The C Word

OK, so we're still not mentioning Ch****** round here, not until at least Dec 1st, but that doesn't mean that Little Miss Organised here can't be prepared.

Certain things are just necessary - like when you need to 'feed' certain puddings for 2 months before they're fit to grace your table! So, on Sunday I set to work on the annual Ch****** pudding. About 10lbs of fruit, 1/2 pint of brandy (and maybe a cheeky bit of sherry I found in the cupboard!), 2 huge mixing bowls and a lot of cramming and voila! A 4 pint pudding!

Then, 10 hours of steaming, which meant a day of brandy/mixed spice smells wafting through the house (mmmmmmmmm....):

And the result is lovely plump, brandy fuelled pud:

It's now safely wrapped up and in the garage, ready for it's first 'feed' in a week or 2.

***WARNING*** Drivers and children - Do not even sniff Lou's Ch****** pudding!

Messy (But Fun!) Pre-Birthday Preparations

I decided it might be fun for the kids to help with some of the birthday stuff. Xander's not going to nursery tomorrow as he has a fun day out planned with his fave little cousin Evie, so I thought I'd send some buns in for all the kids at nursery today instead.

So, yesterday teatime I set the kids to work! While Emily sifted flour Xander set out the bun cases (lots of different colours, just to cause arguments (mwahahaha!)):
He and Emily then spooned the mixture into the bun cases, which they loved as it was all gloopy!

Mummy put them in the oven as Xander kept reminding me a la Big Cook Little Cook that the oven was 'hot, hot, hot!' and the kids got to work on cleaning the bowls:

After tea it was time to decorate the buns, so mummy poured on the melted chocolate and Xan and Em added some Smarties:

And how excited was Xander this morning when he realised that he got to take them for all his friends!

I hope they all enjoyed them! On further baking news, the birthday cake is in the oven and smells fab! Fingers crossed I can make it look something like a carpark!

As Promised...

I've had a few people ask how to make these - Baileys & White Chocolate Cupcakes - so here's the recipe:

Cupcakes:
175g self-raising flour
175g caster sugar
110g butter
2 eggs (beaten)
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 tbsp milk
55g white chocolate chips

Icing:
2 tbsp Baileys Irish Cream
55g butter
175g icing sugar

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/ gas mark 4. Line cupcake baking tray with paper liners.

2. Place flour, caster sugar and butter in a bowl and mix with an electric hand-mixer on medium speed (I used a food processor instead).

3. Add in the eggs, one by one, beating well. Add the vanilla extract and milk and mix together. Fold in the white chocolate chips.

4. Spoon the mixture into the cupcake tray, up to 3/4 full. Place in the oven for 18-20 mins. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 5-10 mins. Remove the cupcakes from the baking tray and allow to cool on a wire rack.

5. Place the butter and Baileys in a bowl and beat together. Gradually add in the icing sugar, beating the mixture in until smooth and creamy.

6. Spread over each cupcake and leave to set.

I got this recipe from a cupcake recipe book that the lovely Marie bought me. There's a whole section on alcoholic cupcakes so watch this space for more drunken cakes! Hic!

New Year Goodies!

I had a sudden urge today to do the first batch of baking of the year. Mainly spurred on by the amount of baking stuff left over from all the Christmas cooking plus a desire to use the food processor my mum gave me the other day (how did I live without one of those for so long?!)

So, first to be used up was some slightly(!) over-ripe bananas and some of the chocolate mountain that the kids had accumalated over the Christmas period. There's only one thing to make when you've lots of bananas, and that's Banana & Choc Chip Muffins (recipe donated by my lovely neighbour Jill!). I swear they are the easiest thing ever to whip up and they taste delicious!By now I was on a role and wanted to bake more stuff. Whilst Christmas shopping a couple of months ago, I spotted this little beauty in my local baragin book shop:
Instantly, my little cupcake queen Marie sprang to mind, so I picked one up as a little present for her. Then walked round the shop and went back to pick up another! So, I had a flick through and found a perfect recipe to try and use up some of the spice rack overflow: Spiced Apple Muffins:

The smell of them baking alone was enough to get anyone drooling!

Of course, my little crafty goddess-in-training wanted to get in on the baking frenzy, so she had a look through the book and chose to make these butterfly muffins:

We only had wholemeal self raising flour in the cupboard but thankfully this worked fine and was a healthy balance to the marshmallows and shocking pink buttercream! Emily certainly didn't have any complaints:

So, the only problem was that, 32 muffins later, we didn't have any room left in the cake box as it's still full of Christmas cake, mince pies and yule log! Thankfully, muffins freeze (I hope!) so they're now in my freezer for those 'oh, I've just popped round for a cuppa' moments. I'll get the kettle on...

So What's The Problem With Green All Of A Sudden?

With it being the last day of school, I needed to make Emily something to take in for her teachers. Foolproof year after year, mini Christmas pudding chocolates; I've made them year on year and they never fail to please.

So, off I troop to Asda with my list of ingredients: chocolate, check; nuts, check; glace cherries, check; angelica, er...hello, angelica? Nope, not a sniff of angelica down the baking aisle. OK, so maybe there's not must call for little pieces of green jellified sugar anymore; I know, I'll go buy some green sweets instead. After all, they're only to make teeny tiny holly leaves for the top of the Xmas puddings: sweet aisle - nowt, not a green sweet in sight! But surely kids like eating green things (Emily certainly seems to like to every time she gets on stage at Christmas plays!).

Not to worry, we have a cupboard full of sweets at home, I'll just improvise when I get home. So, puddings are made and chilling in the fridge, chocolate's all ready to be melted, cherries are diced into mini cherry shapes and into the sweet cupboard I go - no green sweets! What?!! Aha, I spy a tube of fruit pastilles - off comes the wrapper and I empty out the sweets - there's 1 green one! I look at the 52 sweets I've just made, each needing 2 leaves: hmmm, 1 fruit pastille cut into 104? I'm guessing that ain't going to work...

So, routing through the baking cupboard, I find a bottle of green food colouring! Woohoo! And, a bag of mini marshmallows! Double woohoo! So, after chopping each mini marshmallow into 8, out comes the pastry brush and on goes the green!

At this point, the phone goes, it's Kay:

K - "Hi, what are you up to?"

L - "I'm painting marshmallows green"

K - "Er, sorry?"

L - "I told you, I'm painting marshmallows green"

The only words I heard then inbetween the laughter were on the lines of 'saddo', 'what would Nigella say?' etc etc. Anyway, for Kay's benefit, here's the proof that yes, her friend is the sort of sad cow that will paint 104 individual marshmallow pieces green:

However, they were worth it in the end:

Kay, bet my green marshmallows aren't so funny when you want to test one are they?!

In other crafty related news, I've done a bit of scrapbooking this week. I just had to scrap the snow pictures from the other week and after a bit of blog hopping, came across this sketch which worked perfectly!

Right, better toodle, have a busy weekend and believe it or not, even more marshmallows to dye green!

A What Cake Cooked In A What?!!

Yesterday, I decided to try something new in the baking department. I made a cake from a new recipe book I got last week. What's in it? Carrot and parsnip! Yes, that's parsnip as favoured in a Sunday Roast, but not really top of a cake ingredients list! But, why on earth not, thought I'd give it a go!

Then, the other unusual thing about this recipe. Did I stick it in a cake tin and bang it in the oven? No, where would the fun be in that? It went in the slow cooker for a few hours! Don't know if I've missed something all these years but I've never heard of cooking a cake in a slow cooker. So far, my slow cooker experience has been chilli, chilli and chilli; so last week I bought a slow cooker cook book and so far, it's been pretty successful. The other night I made Italian sausage stew which was absolutely beautiful, so when I saw they did puddings, I thought I'd trust them!

And the verdict? De-blooming-licicious!

Oreo Overload!!

For those of you who have ever talked to me online at around 10am on a weekday morning, you'll probably know that I'm normally sat here with my third cup of coffee of the morning, and doing something like this: Yes, I am a bit of an Oreo lover and the highlight of my day is having a couple of the round chocolatey lovlies as my elevenses (OK tenses, sometimes ninethirtyses!). So, there I was at lunchtime today studying away when my old email pingpong buddy Marie sends me this. Now, Shimelle is a bit of a crafty legend anyway and her cupcake recipes are normally to die for, but cupcakes AND Oreos? Surely such a thing is just too good for humankind to stand?! So, I tried to carry on with my work, but I kept getting flashes of the choclately goodness and eventually, at 3pm, I gave in and downed tools and trotted off to Sainsburys for supplies!

Now, they didn't all go accordingly to plan (Note to self: Shimelle is a cupcake goddess, so when she says fill the cases 3/4 full you fill them 3/4 full, not all the way to the top! Bad cupcake amateur!) but I had a decent amount of success. Just look at the yumminess:



You're drooling aren't you?!

Of course, my usual taste testers were all to willing to do a spot of quality control for me, just to make sure!
So now I have about 30 of the lovely little things sat in my fridge...calling me...Lou, you must eat us.....

Muffin Madness!

So far this week, I've made a total of 48 muffins!! It started out as having some over ripe bananas and the only banana recipe I know is Banana & Choc Muffins. Then I decided that I needed to make a tonne of muffins and cupcakes for Xander's birthday, so decided to try some recipes from the cupcake queen herself, Marie!

So, as Emily finishes reception class tomorrow and I suddenly realised that you needed to give presents to the teachers, off I trotted to Morrisons to spend a fortune on baking stuff. May aswell practise on her old teachers, if they go wrong I'll never see them again! LOL!


Anyway, today's muffins were Raspberry & Vanilla and M&M cupcakes. Yum! I've tried one of the raspberry ones (not as good as Marie's but I'm still learning!) and Rob and Emily have both given me the thumbs up for the M&M ones! So, next on the list? Carrot, Orange and Cinnamon. Anyone drooling yet?!