Being Mrs C

Planned excitement

Still feeling rough from a cold that I seem to have picked up, but to cheer myself up I've this morning booked tickets for a couple of things that I'm planning to do over the next couple of months.

Firstly I'm going along to the annual Knitting and Stitching show at Alexandra Palace. This is an event that I've been along to many times over the last few years. I normally spend most of my time going round the stalls, but this year their theme is make do and mend, something that I'm always interested in. The demonstration parts of the day may therefore be of more interest to me than they sometimes are. Although the show is only a couple of weeks away it still counts as an advance ticket booking so I should receive a "savings book" with some vouchers in to help me save some money on the day as I know I won't be able to not buy anything!

The second outing is to the Country Living Magazine Christmas Fair. I've not been along to this before (or to the Spring fair) but having recently discovered the magazine, fallen in love with it and started subscribing, I thought it may be the kind of thing that I enjoy - and it might also give me some good ideas for decorating our new house for Christmas (I'm already getting excited about now having the space to have a real Christmas tree!)

Two lovely days out to look forward to!

The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook

By the time I reached central London on the train yesterday morning I felt so hungry! The culprit being an impulse purchase in the garden centre on Sunday of The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. One of my work colleague J has being going on about this cookbook for ages, mainly as his two young daughters keep feeding him with various things that they'e been baking from it.

I've not had the opportunity to actually bake anything from it yet, but I did manage to read it cover to cover on the train and the photos make it all look so yummy! The Hummingbird Bakery specialises in American stye home baking rather than the more conservative British style - not a bad thing at all when it comes to yummy things like cup cakes!

One thing that was a tad freaky is the fact that my colleague J arrived at the office this morning with a tupperware box fully of brownies made from a recipe in the book. So, although I've not been able to make anything from the book myself yet, I have at least sampled one of the recipes. Now I just need to go and buy some muffin cases as British bun cases just aren't big enough! I'll let you know how I get on.

If you already have the book then it might be worth noting that the bakery have published some baking tips (and corrections to a couple of printing errors) here on their website.

Making a change

I'm not at all afraid of hard work, I just wish I was working directly for myself in a slightly nicer working environment. Possibly one that looks like the above, which is very conveniently located at home. How to make that a reality, whilst still paying the mortgage is what makes it a little more tricky.

Unless someone wants to pay me to stay at home and bake, read, knit and blog! Any offers or ideas considered...

These lovely cupcakes provided some late night snacks at our housewarming party over the weekend. A very simple sponge and then topped with lovely icing made by taking a hint from Jane Brocket's The Gentle Art of Domesticity. Quite simply mix the icing sugar with mainly lemon juice rather than just water. The edge it gives them is wonderful - and had many people asking what made them different.

Delia's Plum & Cinnamon Oat Slices

My Mother in Law brought round a bag of plums from her neighbour's garden the other day which was lovely - but left me with the question of what the heck to do with them! I have to admit that I've never cooked or baked with plums before, but it's always good to try something new.

A quick check through all my cook books found a couple of recipes, but in the end I went for plum and cinnamon oat slides from The Delia Collection: Baking. It's quite a simple recipe where you end up baking a flapjack like thing with a layer of plums between two layers of oat mixture. The plums though are mixed with ground cinnamon making them have a lovely, slightly wintery taste.

Things unfortunately didn't turn out quite as nice as I wanted them to. Firstly my oat mixture was a bit too dry, rather than being dough like as the recipe said it should be. Nothing seemed to make it less dry, although after baking things did improve a bit, but it remained a bit too crumbly for my liking. I'd also suggest adding some sugar when you mix the plums with the ground cinnamon as it did still have a slightly tart taste. But, then maybe that was just down to the type of plums I used?

Not perfect, but I'll definitely try again if I'm lucky enough to receive any more plums.

If you're interested the recipe also seems to be available here.

Gran's ginger biscuits

One of the strongest memories from childhood is being given home made ginger biscuits whenever we went to visit my Gran. There was always a supply in the biscuit barrel in her sideboard and my sister and I loved them.

Gran's now in her nineties and arthritis in her hands prevents her from baking as much as she would like. Whenever I smell anything with ginger in I am taken back to sitting in her back room and munching a biscuit with a glass of squash.

Tomorrow is the WWA AGM and I offered to sort out refreshments. Biscuits was the obvious thing to make and it seemed a while since I'd used Gran's recipe. At the moment 59 58 biscuits (one had to be eaten for quality control reasons) are cooling in the kitchen. The recipe normally makes about 14 biscuits (more if you go for smaller ones!) , but I made two batches of double the ingredients today.

Here's the recipe - I just hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

4 oz self raising flour

2 oz margarine

2 1/2 oz sugar

1 level teaspoon ground ginger

1 level teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 tablespoon golden syrup

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. 

Melt the margarine and golden syrup gently in a pan. 

One all liquid, pour into the dry ingredients and mix to make a dough. 

Use your hands to make into small balls. 

Place the balls on a lined baking tray and press each one down slightly with a spoon or fork.

Bake for 10 - 15 minutes at 180 degrees C.

Enjoy!

Mary Poppins' strike-me-pink raspberry jam cakes

After quite a tough day at work I decided to do some baking on Monday evening whilst Mr C worked late. I've been reading Jane Brocket's Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer for quite a few months now, but haven't actually tried that many recipes from it.

Mr C's a big raspberry jam fan and hence the recipe for Mary Poppins' strike-me-pink raspberry jam cakes seemed like an obvious choice. The recipe makes them sound quite simple to make - a soft dough, make into twelve balls and then shape each ball as if you're making a crude clay pot (like at school pottery class). Then you put half a tea spoon of jam inside each "pot" before using your fingers to seal the pot. Turn them over, place on a baking sheet, brush with milk, sprinkle with sugar and into the oven they go.

The hard part though was the sealing of the pots after putting in the jam. Possibly my dough was a bit too wet, but I found them quite difficult. The finished article though was yummy. Slightly crisp on the outside like a fresh biscuit, but slightly softer on the inside around the jam.

The one thing that this book lacks is photographs - instead Jane has used the line drawings from some of the original books that her recipes are based around. Photos or the steps or the finished article would have been a bit useful as following the recipe, but in this case the finished article was more of a surprise!

I'll definitely be making another batch sometime in the future. As Mary Poppins would have said: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Last day of holidays

Mr C and I are back to work properly tomorrow (that bit between Christmas and new year didn't really count) so today has really felt like the last day of the holidays.

It's been a pretty day though with lots done. The decorations and tree have come down and been packed away for next year. As a result our living room now feels so much larger again. I tried to use up the last of the mincemeat by making a final batch of mince pies. The jar managed to defeat me though and somehow I've still got more left! Honestly, the jar has started reminding me of Mary Poppins' bag!

A batch of chocolate brownies are in the oven as I write this. I'm hoping that they'll be out soon though and cool enough later on that I can package a couple up and get them in the post to my Gran tomorrow. They're baked from my mother in law's recipe and my Gran's been asking to try them for ages. Fingers crossed that I'll remember!

Brownies cooling once they were out of the oven

All my thank you letters are written (bar one) and I've also managed some of the other more domestic things like washing and changing the bed. Just a couple more things to do and then I should be ready for work tomorrow. I must also try and remember tomorrow morning to make sandwiches for work - our efforts to try and save a bit of money in 2009. I have a horrible habit of forgetting things like this though until I'm on the train to work. A post it note on the back of the front door will hopefully remind me though!

 

We did manage another long walk today though - nearly two hours this time around some of the nice residential streets in St Albans. All completely out of our price range, but nice to look at all the same. It was freezing out though, so it really did feel quite bracing. The cup of tea to warm me up when I got home was very welcome though.

Right - off now to cook dinner and to try and get those final things on my list ticked off.

Yummy food

It's been a few days of fantastic food here.

Firstly, we've been enjoying the contents of the food platter that my sister and her boyfriend gave us for Christmas. The chocolate truffles are particularly good (if you're reading please send me the recipe H!) and the chutney went perfectly with some ham for lunch on Sunday.

I then got my hands very messy helping Mr C to make the tandoori chicken part of a butter chicken recipe that was in a book I gave him for Christmas. I have to say that it was one of the most delicious curries I've ever eaten and tasted amazingly fresh, with a particular ginger zing to it. Mr C tells the whole story over on his blog, so I won't steal his thunder here, but I do hope he makes it again, soon!

Another batch on mince pies were also knocked out this weekend for Sunday's WWA working party. This time though we managed to remember that we had a Kenwood and hence saved a huge amount of physical labour in the process! How we manage to normally forget it I just don't know - especially since it takes up so much space in our small kitchen!

Mr C provided the magic of trying to get as many pies as possible out of the pastry and they certainly went down well with everyone after a morning's work in the cold. 

Check out another of this year's wonderful christmas presents in the photo above. I'm now the very, very proud owner of an acrylic cook book stand. I've wanted one of these for a while, and it's already changed my cooking life in the few days since Christmas. It holds all sizes of cook book, keeps them clean, keeps them open at the right page (such a pain with some hardback ones) and it takes up less space than having the book lying open on the counter. Fantastic! What more could I ask for in a Christmas pressie?

Final Preparations

Today has really been a day of final preparations for Christmas. All the gifts are now wrapped and we've been to visit Mr C's family to deliver presents. All the washing is nearly done and I am starting to feel ready to start the festive season.

Quite a bit of time seems to have been spent in the kitchen today. The final touches were made to yesterday's Rocky Road. Now we just need to remember to take it out of the fridge tomorrow and put it in a nice box for the journey north.

Today I also made my first set of mince pies. I have helped my Mum hers many times over the years, but today was the first time I'd made any on my own. Not that I was fully on my own as sous-chef Mr C was helping out.

I have to admit though that the first batch of pastry went very strange whilst resting in the fridge. When it came out it was rock hard and we struggled to even cut it in half with a sharp knife. Too much water may have been the reason, but more experience may help!

I'm pretty pleased with the final version. They certainly tasted pretty good. I may have to work a bit more on the final presentation - or I could just blame my sous-chef for over-filling them! ;-)

After a dozen mince pies the left over pastry made a fine half dozen jam tarts. This was something my Mum always used to do for me and my sister who didn't like mince pies when we were children and it certainly brought back several childhood memories.

Edible gifts

It's been a while since I've done any baking and therefore I was quite excited to go round the supermarket earlier today picking up ingredients. My Dad's a big fan of Rocky Road and I therefore decided to make some so that Mr C and I can take it up as a gift when we go to stay with my parents on Monday.

This is such a simple recipe and I love having these in the fridge for those moments when you need a little something sweet at the end of the day. 

I've got a few ideas though as to how to vary things in this recipe - possibly with the addition of rice krispies or raisins. Something to try in the new year.