A Very British Summer - Olympic Party!

Eeekkkk London 2012 is here!  It's the Opening Ceremony night and everything at our place is British.  We had a few friends over to watch the first night, to support England, Canada and Estonia!  I made some British bunting, we made some select English foods and got settled down to watch!

Savoury to start:  Chicken and Mushroom Pies.  Party sized made in a muffin tray.

Baked scotch eggs!  One of our favourite snacks, this time created in our very own kitchen!  Yum!  And this wont be the only time.

Yorkshire Puddings with Roast Beef

The full spread of British snacks!

 Although rather full we did still manage some Mini Victoria Sponge Cakes and Party Rings!

My favourite kind of cake to make.... and eat.

    Enjoy a British Summer celebrating the Jubilee year and London 2012.

MA Brains!

Jonathan just completed his Masters in Psychology - thesis submitted and passed he is now the proud owner of his BSc and 2 MAs!  So proud of him for finishing up on his latest studies!  ... Now just the PhD to go!!

As a lot of his research and coursework was on brain stuff I made cupcake BRAINS!  I guess I will tag these as Halloween cakes as most people might enjoy making these for that time of year but I thought it was appropriate for his end of school year congrats!

I used a vanilla sponge cake recipe and piped the brains on with butter cream.  It was VERY hot both outside and also inside our place that day, so some of the piping was a little squishy but most were okay.

And the main thing is, Jonathan liked them (and could tell what they were!)...  He also likes when the baking is all for him, so there we go - success on both counts!

Ryerson colours to say Congratulations Jonathan!! ♥

A Taste of Britain: Cherry Bakewell Tray Bake

I love the chance to bake something new so last Sunday it was a post-church coffee and lunch afternoon so I made sure to dig out some recipes I had been wanting to try for a while.  I knew I wanted to do a tray bake as this would make enough to be a significant contribution to the sweet table and would be easiest to do.  Initially seeing as I work on Saturday I was looking for an easy recipe that wouldn't take too long, but oh well - that didn't happen but I LOVE how it all turned out and although the recipe had many stages it didn't take too long!  I was between two different recipes but that day the Cherry Bakewell won!  (Orange and Marzipan Tray Bake to come another day, another blog post...)

Cherries and Almonds.  Pastry and icing.  Strawberry jam and Cake.  This tray bake has some pretty awesome combinations!

I found the recipe here but instead of buying ready made sweet shortcrust pastry I made it!  Busy time is best time remember!!  Just a simple pastry recipe before going ahead with the rest of the recipe.

Here's how it looked post-oven but pre-slice!  

I kept it like this overnight to keep it fresh and sliced it into small squares (it made 35 in total) Sunday morning before taking most of it to church!  We may have had a square or two for breakfast as well!

What I love about Cherry Bakewell are the combination of the outer pastry edge, the bottom jam layer with spongey almond cake topped off with icing, cherries and almonds.  So yes, I love all of it!  This will be made many MANY more times!  I highly recommend you to try it :-)

And here is the first of my 'A Taste of Britain' blogging series - for all my British baking - keep an eye out for more British inspired bakes and makes coming soon!

Good Friday Good Dessert

Easter weekend off work so we invited Jonathan's family over for lunch after church on Good Friday morning.  We prepared steak on the BBQ with the compound butters (check out this post), potato salad and our project dessert - the frozen lemon mousse.  Something we hadn't tried before but wanted to make!

It had a few different parts to it - candying the lemon rind, such a cool and yummy way to prepare this and very good for decoration!  Lemon curd to make, strain and chill.  And then of course the cream part of the dessert to mix with the curd, all before putting them in the freezer in their molds. While they were freezing there was also a lemon sauce to make!  And for something extra we melted some chocolate and made some swirls and other decoration that we also froze ready for when we plated the dessert.

Lemon Curd in preparation

Candying the lemon rind, yummy! 

A long time ago I found a great shaped silicone mold tray but had never used it... But now here was my chance!  We did 4 in the molds, and then a few extra desserts in ring molds.

Here's how it ended up:

5 around our little table, nice and snug for a family meal!

Frozen Lemon Mousse
with dark chocolate swirl and raspberries.

Thank you Martha Stewart for this recipe.  We loved trying it out - both making and eating!! :-)

Easter Bakes and Makes

This Easter meant lots of family get togethers which for me means the opportunity to make and to bake as much as I can!  Just like my 'About Me' says, freedom is boredom so busy time is the best time - and I made the most of my Easter days off work!

First stop was Easter cards.  Just a little simple design using our scalloped circle punch from our wedding (it has been well used since!) and some printables I found of course, on Pinterest!

Next stop more scalloped punches... A quick and easy bit of bunting using paint strips (thank you Walmart hehe), the punch and some cute yellow ribbon.

Then come the Easter treats!  A big bunny cutter and my tiny little farm animal cookie cutters led to these sugar cookie goodie bags iced and decorated for an Easter treat for everybody.

After seeing this on Pinterest from Sweet Vanilla Bean I HAD to try it!  Chocolate dipped peeps, so cool! Super fun easy make anybody could do (even Jonathan joined me for this!)... just melt some chocolate and coloured wafers dip and go!  Just be prepared for a sweet SWEET day of eating!

Although I have some more Easter baking and making to post about I think that's all the Easter treats that will make it onto this post!

Here are the finished products:

Chicks in a Nest

Happy Easter everybody!  I love making Easter Cakes.  I love pure white fondant icing and mini eggs and always love to include those.  This year I had my basic design planned out, a white cake, with mini eggs around and perhaps a few fondant Easter animal cut outs.  However, as you will see in a later Easter post we had an abundance of egg whites left over from our Good Friday dessert so for fun I thought I would make some meringue nests - why not have a couple of pavlovas hanging around in the kitchen! :-D  Once they had cooked overnight I realised when decorating my cake one of the meringues could be a nest.

So with our extra meringue nests and our decorated Peep chicks the cake came together with all of these elements.

Oh and I almost forgot to say, the cake inside was a lemon sponge cake with butter cream filling of course!

* Happy Easter *

One a penny, two a penny ♫

♫ Hot cross buns.  Hot cross buns.  One a penny, two a penny.  Hot Cross Buns ♫

Who else can still remember how to play this on the recorder?!

It's Easter time which means it's time for Hot Cross Buns.  After our bread baking adventures in the past year we decided this year we wanted to try making them ourselves.

Not only to try it out and be adventurous, but also so that we could be particular about how they look and taste.  We didn't want the icing version of the cross on top - we both love the hard crunchy cross and wanted to recreate that.  Also I really dislike a strong cinnamon flavour and didn't want to spend a few weeks and calories buying and trying all different kinds of Hot Cross Buns from different supermarkets!!

So we did it!  We made our own.  Here's how it went:

A little, erm, more overdone than we would have liked but only a little!  Tasted good and that's what matters.  

My first pie!

There always has to be a first try.  And this time it was my first try at a pie!  We were heading over to our friend's place for the evening and I of course offered to bring a dessert - an excuse to try something new out :-)  However there was one catch - our friends were half way through their Lent of being vegan!!!  Hmm, no eggs, milk, cheese, anything you would usually find in baking!  Eek...what to do.  I was searching recipes but wasn't sure about preparing something specifically using vegan ingredients - so many different powders, milks crazy stuff I had never heard of.  And then the thought came to me, I could use a vegan shortening in a pie.  That would be the only substitution necessary but no butter or egg wash on top of the crust but I thought I'd give it a try and see how it went.

I think using the vegan shortening did effect the crust a bit but the taste was good and the filling wasn't effected by anything and I think we all enjoyed it!  

The next pie I make I will try with butter in the crust to see if there's a difference.  

I used this recipe here as well as her vegan pie crust link you'll find on there.  I loved the combination of pear and blueberries and the filling was nice and gooey.  So my crust isn't as pro looking as the one on her website but oh well - first try!

So some of the pastry was a little crumbly pre-cooking.

I seem to be missing a photo or two of the cooked pie so this is all I'm able to post right now but I'm pleased with how my first pie went and look forward to more pie-making soon :-)

Mother's Day Tea

Well what better way to start off my 'Tea' category than to blog about tea!  This year I thought for Mother's Day creating some handmade tea bags would be perfect.

My Mum used to only drink regular tea.  Just the normal.  But I then kept discovering some green tea at home when I visited and in general it seems that loose leaf tea is all the rage...so I put that together and created tea bags filled with our choices of loose leaf teas!  I ordered the tea bags from ebay which would seal with heat - an iron!  We filled them with the teaspoon or so recommended for a cup of tea, added string and a little label to distinguish each one and voila, handmade tea bags!

To match the gift, I made a tea themed card to go with these.  Some purple card, a white lacy doily and a cookie cutter created this card.  Loved using doilies to make cards, and could do any simple shape with them for a really cute feminine card or scrapbook piece.

Happy Mother's Day Mum! ♥

They're in the Freezer!

And it's true...they are in the freezer!  We are now the proud owners of freezer cookies to be shared at a moment's notice :-)  Come on over!  Lemon Icebox Cookies - kind of shortbready - so yummy!  Cherry cookies with pieces of glace cherries in and such a cool colour!  And finally some of the good old classic chocolate chip cookie dough - maybe we'll keep this one just as dough!!  

Unfortunately I don't have the links of the recipes we used, just the recipes saved as a document - let me know if you want to try them!  They are yummy.

In a freezer mood that day we also made some compound butters!  Using a combination of our stand mixer and food processor we managed to create my personal favourite - basil butter as well as roasted garlic butter, chive butter, roasted red pepper butter and one sweet one - maple butter perfect for waffles or pancakes.

Just a little chunk sliced off, placed on top of a freshly grilled steak and you're ready to go!