When Pinterest gives false hope!

I admit I have spent many hours of my life looking through Pinterest pages, and I often pin things that I know I will never really get around to do, but when I saw these cute looking bunny buns I couldn't resist trying them for Easter.

Source

 Now I have never had luck when it comes to bread making, I am impatient, I don't like baking when you have to wait around, so waiting for for things to prove isn't something I'm usually prepared to wait the recommended time for! I thought I'd try to day though, just bought some bread flour that only needed water added to it, and left it covered in the airing cupboard. I didn't have a choice about giving in to putting it in the oven too early as Sam needed feeding so that worked out quite well, and for once the bread dough had doubled in size. 

I used scissors to snip the ears into the dough, and a cocktail stick to prick the eyes. Already they didn't exactly look great...

More like road kill bunnies!

I thoguht hoped something magical might happen in the oven...umm it didn't happen

Attack of the zombie bunnies!

So not all Pinterest makes are a success, especially in my case when it comes to bread!

Still they tasted nice and it was lovely to have warm rolls for lunch!

I thought Alex might have liked to have made these with me, but he wasn't interested as Daddy was home and had got his old scalextric set out of the garage so that was much more fun!

Hope you don't mind but linking up with PinAddicts as not all pins turn out nice and thought it might give you all a laugh!

Quick, easy, child friendly, scrummy loaf cake

I love cakes that are quick and easy, especially when Alex wants to help out, this is the easier cake ever!

I found the recipe here after buying all bran cereal thinking I liked it...then found out it tastes like cardboard!

All you need is...

1 cup All bran
1 cup Milk
1cup Self raising flour
1/2-1 cup of brown sugar (depending on your taste buds)
1 cup of dried fruit (today we just used sultanas as it's all we had)

We also added some mixed spice and I spinkled some demerara sugar on top of the mixture once in the tin.

Soak the All bran in the milk, leave for 5-10mins (must admit we did it for less), preheat oven to 170C, grease and line a loaf tin.

Add the sugar, flour and spices to the cereal and milk, give it a good mix and add the fruit (any dried fruit works well-whatever is in the cupboard), one last mix and bung it in the tin for and hour-hour and a half, can sprinkle with sugar on top should you wish too.

It's not the prettiest of cakes, and when mixing it you will think it looks a bit grey looking but looks can sometimes be deceiving! It is lovely warm with some butter on too.

My little helper

Someone really licked the bowl clean!

Final result

Busy Baking

Mother's day cupcakes for our Mum's (obviously). Double ones were mocha with coffee butter icing, and the single cakes were chocolate with ground almonds. I packaged these in nice cupcakes boxes and both our Mum's loved them. 

Alex had a bake sale at preschool Wednesday, so Tuesday I made this big chocolate tray bake made with vegetable oil instead of butter. It went down extremely quickly and I was quite surprised how nice it tasted as I don't often like cakes made with oil, so I thought I'd share the recipe. 

Chocolate Traybake

75g cocoa powder

200ml boiling water

3/4 teaspoon bicarbonate soda

4 eggs

370g light muscovado sugar

180ml vegetable oil

200g self raising flour

Icing

150g dark chocolate

3 tablespoons milk

M&M's (or any other chocolate delights)!

Whisk cocoa powder with 200ml boiling water, and then whisk in the bicarbonate of soda, leave to cool for about 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 160C fan/180C/gas mark 4. Grease and line a tray bake tin approx 23 x 30 x 4cm. 

Whisk together the eggs, sugar, and oil, then stir in the flour, and cocoa solution. Pour mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 30-40 minutes or until risen and firm. Run a knife around the edges and leave to cool. 

To make the icing melt the chocolate with the milk in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Stir until smooth  and using the back of a spoon or palette knife ice the cake, scatter over the M&M's, wait to cool and enjoy!

This is also really nice warm with ice cream too, and would be great for an easy birthday cake. 

PinAddicts Challenge: Chocolate and cinnamon meringues

Hello I am back *waves* it's been a while since I joined in the PinAddicts challenge due to all sorts of things, the main one being having Sam :)

Since buying my new, massive Jamie Oliver mixing bowl (I have an unusual fetish with cookware, I already had a perfectly good mixing bowl...)  the other day at a party I have been desperate to get some use out of it, and for a while I have wanted to to make meringues, so I had a quick browse for some ideas on Pinterest.

I found these:

Chocolate and cinnamon meringues

It links to a French site here but if you are lucky enough your browser should be able to translate it for you. Now chocolate and cinnamon are two things that I LOVE so it was a no brainer. These were incredibly easy to make, 2 egg whites, 120g sugar, 3tsp cocoa powder, 0.5tsp of cinnamon. Whisk the egg whites gradually add the sugar (I think really you are only supposed to whisk in half the sugar and then fold in the rest after but I didn't realise that until after), sift in the powder and spice and fold it in. Bake in a preheated oven at 130C for 30-45 minutes. Sprinkle some cocoa powder on top once cooled. 

These went down really well on Sunday when my Grandparents were down at my parent's house, they were very moreish and being small meant you could have a few without feeling too guilty! Sorry for the rubbish photo though I was rushing around and had a cake to bake after this to be ready for lunch at Mum's and Dad's! I don't know why I have always felt so afraid to make meringues before as they were incredibly easy to make and will definitely be trying out some different flavour combos or maybe even a pavlova! Watch this space...

Linking up with the PinAddicts click on the linky to view the other makes. 

Foodie Foto Friday: Christmas cake

Yes I know it's still October, yes I know some people cringe at the 'C' word, but when it comes to Christmas cake you have to be organised in my eyes.

I wasn't too fussed with the recipe I used last year for the Christmas cake, I found it a bit too heavy for my liking, so with a bit of searching on line and in my cook books I found a recipe I liked the sound of on the bbc good food website.

The recipe has a lot of options to chop and change a few ingredients, for example you need 1kg of dried fruit I don't like too many different things in my cake, so I put about 400g dried cranberries, and the rest was a mix of sultanas and raisins. I used sherry for the alcohol and used two oranges for the fruit juice.

My little monkey 'helping' me mix. 

 It was such a shame (not) that the mix was slightly too much for the tin so had to try out making some mini ones in two ramekin dishes (which I am planning on doing for small gifts for family), sadly one of these only made it to my stomach...opps, I had to taste to see if it tastes ok ;)

The photos aren't the best due to light and the fact I wanted to eat it so badly so apologies for that, but hopefully you can see that it is quite a light Christmas cake, and it tastes really fruity too, the large one is still currently baking away in the oven as I type. I will have to be good and not dive into that one! This is definitely a better recipe than the one I used last year and I can't wait until I get to decorate it nearer Christmas, always the fun part. Definitely recommend this recipe if you haven't made a Christmas cake yet and want to. 

Linking up with Foodie Foto Friday over at the crazy kitchen

Pistachio Biscotti-very easy too!

As promised yesterday here is the delicious Pistachio Biscotti recipe that I made for the weekend.

It comes from a book we've had ages called, Biscuits brownies and biscotti from a women's weekly.

Ingredients:
60g Butter
220g Caster Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla essence
1 tablespoon Lemon rind*
4 Eggs
335g Plain flour
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Bicarbonate of soda
150g Shelled pistachios (chopped coarsely)
2 tablespoons Caster sugar

Method:

Beat the butter, sugar, essence, and rind in a medium bowl until combined. Add 3 of the eggs one at a time, beating until combined.
Stir in the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and the chopped nuts.
Cover and refrigerate for an hour.

Preheat oven to 180C.
Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface until smooth but still sticky.
Shape each halve into a 30cm log.
Place each log onto a lightly greased tray.
Combine last egg with 1 tablespoon of water in a small bowl, brush the egg mixture over the logs.
Sprinkle thickly with the extra sugar.

Bake for about 20 minutes, or until lightly brown and firm. Stand for 10 minutes.
Reduce oven temperature to 160C.

How the biscotti look before cutting up (sorry for  lack of light, this was taken about 11.30pm)!

Using a serrated or electric knife, cut logs diagonally into 1cm think slices. Place the slices onto ungreased trays and bake for about 15minutes or until dry and crisp, turning half way through cooking.

Cool on wire racks, and then enjoy!

*I didn't add lemon rind when I made them as I had no lemons and they still tasted delicious, I have been told by my parents and in laws that they are great with coffee too.

Hope you enjoy it as much as my family and I did, nice alternative to cake when there are eggs to be used too! In the haste of Easter I never actually got around to taking a photo of just the biscotti once it was all baked so sorry for that!

Happy Easter-A day late!

Saturday evening I spent baking between 8-12pm!

3 baking tins, 2 cupcake trays, 2 mixing bowls, tonnes of ingredients later I had lots of these goodies...

Butter biscuit bunnies, chocolate crispies, & pistachio biscotti.

I have 5 big tubs full of these 3 different things...even when we give some more of them away today I feel we will be eating these for a while to come...my waistline might be considerably bigger! I am going to post the recipe for the pistachio biscotti some time in the next week as it's to die for and really easy to make!

I hope you all had a lovely Easter day yesterday, and hope you manage to enjoy this soggy wet Monday (at least it's horrible and wet here) typical for Easter Monday really isn't it!

Proper Vanilla Butter Icing

So yesterday I made some belated cakes for our Mums for Mothers Day (it was a busy weekend, out Saturday at a wedding and working Sunday), and I just wanted to make them look and hopefully taste a bit nicer than usual. 

Flicking through one of my many cupcake books I came across a lovely looking vanilla butter icing recipe which used vanilla pods. Just so happens I had some about so had to give it a go...

Yum I am never going to use vanilla essence again Ok I probably will for the bog standard quick bakes but shh we'll forget about that! Just wish I had tried putting it in the cakes beforehand too, oh well that sounds like a good excuse to bake some more to me!

I just guess with butter icing quantities as I always end up adding more icing sugar than the recipes suggest, generally a large knob of butter beaten until smooth then gradually add a generous amount of sifted icing sugar. Once it's all mixed together spilt half a vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds into icing and mix again.

The cakes went down very well! 

So did the scraping of the icing bowl...whoops!

Jus Rol Pastry Tart and Garlic Potatoes

Recipe:

Garlic Potatoes:
Oil
Herbs (I used parsley)
Garlic clove
Salt
Pepper

Tart:
One pack of Jus Roll puff pastry
Tomato Purée
Herbs
Onion
Tomatos
Mushrooms
Pepper
Cheese (I used cheddar)

For the Garlic Potatoes:
As many potatoes as you would normally do, peeled, & chopped into small chunks, boil. Drizzle oil in a roasting tin, sprinkle some herbs, add a pinch of salt and pepper. Chop a garlic clove into fine chunks and add to the tin. Drain the potatoes, add to the tin and mix so that the oil and garlic mixture covers them. Place into a preheated oven, around 200C

For the Pastry Tart:

Whilst the potatoes are in the oven roll the pastry out to about the size of a baking tray

Place it onto a greased baking tray, spread tomato purée all over the base and sprinkled with herbs. Then sprinkle the chopped onions, sliced tomatoes, sliced mushrooms, and chopped pepper all over.

Then grate cheese all over, you could use mozzarella slices instead if you prefer.

Place into the oven with the potatoes, and leave for about 20 minutes.

You should end up with something that looks like this:

Serve and enjoy! It is great with salads in the summer too!


This post wasn't sponsored by Jus Rol, just a happy customer. 

Chocolate fudge cake & toddler antics!

Bet that got your taste buds going!

Today has been a good day, managed to get lots done whilst Alex happily played with cars (as always) and also decided to to take the cushions of the sofa and be a 'dinosaur' jumping all over them and doing a 'Peppa pig' style roar.

Check out his 'roaring' skills!

We enjoyed making a chocolate fudge cake together today, this was the first time I think he has properly been involved the whole way through without getting too stropy if I don't let him do something when he wants! The only time he moaned was when it was time to put the mix into the tin as he still wanted to mix it all. Of course he found the best bit was eating the cake mix-and too right ;)

I was a bit naughty yesterday and bought a few too many Cadbury Fudge bars so one of them was chopped up to decorate the top-one less for me too eat...sort of!

Alex enjoyed a piece of cake for pudding and even drowsed off...so an early bedtime for him today, he was fast asleep at 6pm this evening...not sure whether that will be a good or a bad thing!! Must have been all that dinosaur action and cake mixing!

Peanut Brittle= a success this time!

Before Christmas I was really annoyed because I had tried and failed at making peanut brittle, it just went too a gooey sticky mixture and didn't set at all! I was even more annoyed because I had followed the recipe correctly and had wanted to make the brittle for gifts, plus I had used up loads of ingredients for it!

I used this Nigella Lawson recipe which is found in her Christmas book (would recommend, especially if you entertain a lot over Christmas)!

After my failed attempt I discovered I wasn't the only one struggling with the recipe and that I should invest in a sugar thermometer...so I did and last night was the first time I'd tried it out.

Ignore the 'let it boil for 5 minutes' on the recipe and follow what the thermometer says, I had to get it up to 154C to get a 'hard crack' mixture and this took much, much longer than 5 minutes no wonder it didn't set last time, why didn't they just write that in the recipe in the first place, I am very impatient with things like this so last time I just timed 5 minutes and thought, that must be fine and plonked it on the baking sheet!

Anyway I would definitely recommend buying a sugar thermometer if you like things like this, jam, and honeycomb recipes (which I will try again soon too-watch out for that one). I got mine from Lakeland and for £7.49 I thought it was quite a bargain!

Here's the final result:

Not the best photo it was 11pm last night!

Here's hoping my Dad will be happy as it's accompanying his birthday present today, and I think he was quite gutted the peanut brittle was missing from the Christmas hamper. I just hope he doesn't break his tooth on it like my partner did last night whilst chipping away at the mixture left on the spoon!!

AAAAA it's Christmas eve! Need more time! And a very Merry Christmas!

I work in a shop so am working until 6pm tonight setting up for our boxing day sale (yay long Christmas break we are all going to have this year :( ). This really does ruin the Christmas spirit for me every year, because it is so hectic in there setting up for it all, every one is so stressed because we all want to be out on time (if not before) and by the time you are home you are too shattered to want to do anything else! I also feel I miss out a bit of the old Christmas spirit with my son (even though he is only 2) but I would like to start doing traditions but the evening is just going to be rushed with getting him in the bath after a later than normal dinner after work, milk and sorted for bed...boo hoo :(

Image: http://www.sheknows.com/parenting/articles/850121/how-to-reduce-the-stress-of-the-holidays

I still have so much I need to make for tomorrow's gift hampers for our parents too...the peanut brittle I attempted that looked and tasted really good sort of failed as it never hardened so just have a gooey, sticky mess in the fridge at the moment (really annoyed)! The rocky road I made yesterday I didn't have all the ingredients for as the amaretti biscuits I had the cupboard had obviously been there longer than I thought and were 4 months out of date and didn't look too healthy either, so was annoyed with that (although sort of my mistake). So tonight I can see me getting stressed out in my pathetically small kitchen until very late at night and my partner no doubt will say why didn't we just buy them a bottle of wine a chocolate in the middle of it all just to wind me up so more.

Also got Alex's cards for his grandparents to get him to 'write' in so I can put the fab photos I had printed the other day in them and wrap (as I don't have envelopes big enough...doh)!

But it will all be worth it in the end, I can only get done what I can and I am sure it will be a lovely day tomorrow...even if my man is suffering from a bit of man flu too ;) (basically a sore throat)!

Anyway because I will be so busy the next few days I just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. I hope you all have lovely (if not chaotic) days with lots of happy memories.

Quick and easy Marzipan Yule Logs

I am making edible gifts for our parents this Christmas, I am came across this recipe for Marzipan and Pistachio  Yule logs   which looked lovely and fairly easy and cheap to make.

I love marzipan so was nice to come across something a bit different to to just the usual marzipan covered in chocolate recipe. (although it isn't too dissimilar)!

Anyway they are really easy to make, roll the marzipan into a rectangle, cut into 4. Spread the chopped pistachio, chocolate and cranberries evenly over. I'd recommend leaving a slight gap at the end though otherwise it will all spill out! I also used a bit of water (literally barely anything) just to stick the ends once you have rolled it all together tightly.

Then spread the melted chocolate over it, cool, then drizzle melted white chocolate over and sprinkle with the chopped mix again.

They last up to two week in an airtight tin, so make great gifts that will last.

Image from Tesco Recipes-Pistachio and Marzipan Yule logs

I must admit I have had half a log tonight...opps! Good job I had already planned to make some more in the next couple of days!

Decorating the Christmas cake

I made my Christmas fruit cake way back in October, used the Delia Smith recipe that I am sure so many people use. Seemed to go ok, although next time I will use a smaller tin (even though I used the size that the recipe suggested) as my cake seems a little flat rather than deep!

Anyway last night I put the marzipan on the cake, probably not in the right way of doing it but it worked for me. Just rolled it all out, placed the cake on top of it, pressed the cake down so it imprinted, spread a thin layer of jam over the cake, and placed back into the indent. Then I folded the marzipan around the cake and probably looked as if I was caressing the cake when I was smoothing it over! I then trimmed the marzipan around the edge, and 'oh damn' just happened to have some left over that wasn't big enough to use for anything else (sort of)....it didn't hang around long that's for sure! Mmm.

I didn't leave the marzipan to dry out as much as I have read to, but wanted it done as next few days are busy. Tried to do the icing the same way I had done the marzipan but figured it wasn't going to work that way after a quick first attempt of it nearly sticking and ripping. So I turned the cake right way up and then spread some hot water over the marzipan with a brush to give it a sticky layer, and placed the rolled out icing over it. 'Caressed' the sides and trimmed.

Now the fun bit...

I used the left over icing and some from another pack to make the decorations, made up some colours from the ones I had in the cupboard already, and had some of them silver and gold balls (have no idea what they are actually called).

Last year I kept pictures from magazines of craft/baking things I liked the look of and put them in a folder, I loved this cake that had an icing gingerbread man on so decided to give it a go seeing as I had a cookie cutter about the right size. I used a cocktail stick to make the indents all around the gingerbread men. For the candy canes I just had 'sausage rolls' of white and red strips of icing and twisted together tightly and then shaped.

I stuck the icing parts on with just water. Once it was all stuck on I then got some writing icing out to make the finer details such as the ribbon on the presents.

Then got a ribbon and put around the edge.

Now I just hope it tastes as good as it looks...not sure if I can wait until Christmas though with it staring at me! Quite impressed with my first attempt at Christmas cake though :) although bit un-impressed with the food colouring as that was supposed to be green not lime coloured!