Brighton Rock // Queen

I have quite a lot to catch up on! Expect a few blogs over the next few days..

On Sunday we headed down to Brighton to celebrate Mister Chay's birthday. We picnicked on the beach.. well as we'd already been away mine and Jonny's picnic consisted of burgers and chips from Grubbs. I highly reccomend it if you're in need of a filth fix. It's a must-do for any trip to Brighton.


The other must-do for any beach trip is ice creams! Suprisingly, it was only me and Becci that fancied one. You know the kind I'm talking about. Not real ice cream. That miscellaneous stuff that unfurls out of a machine.


I had two flakes. I realise now this is quite greedy. Becci wanted butterscotch sauce but the man had only strawberry or chocolate. She was very dissapointed, and while she struggled on with eating the sauceless ice cream you could see how distressed she was.








After mooching and doing poi and going in the freezing-icicles-of-death sea we all packed up and headed for the pier. We went on the little rollercoaster.


And then we went on the Waltzer. I love a good waltzer. Especially after beer and ice cream.

Then to the pub for some horrendously bad food and service (I was behaved and didn't complain or moan, as Jonny pinched me). I was by now tired. The plan was to head on to a club event reggae thing. Which isn't my cup of tea, but I fully intended to go in order to not look like a grumpy mare that won't do anything that involves something she doesn't like.. but we were tired so four of us headed for the train.


We picked up crepes on the way. While they were impressively cooked and looked really really nice, the batter was odd tasting and chewy. All the nice stuff dripped to the bottom of the cone that they'd been plonked in. That was dissapointing. I think next time I'll just get a second icecream.


Wow. Reading that you wouldn't think that I had a massively awesome day. It was so much fun. Especially the rollercoasters.

Letter From America // The Proclaimers

Libby made a carrot cake for her work. It had cream cheese icing which is delicious but once the icing was on we decided it needed something else to make it look more exciting. We didn't have any sugar paste icing to make an orange carrot so I made a stencil and we sieved cinnamon through it to make it quite plainly a carrot cake.


I was quite chuffed with my stenciling.

There's been a very detailed carrot cake in the past and this was made using the same recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery book.

Jello Biafra // Wesley Willis

I hate that word - Jello. It makes me all cringey.

Jonny and I hosted a barbecue at the weekend to make the most of the weather, and to cheer me up a bit. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself, so we went all out and spent loads of money.

We had a fair few people over and cooked the usual burgers and sausages and Jonny did this amazing marinade for the lamb we bought. It was incredible.

I hit the pimms at about 1pm. I was rather merry by the end of the evening. We put the usual fruit in pimms (the only acceptable use of fruit really) plus blueberries. Jonny liked them as the skin meant they didn't soak up all the booze. I think this makes him weird and for every blueberry I had I gave myself the task of skewering it so that it ended up with some flavour. Weird things, blueberries. They aren't nice, yet it's quite possible to eat a whole punnet. I like them in cake. That's it.


Anyway, Jonny wanted jelly for pudding. Jelly is another thing I don't really get. I'll eat jelly cubes, but once you've watered them down they just taste like cold, set water. We had three flavours - blackcurrent, raspberry and orange. Jonny wanted them layered up prettily. Which meant it took the whole morning, for what was not much of an effect in the end. By the time you water them down they all look the same sort of washed out pink colour.

Jonny liked it. Our lovely friend Hayley had also brought a chocolate torte, thankfully as after all the meat I was really in the mood for a pudding that wasn't jelly. The torte was lovely, not too rich. Someone.. I have a suspicion that it was Jonny put a piece of torte on top of his bowl of jelly.


This is disgusting and wrong.

The weather seems to have gone away again now, and it looks like it's taken my need for sugar. I'll try a milkshake at lunchtime to try and fix this.

It's Not Easy Being Green // Kermit the Frog

''Blaaarghh'' is the only word for me today. I've been feverish and poorly. I think people are suspicious it's a hangover after Jonny's birthday, but I am certain it's not. I have a horrendously sore throat and am all weak and pathetic.

Jonny's birthday picnic was a success. Isn't everything I have a hand in planning? We had to hold it indoors due to crummy weather, but other than that it was a really lovely day. And it was themeless. Which left me at a bit of a loss as to what cake to make. He'd muttered something about chocolate, but other than that I had no clue.

On Wednesday, his actual birthday, I went hunting for a picture to post on his facebook and had googled 'Kermit Birthday' and I stumbled across daveandraina's Flickr and instantly knew I had to make Kermit the Frog cupcakes. They fit in every way, firstly Jonny is a complete Muppets freak and secondly I was short on time.


I used, again, Hummingbird's vanilla cupcake recipe, and vanilla frosting recipe both with healthy dollops of green colouring gel. I seem to know this recipe very well by now and ended up making the cakes in very little time, which meant I could watch Ashes to Ashes while making the mento-eyes.

Some of the cakes were a little low in the case, which meant I ended up using quite a lot of frosting on some, and hardly any on the other. I need to work on this. I also wasn't very happy with the eyes. I had to use blue food colouring to draw them, and let's face it, I've never been one for any kind of artwork.

But they looked like Kermit, and I think most people liked them, and the actual cake being green was a nice surprise. And Jonny got to do his Kermit impression, which is always a crowd pleaser.

Sugar Sugar // The Archies

I've had a very lazy bank holiday weekend. Though I did cook for 8 people at my house in an impromptu dinner party. I made a risotto! It was the first one I'd ever made. I think it was ok, it all got polished off. So did the black bottomed cupcakes I'd made for pudding.
They were exactly the same as last time, but without the raspberry cream. I had to keep it simple you see. I had a lot to make. I had also dragged out my bread maker and whipped up a loaf to serve warm. I think people prefered that to the risotto!

On Saturday I'd read the lovely Penny's blog, Penelope's Pantry. She'd been making cinnamon rolls out of her leaven starter. And since then I'd been craving something cinnamonny. Which is crazy and wrong, as I am one of the rare people that can't stand cinnamon, ever since going to a party when I was younger and getting rather trollied on home-made cinnamon wine.

So today I decided I needed to make something, and it needed to contain cinnamon. I turned to the Hummingbird Bakery Book again. I don't know why. It's strange for me to use a book so much that isn't Mary Berry. Especially when I've had to edit quite a few of the recipes during use.
I picked the banana and cinnamon muffins. And I doubled the mix so that I could eat some and still take enough to work tomorrow.

I ended up with tonnes of mix. I made 24 muffins and one massive muffin cake after panicking and just shoving it in the first oven proof thing to hand.

They are a bit dense and chewy and the paper cases don't peel satisfyingly off. The cake is a bit flat as the tin I picked out was huge. But they have fulfilled my cinnamon needs. Hopefully for a while.

In other news, I am going on a proper diet. I feel like if I write it here then I will have to do it.