s a tough job, but someone had to taste all the recipes in Rachel Allen’s new book. The mum and cook tells Jeananne Craig how family, friends and neighbours all got stuck in As a mum of three, Rachel Allen had no shortage of recipe tasters when writing her new book, All Things Sweet.

But after weeks of sampling cakes, puddings and pastries (the book contains 100 of them), Joshua, 14, Luka, 12, and five-year-old Scarlett had more than their fill.

“They got to the stage where they said, ‘Oh no, no more sweet things’,” says Allen, speaking from her home overlooking Ballycotton Bay in County Cork.

“So we started giving things to our bus driver, who brings the two youngest back from school. We said, ‘Would you like some biscuits or a cake?’, because you can only have so much in your house before things go stale or off.

“We ended up giving him something every day, and then he was passing them on to friends and neighbours, and there were all these people sending messages back saying, ‘Thanks for that’. It was lovely.”

As a busy author, TV presenter and teacher – at the acclaimed nearby Ballymaloe Cookery School – the 42-year-old is effusive in her love of cooking and baking, but one aspect she’s less enthusiastic about is the washing up.

“It’s me who does it,” she says with a slight sigh. “I need to get the kids trained into that...”

The Dublin-born chef was 18 when she enrolled in a course at Ballymaloe, and met her now-husband and manager, Isaac (son of world-famous Ballymaloe chef Darina Allen).

Book deals and TV series followed, and Rachel still makes time to teach at the cookery school (“it’s kind of the core of everything I do; you’re constantly learning from the students’ questions”).

“Most of the time it works, and the very odd time when it tips in the wrong direction, I go ‘Aaah!’” she says of her work-life balance.

“Poor Isaac has the unenviable task of managing the diary. I’m sitting there going, ‘What? I have to do that as well?’, and he’ll say, ‘Rachel I told you that two months ago...’.”

When she does want to unwind, she will go for a run with a friend on the cliffs near her home – “You feel like you're on the edge of the world” – or have a glass of wine with her husband.

“I love it when Isaac and I are cooking supper together and catching up on the day,” she says.