July 2009

The July Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network. For the first time ever I’m late posting my Daring Bakers entry (sorry folks)! We had the option to make either the Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies or the Milan Cookies, or [...]

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July 29, 2009 · 5 comments

Just Beautiful.

in Chat

The lovely Margot from Coffee and Vanilla has awarded me the Beautiful Blog award. I feel highly honoured, thank you Margot!! All who visit are welcome to place the award badge on their blog (i.e. I don’t need to nominate you), but as always there is a rule to follow, details can be found here. [...]

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Yesterday I achieved a culinary first for me – I made a clafoutis. It’s not that they’re difficult to make or incredibly complicated with numerous steps to a multiple page method, just that I don’t really do ‘eggy puddings’ and that is essentially what a clafoutis always seemed to be. I’m so glad I decided [...]

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July 27, 2009 · 12 comments

Creativity

in Chat

I’ve always found that blogging is a way to let out the creative side of your personality. Everyday life doesn’t always lend itself to fitting around our artistic whims and desires, but the virtual world of blogging does.  How lovely then to be presented with the Kreativ Blogger award by Joanna who has a lovely blog; [...]

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I do love spending time on the coast, it’s not the beach that I’m overly fond of (I don’t ‘do’ lying on the beach sunbathing) although I do like to feel the sand between my toes; it is the sea itself. From the gentle lapping of the waves to the rougher tides I love to [...]

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I’d almost forgotten about the joys of fresh pesto. Basil from the garden, beautiful fresh Italian organic olive oil and top notch Parmigiano cheese, combined with some rich nuts and you’re in pesto heaven.  I forget about the classics of pasta and pesto, bread dipped in pesto etc etc, during the cooler months but once [...]

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Inspired by a lovely punnet of frozen raspberries and some gorgeous red currents sitting in my fridge I decided to get cake baking again, after all the Grape Crumble Cake only lasted a day (oops)! This time though I didn’t want to go following another chefs recipe, I wanted this to be all mine I [...]

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Inspired by our lovely Heather over on Violets Pantry I decided to make (or should I say bake?) a Rachel Allen recipe: Cherry Crumble Cake, there was however a slight problem with this idea in that I didn’t have any cherries! Oh what to do? Well I had a hunt around my fruit bowl and [...]

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I just adore cardamom, from its sweet heady aroma to the gentle aromatic taste it gives to both sweet and savoury foods. It is a very well used spice in my kitchen.  Cardamom is one of the world’s very ancient spices. It is native to the East originating in the forests of the western ghats in southern [...]

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Summertime and the livin’s easy, Fish are jumpin’, and the cotton is high. Summertime – DuBose Heyward, George Gershwin We arrived back from Norfolk at the weekend, oh how I wish I was still there! It couldn’t have been more perfect, glorious weather (apart from one afternoon of rain), lovely places to visit, early morning [...]

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Firstly an apology for going AWOL for so long but my ISP connection decided to fall out with me and deny me any internet access at all, and then I went on holiday to Norfolk – more about that later to come (but not in this post). Back to the point  in question … A while back [...]

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