A Bizarrely Crafty Weekend

We had a strangely crafty weekend. It was good. On Friday I took the boys to Lush in the Derby Westfield centre because I'd been told they'd have people in from their factory giving 'making' demonstrations. The boys made a blackberry bath bomb each - no charge. Great!

Then Saturday saw us at Calke Abbey where Zachary spotted a craft book in the shop. We didn't buy it but I used all my powers of focus and concentration to try and memorise the instructions for a treasure chest... Leo's didn't quite get finished, and Zachary was fairly happy with his although he's still complaining that it doesn't have a hinged lid (oh and Leo sat on the lid in the garden...after the photo was taken fortunately!)...

On Sunday, I attempted Mary Anne's Ploughman's Loaf. Mary Anne was a contestant on the Great British Bake-Off last year and she was fab. I have been wanting to try this loaf since I saw it on TV and here is my attempt. 

It does taste great and it has lasted for 3 days so far without getting too hard - I must admit I kneaded it in the KitchenAid, but it appears to have been successful! Oh, just one thing to say - I don't think I caramelised my onions enough or cut m cheese small enough! I've put a link here to Mary Anne's blog and you'll be able to see how in her loaf the cheese and onion is barely noticeable, where as in mine...

Also on Sunday, Leigh showed us a great origami boat which we're going to make on a bigger scale for Zachary to take to nursery next week - his class's current topic is Journeys and they'll reach boats next week.

And then finally the boys made some cupcakes each based on their favourite Skylander characters, Camo and Warnado - well, based on their colours anyway (you can't really see it in the photo, but the Camo cakes are amazingly green and Warnado's are amazingly blue!) You can see them on the side of the plate.

And relax!

Sick Chick

We have had a poorly chicken in the household. We've had the chickens for nearly 2 years now and this is the first time either of them has been ill, but poor Bubbles has been a little under the weather lately - fortunately she now seems to be much better.

She started looking a little uninterested in things, tail was pointing down and she didn't seem to be eating properly so we thought something might be up and then her comb turned very pale. Off to the vets we went - suspected she might be egg-bound, although the vet couldn't find anything. She started on a week of vitamins, but it was during this week her comb went a funny colour, so we went back to the vet and got some antibiotics. Have no idea what was wrong, but the medicine seemed to work and she's really picked up over the last few days. Still not laying though, and neither is Dax, who's been moulting for what seems like months - there's a picture of her with no feathers in the snow we had at the beginning of the year. So we're buying eggs at the moment - come on girls, lay lay!

Thursday

While I try to think of a good title for this entry I'll tell you about my day. To start with we had an exciting new visitor to the bird table - a squirrel! Saw him standing up on the top of the wall trying to nibble into the peanuts - the boys were very excited. I tried to get a photo, but he was off and running before I got organised!

I then had one of my ears washed out at the doctors and can hear again from it - hurrah! I seem to have a recurring issue with wax build-up in my ears. I think I could lessen the impact if I was consistent about putting a few drops of olive oil in every week, but I get complacent and think I don't need it, and then by the time I realise things are going too far...things have got too far! The last time this happened I had to go to the hospital for the ENT nurses to vacuum everything out, but it appears that my GP surgery is now permitted to do it again - apparently a spate of people suing when they had follow on ear infections or problems with their ear drums resulted in a blanket ban on the procedure locally. But it all went well and now I realise just how loud my children are! I'm almost tempted to go and ask for the wax to be put back in! They're just so shrill and Zachary seems to shout all the time.

I'm afraid I had a bit of a break-down just before dinner - I had my hands in raw sausage meat and had Leo by my legs doing some low level complaining about some slight he'd just suffered at Zachary's hands. I could cope with this, but then Zachary sat himself on the floor behind Leo and kept shifting himself backwards to bang into Leo's legs. Leo did not like this, Zachary would not stop (despite my persistent asking) and it all erupted in some kind of banshee wail/scream/rage from Leo, together with Zachary complaining that he 'wanted to keep doing it'. I lost my cool and shouted 'just shut up!' at them both! Fortunately it all calmed down after that.

Then just before bed, we watched an episode of X-Men. The boys usually have a 20 minute episode of something after their baths as a wind down before bed and we've been using this as an opportunity to expand their Marvel superhero education which was ably started with Super Hero Squad. They have now worked their way through season 1 of the late 70's Spiderwoman cartoons, a season of Spiderman and his Amazing Friends (Iceman and Firestar) and we're now on the 1990's X-Men cartoons. Brilliant. Sadly, we may now have watched too many - sitting watching the opening credits, I had Zachary on my right singing along to the theme tune and Leo on my left shouting out the (correct) names of each X-Man as they appeared. Enjoy!

Why?

Had a cup of tea in Thorntons today - well, pot of tea for one. Pot of tea had easily enough for 3 cups in it - but I was only given enough milk for 1!

Chelsea Buns - part 2

I had another crack at Chelsea buns today and, having given the dough proper time to rise, they came out much better than my first attempt. I still think they'll be a bit hard tomorrow (!) as my kneading abilities are not great, but I'm pleased with them - eaten 3 already!

Treasure Trails

We discovered a series called Treasure Trails when we last visited a local museum. Essentially they're fairly simple trails around towns and places, giving you opportunities to explore them while solving clues relating to buildings and local sights. Leigh bought me a murder mystery themed trail for Christmas, based around Loughborough. As this is a place we haven't been to before we thought it'd be a good outing for Bank Holiday Monday.

After managing to find a car park (they weren't very well signposted) and negotiating the trampolines and fair rides set up in the market square, we had a good half hour or so following the trail. It was great and gave us a chance to look at things in Loughborough we might otherwise not have seen - and we also discovered an interesting looking shopping lane called Church Gate. Most places were shut as it was Bank Holiday but we'll more than likely go back. I don't think I can really pinpoint what I thought Loughborough would be like, but I liked it more than I thought I would - it reminded me a little of Ipswich.

We didn't finish the trail though - the boys got a little bored and it was freezing! But we shall be back...

The planets must be in alignment or something

The apocalypse has occurred three times this week! Yes, three.

On Wednesday I took the boys to a local farm in the afternoon to eat ice-cream, use the trampoline in the play area and feed the animals. The play area was shut. Disaster....end of the world-type disaster for Zachary! And then to top it all off, a chicken flapped at him and Leo - more crying and 2 very muddy boys to take back to the car! Please note, no chickens or children were harmed in this blog entry.

On Thursday Zachary asked to have his face painted half an hour before dinner. I said no, but I would paint his feet (also part of the original request I would hasten to add!) and thus brought about the second ending of the world in 2 days.

Today, Leo took one of Zachary's books off the bookshelf. Zachary then decided he wanted to read it and although I suggested we all read it together on the sofa, when Leo refused to let Zachary hold the book, the world ended once more.

Surprisingly our post-apocalyptic world seems vaguely familiar to the old one...

Cake Break 2012

Well, today was the day of Cake Break. I managed  to put together an array of various cakes and lovely treats which my brother-in-law has kindly had at Caralot all day snagging employees and visitors to the site for their hard-earned donations!

I made some flapjack (some of it chocolate covered!), a coffee and walnut sponge, cherry bakewell sponge, popcakes,

special Caralot shortbread biscuits,

a lemon drizzle traybake

and strawberry cupcakes.

Managed to do more than I thought I would on Thursday (given that my entire evening was devoted to watching the Avengers Assemble film - awesome!) and apparently all the cake has gone! Huzzah!

PS on the sweets

As it turns out, leaving the coconut ice in the fridge for a week has firmed it up admirably and is now an acceptable consistency for ladies trying to eat nibbles whilst holding a glass of champagne. It's back in! I have my 3 sweets (although this still means I need to try fruit pastilles sometime as they were going to be my next trial!)

It's that time of year again!

It's nearly time for Cake Break!

This is an annual event organised by the Multiple Sclerosis Society to raise funds - this year the 'official' day is Friday May 4th. The idea is to get together with friends over tea and cake and donate to the charity. I ran one a couple of years ago at home and it went really well, but I missed last year's.

I've decided to try again this year (mainly because I love making cakes!) but have realised that most of the people who came last time have either gone back to work after children, or have moved away. So a Friday would not be good from a 'getting people round to my house' point of view and similarly, people usually have plans at the weekend. So this year I've asked my brother-in-law, who runs Caralot in Spondon if I can basically set up my stall on their site and try to interest people looking at cars (and of course the many, many staff members) in making donations for cake.

Jamie's been enthusiastic about it (so much so I think he just wants me to drop off cakes and he'll do the rest!) and I've started the baking marathon today - I was saying to Leigh though that the trouble this time is that there are so many cakes I like baking, it's difficult to choose! I'm making a batch of popcakes (as I had some bags and sticks left over from a previous batch!), and made the base cake for those today. I've also made 2 batches of flapjack (one for home, one for Friday), and have 2 cakes and the making of the popcake balls on my list for tomorrow. I'm only slightly concerned about having enough time...but seriously, whatever I manage to make, hopefully I'll be able to raise some money!

Chocolate Truffles

So yesterday, I made the truffle base (25g butter, 200ml double cream and 200g dark chocolate) which I left to cool and harden in the fridge overnight.

Today, I spooned out the mix, shaped into balls (I made 30), although my shapes and sizes varied considerably! I think I possibly need to weigh out the mix so that I get roughly equal sized balls. I also found that while the warmth of my hands meant that the top layer of each ball started to melt and was very slippery in my hands, the middle stayed pretty firm and was quite difficult still to shape easily! Leigh suggested using latex gloves and this made it a bit easier. Later on I read another recipe for chocolate truffles that suggested dusting your hands and the work surface with cocoa - sounds good, will try that next time.

Then we get to the covering of the balls. My imagined truffles are coated in white chocolate and have freeze-dried raspberry pieces sprinkled on the top. So I melted my white chocolate - fine. The rest didn't really go to plan! The first truffle I dropped into the chocolate bowl to cover, big mistake. The truffle just started melting! I hoiked it out as soon as I noticed but this left me with lovely dark chocolate streaks in my white chocolate. I then tried poking the truffles onto cocktail sticks and dripping the chocolate over the top. This worked better...until I had to remove the cocktail stick from the truffle - because the hot chocolate was melting the surface of the truffle, anything I used to try and pry out the cocktail stick resulted in a massive dent in the truffle and a big patch of dark chocolate that mingled every so nicely with the white chocolate. Still I persevered for another couple and I think I managed 5.

They actually don't look too bad in the photo, but closeup, the flecks of dark chocolate are more obvious.

I rolled the rest in cocoa powder. Much easier and they still taste good. I wanted the truffles to be white and pink as that goes with the theme of my mother-in-law's charity for the year, but now I'm also planning pink and white meringues, having the chocolate contrast might be good (notice how I'm wriggling out of trying another batch of covered truffles again!).

Onwards and upwards!

More sweets...

In pursuit of my search for sweets I have a bowl of chocolate ganache cooling in the fridge tonight for the making of chocolate truffles tomorrow. Hoping these go well...

Also, Leigh made some great peppermint and chocolate mini meringues yesterday

I'm hoping to also try and replicate these are the event, but with strawberry flavouring and a bit of pink colour. If the truffles work out - that's 2 out of 3 sorted!

Trillionaire's Tart

Mmmmm...quite nice!!! (and that's the 3rd tin of condensed milk I've used in baking this week - hee hee!) ;

335g unsalted butter
 100g caster sugar
 100g plain flour
 25g cocoa, sifted
 140g ground almonds
 175g light brown soft sugar
 450g sweetened condensed milk (I used a regular 397g tin and it worked fine) 
4 tbsp golden syrup
150g dark chocolate
½ tsp sea salt
200g milk chocolate

1. Line a 20cm x 30cm tin with baking parchment and preheat oven to 180C/160Cish fan/gas 4. Cream 160g butter with the sugar and then sift in the flour, cocoa and ground almonds. Mix well. Press into the lined tin and bake for 20 mins. Set aside.

2. For the caramel, put 175g butter, the brown sugar, condensed milk, syrup, 50g dark chocolate and salt in a heavy-based pan; heat gently, stirring until the sugar dissolves completely. Bring to the boil and simmer briskly for about 8 minutes, until thickened. Pour over the shortbread; smooth evenly. Leave for at least 1 hour to cool completely.

3. For the topping, melt 100g dark chocolate and the milk chocolate separately, in a bain marie or the microwave. Pour the milk chocolate over the caramel layer, then drizzle the dark over and swirl together with a skewer. When cool, mark into squares and serve.

Garden birds

We've had a bird feeder in our garden for a good few months now, and apart from being ravaged by some wood pigeons, it's remained untouched by the other feathered lovelies in our garden. But, with a slight change to the arrangement of the feeders, the wood pigeons are no longer easily able to access the hanging feeders (without sliding down the wall!) and the smaller birds are finally joining us!

We believe the blue tits are nesting in our nesting box again and we've seen them regularly at the feeder over the last few days. A few blackbirds, sparrows and a greenfinch this morning - brilliant! We had some long-tailed tits in one of the other bushes in the garden last year...I'm hoping we'll see them again soon. Might even get some pictures.

Sweeties

Aaargh! What has happened to Blogger?? New layout and look...I don't like it. I don't know where anything is now - being a good Methodist I don't like change!!

Anyway, the reason I'm blogging is that I've agreed to provide some sweets for a golfing event that my mother-in-law is running at her golf club in June - she's Lady Captain this year and this is for her Lady Captain's day. It appears that the ladies will golf 9 holes, then stop off with me and Leigh for drinks and nibbles before completing the course.

I've been looking through Leigh's sweet making books to try and narrow down a list of possibilities. I need sweets which can be produced in quantities of 80 easily and quickly and at not too high expense. They need to be things people can eat while also holding a drinks glass and managing a golf bag (the original idea was to package 2 or 3 sweets for each lady in a nice box but clearly that's not going to be practical if they're just stopping off in the middle of 18 holes!).

Also, I'm trying to make sweets which do NOT involve boiling sugar - no toffee, caramel, fudge etc etc. I really don't trust myself to be consistent, even if I do actually manage to get one batch right! One possibility I saw is coconut ice. There were a couple of variations on the recipe but I went with the one I found first in Life is Sweet.

It is basically 500g icing sugar mixed with 2 tins of condensed milk and 400g desiccated coconut and then refrigerate overnight. Yum. So...most of it made it into the tin...and having been in the fridge longer than suggested, it's still quite soft - not at all the consistency I expect for coconut ice. But it is totally yum. How can it not be with those ingredients! But sadly I think it's going to be too sticky for the occasion. I have another coconut recipe I might try, but I need to work through my other possibilities first - chocolate truffles next...

Coffee time

I was sitting in Starbucks with the boys this afternoon, managing them and their drinks, wiping up after chocolate eating, making sure things didn't get spilt, preventing arguments over who gets my straw...and I remembered a time when I used to be able to go out for a coffee, take a book, read for a while, relax...and wondered what that would be like again! But then I looked at the boys and thought that actually this is more fun all in all - I might miss some alone time occasionally, but sharing time with the boys is much better. After all, Zachary will be starting school in September and I'm sure that all too soon I will become an embarrassing parent who must be shunned at all costs, so (without making this too mushy) I must make the most of time with him and Leo together now.

By the way - when I went to get the boys up this morning, Leo presented himself at their door sans pyjama bottoms, having removed his nappy, which he was presenting to me saying "I've got my nappy," and with his pyjama top on inside out and with one arm through the head hole. Guess he'd been awake for a while!

Ta da!! The hot cross buns!

Hurrah! Finally had time to make them today - and it did take all of 6 hours in total...but that was mainly because the dough needed 3 lots of rising/proving. I'm glad I left them until I had proper time to make them rather than trying to rush the rising and they actually seem softer and less dense than my dough usually is. The real test will be whether they're hard as rocks tomorrow...

Here they are ready for final proving



Out of the oven and glazed



And a pic of the inside. Yummy.

Time Off

We are off out for a slap-up Chinese meal tonight with some of our friends so the boys are staying overnight with Leigh's parents. The boys were collected at 1 this afternoon and how have I enjoyed my free time off with my husband - done the ironing and finished Zachary's Spiderman hooded towel. And watched LOTS of TV!!!

PS

And we had lovely mocha creams for dessert made by our guests. I've pinched the recipe to have a bash at them myself!

Pesto Chicken Stew with Dumplings

We had friends over for dinner tonight and I made Pesto Chicken Stew with Dumplings - a recipe I had come across in the April Good Food magazine (along with hot cross buns [bear with me...] and the lovely fruity simnel cake. Also a recipe for chocolate hazelnut torte - still to be tested!).

It needs 12-15 chicken thighs to serve 6-8 people so I went for 12, to feed the 4 of us this evening and then have (hopefully!) 1 or 2 dinners left over to go in the freezer. I managed to fit 8 thighs in my pan with all the stock and other liquid!!! Had a panic about an hour into the cooking when the liquid didn't look as though it was reducing at all and I still had peas, sundried tomatoes and pesto to fit in! Fortunately it did go down enough for me to mix that lot in although I don't think I was careful enough putting the casserole in the oven as I now need to clean spilled stew from the oven tomorrow! Still it tasted really good (I thought it might end up too pesto-y but it didn't) and there's another dinner in the freezer. Yum!

Easter 2012

It's been a busy Easter weekend this year. We went to Snibston Discovery Museum with Leigh's parents on Good Friday, had a brilliant roast dinner (courtesy of Leigh!) on Saturday. Then it was Easter breakfast at church and morning service for me and the boys followed by Easter egg hunt at our friends' house. The weather was not great, but good enough for the children to have an excited 10 minutes running round the garden searching out chocolate!

Easter Monday we went to another friends' house for a late Mardi Gras party - we made carnival masks for the occasion...




I'm not sure, but I think Zachary's face says "do I really have to pose for this?"! I made some mini key lime pies



The recipe described them as "speedy," but I think that was solely on the basis that the filling didn't need to be cooked! Pressing biscuit mixture into 24 mini muffin sections of a tin was not speedy! Fortunately though, the mixture puffed up quite a bit in the oven (the base did need to be cooked) and I could reshape my otherwise slightly ropey bases when they came out and were still hot!

Tuesday was fairly quiet although we did go out to Staunton Harold in the afternoon and today we have been to Twycross Zoo with Uncle Jamie. Again, weather not fantastic, but the hail did hold off while we were there and it was great. Hopefully swimming tomorrow and friends over for some dinner. Out for dinner on Friday night and then CBeebies Live on Saturday afternoon (which I think Leigh and I are looking forward to more than the boys!). Busy but lovely. Monday might come as a bit of a shock to the system...

Realisation

I have realised that lately this blog has become less about my general day to day doings and more just a run-down of what I've baked recently! I shall attempt to put this right...in the meantime though...just so you don't get bored...!

Auntie Becky's birthday cake - as decorated by Zachary. Vanilla sponge with jam and buttercream filling and topped with buttercream.




Easter fruity Simnel slice - delicious although highly bad for you. There's a 500g pack of marzipan in there (along with everything else!)



Uncle Jamie's birthday cake (essentially the same as Becky's but with a different colour icing and topping!)



Mini blueberry tarts. Nice.



I had planned to have another bash at something yeast-based this week - hot cross buns. But not managed it so far. Hopefully I will soon - I need a day when I will regularly be back at the house to check on the 3 risings/provings they need and not be rushed about how long I give them to rise (as it's turned colder, and despite what the recipe says, nothing will double in size in an hour at the temperature the house is at the moment!). Watch this space.

More baking - hooray!

I made a Mary Berry Hokey Pokey Coffee cake this week and some rather nice cherry biscuits (from a new baking book I was given for Mother's Day). The coffee cake came out really well and I even managed to get the walnut praline right this time round (no stirring, just swirling!), and the biscuits were good, although not as crisp as we had imagined they might be. Still tasty though and a good straightforward recipe.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

(the title is really about my baking efforts but I got carried away talking about Zachary's party too!)

Zachary's party went really well - the balloon modellers were a massive hit with everyone! Paid them a flat rate for basically as many balloons as they could do in a hour - 2 or 3 children must have gone home with around 5 balloon models! Here's Zachary with his hat and his spider!!!




His birthday cake came out well - I had arranged to borrow a number '4' cake tin from a local cake shop, but when I collected it I realised it was much smaller than I had imagined...not really going to feed 15 children plus parents kind of small. But luckily, Leigh remembered that a cake decorating book I have has a grid at the back for making lots of different size vanilla sponge and fruit cakes (for wedding cakes and other tiered delights), so we cracked that open, got out the big square tin with adjustable sides and made a 9" square two-layer cake sandwiched with jam and buttercream. Yum. Then as befits the theme of the party, I decorated it...



and made some little gingerbread spidermen to go with it (please no comments on the 'skill' or otherwise of my icing here!!!).



I used Edd Kimber's recipe and I don't know whether I ended up using too much golden syrup (I prefer working with weight in syrup because I know my tablespoons always end up too full!) or something else, but it ended up really greasy and even adding more flour didn't really seem to help because then it was almost impossible to roll out! I did manage to salvage 15 men from it though and they were delicious. I shall definitely be using the recipe again, if just to prove that I can make it properly!


I also made some shortbread biscuits and piped webs onto them but forgot to take a photo!

Then we get to the chelsea buns. I have made chelsea buns once before and have been wanting to try them again ... but this was not a great effort.



They don't look too bad and were quite nice straight out of the oven, but as they cooled they got more dense and hard and I knew that leaving them overnight would result in little rocks the next day! I used our KitchenAid to knead the dough - I always get on really well with it when I make dough for our pizza bases, but it was not to be this time. I had worked out my timings so that I could make them while Zachary was at nursery one morning (and they had to be done by the time I went to get him as we were going straight out for lunch from school), but either the room wasn't warm enough, or something went wrong with the kneading because the dough just did not rise! I had allowed an hour for the first rising, then realised after 45 minutes that something wasn't right (!) and switched the heating on, but it was all too late by then. When I make pizza dough, I usually leave it to rise for the entire afternoon - I need to try these again when I have much more time available and I can really wait until the first rising is done properly. Ho hum.

Spider Walnut Halves

So, my Mum sent me a bag full of walnut halves as a birthday present (there were other presents too!) for my "creative side." Hmmmm. I had not come up with anything interesting so far and I mentioned it to friends who came over at the weekend.

They had many suggestions, nipple tassles and a string bikini being some of the more racy! Natalie suggested turning them into tortoises, then Lyndsey thought about putting jiggly bugs in them - this gave me the idea of getting them boys to paint them like ladybirds and beetles and then it hit me. Zachary's having a Spiderman party next weekend and I'm short of spiders for a treasure hunt game. I was going to print out some paper ones, but I can make them from the walnut halves! I can't believe we actually came up with something for them! We already have a can of black spray paint and I'm going on a googly eyes shopping spree tomorrow - just need to work out how to get legs on...

Pear and Almond Flapjack Tart

Well, the topping was not so flapjacky, but still very tasty! From Good Food magazine Feb 2012...



I think we took it out of the tin too early as the pastry just dropped off at the slightest touch! Either that or my pastry was too short...

500g block dessert pastry (I made my own pastry - 250g plain flour, 125g butter, 2 dessert spoons icing sugar, bind with 1 egg yolk and a tbspn cold water. I did have to add extra water on top of that but very slowly to make sure not too much. Then wrap in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes)
5 pears, peeled, cored and sliced (I used conference pears which were quite crisp, but didn't taste very peary in the tart. Perhaps need riper pears or a different variety)
25g golden caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
large pinch mixed spice
flaked almonds, to finish
pouring cream or custard to serve

Topping -
140g porridge oats
50g plain flour
50g ground almonds (if your pears are really ripe and juicy, it's a good idea to sprinkle an extra layer of ground almonds over the pastry before adding the pears)
100g golden caster sugar
140g cold butter, diced
3 tbsp golden syrup

1. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Roll out the pastry and use to line a 23cm tart tin (mine was a deep one), leaving a sight overhang. Line with greaseproof paper and baking beans, then bake for 20 mins. Remove the beans and paper, trim the pastry, then return to the oven for 10 mins more or until the pastry is biscuity brown.

2. Meanwhile, toss the pears in the sugar and spice, then set aside. To make the topping, tip the oats, flour and ground almonds into a large bowl with the sugar and a pinch of salt, then rub in the butter with your fingertips until you have a soft mixture. Stir in the golden syrup.

3. Increase oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Tip the pears over the base of the tart, then flatten the oaty pastry into a round and place it over the pears - push/spread it with your fingers so the pears are completely covered. Scatter with flaked almonds and an extra sprinkling of sugar, then bake for 30 mins.

White chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies

Lovely, lovely recipe from Great British Bake-Off winner Jo Wheatley in last month's Good Food. Quick, easy and delicious - I have a fan oven and reduced the heat according to the recipe, but they still seemed a bit soft coming out after 10 minutes. For my second batch I reduced the temp but added 2 minutes to the cooking time and this seemed to work a treat.

100g unsalted butter, softened
100g crunchy peanut butter
50g demerara sugar
50g caster sugar
1 large egg
100g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
50g white chocolate chips

1. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Line 2 baking trays with parchment paper. Mix the butter, peanut butter and sugars together with an electric whisk until light and fluffy, then gradually add the egg, whisking constantly, until fully combined. Finally fold in the flour, baking powder, bicarb and chocolate drops/chunks.

2. Using an ice-cream scoop, place dollops of cookie dough onto the baking trays, leaving a generous border around the cookies as they will spread in the oven. (can freeze the raw cookie dough at this stage).

3. Bake for 10 minutes, taking the tray out half-way through and banging sharply on a work surface covered with a couple of tea-towels - this dispels the air, making lovely squidgy cookies.

Life Lesson learned this week - never take your 2-year old with you anywhere you might need to appear even vaguely professional...

I have joined forces with a local recruitment agency in an effort to get myself back into the workplace as a solicitor again. I needed to drop some ID documents and bits off to them so thought I would drop them round in person (rather than post them) and have a chat with the bloke managing me (hee hee!) while I was there. Leo came too.

Lovely conference room - in the middle a big glass table with 4 mirrored legs. Very nice. During my meeting (in preparation for which I had actually taken some books to keep Leo occupied - some hope) Leo started by popping in and out the door a few times. Then when he'd explored that he got under the table and had great fun working out that he could see me through it. Followed this up by licking and kissing the mirrored table legs, trying to bite the corner of the table and then doing a massive poo. Accompanied by grunts and smell. Then him looking at me plaintively through the glass table top and mouthing "I've done a poo."

Great work.

Eccles Cake

Again from Good Food January 2012 - this is a sponge cake with an Eccles cake-type filling. Very tasty and moist. It has apple chunks in the sponge as well which made me think the cake was vastly undercooked when we first cut it open but then I realised I was just looking at chunks of apple!

Sticky Toffee Tarts

Yet another try-out from Good Food mag January 2012. I was a bit concerned that my pastry was too brown after the blind baking, and I had the oven down too low for the last bake so it took another 15 mins on top of the advertised time for them to look done (that is, not wobbly on top!) but yum, yum, yum!!!

Grasshopper Cake

I made a cake for my father-in-law's birthday this week - a saw the recipe in a book Leigh bought me for Christmas. This is a Grasshopper Cake - apparently named after the cocktail. It's a yummy chocolate cake filled and covered with a peppermint butter icing - very, very nice. I have to say I didn't believe the recipe when it said I would be able to cut the cake into thirds - it's only a 2 egg cake, but I guess the bicarb and lemon juice did the trick!!

It's been a productive few days!

After a bit of a baking drought, I've managed to bake a few new (and old!) things over the last few days and I've finally finished my animal alphabet cross stitch!

First was some doughnut muffins from the Good Food magazine - very easy to make and they do seem to taste doughnutty...although that might just be because they're covered in caster sugar after baking!!! I had a little trouble dividing my mix so that the jam was properly covered (I used too much in the bottom layer), but they turned out fine. As I was typing the recipe out I also remembered that this was a recipe the boys helped me with. Leo was in charge of the dry bowl - I turned my back on him to help Zachary with the wet bowl, turned back and saw him spooning flour into his mouth! Nice.



(Good Food Jan 2012)

140g golden caster sugar, plus 200g extra for dusting
200g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
100ml natural yoghurt
2 large eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
140g butter, melted
12 tsp seedless raspberry jam

1. Heat oven to 190C/170C fan/gas 5. Lightly grease a 12-hole muffin tin (or use a silicone one). Put 140g sugar, flour and bicarb in a bowl and mix to combine. In a jug, whisk together the yoghurt, eggs and vanilla. Tip the jug contents and melted butter into the dry ingredients and quickly fold with a metal spoon to combine.

2. Divide two-thirds of the mixture between muffin holes. Carefully add 1 tsp jam into the centre of each, then cover with the remaining mixture. Bake for 16-18 minutes until risen, golden and springy to the touch.

3. Leave the muffins to cool for 5 minutes before lifting out of the tin and rolling in the extra sugar.

Then this week, Leigh made some lemon marmalade from the February 2012 Good Food and I followed this up with their lemon bakewell tarts as well. The pastry was a bit of a bind to make (interesting, reverse method of making) and cracked a lot while I was trying to roll it out, but it came out of the tins beautifully and there were no soggy bottoms.



(Good Food Magazine Feb 2012)

Sweet Pastry -
85g butter at room temperature
zest 1 lemon
50g icing sugar
1 egg yolk
200g plain flour
Filling -
zest 2 lemons
100g butter at room temperature
100g caster sugar
2 large eggs
85g ground almonds
25g plain flour
6 tbsp homemade lemon marmalade (or lemon curd)
25g flaked almonds
icing sugar, for dusting

1. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. To make the pastry, place the butter and lemon zest in a food processor and blitz until soft. Sieve in the icing sugar and blitz again until light and creamy. Mix in the egg yolk with 1 tbsp water, then add in the flour until it's just combined.

2. On a lightly floured surface, bring the pastry together into a ball, then wrap in cling film and flatten lightly to form a disc. Chill in the fridge for 30 mins.
3. Roll out the pastry and use to line six 10 x 2 cm loose-bottomed tart tins, trimming off any excess. Put in the fridge while making the filling. If pastry cracks or breaks, patch up with trimmings.

4. To make the filling, beat together the lemon zest, butter and caster sugar until light and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, including a spoonful of the ground almonds with each addition. When all the egg has been added, mix in the remaining ground almonds and flour.

5. Spread the marmalade or curd over the bases of the tart cases. Spoon over the filling and smooth with a palette knife or spatula. The tarts will be full to the top, which is fine. Scatter over the flaked almonds, sit tarts on a baking tray and bake for 15-20 minutes until lightly golden.

Then yesterday I went a bit mad in the kitchen, making not only the bakewell tarts, but also some mini muffins and a cherry bakewell sponge. Yom.

And finally my completed cross stitch - ready for framing, great!

Outsmarted by my 3 1/2 year old...

I am shamed. The boys had a bubble bath last night and Leigh ran the shower to rinse them down before they got out. He put the shower head back in its stand, leaving Zachary in the bath for me to get him out. I complained that as I was shorter than Leigh, I couldn't reach round the shower to turn it off without soaking my arm. Quick as a flash Zachary told me to just turn the shower off at the wall switch. Which worked. My mental faculties are dull!

Bakewell Cheesecake

The January 2012 edition of the BBC Good Food magazine had a great set of recipes entitled "Your favourites made even better," ie "putting a fresh spin on well-loved classics." I am keen to try the doughnut muffins and the Eccles cake (a big sponge cake rather than the individual pastry ones) but yesterday I made and today we ate, Bakewell cheesecake. It was lovely, and far less rich than I had anticipated after tipping 900g Philadelphia cheese into it!

I was a good girl and followed the recipe closely as to baking and cooling instructions, however forgot to toast the flaked almonds, and didn't buy enough almond biscuits so had to use 50g malted milks to make it up to 200g! Still, turned out nicely. I don't think it will replace my love of Bakewell tarts and cakes, but lovely all the same.




(Good Food Jan 2012)

200g almond biscuits
100g toasted flaked almonds
1/2 tsp almond extract
100g butter, melted
3 x 300g packs full-fat soft cheese
250g caster sugar
4 tbsp plain flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 large eggs
200ml tub soured cream
just over half a jar of cherry jam
icing sugar and cream, to serve

1. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Line the base and sides of a 23cm springform tin with baking parchment. Bash the biscuits and 75g of the flaked almonds to crumbs. Mix with the almond extract and butter, then press int the base of the prepared tin and bake for 10 mins. Set aside to cool while you make the filling.

2. In your largest bowl, whisk the cheese until creamy. Add the sugar and whisk to combine. Whisk in the flour, then the vanilla, the eggs one at a time, and finally the soured cream.

3. Dollop spoonfuls of the mixture into the tin, dotting in tbsps of jam as you go. Smooth the top as gently as you can.

4. Carefully place the tin on the middle shelf of the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Scatter the remaining almonds. Decrease oven to 110C/90C fan/gas 1/4 and bake for a further 35 mins. Turn off the oven, keep the door closed and leave the cheesecake to cool for 1 hr. Open oven door and leave it ajar for another hour. Cool for a third hour at room temp, then cover and chill overnight.

5. Remove from the tin and carefully peel off the parchment. Dust with icing sugar and serve with cream.