Roast parsnip and carrot mash

There are always those times when you have leftover roast veg - and it's such a waste to throw away but often you might not know what to do with them. I came up with the following to use up the yummy leftover roast carrots and parsnips.

Ingredients:

• Enough potatoes to feed everyone - scrubbed clean and cut to the same size (that's right - not peeled!)
• All of your left over roast veggies
• About a tablespoon of fat from the roasting tin
• Milk or egg to mix
• Salt and pepper (to taste)

 How to make it:

1. Put your potatoes in a pan, cover with water and put on a high heat till it boils.
2. Simmer till cooked (about 20 mins)
3. Meanwhile cut the cold roast veg into chunks of about 1 - 2 inches / 2,5 - 5 cm
4. After the potatoes have been simmering for about 10 mins melt the roasting tin fat in a frying pan.
5. Add the roast veg and gently fry them to warm them all the way through.
6. When the potatoes are cooked you can easily stab them with a fork and they will feel soft.
7. Drain the potatoes and put them back in the pan they came from.
8. Pour the entire contents of the frying pan into the pan with the potatoes.
9. Mash it all together.
10. Add salt and pepper to taste.
11. Add milk or alternatively if the potatoes are still very, very hot an egg and whisk quickly to mix to a nice mash consistency.

Enjoy!

Apple and apple/strawberry jam

This time of year when fresh apples are plentiful I like to make apple jam. It's not something people tend to make which is a shame as it is the yummiest jam ever, especially when it's made with strawberries too (though people who don't like strawberries would probably disagree on that point hehe). If you like apple sauce but want something a bit more grown up then apple jam is for you! It's also very easy to make and doesn't require any special equipment.

Equipment you need: 

• Large pan (I used a 5 litre/10 pint pan but larger is probably safer)
• Wooden spoon
• Jam jars:  4 - 5 jars with a metal screw lid per kg/2 pounds of fruit
• A slotted or perforated spoon if you have one - otherwise a normal spoon will do.

See - nothing really special needed :)

Ingredients for about 4 jars of jam*:

•  1 kg / 2 pounds roughly grated apples** (on a 4 sided standing grater I used the largest one)
• 1/2  kg / 1 pound of  granulated sugar
• 1/2 kg / 1 pound of jam sugar
• A pinch of cinnamon (optional)
• A teaspoon of lemon juice (optional)

Instructions:

1. Put the grated apple into the large pan with the cinnamon, lemon juice and add the granulated sugar only.
2. Put it on a low heat and stir the apple and sugar together - it will be quite dry at first but s the sugar gets wet from the apple and starts melting it will soon become liquid.
3. Bring it to the boil slowly, stirring all the time - by doing it slowly you give the apple some time to cook which results in a better flavour later on.
4. Use the slotted/perforated spoon to remove any scum (white bubbly stuff) that floats on the top of the jam.
5. Once it's getting close to the boil add the jam sugar.
6. Stir it in carefully and keep stirring till the jam is boiling even when you stir.
7. Take the spoon out and let the jam boil for 4 minutes exactly.
8. Meanwhile wash the jam jars up in the hottest water possible - you need the jars hot when you pour the jam into the jars and carefully dry them on inside as water in the jam is a bad thing.
9. Keep the jars warm in the oven on a low setting.
10. When the time is up turn the heat off.
11. Do the next bit as quickly as you can - you need to do this while the jam is still close to the boiling point.
12. Get the jars out of the oven and place them on a tea towel to protect your work surface and avoid them shattering.
13. Fill the jars almost to the top with the jam.
14. Close the jars as tightly as you can with the lids and then turn the jars upside down.
15. This will create the vacume seal jam always has.
16. After 5 minutes turn the jam the right way round (don't leave it any longer or the jam will stick to the lid and not move down.)
17. Leave to cool while still on the tea towel, add a lable with the type of jam and the date.
18. The jam should be kept in a cool dark place when sealed and in the fridge when opened.

Enjoy!

  If you wish to make apple/strawberry jam just use half apple and half strawberry and don't use cinnamon.


* Please note that I'm using whole pounds even though a pound is less than half a kg as its easier to weigh and it doesn't make difference to the end result except there being slightly less jam. Just choose either pounds OR kg and stick with that and it will be fine.
** I used Elstar - a crisp semi sweet apple - I'd suggest using any apple you like to eat.

Giant Jelly...

Today we heard that my oldest son got accepted into the school of his choice , which is more than enough reason to celebrate in my book. To do something slightly different I decided to use up the last 3 packets of jelly from England (that's jello for all you lovely American's out there :) ) I had raspberry, strawberry and blackcurrant which go together nicely.

This takes a good 5 hours to make and will feed *lots* as it's 3 pints / 1 1/2 litres of jelly. You will need a really large bowl for this - glass is best to show off the layers though you could turn it out into a dish if you wish but jelly isn't all that stable so the height might be fatal.

Ingredients:

• 3 complimentary packets of jelly (jello)
• A couple of handfuls of raspberries (frozen or fresh)

Preparation:

1. Take half a pack of raspberry jelly and make it as per the instructions, remembering to halve the amount of water used at each step. 
2. Cool to room temperature 
3. When the raspberry jelly is almost cool make half of the strawberry jelly.
4. Put the raspberry jelly into the dish and into the fridge
5. When the strawberry jelly is almost cool make half of  the blackcurrant jelly.
6. Check to make sure that the raspberry jelly is set enough to take a bit of pressure - it doesn't need to be completely set.
7. Carefully pour the cooled strawberry jelly over the raspberry jelly layer.
8. Put the dish back into the fridge.
9. When the blackcurrant jelly is almost cool make second half of  the raspberry jelly.
10. Check to make sure that the strawberry jelly is set enough to take a bit of pressure.
11. Carefully pour the cooled blackcurrant jelly over the strawberry jelly layer.
12. Put the dish back into the fridge. 
13. When the raspberry jelly is almost cool make second half of the strawberry jelly.
14. Check to make sure that the blackcurrant jelly is set enough to take a bit of pressure.
15. Gently place the raspberries on the blackcurrant jelly.
16. Carefully pour the cooled raspberry jelly over the layer of raspberries.
17. Put the dish back into the fridge. 
18. When the strawberry jelly is almost cool make second half of  the blackcurrant jelly.
19. Check to make sure that the raspberry jelly is set enough to take a bit of pressure.
20. Carefully pour the cooled strawberry jelly over the raspberry jelly layer.
21. Put the dish back into the fridge.
22. Check to make sure that the strawberry jelly is set enough to take a bit of pressure.
23. Carefully pour the cooled blackcurrant jelly over the strawberry jelly layer.
24. Put the dish back into the fridge.  
25. When the top blackcurrant layer is completely set the jelly is ready to feast on.

Enjoy!
Note: It's a dark day so I couldn't take photo's indoors and my garden is still a bit of a mess so the close up was taken pointing towards the light so you can see the jelly layers at their best while the full view was taken in front of a convenient wall.

Chicken and bacon burgers

I made this last night as I was in the mood for burgers but didn't have any mince (ground beef) to make it with. It was one of my experimental dishes that the kids LOVED so I thought I'd share it with you.

Ingredients:

• 250 grams / 10 oz chicken breast - diced
• 100 grams / 4 oz bacon (either slices or diced)
• 1 large onion - roughly chopped
• 1 egg
• 50 - 75 grams / 3 - 4 oz breadcrumbs
• Salt and pepper to taste.

Preparation:

1. Put the chicken, bacon and onions into a food processor and whizz till it's finely chopped and looks like mince (ground chicken)
2. Add an egg and 2/3 of the breadcrumbs
3. Season to taste
4. Whizz a bit more to mix it all in, add more breadcrumbs if it's a bit wet still.
5. Make into patties that are about 10 cm / 4 inches across - I got 7 out of this mix but if you make them larger or smaller you will get more or less burgers.
6. Fry for about 15 minutes in a frying pan (skillet) till brown and cooked through.

As you can see in the photo I served mine with mashed potatoes and tinned carrots and peas (not my favourite thing but I had a tin lurking that needed to be used) You can, of course, also make real burgers with them and put them on bread with a sauce and veg to taste.

Tip: If you make your hands wet before handling the meat to make patties the meat won't stick to your hands.

Mike's Mushrooms & A Cake

Last Thursday I *finally* got started on the new daunting project. Having seen other people mark the grid on the fabric I decided to give it a go too and see if it helped me as my biggest fear was loosing count and getting things in the wrong place. As it turns out that was a great idea and I have made great progress since then.

I drew a 4 x 4 grid of 10 stitches per square on the fabric, first with blue chalk but that line was too thick so I changed to a pencil instead.

Ironically the first few colours I used were my most hated colour: pink and i started to get really worried that it would be too pink as a result but as I worked and used darker and more orangey colours it stopped looking too pink and now that the rust has been added it looks exactly like it ought to.

Today it  looks like this:

I'm working on the background behind the two mushrooms you can see in the picture (the pink/orange things), starting with black so that all the little bits I have in the pattern will be easier to do.

About this project:
This is a "large" and complicated cross stitch project based on a photograph by a really talented Alaskan photographer who was incredibly kind and said I could make a cross stitch of it. The photographer is Mike Gates, go check out his site - his work is amazing!

The pattern was made for me as a prize for winning a competition on dA. It's 10 inches wide  x 14 1/2 inches high = 180 x 261 stitches on 18 ct coffee dyed Aida and it uses 147 colours. I am truly intimidated but I did ask for the pattern to be as close to the photo as possible and didn't limit size or colours and I certainly got what I asked for

To celebrate I baked a cake - vanilla raspberry marble cake with royal icing topping and some marzipan raspberries on top. I didn't make as many as I wanted - my hands were complaining after only starting these few and they aren't all the same size but then raspberries normally aren't .

I used my favourite cake mix for this - half vanilla flavoured and half raspberry, and more or less got the marbling right - I tried using a chopstick to stir with this time - not as effective as a spoon but it did work.

Elements biscornu's + IHSW

This weekend is IHSW and, although the kids are home this weekend I still hope to mostly complete the two Elements biscornu's (I still need to buy new buttons for the centres but I'll do that when there is less snow on the ground). I may also finally get round to measuring out the fabric needed for my large project of the year and dying the fabric several shades darker to give it a nice background before I start working on it. 

Not embroidery related but still stitching: I need to appliqué the 12 months of Christmas project circle to a background so I can continue that, this will be done by hand so I also consider this stitching. 

A couple of days ago I made this and uploaded it to deviantArt but was too dead afterwards to also make a post here, so here it is after all:

It's freezing cold outside, with snow ankle deep on the ground and, as I've got pneumonia (on the mend though - the antibiotics seem to be helping), it's best I don't go outside unless it's a dire emergency. However we are running out of bread and don't have enough for lunch, so I had to bake something. Times like this I'm not really up to kneading bread so I dug out my favourite spelt bread recipe which requires no kneading at all!

This recipe is one ANYONE can make as long as you have the ingredients and an oven. The first time I made this I didn't include any of the seeds and it worked nicely as well, though I'd suggest adding a bit of extra flour to compensate for no seeds otherwise it will be too wet.

This time I pulled out all the stops and didn't just add sunflower, sesame seed and linseed but also pumpkin (50 gr) and poppy seed (15 gr) and I scattered sunflower and pumpkin seed on top as well.

I'm really happy how this one came out and can't wait to see the kids reactions when they get home for lunch as they LOVE fresh home made bread

 They did in fact LOVE the bread and it had completely disappeared by the next day!

All 4 sides are now complete. I had to do quite a bit of ripping as I'd miscounted the width of the darker blue one and also miscounted the hight of the green one. as I was lazy and didn't count the fire one but used the green and blue ones as guides I ended up with the fire one being one stitch too high AND one stitch too wide. So out it all came and I re-did the sides I'd miscounted. I also had to do a bit more ripping on two of the spokes of the fire one as I'd missed a corner stitch. After I'd taken the photo's I also noticed that I'd missed a single stitch on the dark blue corner spokes but decided that as it wouldn't be noticeable on the completed product I would leave it as is (on the fire ones it would have been noticeable as the backstitching would have been almost touching in places).

All I need to do to complete these is cut them out, stitch them together and stuff them.

For those of you wondering how my health is: The antibiotics have been doing their job and I'm much better - didn't need any naps today and haven't felt totally exhausted just by being awake and pottering around a little.

IHSW, Christmas baking and more

I hope you all had a great Christmas and are now enjoying that quieter time of year between Christmas and the new year - at least it always is for me. Now on to the updates:
I didn't get as much embroidery done as planned during the weekend as I was still recovering from being ill - needed lots of sleep so it was good the ids were at ex's for the weekend. All I managed was a small start on the air side of the next biscornu that goes with the fire and water one. No photo's of that right now as it's too dark to take photo's and ecru on white really doesn't show up well.

As every year I did some Christmas baking - this year I started with cookies on Monday using Sugarbelle's recipe and put them away till I had more time to ice them, which I did on Sunday. The plan was to ice them using royal icing as per her recipe but the amounts were too large so I stuck with the recipe on the Wilton's meringue powder packet. The cookies are delicious and having seen that Sugarbelle used flavouring in her icing I decided to do that too and made the icing lemon flavoured using lemon zest. One thing I found out is that my hands really, really don't like piping for any length of time (outlining more than 3 cookies actually lol) so i decided to go with the quick and dirty method of no outlining and either spreading it on or using shaped tips to pipe allover patterns.  Not the best looking but they taste good so who cares - my kids certainly don't... they loved them!

In between making the cookies and icing them I did a lot more - first of course was to get the tree up and decorated and get my Lego Christmas Village out. This year I used the bauble boxes and a white sheet set up under the tree to put the village on and it really does look good at night when the lights are off but the tree is still lit. The kids always have a lot of fun playing with this and used the angled slopes between the different levels of the boxes as ski slopes for the Lego skiers.

On the Thursday before Christmas it was time for the bi-annual Christmas fair at the kids school so it was time for me to bake something for them to sell there - this year they wanted 48 mini cupcakes so that's what I made for them a couple of hours before the fair so they were at their freshest.  Half were chocolate and the other half vanilla topped with a same flavoured butter cream icing. (I'd used a different recipe than I usually do - a local sweetshop was selling this packet of powder to make the butter cream with but I didn't really like the end result so threw the rest of the packet away.)

However my baking wasn't done for the day as I also wanted to send the kids to school with cupcakes for their classmates and also some for the teachers lounge as I do every year. I needed 30 for youngest's class and 27 for oldest's class and at least 50 for the teachers lounge to make sure there was enough for all the teachers AND the admin team. In the end I baked 114 large cupcakes in 5 flavours: Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, caramel and apple/cinnamon. I had some batter leftover from baking 2 full trays of each flavour (except chocolate which I only had enough better to make 1 1/2 trays)so I put the leftovers into the mini cupcake tins and ended up with an additional 36 mini cupcakes. I iced each flavour with the same flavour icing, except the apple/cinnamon ones which I iced with lemon butter cream (which as you may notice I didn't have enough of to completely ice everything).  Taking them to the school was a bit of a challenge till I thought of using the (cleaned out) bauble boxes to carry them in.

In the morning I helped the kids get to their classes with their boxes and then went home for some much needed coffee before taking the box you see above in a sneak ninja delivery attack to the school. Since they have an open door policy at the kids school I was able to sneak in, sneak into the teachers lounge, grab some serving dishes and put the cupcakes out and sneak off again without begin seen - the cupcake fairy strikes again! Of course they did know "who dunnit" due to the kids taking the same to their classes but it's still fun to do the cupcake fairy bit.

On Saturday I had the house full of kids so I baked another batch of cupcakes and surprised the kids with them - I made half vanilla and the other half strawberry. The kids and their friends were overjoyed and the cupcakes did their usual disappearing trick.

Somehow or another I was all ready on Christmas Eve despite starting the preparations a week late due to the illness I had the week before, so I decided to try my hand at baking an 8 strand braided bread. As you can see it didn't exactly look "right" as I'd misunderstood the braiding instructions, thought it looked weird (which it did) and then made some adjustments, which didn't need to be done at all. However it tasted good and went well with our Christmas Eve table grill meal (we usually do this on boxing day but due to the kids going to ex on boxing day we moved it to Christmas eve)

Overall it was a  busy week baking and doing stuff but the effort was certainly worth the end results!

Macaroni cheese with a difference

I always remember this as the family "Macaroni cheese" though I may have misremembered what we used to call it when I was growing up - either way it's perfect for using up leftover pasta and those bits of veg lurking in the fridge that are not enough for cooking with. Of course you don't have to use leftover pasta - you can also cook it specially for the dish, just make it while you chop the veg and use it while hot.

For 4 people (or 2-3 people with a larger appetites) this is what I used but just adjust to your taste/what you have lurking:

•  About 400 grams pasta (that's about 250 grams "raw" pasta)
• 125 grams diced ham or cooked bacon
• About 250 grams grated Cheese - this can be cheddar or something else that melts nicely. I used mature Gouda as that's what I had in the house
• 2 tablespoons fine breadcrumbs
• 2 medium carrots - diced, 0.75 - 1 cm/1/8 - 1/4 inch
• 2 tomatoes - diced, about 1 - 2 cm/1/2 - 3/4 inch
• 1/3 cucumber - diced, about 1 - 2 cm/1/2 - 3/4 inch (I do this by leaving the cucumber I need on the whole cucumber and cutting down the length in a cross hatch and then "slicing" the bits off)
• 2 spring onions sliced thinly
• You can also use mushrooms cut into small bits, onions, courgette aubergine, etc. just don't use tinned tomatoes.

You will need a deep oven proof dish for this - I always use the dish for cheese fondue as it's oven proof, deep and large.

 How to make it:

1.  Mentally divide the pasta into 5 use 1/5 to make a layer of pasta in the oven dish.
2.  Sprinkle 1/3 of the ham over the pasta followed by the 1/3 of each of the different kinds of veg you are using.

 3.  Sprinkle 1/5 of the cheese over the top.

 

4.  Make another 2 layers like this till you have run out of ham/veg.
5.  Spread the last 2/5 of the pasta over the top of the dish.
6.  Cover with the last of the cheese.
7.  Sprinkle the bread crumbs over the top.

 8.  Bake in the oven at 200 C / 390 F for about 35 - 45 minutes.

Enjoy!

Tortilla cake

The other day I made a tortilla "cake" I called this a tortilla cake because I baked it in a cake tin and I did it like that because I wasn't up to making a bunch of burrito's to put in the oven so decided to make my life easy. It's a bit like making lasagne.

Ingredients:

• 1 pack of  tortilla's - I used small tomato flavoured ones because that's what I had in the house.
• A pound of minced (ground) meat - I used half pork and half beef but you can use what ever you prefer.
• 1/2 - 1 sachet  of taco spices - or use your own mix of herbs  if you prefer.
• Chillies (optional)
• Half a pound of grated cheese
• Tinned or fresh tomatoes diced (1 tin or about a pound of tomatoes).
• Tin of tomato purée (optional - Best used if you only add half a pack of taco herbs)
• 2 finely chopped onions.

First make the sauce - this can be done in advance and left over night (makes for a better taste) if you are short of time on the day.

1. In a large pan fry the onions in a bit of oil, margarine or butter.
2. Once softened add the meat and fry till brown using a spatula or wooden spoon to break the mince up into little bits.
3. If using fresh tomatoes: Once brown add the tomatoes and fry for a bit and a pint of water (about 500 ml )
4. If using tinned tomatoes then add the tomatoes and about 2 tins of water.
5. If using the tomato purée add it now.
6. Add the taco herbs at this stage and mix well.
7. Bring to the boil and allow to gently simmer for a good 30 minutes this will allow the tomatoes to get nice and soft.

To make the cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 170 C / 340 F.
2. Find a round cake tin (a spring form is easiest) that is about the same size as the tortilla's.
3. Butter the cake tin.
4. Set aside half the cheese
5. Place a tortilla at the bottom - don't worry if some edges stick up a little, tortilla's are not perfectly round - just press against the sides and make sure that every time you add a layer that sticky up bit ends up in another place.
6. Spread some sauce over it, about 3 - 4 tablespoons
7. Sprinkle a little cheese over the top of the sauce. 
8. Place another tortilla on top.
9. Repeat till you place the last tortilla in the tin.
10. Put another layer of cause on and use a liberal amount of cheese you set aside earlier on the top.
11. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes (if you used warm sauce) / 35 minutes if you used fridge cold sauce.
12. Leave to stand for a few minutes then remove from the cake tin .

Enjoy!

I know we did!

8 Colour challenge - Part 1: Preparing the fabric

I decided to enter another competition on Deviant Art - the 8 colour competition. The challenge is to use at least 5 of the following colours in an embroidery:

• Black
• Orange
• Purple
• Green
• Silver
• Red
• Ecru
• Glow-in-the-Dark

 I love the idea and had a think about what to do - what I came up with is a night time scene so I wanted a darker fabric to do the embroidery on. I don't have any dark fabric on hand and can't spare the cash for some so soon after my bedroom re-vamp so I decided to do a bit of witch style stuff in the kitchen and cooked up my own fabric dyes made with what I had in the house already.


I made "brown" with reduced coffee and some cornstarch to make it more spreadable and I made "black" with the extra, extra salty liquorice I had lying around the house that nobody liked. Unfortunately I made both a bit too thick so they didn't spread too well and were a bit lumpy on the fabric but since I was going for large sections of colour it was ok

Once I'd "painted" it all on I left it for about 30 minutes and then rinsed it off in a sink full of water and vinegar to set the dye. Then I removed as much water as possible and then ironed it dry.

The white square you see is the starting colour and as you can see the black didn't really take so well and just became a pale grey. The brown is a bit darker but overall for an experiment with something I've never done before this was a decent result.

I will be using this for the 8 colour contest embroidery - I think it will give it just that bit more depth than plain cream fabric would do and will certainly show off the glow in the dark thread I'm planning on using.

Apple Cinnamon Cake

Sometimes a cake I made using someone else's recipe is so delicious I want to share the recipe and even more occasionally I get permission from the publisher to do so :) The apple cinnamon cake is just one such cake and The National Trust is that publisher. This recipe comes from "The National Trust Book of Teatime Recipes" by Jane Pettigrew that was printed in 1991 ( © National Trust/Jane Pettigrew 1991). Sadly it's out of print but fortunately The National Trust does have another book by the same author Good Old Fashioned Cakes and many more wonderful books in their on-line shop. And now on to the recipe I have copied from the book, I'm going to copy it as faithfully as I can so it won't be in my usual format.

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Apple Cinnamon Cake

Makes 1 x 8in (20 cm) round cake

FOR THE CAKE

7oz (200g) self-raising flour, sifted	5oz (150g) margarine, softened
3oz (75g) caster sugar	1 large egg

FOR THE FILLING

2 cooking apples, peeled, cored and sliced	2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons granulated sugar	2 tablespoons strawberry or apricot jam

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4, 350°F, 180°C. Grease and line an 8 in (20 cm) round tin. Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl. Add the sugar, margarine and unbeaten egg. Using a wooden spoon mix the ingredients gently for about 2 minutes until thoroughly combined. Turn two-thirds of the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth. Lay the apples on top and sprinkle with the granulated sugar and cinnamon. Drop spoonfuls of the remaining cake mixture on top of the apples but do not spread. Place teaspoonfuls of the jam in between the came mixture. bake for 1 hour until golden and firm, remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin.

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Personal notes:

• It's really really important to line the tin - if you don't the stickiness from the jam that ends up on the lining paper will get on your tin instead and it will be a nightmare to remove. (I found this out the hard way some time ago when making jam tarts)
• The mix is much much drier than most cake mixes and it needs to be - don't go and add more liquids! (no I didn't but I'm just mentioning this hehe)
• You will feel that there isn't enough cake mix - this is normal and will pass once the cake is baked.*grin*
• Use a teaspoon to put the spoonfuls of the remaining cake mix on the top - a tablespoon leaves larger lumps like the one on the right of my cake AND you won't have many spoonfuls to put on the cake.
• I used strawberry jam on mine, I'm partial to apple/strawberry jam and knew this would be loved by the kids.
• YES you really, really need to let it cool first! Jam gets VERY hot in the oven and a burnt mouth from hot jam is no fun at all. (yup first hand experience here.. that will teach me not to be impatient when wanting to sample jam tarts)
• I'm going to try this without cinnamon next time, while it was very good like this the kids asked to try it without next time.
• Don't allow your kids to eat all the cake in one go.. they won't want dinner!

Enjoy!

Summer day camp reward

The kids have spent all week at a summer sports day camp and as a thanks I made the people who had made the week so much fun for the kids cupcakes. There were 40 people working there and about 60 kids so it was really well staffed and they had put a LOT of effort in to make things fun.


I made 4 batches of cupcakes - chocolate, apple cinnamon, strawberry and of course vanilla. The people there were thrilled with the treat :)


I don't think I've mentioned how I make the apple cinnamon cupcakes yet so here goes:

• One batch of My favourite cake batter made with/omitting:
• Omit the vanilla flavouring
  
• Add 1 - 1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• Add an additional 5 ml / 1 teaspoon of milk
• About 50 grams / 2 oz chopped dried apple (this stops the cake from going soggy from the apple juices)

• If you wish to ice this use:
• Icing made with lemon juice 
• Caramel glaze made with: 
• 125 gr / 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 - 2 tablespoons of caramel coffee syrup
•  Half a batch of caramel frosting as found here

Enjoy!

Strawberry Banana Smoothie

Some of the best things in life are healthy - like this smoothie.  I like my smoothies simple so just go for fruit and yoghurt with a bit of sugar to sweeten the yoghurt, which is needed here as the plain yoghurt here is unsweetened.

All you need is for about 4 large glasses:

• About 2 pints/a litre of natural low fat yoghurt
• 3 banana's broken into bits.
• About a pound of strawberries.
• Sugar to taste (or sweetening if you can deal with the artificial taste it adds)

Use a kitchen machine or blender to make this. Just put all the ingredients into the machine and turn it on till smooth.

I had a couple of raspberries that needed using up so I threw them in as well - any soft fruit will do really - apples will give a chunkier result unless you finely grate them first.

Cupcakes, cakes and Cake kits..

Today was the last day of term and not just of term but also the end of the school year. Here we give the teachers a gift to show appreciation of the work they did in the year that's just past. Knowing that the teachers adore my baking we decided that a kit to make cupcakes would be a good way to go so I found some cheap 6 hole cupcake tins and got enough for the teachers we wanted to give a gift to. I also got a nice sized fridge/freezer box to put the mixes in as I didn't want the baggies etc lost before the teachers got home.

First I spent an age weighing out the right amount of each ingredient for each bag as I wanted to be 100% sure that each bag had exactly the same amount as every other bag. I was making 10 kits so I weighed out 10 x each ingredient for the chocolate mix and then 10 x each ingredient for the vanilla mix and put them in the baggies - I later (with the help of oldest) shook it all together in the baggie to make the mix evenly mixed before removing all the air and putting them in the little boxes.

  I then added some cupcake papers and the recipe, closed the boxes and wrapped them up.

It was really nice seeing the teachers faces - they were all surprised and happy with them so it was a gift well gifted.
 

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Meanwhile I was also baking cupcakes for youngest to treat his class with because it's almost his birthday.  He wanted to do mini cupcakes so he could let the kids have more than just the one so i baked 72 vanilla and 72 chocolate ones. I then put them on sandwich sticks in pairs - some with both the same flavour but most with one of each flavour. I ended up with a huge basket of these which were enjoyed by the kids and also by the teachers as I had, of course, made far too much

I also baked 2 large cakes for the teachers as my personal gift to all the teachers at the school and sneaked into the kitchen when they weren't looking and put them there - it's something I do every summer as my way of showing them how much I appreciate the teachers.

 This one was iced with the help of oldest vanilla ring cake on top and chocolate on the bottom.

And this is a caramel 2 layer cake iced with fudge frosting and filled with fudge. All in all the teachers were spoiled rotten - as they fully deserve :)

Baking was a pain as my old oven was on it's last legs and it was taking 2 x as long as it should have to bake each batch of cupcakes/cakes. But today (after I *really* needed it) my nice new shiny oven arrived. You can see the packing material reflected in the door hehe. I had to put the oven on for a bit empty to get rid of the factory newness smell that would make food taste bad. I then made some cupcakes to try the oven with.

They were done in 25 minutes - half the time I'd needed for the mini cupcakes last night and they are perfectly done - light and fluffy - all the things I'd been missing in the old oven lately that on occasion made me feel uncomfortable about giving people my cupcakes.

I am again a happy baker :)

Day 15

A bit on the late side with my post but well.. it was just one of those days that result in "nothing" getting done that was planned on but lots of time was spent doing it. I'm afraid the photo isn't the best I've done but I had accidentally deleted the wrong one and as I only just noticed it's a bit too late to change the photo as I've done a fair bit of work on this since the photo.

Colours finished:
None

Working with:
3865
B5200

What I did manage to do yesterday was bake some spelt buns (need to bake them for less time next time as they were a bit too hard lol) using a recipe from the Times newspaper to have with dinner last night.  They were however delicious, especially with the additional 50 grams of pumpkin seeds I'd added. During said meal oldest screamed and panicked because he thought a wasp had landed on him and when I told him to sit still he froze like a statue. Turned out he didn't have a wasp on him but a very sneaky caterpillar. Once I'd removed it with some kitchen paper I took a moment to take photo's and see what it really was.

Top view

Side view

What you see above is the Orgyia antiqua better known with the non Latin names of Rusty Tussock Moth or Vapourer which when looked at from above really does look more like a wasp or bee - pretty nifty camouflage really for a moth caterpillar. Once he had seen what it really was he had a good laugh and then kindly returned it to our back garden where it hopefully it won't damage the apple tree *too* much lol.

Run off my feet..

Getting oldest ready for school camp has really made me run around a lot more than I expected *of course* he dropped at the last minute that his swimming trunks didn't fit and his slippers were broken (when asked last week he said they were all ok lol) so that resulted in another trip to town to get that stuff with money I had earmarked for other stuff.  Then of course there was the time spent adding name lables to *everything* so it doesn't get permanently lost if he forgets something or it gets mixed up with somebody else's stuff.

He did come home with some news that caused me to spend all evening and part of the night baking: ALL year 7 kids that had done their bicycle exam (similar to a drivers licence but without the "weight" of it - it just means that kids know traffic laws and can safely bicycle independently in traffic) and passed - it's rather unusual for the pass rate to be 100% so I decided that all the kids deserved cupcakes and got baking.

I made 3 batches of batter: one strawberry, one vanilla and one chocolate and somehow ended up with 3 different amounts of mini cupcakes: 34 vanilla, 38 strawberry and 41 chocolate. after baking I decorated them with a simple icing of water and icing sugar, adding strawberry flavour to the icing for the strawberry cupcakes and brown sugar to the icing for the chocolate ones.

Once the icing had set I split them into 6 bags of 18 cupcakes each as the kids were split into 6 groups for the bicycle trip to the school camp location and to make it easier for the teachers to share the cupcakes to the kids. The teacher I gave them to was thrilled - she loves my baking and had been disappointed that oldest had chosen to give his classmates ice creams on his birthday instead of cupcakes. (I just hope she does indeed share the cupcakes instead of keeping them for herself lol) Next time i need to start baking sooner.. I didn't finish till 4:30 am.

Birthday sleepover

It's almost my oldest son's 11th birthday and he wanted a sleepover party - I wasn't too keen on the idea but I decided to give it a go anyway and see how things went. (it's actually going better than expected lol) Any way - with a party there is party food and I spent the greater part of today in the kitchen baking, decorating and preparing food. First there was the afternoon party with a couple of friends who weren't allowed to spend the night but did want to come> I had baked a sponge cake and filled it with raspberry jam, made 4 kinds of cupcakes (melon, lemon, peach and popcorn) and 2 different types of biscuits (that's cookies if you are American ;) )  One batch was using an "Animal crackers" recipe and was first letters of the names of the kids coming to the party. The other batch was sitting dogs that due to the black splodges I gave them looked more like cows, stegosauruses and fish made with a sugar biscuit recipe. On top of all that I also served a "Chinoise" a French style "cake" made with mini rolled up brioches filled with French cream and then baked - I cheated and bought this in the shop though hehe.  I gave the kids a choice of orange, strawberry and blackcurrant lemonade to drink.

For dinner oldest wanted home made pizza - ones they could "decorate" themselves. So I spent an age cutting stuff up for them So I made the tomato sauce for them, red/yellow sweet peppers, spring onion, normal sliced onion, sliced cherry tomato's mushrooms, tuna, boiled back bacon (the dutch call this casslerrib) , raw back bacon, leftover kebab from last night, some mince I cooked specially, salami and ham. I offered 4 cheeses: old Gouda, young Gouda, a special blend of "gratain"  cheese and last but certainly not least: mozzarella. The kids had a load of fun making their pizza's and then spent the next 20 minutes complaining that it took so long to cook lol.

In a short while I'm going to be a good mum and make the kids a midnight snack, not entirely sure what yet but they will enjoy it :)