Tea party Thursday...

When your other half comes bounding in like an excited puppy telling you, you've been invited round for a girl's night you something's not quite right. In fact what he's really saying is 'I'm having a poker night, ordering pizza and drinking beer and you're not invited.

I don't mind anyway. I'd much rather eat lasagne and salad and watch Strictly Come Dancing reruns than be stuck in a flat with a load of boys...

So if I'm going to play at the girls' house I thought I better make something fit for party. I wanted to make proper fairy cakes. Like the ones you had at parties when you were little...not the fancy creations you get now. There's nothing wrong with the posh ones. I love them. I dream about the perfectly whipped frosting kiss sitting on a perfect vanilla sponge that I see in Marks and Spencer. But it's the same as beef. I love fillet steak but occasionally I'll wolf down a Big Mac and enjoy it in the same way. These are the fairy cakes your mum probably made....

Mum's Cupcakes....

Ingredients: (Weights to be determined but you probably have them all in your cupboard anyway...)

4 eggs
Self Raising Flour
Baking Powder
Butter
Golden Brown Sugar
Cocoa
Icing Sugar
The most brightly coloured sweets you can find....

Method....

Weigh four eggs in their shells....Mine came to six oz.....


Put the eggs to one side. Weigh the exact same amount of butter (so six oz) and sugar (six oz) into a bowl and whisk together until fluffy. Add an egg, one at a time, mix.

Fold in the same amount of self raising flour (for me it was six oz) and 1 tbsp baking powder. In cupcake cases add 2 tsps of the mix. You will still have loads of cake mix left. Add 2 tbsp cocoa and mix. Spoon into the rest of the cases....

Pop into an oven (preheated to 180'c) and cook for 20 minutes. Take out and cool and top with your favourite toppings. I chose butterfly cakes filled with blackberry and apple jam I cooked last week. I made royal icing and topped some with a type of sweets called "millions".

The chocolate ones are topped with chocolate butter icing and smarties and chocolate buttons...

So now (picture this) the boys will be playing poker, eating pizza, drinking beer and polishing off fairy cakes....

A little egg for a sad day...

Photo: http://www.callington.uk.net/

It's amazing how someone you've never met can inspire you to live a different life. That someone once told me she would stay "active, attractive and positive." I found out today that person died last Thursday. And I'm sitting here repeating her mantra..."active, attractive and positive" feeling none of the three....but hoping that she inspired others like she inspired me.

So no proper blog today. I'm going to eat poached Cornish eggs with a sunshine yolk then go for a walk on what could be the last sunny day of the summer.....

Dinner for six...(a sneaky peak)

We bought a new dining table back in May and I apart from a few family members I haven't had chance to have real people around to eat around. Tomorrow is our friend's 30th birthday so tonight I'm cooking her and her husband and two other friends dinner. I'll blog the whole thing tomorrow but here's a sneaky peak of the starter (which is about all I've done so far....)


I'm making herb bread to go with it...

Full photos tomorrow

Cornwall Food Festival (Part 1)

I love that feeling when you have got so many exciting things to look forward to you can hardly decide which one to think about the most.

Firstly we have our lovely friends wedding, then I have my birthday when Team Taylor will come over from Scilly to have three days of fun, walking and eating at my favourite restaurant The Driftwood at Portscatho. Now I've found out the radio programme I produced has been nominated for a Gillard Award for Best Daytime Show. I am doing a lot of skipping about my flat!

And in 3 weeks time I will mostly be blogging about the Cornwall Food Festival. It's always my biggest challenge not to spend a month's wages. But this year I have a freezer and I'm going to buy lots of goodies to squirrel away.

Like Sargies sticky toffee pudding....


I bought some home from Launceston Show and we ate it with clotted cream. It sticks to your teeth and it will be perfect for a rainy day. Also some Fifteen Bread....

I hope they have the rosemary and sea salt one I bought at the Royal Cornwall Show last year. More to come.....

Tea=Happiness

I'm a bit baked out after the last couple of days. I had planned to come home after work and bake some bread but I looked at the perfectly fine loaf of bread already in the bread bin and decided to have a cup of tea instead.

Photo Credit: David McNeil

I'm off to Wales tomorrow (hopefully, if the DVLA ever accepts my money for car tax!) so hopefully I'll get the chance to buy some great stuff to come home with. There's an amzing deli in Pontyprydd and I'll probably come home with all kinds of finds. It does an amazing gorgonzola and marscapone dip there. Rumour has it that there's an Italian in Pontyprydd who asked them to buy it in for him...now everyone wants it. My marvellous soon to be married friends always bring me a tub when they come to visit and we dip carrots and beans in it (and when they've gone I just use my finger).



I'll blog my finds when I get back on Sunday but for now I'll stick with my cup of tea...if only I had something baked to eat with it....

Crumble Grumble...

When Delia did her TV series last year using cheating ingredients her fans were split down the middle much like celebrity fans in the Jordan/Peter divorce. Team Traditional love old Delia, her foaming hollandaise, corned beef hash and apple cake. Whereas Team Timesaver dusted off their breadmakers and sauce jars and jumped for joy that Queen Delia finally gave them the endorsement to cook again!

I think fruit crumble is one of those puddings you can't go wrong with. Everyone has their own recipe and I've never had a bad one. But still cooks are fiercely proud of their own one.
I've always moved towards Team Traditional in the Delia camp sticking to her tried and tested methods.

But a few weeks ago I vowed to use up my larder cupboard ingredients. And as I was making a crumble I added a sachet of Oats So Simple...and the rest is history.


Blackberry and Apple Crumble...

7oz Plain Flour

1 sachet Golden Syrup Oats So Simple

4oz Butter

40z Soft Brown Sugar

8oz blackberries

8oz apples, peeled, cored and chopped

Sugar to taste.

Put the apples and blackberries in a saucepan with 4 tbsp water and a tbsp or so of sugar. Cook on a low heat until soft. Pour into a crumble tin.

In a bowl put the flour and sugar. Rub in the butter until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the oats. Sprinkle on top of the fruit and cook in a pre heated oven at 180'c for about 25 mins.

Served with clotted cream.

Banana and Chocolate Cake for a windy day...

I've got a million pictures like this. When I try and stretch out my arm and take our picture and end up cutting one or both of us out. But they make me laugh. They remind me of my other half talking through his smile telling me I've only got half the photo and me maintaining that "no I've definately got us both in this time."

Another thing I am not good at is making plans fit the weather. We decided early on to go for a walk. The old Gwithian/Marazion debate started and the other half won. But the wind picked up and the tide rolled in and the windsurfers that were making the most of the wind started to pack up and come in. Avoiding the thousands of tourists huddled behind wind breaks in shorts and t shirts as locals walked the coast in jeans and jumpers.

We walked over towards Godrevy through the dunes where the last few bits of living sea holly were searching for sun among the coffee grey skeletons of dead plants. As we walked back to the car park the wind whipped up mouthfuls of sand, scattering a sprinkle in our eyes for good measure.

The other half was moaning about going rowing and in the car ride home I tried to think about what to cook him for when he got home. We had three tired looking bananas that were way beyond packed lunches and I've thrown too many of them away in the last few months. Hidden among the potatos in the bottom of the larder cupboard was a bar of cooking chocolate left over from another windy day cookery session so I decided to make banana and chocolate crumble cake. A cake stodgy and gooey on the bottom with a crumbly dry topping that makes you feel like you are eating cake and pudding all at once......

And it hit the spot....with leftovers heading to work tomorrow....

Banana and Chocolate Crumble Cake (makes 12 squares)

3 eggs

Self Raising Flour

Caster Sugar

Butter

2 tbsp cocoa

4oz Chocolate

3 bananas

1 tsp vanilla essence

7oz plain flour

1oz oats

4oz butter

4oz brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 180'c. Grease and line a rectangle tray. Weigh the eggs in their shells. Set aside. Weight exactly the same amount of butter and then the same amount of sugar and cream together. Add the eggs one at a time mixing thoroughly. Weigh the exact same amount of self raising flour and fold in. Add the cocoa, vanilla, mashed bananas and chopped up chocolate. (Make the chocolate chunks big).

Put the mix in the lined tray. Put the flour and brown sugar in a bowl and rub in the butter until fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the oats. Sprinkle on top of the cake. (Only half the crumble mix is needed.....I always freeze the rest). Pop in the oven and bake for around 30 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.

Eat warm, with clotted cream.