My Little Pony...

As you've never seen them before...here.

Shame I can't work out how to get a picture in my blog...probably illegal though!

Yummy, yummy!

Lemon curd cupcakes! Brilliant - although the real test will be what they're like tomorrow. My buns usually end up either rock hard (if only!) or stodgy from being slightly undercooked on the second day...we shall see!!

From Tesco Food magazine (Spring 2009)
Ingredients :
175g/6 0z very soft unsalted butter
250g/9 oz caster sugar
3 medium eggs at room temp, beaten
250g/9 oz SR flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
100ml/4fl oz milk
4 tbsp lemon curd

Icing :
75g/3 oz very soft unsalted butter
125g/4 oz icing sugar
3 tbsp lemon curd
2 tbsp lemon curd to decorate

Method :
1. Preheat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Put the butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, milk and lemo curd into a bowl. Beat with a wooden spoon (or KitchenAid!) until thoroughly combined and smooth.

2. Put paper cases (muffin cases not bun cases as I used - got 20 out of the mixture!) into trays then spoon in the mixture until each case is evenly filled. Cook for 30 minutes or until well risen and springy to the touch (we have fan oven and even with the reduced temp, they were done in 25). Lift out and leave to cool on a wire rack.

3. Make the topping by beating the butter, icing sugar and lemon curd until soft and fluffy then put a swirl on top of each cake. Finish with a small blob of lemon curd.

UK Games Expo

L's been talking about the UK Games Expo which is in September. Had been slightly ambivalent to be honest but that was before I heard about The Living Dungeon. Apparently it's a cross between The Crystal Maze, Knightmare, Raven and The Adventure Game...OMG if he could have said anything to make me go - that was it!!!

Trouble is, I get really excited about this sort of thing, and then turn out to be really crap at all the challenges!!! Oh well...in a team with people I've never met before and probably never will again. Nothing to lose!

I can hear bells chiming in the distance

Just found out today that 2 of our friends have just got engaged - fantastic news and congratulations to you!!!! You know who you are!

Freshens!!!!!

L and I are having a gameathon. The original idea was to play through all the board games L has and rate them as 2-player games. This lasted all of 3 games when it became clear that any document purporting to summarise and rate all these games (over 100 now) would be long and dull - not only to read but to prepare!!! Also we'd have had to play 5 different versions of Monopoly - we got through, I don't know, around 6 dice rolls in Nintendo Monopoly before deciding there was absolutely no way we could face playing any more!

But we're carrying on with the majority of the games, just to play them through and make more use of the games we own rather than buying more (added to which L is on a self-imposed game buying prohibition for Lent). Things have been going well. Then we played Boggle.

1st round - I got more words than L but he beat me on the round with the most annoying 8-letter word in the world. Freshens. Annoying because I got 'freshen' as the time was running out and because 7-letter words get you 5 points, but 8-letter words get 11!! Who thought that was a good idea??!! Also, I got more words than L so, even though I lost the whole game by 1 point, I think I have the moral victory.

L is in the lead on the overall tally. Freshens will haunt me forever.

David Bailey he ain't

I have discovered that I can access the camera on my phone by simply pressing 'up' on the menu button rather than having to go through menus to find it. I found this when I saw that Zachary had been taking random photos of stuff and I wondered how he'd managed to navigate the phone! So, for your delictation, here are some of his efforts (with apologies for the blurriness) :

His foot -


A rather good self-portrait -


Foot again -


And finally the sofa -


(I think I have also now found and deleted all the videos he's made...)