Let’s get started.

I know I need to finish up the Universal Studios/Harry Potter recap post.  I fell into a bit of a slump this week.  I had such a great week the week before with a grad school weekend and then an amazing trip to Orlando with Meg and our magic golden pass (which won’t make sense until I actually finish that post.  I know.)   I got home from vacation on the 9th, even got great news from Claire about something at work that I didn’t want to happen, NOT happening!  And THEN they made the announcement that our office was going all casual all the time.  That’s right – I can wear jeans to work every. single. day.  I was on a roll!  And yet, the slump was starting to set in.  Life is a roller coaster not unlike the ones I had been riding just days ago…(I acknowledge that is a super cheesy metaphor.  Let’s get past it.)  What goes up…must come down.

So, I’m working through the post great week blues and little things keep irritating me.  Getting the grade back for a paper I was kind of terrified of and getting a really good score, but one that could have been .5 points better had I not made some silly editing mistakes.  Cranky that friends of mine are far away in Richmond, Cleveland, Memphis, Columbus, Boston and New York and I don’t see them more.  Grumpy that the travel budget I typically use to see these friends once or twice a year is being eaten up by monthly trips to glamorous Toledo, Ohio for school (which is so worth it, I know.  Man, the inner dialogue in my head is driving me nuts – can’t imagine how it must feel to read this.)

And then yesterday happens.  I won’t pretend that I can even imagine what those families are going through this morning.  It’s Christmas – those kids had presents under a tree already, you know?  Parents just thought it was another regular day.  There’s really nothing I can say that hasn’t been said or even adequately expresses how heartbreaking yesterday’s tragedy is.  We never know when the biggest days of our life are going to happen.

Which leads me to the running part of this post.  This morning was the one year anniversary run, if you will.  I ran the Reindeer 5K last year as the official beginning of my training program for the 1/2 marathon that I thought I’d be running February 2013.  It was hard to get up for it this morning.  I’ve run races by myself before, but this morning was different.  It was cold and windy and gloomy.  I had a heavy heart from yesterday.  But I got out of bed, synced up a new playlist called “31″ and got dressed.  I only had to walk across the street to the park for this race.  There was no excuse not to be there.

Me last year getting ready for this race…

Me this year! I wore the same shirt.

True story – I love to over tilt my head in photos.  Moving on…  Earlier this week I ran a 5K in right at 31 minutes.  Excellent.  I made that my goal for the race this morning thinking race adrenaline and excitement may even push me faster.

This happened a few days ago…Awesome!

Not the case.  I got out there and struggled.  Still thought about going home and getting back into bed.  No one would ever know.  I didn’t go home.  I started running.  I do like running through Tower Grove Park so much.  And I was just running.  And I knew I wasn’t fast and I didn’t feel like I was running great.  That’s fine.  My overall goals are always just to finish and preferably not finish last.  I figured I’d settle into a rhythm soon.  And I was fine until just after mile 2 when my usual running mantra almost made me burst into tears.  During the half marathon training I would repeat to myself that I was running for those who can’t.  That took on a whole new thing this morning after yesterday’s shooting news.  Six year olds who just showed up to school are now the ones I was thinking of.  Running for those who should have been running around on a playground.

I kept it together.  I focused on some guy and told myself to stay with him.  I ended up passing him before we crossed the finish line.

This morning. Eh.

Not quite as fast as I would have liked.  But I finished.  It’s officially my best race 5K time.  I guess the Color Run was the last timed 5K I did and it was just under 34 minutes.  The Girl Scout Run I did I averaged a 10:37 min/mile and this was 10:19.  So, it’s improvement.  We get better.

But I’m still a little cranky about it. This is my grumpy face.

We’re done with the grumpy now, though.  Because life is just too short to be grumpy.  Because you just don’t know what the next day brings.  And last night, after a day of sad, tragic news – I got to spend the evening with this chick -

And her mom…

I watched that kid tuck into some fruit puree like nobody’s business.

And we drank delicious wine from Trader Joe’s.  Delicious and cheap!

But most importantly, we made cookies.  I taught Angela all these fun techniques I learned last year when I was working at the cooking school.  We made real royal icing with meringue powder and so much powdered sugar.  The funniest moment of the night was when Angela, 20 minutes after tasting the icing, blurts out, “I can still feel it on my teeth!”

She only referred to me as being really bossy about the way I decorate cookies a dozen times, so that’s not so bad.  There’s a really funny clip of Amy Sedaris on the Martha Stewart Show and Martha says to Amy: “I try to make things look like they should, and you just try to make it look like it does.”  I use this clip when I train the Disc Profile all the time as an example of S style behaviors.  Martha wigs out when Amy tries to add the salt – it’s pretty funny.  Anyway – apparently all of my S tendencies came out last night while making cookies.

Who decorated it best?

I know it’s not a competition, but I am really proud of my cookies.

We also made Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookies.  Ummmmm… I’m not sure about these.  I love the Friday Favorites post on the blog Iowa Girl Eats.  She always compiles a list of fun stuff from around the web that I would have never found on my own and I have been inspired to try more than one thing she’s put out there.  This time it was these cookies, which were really from a blog called Sally’s Baking Addiction.

Here is a link to the recipe…and below is the picture she posted of the finished product.

Photo from Sally’s Baking Addiction

Here is how Angela and I’s cookies came out…

Nailed it!

I do not know how she still has those legitimate caramel chunks in the cookies.  Ours melted into gooey (and delicious) little pools.  The cookies also spread out more than I would have liked.  I do not know the cause of this.  They taste good.  No amount of good camera work is going to make them look like the original photo, though.  Oh well.  I don’t know if I would try them again.  The caramel kind of sticks in your teeth as you eat them.  They’re tasty.  They’re a good idea.  They don’t exactly pan out.

Anyway – there you go – three posts in one.  A slumpy week that ends in sad perspective brought on by a tragedy, a year later run and cookie night in America.

Little drops of heaven?

Detailed post coming soon!

On Tuesday, I hosted my sorority’s annual holiday cookie exchange. Our best turnout year had over a dozen people, but this year was a paltry four. One girl made Snickerdoodles, another made peanut butter cookies and the third made potato chip cookies. The potato chip cookies were pretty interesting (a hint of saltiness)–I’d heard of those before but never tried them.

It’s a super simple party to throw–evite, get some drinks (I just did hot chocolate, and everyone only wanted water) and remind people to bring copies of their recipe and an empty container for all their cookies!

I made a recipe Lesley pinned from Recipe Girl for Peppermint Sugar Cookies.

Recipe Girl’s Peppermint Sugar Cookies

They turned out pretty well. I wasn’t totally in love, but I liked them, and they look really pretty. After reading the reviews I subbed granulated sugar for some of the powdered sugar. It worked fairly well (but its not like I know how the recipe would work as written).

I served hot chocolate and we sat around and chatted and snacked on cookies before we exchanged. This was also a great plan for holiday party prep–I scheduled it so that I could use my cookies for dessert at my Christmas party on Saturday.

What’s your favorite kind of cookie?

I tried with the title, okay? Don’t judge me. Anywhooooo….

Snickerdoodles. The name is awesome, don’t you think? Earlier that day when we were baking, I was wondering how these delicious cookies got their name. According to Wikipedia (I know we’re not supposed to cite from there, but whatevs! School’s almost out, and I’m getting a head start), snickerdoodles might have come from the German word Schneckennudeln (“snail noodles”), a kind of pastry. Or just a mash up of words from New England. I’m too lazy to do further research, so if there are any snickerdoodle experts out there, feel free to let us know what’s up.

I got the recipe from this sweet blog again. She’s awesome, so go check her out if you want to cook something good.

Fat Fluffy Snickerdoodles

makes 16-20 cookies

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

2 tablespoons milk

1/4 cup sugar + 1 tablespoon cinnamon for dipping

Preheat oven to 375.

Cream butter and sugar with an electric mixer until smooth. Add egg and vanilla, mixing well until combine, about 2 minutes. Stir in flour, baking powder, salt, and 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon. Mix until dough comes together. Add in milk. If dough is still crumbly, add milk 1 tablespoon at a time until it comes together. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

In a bowl combine remaining sugar and cinnamon. Remove dough from fridge and roll into big 1 1/2 inch balls. Dip in cinnamon sugar mixture and place on baking sheet. Lightly press down on dough to flatten it. Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes.

This is me and Julius’s first time baking cookies from scratch. We did pretty well for our first time (it’s probably because these are really easy to make). Oh! And my mom bought a new stand mixer for the kitchen, so that made things even easier.

I wanted to pick the recipes I’m going to bake for my family’s Christmas party, and I think there’s a good chance that this might be one of them. However, Julius (and a whole lot of other people) are requesting that I make chocolate chip cookies for the holidays too, so maybe I’ll make those instead. Decisions decisions decisions.

Like I mentioned earlier, we didn’t have a hard time making these cookies (baking them is a different story though). The dough (to my knowledge) turned out great. If it’s not supposed to look like that please let me know!

I never knew baking cookies was so fun. My favorite part was rolling the cookies into balls and rolling them around in cinnamon and sugar. IT’S SO FUN.

Rolling rolling rolling. I don’t know about you guys, but I honestly felt like the Prince from the video game, Katamari Damacy. If you’ve played that game before you’re badass. Just sayin’

Julius was cute. He had a lot of fun pressing the dough balls down with a small ramekin.

Things were going great. The first batch was in the oven, we were working on our second batch, and my kitchen was starting to smell heavenly. You can really smell the cinnamon. If only my house could smell like that all the time…….. Anyways, the first batch came out great. They were fat and fluffy just like the recipe promised! However, disaster struck when I put the second and third batch in the oven.

This is embarrassing, but I’m still going to say it. MY COOKIES CAUGHT ON FIRE!!! Okay, well not my cookies per say. It was actually these burnt pieces of batter that overflowed in the stove when I tried making red velvet cake earlier in the morning. I think I can safely say that I suck at reacting to emergencies. Or maybe it’s just fire emergencies? But it’s still an emergency, so it’s still bad. I know. Thank goodness Julius was there to help put it out.

More good news is that most of my cookies survived. Only three got seriously burnt, but that’s not bad at all.

This is my first baking disaster, and I’m pretty sure there’s more to come. Oh well! Sift happens. (See what I did there? I hope you saw what I did there).

Fat snickerdoodles for Christmas?

Detailed post coming soon!

When I was little, there was this one dish that my mum used to make me that I went absolutely nuts for. It was a fairly simple, but utterly brilliant concept: spinach and egg, covered with mashed tatties, covered with cheese, from the oven. I may have to admit, it’s not very sophisticated, nothing culinary about it, it really is a dish for kids. It contains no ingredients with strong flavours, it doesn’t require much chewing, and it’s topped with cheese – grilled cheese, that universal cheat of cooks.

But it’s really nice, and I still sometimes have it. It makes me feel good. Maybe because it’s delicious. Maybe because it reminds me of my mum taking care of me when I was a youngster. (I’m sure Freud would have something fascinating to say about this – mommy issues, expressed in my choice of food.) Either way, it’s comfort food. It’s easy to make, more or less healthy, and not all that expensive.

You can use frozen spinach or fresh, either is fine, but if you use fresh, you’ll have to wilt it before putting it in the oven.

For 2, you’ll need:

• 250 gr fresh spinach, or the equivalent of frozen spinach
• 2 eggs
• 3 large potatoes
• some butter and milk to make mash
• cheese of your own choice (I use normal cheddar)

Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Peel and boil the potatoes in water with enough salt, then mash them with some butter and some milk.

Boil the eggs until they’re hard all the way through. Peel them and chop them up into bits.

Roughly cut the spinach and wilt it in a frying pan with a little bit of butter. Once that’s done, take an oven dish and put the spinach in it. Add the egg (you can mix it or just make it into a separate layer), top that with the mashed potatoes, and finally with a layer of cheese.

Stick the dish in the oven for about 15 minutes. Then turn the grill on and wait until the cheese is nice and grilled.

Do leave a comment if you like, and tell me about your favourite food from when you were young. I’m actually quite interested.

So ranting aside, I’ll distract myself with a run down of how today I knit myself the cutest grey-blue slouchy toque and made coconut macaroon cookies for the first time in my life. Both were a roaring success, so I see many more in the future. Macaroons at least, I really don’t need anymore hats, though I suppose that they could be presents. I just don’t know that many people who wear hats very often. Either way I guess I need to get some sleep, since I will be having a relatively busy weekend. I’ll take my chance while there’s a lull in the music.

My Document Word Count: 57227

NaNo Verification Word Count: 55542

Sometimes I think the computer knows about that 2000 word chunk that I will be deleting without shame. I’m not really sure what accounts for the difference, but since last year it left me scrabbling a few hundred words short I made sure to give myself a big buffer zone this year. I was really glad that I got to verify finally though because despite trying to add the second part to the novel I didn’t really know what I was doing and was definitely done the writing phase. I love the writing phase, but at this point the editing phase has become absolutely necessary.

I’ve known I’m done because I’ve been working on other things, including The Marking and spending time on non-writing related things. A whole lot of knitting has happened, including having KS over for knitting and Community last night. I’ve been doing a whole lot of knitting, pretty much deciding that almost everyone I know gets something homemade for Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, I went to Candy Town in Yaletown with JW on Friday, but it wasn’t that impressive. We surmised that it would probably be a lot better on the actual weekend as opposesd to Friday when there weren’t a lot of people getting out to see what was there. On the plus side, roasted chestnuts! Always remind me of searching out Geisha in Kyoto, that’s the first time I ever had them, such good memories.

I also spent several days doing nothing but knitting and watching a whole lot of Doctor Who. Endless supplies are necessary, but alas our entertainment system is going throught the fits and spurts of slowly dying right at the worst times. At least it waited until I was done blubbering like a baby in Bad Wolf Bay to die the first time. Today I am watching Star Wars, starting with A New Hope and ending with Return of the Jedi, because I’m not a masochist. I feel like it’s been ages since I last watched, but in Star Wars time that’s more like a few months, tops. And I love that from start to finish I can still laugh, sigh, and get hit right in the feels, no matter how many times I’ve seen it.

Guess which one is the most matured? Most of us got it wrong.

Today is Stir-up Sunday, which according to Wikipedia (as after seven years of living here I’m still trying to work out the Brits), is the day before Advent which is basically the Christmas season for most Western churches (do correct me if I’m wrong!). So all of the Christmas stuff you’ve seen in the shops which may have sent you into a panic as what on earth to get the in-laws again, yeah, that’s basically to lure you in, the official Christmas season really starts tomorrow.

Stir-up Sunday is used in the culinary world as the day to put together your Christmas puddings to let them stand for several weeks and soak up all the goodness. If you’re super organised, you’ll actually be preparing next year’s pud as they can actually sit there fermenting for up to 18 months. The term comes from the 16th century when on the Sunday before Advent, British women would inadvertently be reminded at church that it was only several weeks now until Christmas so you’d better get home and start getting the pudding ready, ensuring that every member of the family makes a wish and stirs the pudding from east to west.

I was quite surprised when I received an email from Asda inviting me to participate in Stir-up Sunday as my experiences of baking in our East End Abode haven’t been brilliant to say the least (only Mr Man recalls my pistachio macaron disaster thank heavens) but as an expat still trying to get their head around quirky British traditions I was too intrigued not to accept. So on Tuesday I popped along to the fabulous Leiths School of Food and Wine in West London to see a demonstration of making the perfect Christmas pudding then had the chance to make my own, to bring home and steam today, then made mince pies from scratch.

Puds and their stars

Asda has partnered with Leiths to create their Extra Special Christmas menu which includes a range of foods for those of us who aren’t brilliant in the kitchen or just don’t have the time to go all out in preparing Christmas related food. I got to try some of the Extra Special menu on Tuesday and really enjoyed it. Being a bit of a sucker for Christmas mince pies I was grateful for the opportunity but will definitely be looking forward to the New Year Detox – like most of us, all good intentions for having a healthy Christmas seem to go out the window for me about a week before 1 December and I descend into a downward spiral filled with Christmas mince pies, shortbread, Quality Street, Lindt chocolate balls, roast potatoes, stuffing, the lot…

Here’s what we did… 

We made and wrapped Christmas puddings, from scratch, with the help of Leiths chef Nick Timothy who is the man in charge of putting together Asda’s Extra Special Christmas range. This took ages but it’s actually not that hard (except for the tying it up bit which you do need a second pair of hands).

Stirring it all in.

We then went on to make Christmas mince pies, even making the shortcrust pastry ourselves. That part took ages and my hand hurt. In future I will just buy the pastry but still fill the mince pies as apparently there’s not that much difference between good shop bought and handmade pastry – it’s just butter, salt, eggs, sugar, water and flour after all.

Tools

Then it was on to chocolate dipped Christmas tree biscuits. Thankfully the biscuits came ready made (and are quite moreish) and all we had to do was heat up the chocolate, dip the biscuits then decorate with almonds. They look great.

We dipped Christmas tree biscuits in their Extra Special chocolate which has a hint of pineapple in it – delicious.

The results of the mince pies – before and after:

The final event – my Christmas mince pies which ended up tasting quite good. Feedback from colleagues the next day was that they were great. Yay!

And then we got to fill ourselves with some of the other food from the Extra Special range and I was quite impressed, particularly with the Nocerella green olives and prawn dumplings.

My Christmas pudding is now steaming for the next 10-12 hours and after that I think I’m supposed to just leave it to sit until Christmas day when it gets re-steamed for 2 hours, blob on some vanilla icecream (or custard if that’s your thing) and hopefully appreciate the goodness that has gone into it. I will turn up with a back-up pudding just in case I’ve managed to screw this one up – here’s Plan B.

So now I can turn up to the in-laws this year with not only a bottle or two of NZ Marlborough Sauvingon Blanc but a real Christmas pudding, made with some help from the lovely Chef Nick, but ultimately the very first pudding to ever appear from our East End Abode and my adult life to be honest. And for that Asda, I am very grateful.

And now the Christmas panic begins and I go into a wild rampage down Oxford Street (with their awful Marmite lights, seriously, talk about a way to alienate half the population!) every few nights until I find Mr Man the perfect present. Have you started your Christmas shopping yet? Have you ever attempted to make Christmas pudding???

I was a guest of Asda and Leith’s School of Food and Wine on Tuesday night but was not obligated in any way to write this post or say positive things about it. All views are my own basically (especially the part about Marmite which you either love or hate). Thank you very much for having me Asda. 

Asda’s Christmas range – I was pleasantly surprised. It’s really good!

Today was our first attempt at baking from scratch. I forgot to mention that I (Nyssa) will be focusing on baking and Julius will be focusing on cooking. This week we were baking, and I chose to bake some Red Velvet Cake! However, my mom took the cake pan with her this morning so I had to settle for cupcakes instead. I got the recipe from this amazing blog.
The result was a lot better than I expected. I feared that I would mess this up…badly (and I did mess up a little — will expand later). But the cupcakes were edible, and they tasted either “okay” or “good.” It was our first time baking from scratch, so we weren’t complaining. On to the process!

The first step in the recipe was to “cream the shortening and sugar.” Okay. Honestly, I did not know how to cream anything, so I had to search the Internet for some tips. I managed to find an awesome guide that gave great tips on mixing. Creaming the shortening was kind of…weird because it didn’t look like cream. At first it just looked like clumps. When I read the packaging on the shortening it said that “water + shortening = substitution butter” so I thought that I needed to add water. It still looked the same, so I decided to just move on and add in the eggs. The batter started looking like batter after every egg we put in, so we were hoping everything was okay.

The steps after that went smoothly, and the batter started looking good. Julius was amazing today because he was just so helpful. I felt like we really worked as a team today. Woohoo! Anyways…The next part that was new to us was sifting! We had to sift some salt and cake flour, and Julius said he’ll take care of it. It took a while, and I think he gained some extra hand muscles, but he got it done beautifully.

After we put the trays into the oven, we started working on the frosting. It was a lot easier to make than the batter (I’m guessing it’s because we got accustomed to using the mixer). I’m just wondering if I mixed it long enough. I’m not too familiar with Red Velvet Cakes/Cupcakes, so I wasn’t sure if the frosting was supposed to be light? Thick? It tasted alright though.

The main problem we had was the baking itself. Since I had to switch from cakes to cupcakes, I wasn’t sure how long I was supposed to leave the trays in there. I decided to base it off of the Angel Food Cupcakes I did two weeks ago, and left it in there for 18-22 minutes. Well that was the first batch, and that turned out a little burnt. (Just the edges of the cupcakes and the bottom). The second tray turned out okay, and the third (after learning the right timing) was good. They came out pretty flat though, and that bugged me. I wasn’t sure what I did wrong because I followed the ingredients of the recipe I linked above. Julius’ brother (he bakes a lot) said that the reason why the cupcakes didn’t “poof” was because we didn’t add baking powder. I think that’s the reason because it slipped my mind that I was following a CAKE recipe and not a CUPCAKE recipe. I then checked other cupcake recipes and…Alas! There was baking powder listed. Lesson learned.

Overall, the cupcakes weren’t bad. I’m quite proud of us for not screwing them up entirely. My friend and my dad said they were good, so that lifted my spirits. My mom was a little more critical, but that’s understandable because she bakes more than me. We survived! YESSSSS. Julius and I are happy because we can only get better from here. Next week, we’ll be cooking. And this time, Julius will be the one picking the recipe and taking charge. I told him he should write his blogs, but we’ll see how that goes. I’m excited to be the assistant next week.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, I chose the title because of my current addiction to Animal Crossing. In love with everything about that game. ESPECIALLY the music~♫

This is our first time baking from scratch! Although they aren’t perfect, we’re happy that we didn’t mess up too bad.

Click here for our detailed post!

A recipe dedicated to my gorgeous sister who loves cake.

Magic Cherry and Almond Muffins

Makes 12  5 big fat muffins;

Ingredients

• 150g soft butter
• 150g of sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 150g self-raising flour
• a couple of drops of almond essence
• 100g ground almonds
• 100g glace cherries
• 50g flaked almonds

Equipment: 

• food processor
• 12 large muffin paper cases and tin.

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C and pop your paper cases into the muffin tin.
2. Put the butter, sugar, eggs, flour, almond essence and ground almonds into the food processor and blend for 2 minutes until smooth and creamy.
3. Chop the cherries and stir into the mix.
4. Spoon the mixture equally between the 12 paper cases.
5. Sprinkle on the flaked almonds
6. Bake in the centre of the oven for 2o minutes until risen, golden and firm to the touch.
7. Taste one hot straight from the oven with a well earnt cup of coffee.
8. When cooled place on a pretty cake stand and eat another as there’s sure to be too many to fit on.
9. Look carefully at your masterful display and eat that one that’s a bit wonky looking, you wouldn’t want someone else to have to have that one would you?
10. Cherries are a fruit right? So another cake would count as one of your five a day surely. So sit down again with another cuppa and enjoy your fruity fix relaxing in the knowledge that it is good for you.
11. Now think about all those almonds. Have you had your protein today? No, I didn’t think so! You owe it to yourself to tuck into another.
12. Now quite a lot of time has passed and people will be coming home soon and want to share them. It is your duty to check that they are still fresh and tasty. Savour another, making sure they are as delicious as you remember.
13. They are still wonderful so have a cake to celebrate being such a fantastic baker.
14. Put your remaining 5 cakes on a smaller plate ready for sharing with anyone that’s quick enough.

I’d love to hear how the magic

worked for you.

2012 © My Little 3 and Me

They are really easy to make and can be adapted to different tastes and occasions with a huge array of additions such as dried fruit, nuts and chocolate chips.  Featured here are the plain ones with a dusting of icing sugar, my children’s favourite. I love them too but my absolute firm favourite is the addition of chocolate chips and a topping of chopped toasted hazelnuts, delicious. It really is worth experimenting with different additions, and it of course gives you the excuse to make another batch.

You can find out more about Emma here…Thanks for a wonderful share Emma. x

Emma’s Chocolate Brownies

Makes 16 squares; enough for one greedy mummy or a family if she really must share. Grrrrr.

Ingredients

• 100g butter
• 50g cocoa
• 225g of sugar (This looks like a lot because it is, best not dwell! Move swiftly on to the eggs, they’re healthy right?)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 50g self-raising flour (If you prefer a more cakey, less sticky brownie you can use 75g flour.)
• 23cm square cake tin

optional additions:

• 2 or 3 tablespoons of icing sugar to dust over the top through a sieve.
• 50g chocolate chips
• 50g chopped hazelnuts
• 50g sliced glace cherries
• 50g raisins

The possibilities are endless.

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C
2. Melt the butter and cocoa together in a large bowl. I blast mine for 30 seconds in the microwave but you could do it gently in a pan.
3. Add the sugar, eggs and vanilla and stir well to combine.
4. Stir in the flour and any additions such as nuts that you choose.
5. Pour into the greased cake tin and bake for 25 minutes until it’s set on top but still slightly squidgy underneath.
6. Once cooled, remove from tin, cut into squares and gobble them up before the children get home from school. (A great tip Emma, thank-you.)

I’d love to hear about the combination of additions and toppings that you try, so do please pop back and let me know how you get along.

2012 © My Little 3 and Me

This is the first dish we made together. At the time, we had no intentions of starting a project. We just felt like baking on that day.

Before we started, I put on my personal copy of the Korean drama Full House. I thought it would be fun to watch while we were baking. Plus, the soundtrack is amazing. Fun, light, and upbeat instrumentals filled the room while we got down to business. I’m just going to share a link to one of the songs. Lalalala~

Anyways, back to the actual cooking! We used a cake boxed mix for baking our angel food cupcakes. Mixing it was simple enough because all we needed to do was add water. In fact, I never knew that angel food cake was a health food. I’ve always loved it for the taste, and when I found out that it was healthy, I was like WHAT?! Now I want to eat it FOR-EH-VUR.

After mixing, I put the trays in the preheated oven. There were directions on the box, but I wanted to keep a close eye on them because I’ve overcooked pastries before (not gonna lie, I’ve overcooked many pastries before). It said to “bake until the tops are golden brown and cracks are completely dry,” so I set a timer on my phone to notify me after 18 minutes passed.

While the cupcakes were baking, we started on the frosting, which was my favorite part because we were making it from scratch! We wanted to make a simple vanilla whipped cream by using whipping cream, vanilla extract, and sugar. At the time, we did not have a mixer so we had to beat the mixture ourselves. We had no idea what we were doing and how long and fast we should be beating the mixture, but we tried anyway. We kept mixing and mixing and mixing. At first, nothing was happening. Julius and I just kept taking turns mixing the ingredients. And after several minutes and four tired arms, the mixture got thicker! We were so excited after that. And it tasted great!

The cupcakes looked (and smelled) good when they came out of the oven. We set them out to cool, and continued to watch Full House while waiting. Here’s another link to a song. (Yes, I love this drama so much. I don’t care what anyone says). So after an hour or two we took the frosting out of the refrigerator and slapped it on the cupcakes with a spoon. We cut up some strawberries for a final touch and voila! We succeeded in our first baking attempt together. Hopefully we survive this Friday’s recipe — hint hint: we’ll be baking from scratch this time!

Our first creation. Click here for our detailed post!

I have finished the novel but am now going back to flesh out any areas that need further explication, dialogue, or moments where Shade has his foot in his mouth. I love those moments. I don’t think there are quite enough of them in the beginning. But I am not editing, just adding more content. I am also listing all of the chapter names because half of them are named and the other half aren’t, so I need to know what’s missing. At one point I couldn’t decide where to differentiate so I just kept writing, leaving breaks so I could figure it out when I went back. But that is editing, so I will not do that. I have to keep telling myself that, or I will get caught up forever. This is also a chance to stew on what the next book will be about, so that’s going on in the back of my mind as I read through everything. At some point I am sure that I will get out the post-its again and start plotting on my wall. But first I need some sort of incident.

For the first time ever I have decided to try making brownies from scratch. The only reason I haven’t done it before is because we never had cocoa powder in my parents’ home, brownies being one of the very few things my mum used a box mix for. I actually have to powder now, since I made Boyface white chocolate hazelnut cocoa cookies for his birthday. It’s probably a good thing I only just tried making brownies, since it was so fast and easy I feel like they could become one of my go-to recipes when I get the baking urge, and that would be bad. I would go through so much cocoa and eat so many brownies, even if I gave them away I’d eat too many. Sometimes I hate when something I bake turns out well, because otherwise I wouldn’t eat so many baked goods. Oh well, yummy brownies for me!

I have learned that I am most fit to write horror. Horror and smut, probably not at the same time. But I take a sick pleasure in the disgusting adjectives and extensive battle sequences of certain scenes. I laugh as I digust myself, making faces the whole time. I had learned this about myself while writing The Marking but I never fully comprehended the exent of the situation. Perhaps it’s time to switch (or at least adjust) my genre.

Current Word Count: 44398

Today I also spent the afternoon with KS, drinking coffee and walking around by the water’s edge. It was a nice break to actually get outside in the fresh air for once after several days cooped up with my laptop. And the good thing about getting so far ahead in my word count is that I can take time off to spend with friends. Yet I can’t take it off to clean, hmm, tells you a lot about my preferences.

And thus I spent my evening becoming more and more unproductive. I shouldn’t have started watching Boy Meets World, it’s just so entertaining.

Side note: peanut butter loaf came out delicious!

Greatest Newly Discovered Writing Aid: Gunnars! These glasses are freaking awesome, designed with a special lens something or other that basically eliminates the fuzzy aura on the computer screen, meaning I can stare at mine all day without getting all squinty as the vision grows dim and a headache develops. I got lucky and Boyface left his at home (he has them for work) and I snagged them. Amazing! If you stare at the screen all day and want to fix the resulting agony then I suggest you get some. Well worth the price and they look like sunglasses, win squared. They work for gaming too, and don’t be daunted by the homescreen price, actually look around the site and there are some reasonable ones. Again, I wouldn’t normally bother with this kind of stuff (I’m not that techy) but after trying them I definitely plan on investing in a pair and saving what’s left of my already straining eyes and addled mind. http://www.gunnars.com/

Shameless promoting aside, my headache is mostly gone, dulled back to its usual chronic ignorable stature, and I started plugging away at my novel again. I have officially pushed it into Urban Fantasy/ Alt Universe zone, having early referenced the American Civil War I actually am having a character relate his history to having been directly involved with aspects of other wars. No longer a bystander, we are taking history through its paces and while outcomes so far have remained the same (who am I to argue with the vast knowledge of my Grade 12 History teacher Mr Potts, he was freaking awesome!), I can’t just assume that a world over run with interfering self-righteous demons would be the exact same, can I? But no, fellow NaNoer KF is right, sometimes that kind of stuff is just too out of character and I know that I’m just writing it to fill in the space because all I’m running on right now is extreme terror that I will get to the end of my novel 10000 words short. Fast forward to me scrmabling to fill in the extra words with stuff even more ludicrous than the above. Rewind to me in the present, guzzling a whole pot of coffee as I attempt to make sense of what I am now imagining as a huge headache for my future self, The Editor.

I’m rambling though, and right now I need to focus on the writing and getting out those scenes, hopefully as coherently as possible, in order to make this into a novel and not just a mess of every random idea that pops into my head. Or maybe all I really need to do right now is just end this atrocious scene and move on. Oh yes, a lot of fun editing in my future.

I am taking that peanut butter loaf for another spin, but as an adjusted recipe, so I hope it turns out well. I have some of my mum’s homemade blackberry jam I am dying to eat and this would be perfect. Fingers crossed!

And on to the writing, yet again!

Cover me in cream and eat me!

This recipe is adapted from the one on the Lurpak website. I did want this to be a loaf, but since I only own a ‘normal’ sized loaf tin and not the special Lurpak one, you’ll have to find a big tin, or maybe half the recipe (although that of course would be total guesstimation).

My cake ring was from Sainsburys, the cake fit in perfectly (but I still would have preferred a loaf – but I think this is semantic, I REALLY just like the word loaf). To make the cake you will need:

275g caster sugar

175g butter

2 eggs

200g self raising flour

50g cocoa

280ml sour cream

100g dark chocolate (chips or a bar) – my current favourite way of breaking up a bar of chocolate into chips is to break the chocolate up with my hands, and then wrap it in a tea towel and beat the hell out of it with a rolling pin. Therapeutic AND cost effective.

Grated zest of 1 orange

For the syrup:

100g caster sugar

Juice of 1 Orange

Let’s do this! Butter whatever tin you are using (and line with paper if you can), and preheat the oven to 160c/ Gas 140c / Gas Mark 3.

Cream together you butter and sugar until smooth and creamy.

Add the eggs one at a time (I always add 1 tbsp of the flour after each egg to stop it curdling) and mix in until well combined.

Mix in the flour and cocoa, followed by the chocolate chips/chunks. The original recipe says to fold in the flour and chocolate, but mine immediately started forming into balls, so I abandoned the folding and carried on with the mixer.

Mix in your orange zest.

Bake in the centre of the oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes, until the cake has risen and is springy to the touch. You could stick a skewer in it, but if you hit a piece of chocolate that will stick to your skewer, so it’s not entirely accurate.

When cooked, remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin for about 5 minutes. While the cake is cooling, heat your orange juice in a small pan and melt the icing sugar into it to form a (sort of) syrup.

Your cake should still be a little bit warm, so poke a few holes across the top of your cake, and pour the warm syrup over as evenly as possible so it soaks through into the sponge.

You’re all done!

A piece of cake!

We ate it while it was still warm, but I bet it would be lovely warm with some cream on top. I do have a bit of a ‘thing’ about flavoured chocolate. I am tempted to have a go at mint brownies this weekend.

I’ve also been shopping this week… (I only went out for a walk and a sandwich for lunch!).

Quilting is something on my ‘to do’ list, and I’m at that age where all my friends seem to pregnant! I’d rather not put into a collection thanks, I’ll make something!

Similar to The Works, have you heard of The Book People? They do new releases at bargain prices.

So heavy it can also be used for self defence if needed.

I recently got DK Dressmaking (a huge hardback monster of a book, good investment for keen dressmakers, and a steal at £8.99) from them. AND if you order from them before Midnight tonight and use the promo code PUMPKIN at the checkout, you can get free delivery! Go, quick!

All for just £4.98!

I also bought these bedsheet sets from a charity shop (the same shop as it goes). Sorry about the rubbish picture by the way! I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with them. The yellow one is so 70′s I think it will have to be made into a dress of some sort. I think I am going to use the pink one for a Colette Sorbetto (which is a free pattern by the way!), but with a peter pan collar and sleeves, just because I can’t do anything without making it even more complicated!

Image taken from BurdaStyle.

Before I go, have you seen the pattern for these Sailor-style trousers at BurdaStyle?! I want them, I just don’t know if I want to make them, trousers seem hard! But I do love trousers with pockets. I feel like Coco Chanel in trousers with pockets. That’s just how weird I am!

From ‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allan Poe.

Being an alleged grown up now, I don’t really get excited about Halloween. In fact I can only recall going trick or treating once as a child. Nowadays I normally try to be out at Halloween to avoid the constant stream of bad attempts at dressing up. Don’t even get me started on the people that come knocking before Halloween!

One of the bonuses to Halloween though (and Autumn in general) is that the food gets GOOD. By that I mean that my diet gets BAD. The cold weather hits and I want to comfort eat. I want pie, mash and gravy, hearty stews with thick crusty bread. I want pecan & maple plaits for breakfast.

Amarettini!

I’m steering off track here. Anyway, just before Halloween the supermarkets always seem to have pallets loaded with Pumpkins, and when I see them in the stores I convince myself I am going to buy one and make something with it – Pumpkin pie was top of my list, but since I haven’t even began to try and do pastry yet  I think Pumpkin pie might be a bit adventurous.

This recipe comes from the River Cottage Cakes Handbook. You can find the recipe for free online here.

The other recipes Google gave me all contained a lot of spices and a lot of other stuff I’d have to buy, and because Autumn makes me lazy, I wanted something with minimal effort and maximum reward.

If you’ve got this far, give yourself a pat on the back.

Which brings me to my first warning tip about this recipe – you will LITERALLY have to wrestle the pumpkin.

Yep. Pumpkins are hard work. I managed to jab the knife into the top, wiggle it a bit, and then had to call for help. Things will not get any easier when you are into the pumpkin either. Oh no. You will have to scrape out the middle, and divide the pumpkin into wedges to grate.

Second warning – grating pumpkin is dangerous. Better to leave some flesh on the skin than grate the skin on your hands (I’m speaking from experience here).

Also, be aware that mixing this will be one of the best workouts your arms have ever had.

However, all the hard work is definitley worth it. I might even make another one next week. The finished cake smells amazing (thanks to the amaretti), and it’s actually perfectly sweet. It would go really well with custard.

Cake wedges to take in to work.

And just for good measure, a close up…

Look what was waiting for me when I got into work today!

I will be doing a proper review of the book some time this week.

If you have it, which patterns are you keen to try?