I Can't Live With You // Queen

This song is my favourite Queen song. Its probable that I love it so much because everytime I hear it I think of being in the kitchen in Forest Hut, my favourite room in my favourite house.
I think the last time I was there was back in January, which was aaaaaages ago. Too long.It wasn't the best trip, it probably wasn't the best time to go in hindsight.

But I made a key lime pie. It's not something I'd ever done before, but wanted something easy, and when looking at the ingredients list (biscuits, butter, cream, condensed milk, limes) it just looked like it was going to be lush.

It really was. It was a bit stressful to make. I've said this before - Forest Hut is a dumping ground for things that aren't quite good enough to have in your full-time house (Mouse Trap with half the parts missing? That was one of the most dissapointing moments in my life, and I'll rant about it to anyone that will listen) so if you bake you're doing it on limited equipment.
The thing missing for this was some kind of grater/zester for the peel of the lime. Jonny worked really hard peeling and chopping about 8 limes to get the zest, and I looked at the product of about an hour of hard labour and said 'No.' Now I wasn't just being a bitch, I for once was going on my instinct that chucking in a load of pithy, lumpy zest would ruin my smooth, creamy pudding.



Jonny later concurred that I was right, and it was such an excellent pudding that it did not need the zest.

Just remembering this has made me want to make another. Here's the recipe!

Deeply Dippy // Right Said Fred

I'm getting so excited about Christmas. The trees went up last weekend, so I made them some stained glass tree biscuits with the help of Jonny on Wednesday evening.


We're having a party next week, and the theme is red gingham (the only thing I'm allowed to be in control of, according to Jonny!) so I wanted these to fit, so I decided on heart shape, to only be filled with red sweeties, and to be hung with gingham ribbon.


I won't try and pretend that these are revolutionary biscuits, I think I've made them since I was very little, but they are stunning. This morning the tree was the only thing lit up in the house, and the way fairy lights glowed through the biscuit looked magical.


They are a little bit dark for my liking, I put way too much mixed spice in, so they raw dough was sort of brown rather than golden. And some of them caught in the oven, and they don't taste good, as to be expected.


But this was the first time I've managed to find a recipe where the biscuits did not spread in the oven. My top tip will be not to use any kind of baking or grease proof paper for cooking them on - the sweeties will stick.
Hoepfully they'll last a while on the tree. I've held some back in the tin just incase the giant mouse that lives there gets to any.

Earth Song // Michael Jackson

I was asked to do another allotment cake on the back of the Transition Town Cake . It was for the charity Eco Local for a celebration they were having, and was, thankfully, much smaller.

I was very pleased with the turnout of this cake. The icing was the best I've ever done, and it seemed ashame to put on the ribbon, and then all the mini vegetables on top.

But it looked grand in the end, and apparently it went down very well at the party.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow // Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

Back in September was my friends wedding, I've posted about practice cupcakes for them.
I spent a day solidly baking, decorating and packing up an large amount of cupcakes, just over 150 to be precise. By the end of it I could barely stand up, I was exhausted.



I also did a large chocolate cake, with a Star Wars topper, made by my fantastic brother, Ollie - Glass Candle Grenades.



The day of the actual wedding was interesting, Jonny was official photographer so I was pretty much alone. His Mum, Rosemary shipped me and the cakes about, which I am so grateful for, it would have been very hard to do it on the bus!

There was a small issue of a tablecloth, which a swift jog along the river at Kingston solved, and then I got my own little peaceful trip on one of the Turks Pier boats up to Teddington, where I was met with more cakes at the Wharf.

Then back to get ready and off to enjoy the wedding. Everything was so beautiful and perfect and I got fantastically drunk.

Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter // Iron Maiden

I'm the worst daughter ever. This cake is my Dad's Christmas cake from last year. It took me a year to finish it for him. There is no excuse. I just suck.



It was kept nicely fed and apparently is still in tip top condition and is currently being consumed by him while he's on holiday in Scotland.

I did it with Jonny one evening when all I really wanted to do was sleep, hence why it is so simple, and a little bit rough around the edges. And on a plate, not a cake board.

Smaller and Smaller // Faith No More

A little bit of news to start - Jonny has graduated! I think. I don't really know what process he has to go through to make him graduated (yay grammer) but I know that he's finished uni and his mark has been confirmed and he had his exhibition. Which was great fun, and I was very drunk.

Anyway to celebrate his Mum hosted a little do. She asked me and my Mum to do the sweets.


This was an exciting offer as I'd just bought a new book from Books for Cooks. If you are ever in the Portabello Road area I would say you should do to Books for Cooks more than you should go to the Hummingbird Bakery.

Anyway my new book is called Petit Fours and is just beautiful. I bought it for inspiration for not only food photography and styling, but interior inspiration too (that there is my guilty little indulgence that doesn't involve The Doctor).

The recipes in this book are brilliant. Definately aimed at the dinner party hosting crowd. The recipes are for bacthes of around 8-10. We made the lime meringue pies and the raspberry mousse brownies.


And I did some cute piping, which I was quite pleased with. The lime meringue pies were lovely and I plan to make lots more. The raspberry brownies were a bit trickier. As ever I couldn't tell when the brownie was done, so it was much dryer than it should have been. Mum made the mousse, and it was weird. Weird. Sort of grainy. I should read the recipe, that would probably explain why.


They all went down very well, and everyone said how nice they were. The main point of this post will be LOOK AT THE PIPING!!

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.

Mother // John Lennon

I just had a very busy weekend. I am quite knackered. And I ache all over. That would be down to over doing it at Ballroom I suppose. And then going to the gym yesterday.


You see, the problem with this love of all things sweet is that I'm getting fat. I didn't really notice as at work I tend to go for comfy skirts that sit on my waist and give the illusion of having no hips. Friday evening ended in a massive panic when nothing would fit. Not even the dress that I bought when I was the fattest I'd ever been.
That means I'm now fatter than I have ever been. Gosh. If it is of interest in the end I had to make the dress into a skirt and wear a top.
Anyway in conclusion this all means that I am going to the gym, and anytime now my cravings for sweet things should be replaced by cravings for peas. This could be damaging to the blog for a short while.

The other part of my busy weekend was Mothers Day. It started with an almighty strop because the card I had made was shit, and I couldn't be arsed with getting up stupidly early (9.30 am) to go to Church.
It seems to be tradition now that I don't bother with gifts and just attempt to do all the cooking. I made a chilli and a pudding that Mum had eyed up from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook.
It was a chocolate brownie base, with cheesecake and then a raspberry cream on top.
I think the jist of it was that you bake the brownie, then stick cheesecake on top, then bake it again and then stick the cream on. I don't trust myself or my oven and decided that I really didn't fancy baking brownie twice.


So I made black bottomed cupcakes, which is pretty much the same thing. Chocolate sponge with a dollop of vanilla cheesecake all baked at once. Then to make it more puddingy I made the raspberry cream to blob on.

Issues; I didn't read the recipe and got massively confused when after adding all the wet ingredients the mix was still dry. I'd missed the bit about 125ml of water. Mum had to read it to me. Blame the hangover please.
After adding the water the mix turned into a dough. I'm sure I'd measured it correctly.
Anyway, this is where I went wrong. I sploshed in a load of milk until it was a trustworthy consistency. This isn't helpful for anyone else looking to make these. But you know.. It was a large splosh.

Then the cheesecakey bit.. I whizzed it all up like it said and it was very very runny. So I ended up putting the same amount of cream cheese in again. This meant that I over-mixed it and in the oven it split.

But anyway they were very tasty and I've eaten 3. No more treats for me for a while.

Cups and Cakes // Spinal Tap

Part One.

I have begun the grand cupcake rehearsal. I'm full of fear and excitement as I've put myself up to make 75 cupcakes for a big district guiding event at the end of February.
Which is probably crackers, as I've never attempted a cupcake in my life, and have always been a bit anti-cupcake, more of a fairy cake girl, and then I was a bit snobbish for this trend which is seemingly tailored for yummy mummies.

Anyway, the challenge was too tempting. So.

Practice run one;
Vanilla Cupcake recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Book.

I used to enjoy a wander along Portabello Road to the Hummingbird Bakery. Made a hard day at work and long journey almost worth it. And they are one of the most highly regarded cupcake bakers in London.
So I put myself in their hands and currently have some buns in the oven.

I only got 7 cakes, not the 12 I should have. I assume this is because they realise most people would pop to the supermarket for bun cases, which is standard size, whereas I've used larger ones.
The mix was like pancake batter. It seems to be mostly milk. I have no faith in the professionals and I doubt that they will rise.

Watch this space...



One Hour later...
I think I must have over-filled the cases, but they taste gorgeous! I'll have another go soon and put less mix in. Tomorrow I'll have a bash at carving these ones down and icing them..

Hollaback Girl // Gwen Stefani

A long week was rounded up by a delve round the bakeware section of TK-Maxx, with the lovely Becci.
We found a lot of great stuff, including a black le creuset tea pot! £10! It's beautiful and Becci snapped it up so I'll be round to hers for tea soon. I saw a lot of stuff that I would like, but resisted everything apart from four mini loaf tins.
Cakes are good, but tiny cakes are excellent. I don't know why.


And when you have new loaf tins, there is only one thing you should christen them with.

Banana Bread!

We used How to be a Domestic Goddess, by Nigella Lawson, for the recipe.
We didn't change anything, other than soaking the finished loaves in a bit of rum and glazing them. Oh and I put a split in the cake half way through cooking, which is an old William Curley habit. Jonny thinks it was unnecessary. I don't.


The bananas were not ripe as the recipe states, as it was a spontaneous decision to make it today and we had none in stock. I just made sure that they had a proper good mash before going in.



The cakes have turned out beautifully. Moist and moreish. I'm not allowed to eat anymore though until I've had some lunch.


The only problem I had was that we cooked 1 recipes worth, but took quite a lot out of the large cake in order to make the small ones. This means that the big cake is wide and a bit flat, even though it has risen and definately did not sink when cooling.

I Can't Smile Without You // Barry Manilow

That song, is the only song on my cake playlist that does not directly reference any kind of food. It is the only song on my cake playlist that does sum up my relationship with food, especially sweet food.

I have started blogging as I have been told by a few people that I must 'keep my hand in' when it comes to food. I trained for a year with a team of the best pastry chefs in the country, with dreams of starting an amazing career working in the best kitchens in Britain.
This came to a difficult halt a few months ago when I developed a spot of the blues, and went a bit dippy. It took a lot of thought, but in the end it was clear that I had to stop working in the kitchen as I couldn't handle the stress and working very long days wasn't giving me the time to get better.

So I am now on the road to recovery, and have quite a bit of spare time. My current therapy is making eleven christmas cakes over the next few days. Once these are complete I can get down to the details - planning how I will decorate each one. I'm trying not to let myself get too excited about this bit yet, as they need all the time they can get to mature and be fed. But the planning will start soon.

The christmas cake adventure started a week ago, with the realisation that I had no vessel large enough to soak three and a half kilos of fruit. A panic stricken flurry around the house finally came up trumps and I filled up one of those 'really useful boxes'. This turned out to be a fantastic idea as you can clip the lid on and shake it up, and it's kept some of the fruit, that I haven't gotten round to using just yet, fresh and boozy.

The first batch I did - a 10, 8, 6 and 5 inch round - turned out to be way too big and had to be split into more mixing bowls than I was happy with.
I was up until 3 in the morning waiting for that lot to cook.

I suppose this is where I should post a recipe but I find that, of all recipes, the ones for Christmas Cake are the ones where people say: 'I use my great great great grandmothers recipe which has been exclusively used in our family for one hundred and two years.'
This is where I have a shameful admission - the recipe I use has not been lovingly passed down through generations, but is from a very useful website, which gives the amounts, cooking times and final weights for every tin size imaginable.
This is incredibly useful when you're making eleven cakes, and some people want enough for an army, and others want enough for two.
It makes a beautifully rich cake which I have never receieved any complaints about.

Imaginative Icing Site

Under Christmas ideas is an extensive range of evrything you could need for your festivities, as well as the amazing recipe.