Back at the start of November I woke up one morning with a sudden urge for a winter flavoured coffee. No one else was up and it was cold outside, so as I waited for the coffee to brew I thought about how I could get that taste I wanted.
The taste I wanted was the taste to wake up to on a cold snowy morning, when the Christmas tree is up, something warm and spicy.
I have put off making cheesecake for years, reading so many recipes but worrying about cracks or soggy bases or that I wouldn’t be able to get it from the tin. But when it came down to it, it was actually super simple.
This weekend I bought a pie dish with a fluted edge. I wanted my first homemade apple pie to be just a little bit special.
In fact there were a lot of things I wanted from this pie. I wanted it to be the perfect end to my Sunday lunch. I wanted it to be perfectly warm after a cold walk out in park. I wanted it to be just like my Gran’s Apple Pie. As much as I love cinnamon I didn’t want this to be an American Apple Pie and I wanted this to be different from the pies you get in the supermarket.
Oh dear I was expecting a lot from this pie.
Over the weekend I have been over indulging on scones, scones, more scones and the occasional pumpkin cookie. Despite all this I have not disgusted myself quite enough to stop from it altogether. An emergency plan is needed, I need to trick my own brain!
I need something that tastes scrumptious, autumnal, indulgent and cosy, but doesn’t do so by piling on the calories. With this goal and left over pumpkin puree from yesterday tonight I made and tasted my first Pumpkin Spiced Latte.
When you have been away from something for a while you don’t always want to jump straight back in at the deep end. So this blog post contains no recipe, no steps and nothing with cobwebs, ghosts or witches fingers. Enjoy.
The September 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John’s source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation.
The summer months are just long enough to forget how difficult it can be to get decent lighting for photos. I do most of my baking in the evening, by the time its finished it’s too dark to take good shots. I ended up taking these photos in the morning sunshine, but somehow it’s not the same.
This is the second yoghurt cake I’ve made in the last week. This is by far the prettier of the two.
This week I saw a punnet of British Cherries in the supermarket and it reminded me of this Cherry Bread I made a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately this was before I could get my hands on the British cherries at all.
I love cherries as you can probably tell from all the cherry recipes: cherry mince pies if you were really organised you could start thinking about making your mincemeat now, cherry bakewell cake, cherry and almond bread and a cherry teabread. Not even to mention the other draft posts I have for cherry recipes…
There is an inherent difference between men and women, or at least between Matt and I. I want fuss and time and effort, Matt wants anything for the easy life – the less stress version.
This is most obvious by looking at what I made each of us for a birthday cake. I wanted a stunning three layer brightly coloured cake, lots of time, lots of effort, lots of stress and essentially (in this case) disappointment.
Matt however wanted… nothing, he wouldn’t be drawn on what he wanted at all as his birthday cake this year. For a while I thought about making a lemon torte, but I have tried umpteen different recipes and none of them worked, none of them were really even tasty. In the end I gave in to what he wanted which was the least stress option.
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