Stylish Blogger Award

Wow thank you to http://cupcakesmile.blogspot.com/ for this wonderful blogging award. You should all read her blog, it's really great with some wonderful recipes on there!

There are four rules to taking part - thank and link to the blogger who nominated you; share seven things about yourself; award 15 new bloggers, and tell them you have done it (sorry but I'm doing 16, I like too many!). I will be passing the baton to:




http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/
http://lookuplookaround.blogspot.com/
http://lookatmydinner.wordpress.com/
http://scottstipoftheday.blogspot.com/
http://mabelandmack.blogspot.com/ 
http://www.merseytart.com/
http://mookiesbigadventures.blogspot.com/
http://grinsworld1878.blogspot.com/
http://haroldtheplatypus.blogspot.com/
http://blogyourstore.blogspot.com/
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
http://brightandbeautiful-caro.blogspot.com/
http://melissas1.blogspot.com/

http://natalieroberts1.blogspot.com 

http://simonwhaleytutor.blogspot.com/

http://mistakeswritersmake.blogspot.com/

Ok, the hardest part of getting this award is to think of seven things to say about myself lol, but I'll give it a try!

1. I have been baking for less than a year but I'm really enjoying it and I'm currently going to a cake decorating to improve my skills.

2. I have just moved out of home and into a houseshare with strangers! An odd experience but hopefully it'll be a positive one - I've only been here 6 days, but I loved being able to have my friends over and have fun with them in my "own" place :)

3. I am part of the science fiction and fantasy book club at Waterstones in Liverpool 1 which is a lot of fun and I'm reading a lot of books I wouldn't have even picked up - sometimes this is good but sometimes there's a very good reason I wouldn't have picked them up!

4. I'm doing a creative writing course at the moment which I have been enjoying, despite being very naughty and not writing much for a couple of months! Oops

5. One of my favourite places to just be in are coffee shops - especially Caffe Nero with their yummy soup! I find they are such laid back places with a great, relaxing atmosphere. It's a good place to write actually :-)

6. I love films and TV and even have a Cineworld monthly pass so I can go as often as I like for only one monthly fee. This works well for me as I like pretty much every film I see and I like most genres too. I'm most looking forward to the last Harry Potter film :(, scream 4, X Men First Class, the new Pirates of the Caribbean and Breaking Dawn part 1.

7. Wow this is hard! I have a second blog http://awritemess.blogspot.com which is all about spelling or grammar mistakes I come across in either printed or online publications including articles, adverts, emails etc. I'm always looking for mistakes now and can't stop looking for them!

Thanks again for the award and I hope I can live up to it

Baking Review - Chocolate Peppermint Bars

I'm a bit late in posting this recipe on here - I made these yummy peppermint bars last weekend when my brother and sister in law came to visit.

I ended up making these and also the cranberry and white chocolate cupcakes I've made previously (and also blogged about). I had lots of ingredients left over from Christmas when all our plans went slightly awry so I decided to do one thing I'd made before and also a new thing.

The recipe for the Chocolate Peppermint Bars comes from the book - 1001 cupcakes, cookies and other tempting treats by Susanne Tee, which I received for my birthday off my friend Sian. The recipe is on page 190.

Ingredients:

55g/2oz butter, plus extra for greasing
55g/2oz caster sugar
115g/4oz plain flour
175g/6oz icing sugar
1-2 tbsp warm water
1/2 tsp peppermint extract
2tsp green food colouring (optional)
175/6oz plain chocolate, broken into pieces

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Grease and line a shallow 30x20cm/ 12x8 inch baking tin. Place the butter and caster sugar in a large bowl and beat together until light and fluffy. Sift in the flour until the mixture binds together.

Knead the mixture to form a smooth dough, then press into the tin and prick the surface all over with a fork. Bake in the preheated oven for 10-15 minutes, or until lightly browned and just firm to the touch. Leave to cool in the tin.

Sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Gradually add the water, then add the peppermint extract and food colouring (if desired). Spread the icing over the base, then leave to set.

Place the chocolate in a heatproof bowl, set the bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water and heat until melted. Spread the chocolate over the icing, then leave to set. Cut into slices to serve.

I ended up using a tin slightly smaller than suggested as I could only use what I had! However, the amount of base that was made from the ingredients barely covered it at all and in the correct sized tin, I think it would have been stretched too much. Also the mixture didn't really come together brilliantly and didn't form a smooth dough, it was quite crumbly. But despite that, it did come out ok in the end.
For the peppermint part, I actually added another few drops of the peppermint extract to get a stronger mint flavour, which worked well for me and my family as we like it like that, but obviously go on what your preferences are. I did use the green food colouring and it does come out a lovely mint green colour - though I don't think I can show you this as a I stupidly forgot to take photographs of it once sliced. Never mind, next time :-)
I also used 200g chocolate instead of the 175g required as I had 2 100g bars and didn't want to leave any as i'd only end up eating it all! This gave a slightly thicker chocolate layer, but really, who's going to complain about that?

I really enjoyed the bars and would definitely make them again and my mum also really loved them :)

Baking Review - Lemon loaf

 Every time someone visits the house is another excuse to make a cake and this time I decided to give something a try that we've not had before so I went for the, what I thought would be, easy option of lemon loaf from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook.

The recipe is as follows:




Ingredients:


Cake
320g caster sugar
3 eggs
grated zest of 2 unwaxed lemons
350g plain flour
11/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
250ml whole milk (although I used semi skimmed)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
200g unsalted butter, melted

Lemon syrup
freshly squeezed juice and zest of 1 lemon
50g caster sugar

a 23x13-cm loaf tin, greased and dusted with flour

Makes 8-10 slices

Method

Preheat the oven to 170oC (325F) Gas 3

Put the sugar, eggs and lemon zest in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment (or use a handheld electric whisk) and beat until well mixed

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a separate bowl. Combine the milk and vanilla extract in another bowl. Add one-third of the flour mixture to the sugar mixture and beat well, then beat in one-third of the milk mixture. Repeat this process twice more until everything has been added. Turn the mixer up to a high speed and beat until the mixture is light and fluffy.

Turn the mixer down to a low speed, pour in the melted butter and beat until well incorporated.

Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf tin and bake in the preheated oven for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until golden brown and the sponge bounces back when touched.

For the lemon syrup - While the cake is baking, put the lemon juice and zest, sugar and 100ml of water in a small saucepan and bring to the boil over low heat. Raise the heat and boil until it has reduced by half, or until it has a thin syrup consistency. When the hot cake comes out of the oven, put it on a wire cooling rack in the sink and pour the syrup all over the top. The excess syrup will run over the edges into the sink. Leave to cool slightly in the tin before turning out onto the wire cooling rack to cool completely.

I think the main mistake I made was just reading the ingredients list and thinking, yeah there's not too much there, should be quick and easy. I didn't realise until I was literally up to those points in the recipe that I needed a number of different bowls and a good deal of coordination lol. It wasn't too bad in the end, it was just unexpected - that'll teach me anyway!
I also used my silicone loaf "tin" for the first time and I don't think it's the best material for a loaf tin as it did bulge out at the sides quite a bit which I think affected the cooking time to be honest - made it longer. I may invest in an actual loaf tin. The silicone is great for the round 'tins' as it's not able to bulge.

As I mentioned above, it did take a bit longer than the stated cooking time - probably about a further 10 minutes. Because of this, it was quite hard to coordinate making the lemon syrup as if you put that on too early, the it wil have all boiled away, but if you leave it too late then the cake won't be hot any more. I managed to kind of work it out, though I think I did reduce it by more than half, could have done with more syrup to coat the cake.

I did find the cake enjoyable to eat though I felt it wasn't quite lemony enough - I think extra syrup would have helped and maybe another lemon zest in the recipe? But I'm not quite brave enough to amend recipes yet :-) I stated above that it makes 8-10 slices but I think it will go much further than that (especially if you have a loaf tin that bulges at the sides! hehe) as it is quite a dense cake and a full slice across is a little too much.

It's a New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone - ok so I'm a day late, but I spent the day reading yesterday and didn't go near technology.

I'm quite disappointed I didn't reach my intended target of 100 posts by the end of 2010 but as I was running out of time, I didn't really have an awful lot to say and I didn't really want to write any more drivel than was necessary :-)

Ok so everyone talks about resolutions for the coming year but first I'm going to dig out and see what my resolutions were for 2010 and see if I managed to accomplish any of them:

1) Do more writing - well I did do a fair few assignments and definitely did more writing than the previous year so I will credit myself with this one I think :-)
2)Save more money - I also managed to do this - to some extent as I have made a few purchases also
3)Get more active - unfortunately I dramatically failed at this one. However, I do have an excuse...I mean reason - the chronic sinusitis caused me to become very lethargic and this time last year I wasn't really expecting it to last as long as it has (which unfotunately is still a problem?)
4) Eat less indulgently and cut back on the crap - I had ups and downs with this one, I was very good at times and terrible at others, something to work on harder!

There were a couple of personal ones too which I will say that I did have success with one but it didn't work out as planned, as for the other, I failed :-(

So new resolutions for the forthcoming year? To be honest I'm going to keep most of them the same:

1) Again, get more writing done - I've now switched to the fiction part of the course so I should be able to feel more focused and I'd like to dedicate some time per week to getting out the house to write where there are less distractions.
2) I know it's a long way off but I'd like to prepare for this year's NaNoWriMo and give it a bigger shot than I did last year.
3) Save more money - again I want to keep up with this and look around for the best deals with savings accounts
4) Get more active and lose weight - not something I can start immediately, need to wait until my foot is better but as for the losing weight bit, I can start with that - eat more fruit and veg, eat more healthily and stop eating for the sake of eating - get out of the habit of boredom eating.
5) Try and do as well as I can with the new cake decorating course I'm starting next week. I'm hoping to make my new baby niece's Christening cake (it'll be a few months, she's not due until March! But at least I can get some practice in!).
6) Try new things and take more chances
7) Keep baking and attempt proper food cooking also

Ok, I think that's well enough to be getting on with for now - ok one more to add - keep blogging! :-)

Let em know if you have any resolutions and maybe we can help each other to stick to them
Good luck and I wish you all the very best in reaching your dreams in 2011
xx