Easter Feasting...

Just before it gets wiped away let me share with you our Easter feast that was...

I was too busy cooking and serving at the time to photograph it all, and most of it was munched before the camera came out - but we did get a picture of Ponygirls birthday cake - she has an Easter Birthday so there's no shortage of chocolate!

What the camera doesn't pick up is the sparkly glitter  - or the chocolate popping candy sprinkles - or the birthday ready to sink her teeth into it! Happy Birthday Ponygirl!

A little taste of sunshine...

Last bakeup of the holidays today and a taste of somewhere sunny was definitely needed. We've been surrounded by rain and wind all day, rattling the windows and blowing the wheelie bins down the garden so i wanted something light and zesty to take away the winter blues ( and to use up some the leftover lemons sitting in the fruitbowl!)

These lovely lemon bars come from a favourite cookbook of mine The Dairy HollowHouse Cookbook by Crescent Dragonwagon - fab name I know! Every recipe has a great anecdote with it so if you ever see a copy snap it up.

Here it is...



And here's the recipe

Mix and press into the bottom of a baking tin

Half cup of butter
1 cup plain White flour
Quarter cup icing sugar

Beat

2 eggs
1 cup of sugar
2 tablespoons flour
Half teaspoon baking powder
Juice and rind of 2 lemons ( I added 1 more to the original recipe)

This mixture will be thin. Pour it over the first layer. Bake for 30 - 35 mins. Let cool slightly then sit with icing sugar.

Okay so they won't help with any diet resolutions but they are lush and brighten up the idea of tomorrow's back to work packed lunch.

I did think that a good walk with the dogs would make me feel less guilty about eating cake...I shook the lead, I put my coat on but these two are having none of it!






Oh well i tried!

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Rainyday Fudge Cake...

Sometimes on a Sunday, when its too windy for walking and too wet for digging, theres nothing for it but to throw caution to the diet plan and fire up the ovens. My tribe's cake of choice is always of the chocolate variety, so today we decided to go for it and bake a chocolate fudge cake of staggering proportions...

My assistant chef was in full agreement of course!

  We followed Nigellas recipe for Fudge Cake from the Nigella Bites book. The recipe called for:

400g plain flour
250g golden caster sugar
100g light muscovado sugar
50g best quality cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
half teaspoon salt
3 eggs
142 small tub sour cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
175g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
125ml corn oil
300ml chilled water

For the icing
175 dark chocolate
250g unsalted butter
275g icing sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

The dry ingredients are combined in one bowl, the eggs, sour cream and vanilla are blended in another. Then the butter, oil and water are beat together in yet another bowl. This cake is definitely one to make only if you have space to spread out!
Next the dry ingredients are mixed into the butter and oil mixture and last of all, in goes the eggs and cream. It mixes together satisfyingly well and pours easily into two sandwich tins. These bake for 55 mins until they come out skewer clean!

 I was a little surprised at how big they got!!!

The filling is a simple chocolate butter cream with which we filled the cakes up and then slathered all over! We topped it off with icing sugar and glitter  - which you can't see on the pictures but now coats everything, everywhere in our kitchen. I think we'll be finding edible glitter for months to come...

The results were delicious; a dense, fudgey, chocolaty reason not mind rainy days so much after all!

Rainy days and chocolate cake...

As the songs says, 'I don't care what the weather man says, if the weather man says its raining, then its another excuse for baking, and that's alright by me' ...okay, so that's not quite the words but you get the idea! The weather here in East Yorkshire has been pretty filthy of late. Even walking the dogs round the block is a waterproof and wellies job. The temperatures dropping, the days are dark and the garden looks like one big compost heap...

But on the bright side, the fires are lit and glowing

 

the evenings are longer for knitting and crochet (or putting knots in bits of string as BH would refer to it!)

 

and all the time I would spend in the garden can be put to good use baking cake...

I made this Double Chocolate Loaf Cake at the weekend with the intention of fuelling BH  on the building site this week. The kids loved sprinkling the choc chips and set about scoffing it as soon as it was cool enough to handle. I got the recipe from good food and tweaked it by changing the chocolate chunks to chunks of leftover Toblerone - I know there's no such thing as leftover Toblerone, theres only Toblerone that Mum broke into before Christmas and felt so guilty that she used it up in a cake - there you have it -  confession over, I feel so much better that the truth is out there!

Double Chocolate Loaf Cake

175g softened butter
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
140g self raising flour
85g ground almonds
half teaspoon baking powder
100ml milk
4tbsp cocoa
50g plain chocolate or guilt laden Toblerone

chocolate chips for decorating


Heat the oven to 160C and grease and line a 900g baking tin ( I use the Lakeland liners for convenience).
To make the cake batter beat the butter and sugar until fluffy then beat in the eggs, flour, cocoa, baking powder and milk until smooth. Stir in whats left of your Toblerone then scrape into the tin. Bake for 45 -50 mins until risen and ready.

Then devour and ignore the fact its still raining outside!

A busy week and a bleedin birthday...

Who knows where the time goes? I start each week with a list of garden jobs and house stuff that I either has to be done, should be done or ideally I would just like to do. the list is always ridiculously ambitious which invariably leaves me with a sinking feeling and an unchecked guilt trip.

Earlier this summer I daydreamed about cooking things up out elderberries and brambles, of juicing our apples and stewing up fruit to fill the freezer with pies.

Dream on Freerangegirl - when I finally got out to the hedgerows I found that what hadn't already been picked was shrivelled and dried up already. We haven't plenty of elderberries near us  - i know as I planned to harvest them for elderflower champagne but didn't get round to that either! Ive got the bottles, Ive got the yeast, I just need an extra day in the week.

I think its particularly galling in the garden when you don't get round to a seasonal job as you know that it will have to wait another year - I wonder if anyone else missed out on any planned harvests this year, or is it just me!

Last year year BH had his apple juice production line set up by now and we were enjoying the cloudy nectar well up to Christmas, but what with the big build the juicer is still packed away and at the end of the day we can barely crush a grape, never mind anything else!

Friday was BH's birthday and cake was called for, but as it was a school night this called for a late bedtime whilst my freerangers helped out. They left the final stages to Mum but were more than ready for cake action the next day at breakfast (not sure that's on the healthy schools agenda, but I wont tell them if you don't!)

I love to see perfectly iced cakes, but for our own birthdays I love the child decorated look, so the milky way stars and chocolate buttons got put to very good use. We made a red velvet layer cake and covered it in chocolate ganache. It was a nightmare to get it to set as I was cooking it so late at night I dint have time to let the layers cool and they all wanted to slide off - I ended up securing it with kebab sticks in the fridge overnight.

BH loves a chocolate cake but wasn't quite prepared for the red insides - the words 'chocolate roadkill' come to mind! - well at least it took his mind off getting older!

Workers teatime and a sad sunday...

The building is cracking on a pace. Its unbelievable how quickly things start to take shape once bricks are being laid. Finally our children dont think Dad's building a swimming pool - its going up instead of down at last!

For the longest time BH has been talking me through the finest details of the drawings and plans and managed not to throw them at me when Ive drifted off under the weight of all the technical detail. It was never that I was interested but I just keep leaping too far ahead to the curtains and cushions stage!

But now weve got holes for windows and doors, i'm practically giddy with excitement!  We've already practised sitting in various parts of the room to imagine looking out of the window - but I am under strict orders that if I buy any furniture before its finished tools will be downed in protest!

At least I can feel confident that at last we'll have a room with a view!

This doorway isn't quite as huge as it looks - BH is stood quite a way up the hill - either that or our Yorkshire mist is making him shrink!

Despite the rumours, builders dont survive on tea alone - they quite like a bit of cake to go with it. We had a rare trip to the famous Bettys tea rooms and couldnt resist these beauties. The French fancies have gone down a storm, Mr Kiplings won't ever seem the same again! Personally I'm quite quite taken with the chocolate chestnut conkers!

We'd planned a Sunday tea to serve these up at, but alas things didnt quite go to plan, not least but because we made a discovery in the chicken coop which knocked us for six.  We lost our favourite baby buff bantam this weekend to the pecking order. We noticed that the Marys (our bossy hybrids who we hatched earlier this year) were getting increasingly dominant with our oldest Buff Bantam offspring. She was beautiful and had just laid her first egg. They bossed her about but it seemed no more than that, only when we checked them Sunday teatime we found that she'd been pecked to death. I know, I know  - rural life can be brutal, but right now I could throttle the Murdering Marys myself. BH is really sad too as she was the first chick we ever hatched and he had hoped to show her next year. 

So heres to BB, our baby buff, we'll miss her very much.

Holidays are here!!!

Hoorah!!! They're here at last - after counting down the sleeps and asking how many 'get ups', the summer holidays are finally here! I intended to write a post each night this week as I counted down the days but what with school discos and Governors meetings and what have you i've been too tired to write my own name never mind anything else. But Friday came at last - the end of the term and for me the end of an era, as I finished the job i've been doing (a long way from home) and prepare to take on one much closer to the old homestead. Hoorah!!!

These were waiting for me when I got home...



...along with balloons and my very own ticker tape parade - bless my tribe - they've seen me through every get up and were still there to blow the champagne corks when it came to an end!

This cake was made by one of my parents - I am in awe of their talents and intend to copy this for all my friends!



Once the champagne bubbles have faded I intend to spend the rest of the summer in the garden - the weeds are gathering momentum and it feels already as though the season is slipping away from me. I cant believe I'm excited about raking and hoeing but there it is! the only thing that looks lush in the border at the moment is this Yarrow 'Summer Berries' and even that is in the wrong place and needs moving next year...



But the best thing about breaking up for the summer, the very bestest and loveliest most smashing thing of all is... no more dashing off before breakfast to commute and leaving these two lovelies in bed; and a whole summer of 'Jesse and Woody' fabness ahead - double hoorahs all round!




YEEHAAH!!!