Christmas, biscuits & country cottages...

It's nearly Christmas day and I think we have everything ready - which kind of worries me because we are not normally this sorted and it makes me think we may have missed something.  Oh well, whatever it is I have one day left to remember and then we'll have to do without it (whatever 'it' is).

In the meantime I have been thinking of things to keep the G amused pre'TBD'  (The Big Day) and came up with the idea of festive biscuit houses which are along the same lines as gingerbread houses but which don't necessitate my baking loads of gingerbread. As you can see my 'house' turned out more like an abandoned, ramshackle barn but that said, I do kind of like it because not being too perfectionist allows you to get sticky & stuck right in - so great for kids! 


I thought I'd share it because, having had a go this afternoon,  it's messy, it's fun, it's a bit like building a house of cards and, best bit,  it's cheap as you don't need many ingredients so here goes....

You'll need some rectangular, plain biscuits...

....and some icing made up a bit like Goldilocks porridge i.e. not too thick and not too thin or it won't work!

Then you simply start sticking some biscuits together to make the basic shape and wait for it all to dry (because if you don't it will all fall apart as I discovered... many times!)

Add a roof and fill in the gap with another triangle of biscuit before drizzling liberally with more icing...

If, like me, you do not let the icing set fully between each bit of building the structure will start to slip & slide.  If it does... well you can always remove them and just add more and use the broken bits for 'walls' (or just eat them!) I say just have fun, make the best of it and pretend it was always meant to have that 'derelict shabby chic' look.  Oh - and then sprinkle with edible glitter because that just makes everything look pretty anyway!

So, that's that.  And now, if I could just remember the thing I think I may have forgotten we should be all done for TBD....


Mince pies! I've just remembered that we have no mince pies for Santa tomorrow night... ah well, looks like the biscuit house will be put to even better use after all ;-)



                                                                             Merry Christmas !
                                              xxxxxxxxxx

Pomegranates & cheesecake...

This is definately not one for anyone one a diet but I did warn you I could feel a pudding post coming on! 

This time it's the naughtiest, creamiest, yummiest cheesecake...it's always popular with the family and I decided to make one last week when I had some friends to visit.  It went very quickly too  - which is just as well because it stopped me from eating too many slices!

I've got to the stage where it's a bit of a 'throw-it-together-and-adjust-according-to-taste' type recipe so apologies for no exact measurements but I am sure you will get the gist (or be able to find yourself a similar 'no cook' recipe!).

To begin I simply bash up some digestive biscuits until they are nice and crumbly then melt a good dollop of butter in a saucepan before adding & mixing them in (don't you just love the word 'dollop'). If I accidentally add too much butter I just add more crushed biscuits, after all no-one usually complains that the biscuit base is too thick!  Next, press the biscuit mixture into the bottom of a loose-base tin and I find it helps to smooth it with the back of a metal spoon.

For the filling,  I normally mix up around 1 + 1/3 tubs of cream cheese, couple of tablespoons of honey and a couple of ounces of brown sugar.

Then I whip some double cream (around a medium size pot) and spoon some into the cream cheese/honey/sugar mixture and carefully mix it in.  The best part now is to keep having little tastes until it has a nice balance of creamy-cheesy-yumminess!

After that, all that remains is to just dollop (there's that word again) it on top of the biscuit base, smooth nicely and pop in the fridge for several hours  or overnight is better.

So, that is the basic no-cook cheesecake and all that's left to do is decide what topping to decorate it with. I chose to embellish it with some gorgeous little scarlet pomegranate seeds...

Pomegranates can be quite tricky to de-seed and the juice really stains so be careful where/what you are preparing it on.  The method I used was to slice the top off then score & pull apart rather than cut in half.  You can also bash the outside with a spoon to make the seeds pop out.  It's a little messy but they are worth it for a stunning finish to the cheesecake!  

Once it's chilled nicely, remove the cheese cake from the fridge and put it on a plate then sprinkle with the little red jewels. Then for the best bit.....  simply slice & serve with an extra sprinkling of juicy little seeds ....mmmm

I did tell you it was a bit naughty...


Enjoy! 

xxx

Channelling my inner Mary Berry....

Puddings....mmmmm....I want puddings....


Ever since the pudding episode of  the 'Great British Bake Off' I have been craving puddings. Not fancy, delicate or fine puddings.... I want big fat, sweet & stodgy, puddings - the sort you got dished up as a child and sploshed with gallons of yummy yellow custard!

I wanted to make one last weekend and played with the idea of Sticky Toffee pudding....then I dreamt about Jam roly-poly.... but in the end decided it simply had to be Treacle tart!  I went shopping to get all the ingredients and deliberatly walked past the 'ready-made-just-heat-in-the-oven' pie determined to channel my inner Mary Berry and make one from scratch myself! I even googled her recipe here.

I got everything home and checked through, trying hard to resist sticking my finger in the golden syrup,  only to discover that the bottom of my *special* (not used very often) fluted flan tin had gone missing!  I hunted high & low and thought I had found an alternative china pie dish - only to discover that it had a huge hairline crack running through it -disaster!  I didn't have anything else suitable or that was not already being used for the Sunday roast so that was that. I could have cried and, having told the kids we were going to have a totally fab pudding-fest, felt really rather bad about the whole thing!

Anyway, by this weekend I'd pretty much forgotten about it and pushed my cravings back in the craving spot (or wherever it is they live when you are not thinking about them) and consoled myself that puddings are just really bad for you anyway. Then this morning, out of the blue,  Super-Huzb brought me home a new fluted flan dish!  Treacle tart here I come....

Back to googling Mary Berry's recipe and not long after the new flan dish got duly covered in pastry and the extra little strips for the top were prepared.  Breadcrumbs were whizzed in the whizzer and a pan of sticky golden syrup was set to warm gently on the hob.  A large un-waxed lemon was zested & squeezed and the kitchen smells were mmmmm..delicious!

I'm not sure Mary would approve but I decided to use only 1 lemon, not 2, because in our house we all have a rather sweet tooth and I just know that our youngest would 'yuk' at too lemony a flavour.  I guess Mary isn't here to try it (or Paul Hollywood to grimace at it) so it didn't really matter.

I also didn't exactly work the classic 'lattice' look either, preferring instead to embellish (aka cheat..) with a few un-woven, twisted pastry strands instead (sorry Mary).  I did brush everything with egg so it baked nicely from anaemic to golden brown in the alloted 25-30mins and I managed to stop it from getting burnt by popping some tin foil over the top for the last 10mins- that way it could also go on cooking and I could try to avoid the dreaded 'soggy bottom'.

The last thing you are instructed to do, and probably the most difficult, is to leave it in the tin to settle a while - which when it's all golden sweet, fresh out the oven is pretty hard!  It is necessary though otherwise the middle would be too gooey to cut properly.

So here's my finished Treacle Tart!  Maybe not the best looker in town but it sure did taste mighty fine and there was very little evidence of a soggy bottom.  Of course, it was most definately best served with some yellow stuff too...

I just need to sit with the papers and a bit of Downton now to round off the day nicely!

Happy Sunday :-)

In need of a sweet treat..

This week I have been catching up on admin & bookkeeping which, in spite of my best intentions to do more regularly, can end up in a pile of paperwork that takes a while to sort (well, you know how it works.... there are always a hundred other, more interesting tasks!) Anyway, realising that I really need to knuckle down and get it sorted I decided that this week would be the week I would get it all done & out the way.  To start with I thought it best if I restrict my social networking to '10 mins with morning coffee’  and then get my head down (because everyone knows how much time you can loose once you get lost in the i-vortex) and by the end of Day 1 I felt quite pleased that I had got well and truly stuck into the task. 

On Day 2 I resisted the urge to slip back into the ether(net) or start a new crafting project but it was harder.   Day 3 was more of the same with the addition of a hugely frustrating software crash that just would not fix but which meant I finally had the excuse I needed to escape and do something different! I settled on making a batch of coconut ice because I have been craving something really sweet and felt deserving of a treat.

I have to say that, although it’s a simple recipe, you need a bit of muscle for mixing! I found several recipes for it, all with varying quantities of this & that but the basic method is quite simple as you just mix everything up! Unless you choose to go for the rolling pin method, my best tip when you remove half the mixture to put in a lined tin/dish is that it really helps to use the back of a metal spoon to smooth the top. Once it’s ready you do have to resist the urge to starting eating and put it in the fridge overnight to chill although I have to confess I failed slightly at this stage (oh well, a cook needs to test the batch doesn’t she?!)

It really is as sweet as a sweet can be and although I’ve read it can last up to a month if stored properly I just don’t think it will somehow…