By Alice | Published:
November 1, 2010
The last two I did are now gone so I fancied doing another one, this time I carved a fish into the pumpkin.
I got the idea to do a fish from this fan.
Here it is lit up.
The view from the window in the morning, the leaves are amazing at the moment.
Cats really know how to relax don’t they!
Some friends came around on Saturday which gives a good reason to bake. The Moomin cutters I got in Japan. The hippo I found at a charity sale, I think it might have once been part of a Zoo set.
The recipe I tried out was Nigel Slater’s Brown Sugar Spice Biscuits, the recipe is at the end of this article. I like my gingerbread a little more fiery so I would increase the amount of ginger next time and perhaps roll them thinner. The cardamom in his recipe is a nice touch though.
I like a weekend that has room for these sort of random things alongside all the bustle :)
By Alice | Published:
October 29, 2010
1. Increase fairy string light quota.
2. Mulled wine.
I got some new lights for inside the house. I don’t quite have as many as Nigella… yet. Mulled wine is also another perk of this season. It seems that Oxford is a very mulled wine sort of place, most pubs will do it from about now through to next year. There are hundreds of different mulled wine recipes, some involve things like Earl Grey tea and brandy. However if I make it at home I have a quick recipe of 2 parts red wine to 1 part fresh orange juice plus a couple of cloves, a dash of cinnamon, and a teaspoon or two of honey. Then heat very gently for a few minutes in a pan. For me the key is not over spicing it, cloves can be very powerful. There is also the non-alcoholic version of heating cloudy apple juice with the mulling spices which is very tasty. Roll on winter.
Also posted in Cooking, The house, Yum |
By Alice | Published:
October 8, 2010
Cake! I made an apple cake from Nigel Slater’s Tender II, the recipe is at the end of this article, it’s great. As we had no particular need for a whole cake I froze most of the pieces, each wrapped in baking paper. Ideal for a rainy day…
With the cats I feel I must feature them both equally but Ira must have been off on some important kitty business so Beep will have to represent.
Also posted in Cats, Cooking |
By Alice | Published:
August 9, 2010
Some other things that we did for my dad’s birthday. I cooked haddock, with mashed potato, spinach, and mustard sauce. There is a roughly similar recipe here. I was trying to recreate something I had eaten here on the Monday before. My sister made bread and butter pudding which is one of my dad’s favourites. It’s the dish with the candles in the third picture. We joked that it looked like lasagne :) She used the recipe from the Dorie Greenspan book Baking From My Home to Yours
(the gluten intolerant members of our family weren’t there on this occasion), and it was really good.
By Alice | Published:
June 10, 2010
I made Elizabeth David‚Äôs Chocolate Almond Cake again, this time for my mother’s birthday celebration. It is such a good cake anyway but I love it because it so happens to be gluten free so I can make it for my family. It is made with almonds rather than flour so it has that lovely brownie type moistness. Sometime I would like to give it a go with some other flavours added, orange would probably be awesome.
I kept it straight chocolate on this occasion as I wanted to also make a ginger ice-cream to go on the side. To do this I made a vanilla ice-cream then just before I was putting it in the freezer to set I mixed through lots of chopped crystallised ginger and little pieces of dark chocolate. Crystallised ginger is quite sweet anyway so I kept the vanilla ice-cream on the less sweet side. I however think this could perhaps be made with shop-bought vanilla ice cream – just get a tub of it and mix through the ginger and chocolate pieces. I got the idea from having tried a Waitrose version at Simon’s parents house, my mum loves ginger so I had to give it a go. It was a success! Definitely a good combination.
Also posted in Cooking, Gluten Free |
