Sunday Lunch

Today we had family over for Sunday lunch and unsure of the weather we had decided on Roast Pork with all the trimmings, stuffing, roast potatoes, parsnips and sweet potatoes, carrots, broccoli, Brussel sprouts and gravy! 

To follow that I thought I would do something quite light and refreshing and had settled on a Key Lime Pie which  I made yesterday and just needed to finish this morning. A baked biscuit shell filled with a smooth, creamy, lime middle and topped with lightly whipped double cream. However, Megan had an urge for my triple chocolate cheesecake so I decided to make that too. Although on checking my cupboards for the ingredients I discovered we were out of white chocolate so opted for a Double Chocolate Cheesecake instead! Just as yummy! 

They were much appreciated the only problem being there were only 8 of us to eat dessert and I have enough left to last for breakfast, lunch and tea until next Sunday lunch! Think I may have to share some of it with my friends at work tomorrow, not that they'll complain.


Our guests also had a chance to look through the first pages of my book and they said it was looking good, and said they would be more than happy to buy it once it was published!

Year 4 Cake Crumbly

So it's my first Cake Crumbly of the school year tomorrow. At lunch today in the staff room I was kindly advised that it had been announced in the staff meeting this morning that I would be baking for this weeks cake crumbly - no pressure then!!

Hmm! What to bake? I wanted to kill two birds with one stone so to speak and bake for the cake crumbly while still assisting myself in the book writing process. At Freya's request brownies were once again at the forefront and whipped up this morning while getting ready for school. Nothing like the smell of fresh brownies first thing in the morning. Mmm!

Then after tea we multitasked, testing Megan and Freya ready for their weekly spelling tests. Freya reading the recipes for me and for her reading diary and both girls doing a bit of baking along with me ready for cake crumbly, and as I was reminded by them for their lunch boxes.

I decided that I would go for Apricot and White Chocolate Chewy Bars and Lemon Drizzle Cake initially as they are both easy and quick to do. Followed by Gingerbread People which all (well nearly all!) children love! As you may have guessed this is the one the girls wanted to assist with, so I cut out the people for the cake crumbly and they were let loose with the left over dough. We have ended up with lots of tiny flowers, leaves and butterflies which Megan thinks are the perfect size for her lunch box tomorrow.

With bedtime approaching it was time for milk and for Megan to have a taster of the Gingerbread leaves. Then once peace had descended on the kitchen it was time for me to decorate my people, very relaxing. Now I hope that the children will enjoy eating them tomorrow as much as I enjoyed making them.

Rhubarb! Rhubarb!

After a bit of a break from doing any baking I decided that the awful British weather this morning warranted a delicious rhubarb crumble to follow our favourite Sunday Roast! Home grown rhubarb and a lovely, buttery, oaty crumble what more could you ask for? Served hot with vanilla ice cream -yummy!


Then after cooking some extra rhubarb I thought I would trial a recipe for rhubarb and almond cupcakes and I have to say it  turned out very well, even if it did only make 9 cupcakes instead of 12! Smaller cupcakes or an increase in quantities - which one will I choose?


The reason for the lull in baking has been that when I've had some time off work I've been catching up on the writing part of my book, so much so that I've now actually printed off some of the first set of pages to edit!
But the lull in baking will now have to cease as I have Freya's Year 4 cake crumbly this week, a card party with lots of cakes to taste for my friends next week and Megan's Year 6 cake crumbly the week after. Hmm what shall I bake this week? As if that wasn't enough I need to get the Christmas cake made too to give it plenty of time to prove with the brandy!! After all it's only 12 weeks until Christmas!

European Day!

Olá


So tomorrow is European Day at school and Year 4 is studying Portugal. Red, green and yellow attire for myself and Freya in the morning, well definitely for Freya and whatever I can find!

I found out this morning we are going to be baking "Pasta del Nata". This is an egg custard tart and something I've never made before so I copied the recipe and gave it a try this evening... and I have to say they didn't turn out too bad. They tasted OK too!

Then as is my want I decided to have a quick look at the internet and see what other Portuguese baking recipes were around. I found quite a few and settled on making some "Lavadores" which are a type of lemon cookie and a Portuguese Sweet Bread. The cookies turned out beautifully and I am still waiting to see if the bread is going to rise before I put it in the oven. 

Freya came downstairs just as I was making the cookies and wanted to help and she did a very good job too!


Hopefully the children will enjoy tasting them tomorrow along with the ones they will be making themselves. Fingers crossed the sweet bread turns out ok too!


Boa noite!

Pizza!! Hardly Cakes !!

Hmm! Hardly cakes is it, but fun never the less.

Today we had friends coming over for lunch so after cycling to the gym and back this morning it was time for some baking. A quick batch of my fail safe brownies to start with followed by Megan and Freya assisting me in making some Rock Cakes. I'd not had them for years! and they were just as I remembered. They smelled delicious while they were baking too - nutmeg and cinnamon! Megan was especially pleased when she tried them only to discover that they didn't feel or taste like rocks at all!!

Then we met up with our friends down the skate park for Freya to show off her moves on her skate board before coming back to make our own pizzas for tea. As you can see our little visitor was a complete natural and has a vocation at Dominos should he require it!!

We followed up the pizzas with a sticky toffee pudding that I had been wanting to try from Nigella for some time, and although it tasted very nice I have to say it wasn't exactly what I was expecting! Definitely some more searching required to find one I really like.

Different!

Well I'm not giving up the day job but have spent most of the day up on the scaffolding helping Pops fit new fascias to our house! I'm not sure how many times I have been up and down the ladder today but I have to say it is nice to sit down! And guess what more of the same for tomorrow and my days off this week.

In between, however, I did manage to bake a carrot cake and get it iced and a mars bar cake for the girls lunch boxes next week.

I'm looking forward to sampling the carrot cake later I've not made it for a while, and I definitely feel like I deserve it today!

Just Desserts!

An afternoon away from work and spent sitting in front of my laptop trying to remember details of my Just Desserts business from over 4 years ago to include in the Just Desserts section of my book! A little bit of the first draft follows:-

In July 2004 after making delicious desserts for dinner parties, families and friends I thought it would be a good idea to sell my desserts to others who might be having a dinner party or gathering. After plenty of research, a course in food hygiene and lots of preparation I was ready to start my own business from home and called it Just Desserts.

I started by inviting all my girls, neighbours and their friends to my house for an introduction to Just Desserts and a tasting evening. My kitchen was quite bijou then so I set up at least 20 desserts on two dining tables in my lounge. It looked fabulous and I felt very proud if a little nervous as everyone began to arrive. How had I managed to pull it all together?

There were at least thirty ladies salivating around the table when I started by giving a very short speech and then proceeded to describe my way through all the desserts, dishing out tasters as I went. The fantastic feedback was more than I could have imagined and hoped for and by the end of the evening I had the first orders confirmed in my diary. Everyone left feeling replete and most took doggy bags home for husbands and partners to sample too.

The business started and continued to do well, with Christmas being a particularly busy time, one Christmas Eve I had to complete and deliver over 20 desserts! It was then that I felt my children were missing out as I had less time to spend with them, weekends being when most of my baking would need to be done. So after over two years and pleasingly in profit I decided to close Just Desserts and to revert to baking just for family and friends.

So there we have it, it still needs work but I'll slowly getting there. I wanted to include a photo of all the desserts for you to see but Ian is away and I have no idea how to retrieve it from an older storage file! Another time!