Sunday, June 26

An 18th Birthday Afternoon Tea Party

Sarah didn't want a big do - we aren't really big do people lol! Just a small circle of her closest 10 friends for afternoon tea. So that's what we did - after 7 hours of baking, with everything made from scratch except the puff pastry for the sausage rolls and their sauces.

Purple was her choice of colour and I think I need to invest in some purple food colouring as it's a surprisingly tricky colour to make with blue and red gel colourings. But Sarah is very happy with everything, and man it all tastes sooooooo good!


Raspberry cheesecake Brownies from AWW cheesecake book - I think it needs more a slice tin as it's quite deep but yumm delicious and it pays to read the recipe before diving in, the brownies are made differently and you need to only part cook them before adding the cheesecake baker, consequently we have a spare batch of just brownies, not a bad thing apparently.


Inspired by the divine Rose Cookies from I am Baker and using the sugar cookie recipe from September last year, I made these with a yummy smooth buttercream and piping tip from the stash, they are about 1 1/2 inches across, just a mouthful and perfectly delicious!


Lemon Tart from Masterchef Masterclass I made a double batch of the pastry as I wanted to use this tart tin and I didn't have individual ones. As it turned out I didn't need to have that much pastry, so half is now in the freezer for next time, it was a very easy dough to use. I doubled both the filling and the topping recipes and it fitted nicely, though there was some meringue left over. It's a lovely tart filling. I didn't use the blow torch *yes I have one* cause I was given it but no gas, and I just haven't gotten around to getting some, so I popped it back in the oven for about 10 minutes. Unfortunately I think that leads to some weeping which always seems to happen with this pie.


My standby cupcake recipe with pink and lavender buttercream and decorations!


Sausage rolls - soooooo yummy again from Masterchef, though I've tweaked the recipe to suit us.


And then russian caramels, though they did need to be cooked a wee bit longer, probably to hard ball stage, but delicious and sticky and I think awesome if we melted it and poured it over hot waffles.

And macaroons, I can't quite get that beautiful smooth look of the Zumbo ones, I think because I don't resift my almond meal, but they still taste delicious and they are William's favourite I think - he told me he wasn't eating the brownies but could he please have some more macaroons, they are sandwich with white chocolate ganache ... man that sucker sets fast.

There you have it - all day of baking and it was so worth it just waiting to cut into the lemon tart, so I can have a piece.

Sunday, June 12

An 18th birthday

Our gorgeous Sarah turned 18 yesterday - we had big plans, a scrummy dinner consisting of chicken pie and potatoe bake and an awesome cake, BUT the birthday girl fell sick like a ton of bricks, taking her littlest sister with her, so neither of them ate. Thankfully the birthday party for friends isn't for a couple of weeks, so hopefully they'll be recovered by then and I can post photos of her, she wouldn't let me take piccies yesterday.

But here is the cake as I know you want to see!!!


Recipe from one of my favourite magazines - BBC Good Food - Chocolate and Caramel Layer Cake.

I made a few substitutions as always.

The cakes went together easily, though they aren't what I would call a sponge, they rose nicely but then flattened, which makes them easy to stack, I found I needed to add a wee bit more liquid to the vanilla/chocolate ones, so I just used milk. I used Black Swan Vanilla Bean natural yoghurt.


I did pike and buy *shock horror* Nestle caramel top and fill, I've just been too busy to make it from scratch.

And the icing I did differently as well - I used a block of Cadbury Dairy Milk, broken into pieces, then I poured over 1 cup of thickened cream which had been boiled. Then mixed them together and popped them in the fridge to cool down and then whipped it up until fluffy and holding it's shape.

It's sprinkled with sugar pearls and it looked fab and tasted delicious - I bet it will taste even better today - be warned it's a big cake, and you'll need somewhere to put it since it has cream on it, but it's not overly rich.


Shane took the photos, and you can see he's not a food stylist lol!!

Friday, June 10

Well it's cold enough .............

For Christmas in July *cough* June right???

And these gorgeous prints arrived this week and so I just couldn't help myself, I made some of them up. The cold and dreary has not helped the inspiration strike, but today was sunny and bright and perfect for some cheer.



These naps are going up in the store shortly - I know that lots of people celebrate Christmas in July and what fun with these prints. If you purchase immediately with DD, I will pop in your parcel a matching tshirt at no extra cost.

And a surprise bonus!! Two of the naps are a pre-release of the CK Pocket. Same awesome fits, same wonderful attention to detail as you've come to expect from CK products. It's a front opening pocket, so no little suprises hiding in there (unless you count little people popping toys, keys or food for later in there) Plenty of room for those with larger hands or Dads, it's been Dad tested to stuff. Comes with a 12 x 12 bamboo/cotton fleece trifold, sewn down in thirds to stop that annoying shifting and moving, with fleece side in. My testers have given them the thumbs up so I hope you do too.



My pockets are due for full release come July, so if you want a peek before hand, just keep an eye out on the FB page for some early and very limited early releases.

Wednesday, June 8

Meatless Monday!

Okay okay I know it's Wednesday but I did cook this on Monday.

It's just a white loaf, with cheese and pistachio dukkah on the top.


and this is a variation of leek and potatoe soup. It had leeks, potatoe, sweet potatoe and cauliflower, along with a sprinkle of bacon - okay not quite meatless, but pretty much. William turned his nose up and ate left over bacon and egg pie but K had two helpings and the bread didnt' make it to breakfast.