Chocolate and Orange Teacakes

These delicious teacakes were inspired by the Meringue girls TV recipe on the waitrose website  but made just about following Jamie's minty ones. All I changed was adding tangerine zest to the dough, omitting the peppermint oil and adding a dash of orange oil to the chocolate coating! 

Hidcote

We had a super time yesterday visiting Hicote manor and gardens. We had intended to spend time at The Fleece Inn, who were celebrating apples and cider and had owls visiting, but we were evidently too early and they hadn't quite got going when we turned up, so we poottered round the corner to Hidcote and had lots of fun exploring the gardens and eating cake!

Market foraging

On Saturday we went to the markets with all the grandparents to 'forage' for our supper. Having passed on the delicious looking game we settle on a fishy fare - sushi for starters and halibut for mains!

 

Two!

Our little Lexi is getting bigger - we just celebrated her second birthday. Of course there needed to be a great quantity of cake: for us, for nursery and even some practise ones! The theeme was 'tickle monster'!

 

Lexi picked out the cake cases and helped fill/empty them.

 

rice crispies witches by laughingmagpies

 

cakes for nursery

 

practise monster cakes

Pumpkin bowls

A few weeks ago we visited the beautiful Charlecote Park - to our delight they had a huge number of pumpkin and squashes on sale. I bought a few and made some pumpkin moulds and then some dishes. I also bought some new Potter's choice glazes - Albany and Firebrick - and a Pear Celadon glaze. I really like the results - just need to make a few more now!

Cupcake at Charlecote Park

Steam fair

A fantastic outing to the steam fair!

Purple velvet cupcakes

Last week everyone was very helpful in the lab and got me through a rather important experiment. So I made them some of these scrummy cupcakes from the good food mag. We picked blackberries from opposite the house too, so a local treat!

Take 150g blackberries and crush them with a fork. Melt 100g butter and 100g dark chocolate (mine was a supermarket brand at about 40% so not that dark) gently together. Mix 225g self raining flour, 175g caster sugar and two tablespoons of cocoa powder (I used green and blacks) in a large bowl. Beat two eggs with a teaspoon of chocolate extract (this was an extra addition I made to the original recipe). Then add the melted butter and chocolate and eggs and blackberries to the dry ingredients with a little red/purple food colouring. Mix everything together into a smooth batter and apportion to 12 cupcake cases. Bake at 180C (160C fan) for 15mins or until a skewer comes out clean. 

(The recipe recommended the following for the icing. I think it's a bit much and could easily be halved but then it depends on how much icing you like!) Press 150g blackberries through a sieve to extract the juice. Beat together 100g soft butter and 400g icing sugar with 1tsp vanilla essence. This is very very stuff. Mix in enough of the juice to make it pipable. I made the mistake of mixing it all in at once and it was a bit runny so take your time! If you have any spare blackberries put one on the top before serving. 

Moomin house - Tove Jansson's centenary

To celebrate 100 years since the birth of Tove Jansson, author of the fabulous moomin books, we baked a moomin house and cooked onion tart and tomato salad from her cookbook.

David Austin Roses

To go in our front garden we wanted to buy some fragrant roses. So we headed off to David Austin Roses near Telford. What beautiful place to visit! We had a fabulous moring exploring the gardens, sniffing the roses, eating tasty treats and ended up with three delightful roses - Sofie, Darcy and Gertrude!

Another decking project

Yes we made another one - with the help of the laughing magpies again!

Isle of Wight

We had a beautiful week in the Isle of Wight, staying in Shanklin. Beautiful weather and amazing lobster and chips as a final celebration!

Brindley Place gingko leaves

On Sunday we went to the Sealife Centre to see the new penguins - what a treat it was!

While we picnicked in Brindley

Place I noticed no less than 6 gingko trees! I managed to find a selection of fallen leaves which I squirrelled away and brought home. Yesterday I took the day off and used the leaves to impress into some lovely flax clay. They're looking good just now - I hope they make it throught the firings!

Jam tarts

Made up Cheesecake

After pottering round the supermarket just before closing time last night and finding a lack of rhubarb, N and I decided we'd make a cheesecake rather than the planned rhubarb and custard cake for dessert tonight. So we bought some cream cheese and frozen berries, thinking we'd have sufficient ingredients for the rest back at home. And we did, though I did have to amalgamate several recipes to accommodate the half a pot of cream and some marscapone, a leaf of gelatine and some squeezey lemon juice. Tasted good though!!

Birthday cake!

At the weekend I went down to Kew Bridge for the last of Anna's Romantic Disease workshops http://annadumitriu.tumblr.com/RomanticDisease at Waterman's gallery. I stopped in at Peyton and Byrne for a little yoghurt and berries breakfast with some Lapsang Souchan. The server then brought over a complimentary cupcake! How very lovely!!

Cakes, cakes everywhere!

It was the last day of one of my post docs today - he'd been working on miniature schnauzers and so I found a schnauzer cookie cutter and made some sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies with royal icing.

http://www.bakespace.com/recipes/detail/No-Spread-Sugar-Cookies-(Cookie-Cutter-Recipe)/33698/

http://www.thekitchenpaper.com/gingerbread-cookies-wont-spread/

http://www.marthastewart.com/316888/royal-icing-for-sugar-cookies

Last week it was Katherine's last day too and we had a cake festival - I made lemon macaroons, egg yolk cookies and friands!

http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/16507/heavenly-lemon-macaroons.aspx

http://www.food.com/recipe/egg-yolk-cookies-63803

For the friands:

I mixed together 175g unsalted butter with 210g icing sugar until light and fluffy. Then I mixed in 5egg whites, a teaspoon of pistachio essence, 60g plain flour, 150g ground almonds, 200g chopped milk chocolate (some of which were Lindor chocolate balls!). I put the mix into greased and floured muffin tin and cooked them at 200C for 25min when the sides were coming away from the sides. I let them cool in the tin and then popped them out and dusted them in icing sugar. 

The Blue Piano

We tried out the Blue Piano, a Singaporean restaurant, as a late Valentine's treat - deliscioius! 

Tasty treats

Last weekend I had a lovely time making some tasty treats. Above are marshmallow crispies. I took 50g butter and 250g mini marshmallows and melted them in the microwave, about 1min did it. I then mixed in a whole packet of Froot Loops (350g I think). Then spread them out into a silicone lined baking tray, I had to squash them down with another silicone liner on top, they were very sticky but once they were cold it was fine. Yummy! 

And to balance the sweetness I made some cheesy courgette muffins from Gourmet Mum  I think next time I'll add some of the optional salt but they were delicious and very light!