In the Kitchen

I have been baking up a storm over the last week, mainly during our quarantine. Iris and I made some iced biscuits. So delicious. And easy! I think perfect for birthday parties and maybe even to hang on the C******** Tree?

Here's the recipe - makes 20*

110g/4oz unsalted butter (i made them with salted butter and it was fine)
110g/4oz caster sugar
1 egg beaten
few drops real vanilla essence
285g/10oz plain flour
a pinch of salt (omit if using salted butter)

for the icing
225g/8oz icing sugar
boiling water
If you want to colour it naturally, try pressing a few raspberries through a sieve to extract the juice. This should make a nice pinkish icing.

First preheat the oven to 190C/375F/gas mark 5

Then beat the butter until soft, add the sugar and beat until light & fluffy. Gradually beat in the egg. Add the vanilla essence.

Next sift the flour with the salt (if using) and mix it into the butter. sugar & egg mixture.

Roll the paste out to the thickness of a £1 coin and stamp it into your desired shapes with biscuit cutters. Place on an ungreased baking tray.

Bake for 8-10 minutes until just beginning to brown at the edges. leave to cool on a wire rack.

Make the glace icing. Sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Add enough boiling water to ensure a fairly stiff consistency. Add the raspberry juice. Spoon the icing over the biscuits smoothly over the biscuits using a spoon. Leave to dry and harden.

*adapted from Leiths Cookery Bible by Prue Leith & Caroline Waldegrave.

Then, I made this chocolate-y date-y crumble-y slice. Seen here in the early stages.



Again very easy and delicious, Iris wasn't keen, I think the dates distract too much from the chocolate for her. I really liked it, although I'm going to make it again without the dates, I'm going to replace with with more chocolate! I'll let you know how that turns out.

Not to mention also potting up things for the store cupboard. Spiced blackberry jelly, some lemon curd and some apple & chilli jelly. Lemon curd on toast is about our favourite thing to have as a snack, but you could also use it sandwich a simple vanilla sponge cake together, oh boy, that would be so NICE!



I have been in the mood to try some new recipes also and made this(the last one) and this for supper last week. All very delicious and recommendable.

What have you been savouring in your kitchen recently?

sweet treats

It's tipping with raining today, it's still the summer holidays, we've just got back from an epic trip (more of that to follow) and naturally one's mind turns to... CAKE.

So, here as promised are my recipes for two fail-safe, easy and delicious cakes that I make quite regularly, easy enough to make with small children helping as well.

Plum Cake




This is taken from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries

butter - 150g
unrefined golden caster sugar - 150g
plums - 16
eggs - 3 large
plain flour - 75g
baking powder - 1 1/2 teaspoons
ground almonds - 100g
vanilla essence - 1 teaspoon (original recipe didn't call for this but I always add vanilla to my cakes no matter what).

How to

Set the oven at 180C/gas 4. Line a 20cm square cake tin (nb I made this in a large round tin and it was fine).

Beat the sugar and butter until pale and fluffy. NS recommends the use of a food mixer here, but I beg to differ. Yeah so maybe it's convenient, but I only ever make cakes by hand, I mean if you're gonna bake, you might as well do it properly and not in a hurry, eh? And it tastes better too. Aaaanyway, halve the plums and remove the stones.

Break the eggs, lightly beat them with a fork, then add them bit by bit to the butter and sugar. Sift the flour and baking powder together and fold them gently into the mixture using a large metal spoon.Fold in the ground almonds.

Scrape the mixture into the prepared tin. Place the halved plums on the cake mixture. Again NS says not to do this with any real precision as they will sink into the cake as they cook. But I found that they stayed toppermost and the whole cake looked quite frangipane-y (you could super-amp this by adding a couple of drops of good almond essence instead of vanilla). Bake for 40-45 minutes. Test for doneness with a skewer. If it comes out clean with no wet cake mixture then it's ready. Take it out of the oven, leave in the tin for 15 minutes before turning out. Delicious with some thick cream as a pudding.





Banana Bread

To make one loaf - the template ingredients.

sultanas - 75g
butter (recipes always seem to call for unsalted, but I never buy unsalted so use what you have)- 100g very soft
caster sugar - 125g
organic free range eggs - 2 large
bananas - 3 large ripe ones
vanilla essence - one capful
self raising flour - 200g (I sometimes use white spelt or a mixture of white and wholemeal flour)

So you could make the above cake and it'll be really yumso, but here are some other things I like to add.

ground almonds
Green and Blacks cocoa
shredded coconut

Quantities of the above extras should be around 100g, maybe a bit less. That's not very exact is it?

How to

Preheat the oven to 160 or gas mark 3. Grease or line the tin.

Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl until well softened and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract. Break in an egg and beat it into the mixture completely then beat in the other egg. Add the sultanas, and the coconut if using.

Mash the bananas to a lumpy pulp, you don't have to be exact here. Add them to the bowl and stir well.

Sift the flour (and cocoa and/or almonds if using) into the bowl and carefully fold throughly into the mixture with a large metal spoon.

Scrape the mixture into the tin and gently level the top with the back of the spoon (at this point I sometimes sprinkle sugar over the top and some flaked almonds for a sugary nutty crust). Into the oven! Bake for about an hour. Test with skewer for doneness. Cool in the tin for 15 minutes then you can turn it out and tuck in!

Random Summer Snapshots

Long and proper days of summer. The same beach on two different days. Pimms. A takeaway curry on the beach. Strawberries, suncream and sand. Another flea. Carefree days and late nights. And so it has felt like being on holiday, even just for a day or an afternoon or an evening - quite magical. It's raining today though. But I don't mind, everything could really do with a drink. But I hope the sun comes back soon! What has been your favourite summery thing to do?

New Treasure Finds & Summer Time Treats

I have spent the afternoon weeding, hoeing and eating wild boar sausages in the hot hot sun, I'm not complaining but blimey, I am feeling exhausted! Although, actually, I am complaining about pollen! Go to the bees and not up my nose! My hay fever is raging. It's a pain.

Anyway! See here! A big pile of new (to me) treasures!!

More books of course.



I mean, don't these shelves look like they need a few more books?



A jolly old jigsaw.



A nice old fat Pooh bear for Iris.



Tiny faded raffia sewing basket and babushka doll.



Some old bottles for my next flea.



After lunch today, Iris and I picked a good handful of wild strawberries from our garden and snaffled them with some strawberry ice cream. *YUM*



And now, finally, to bed. Hooray.

Post Birthday Post

Thank you all for your birthday glad tidings. I had a sweet and treaty day, with all sorts of nice. There were presents and cards and cake (two kinds) and prosecco and oysters.

Unfortunately all the photos I took were either out of focus or rubbish in some other undefinable way. So, I can only really share my new brogues with you for the moment.



And this whizzy photograph I took of Iris.



Oh and also, here's a little peek at some things I'm working on at the moment.

Come Down Thursday

After the excitement of yesterday, today has been really rather uneventful.

Luckily, I was able to lose myself in the alchemy of the kitchen turning plums into jam...



Damsons and blackberries into spiced cordial (half of this will be added to some brandy or vodka to make something special to drink in front of the fire this winter, cosy picture, eh?)



And cucumbers into dill pickles. Coupled with the beetroot chutney and elderberry & blackberry cordial I made earlier this week, if we had a larder, it would be groaning.



Here are a few little things I found last weekend, I expect I'll get round to putting some of them in the shop next week.

Tiny kaleidoscope - it has the prettiest little circus-y drawings all over it.





Wonderful 1960s (?) map of Barcelona, wouldn't the image below be great as a poster?





Jolly Bearskin dish, in its original box, it looks as though it's never been taken out! It reminds me of the illustrations in M Sasek's This Is London.





We're going camping tomorrow, one last hurrah as the weather has been rather lovely the past two days, and you've got to make the most of that haven't you?

Wow, What A Wednesday!

Oh Wednesday, who knew you could be so good?

1) It's our 4th wedding anniversary



2) Our family portrait is up on DosFamily - thank you Jenny (you can see some outtakes below). Join in, join in!





3) I have just got back from an afternoon in the sun picking plums and blackberries with my sweet funny family.

4) And, oh yeah, my plates are on Design Sponge! WHOOO HOOO! Design Sponge! I am absolutely thrilled. Grace, thank you very much.

p.s. Tuesday was pretty sweet as well, Amy at Sweet Sweet Life posted this - thank you, thank you dear Amy!

I'd better go and have a lie-down, I'm feeling as giddy as a kipper.

A Super-Nice Time

So many super-nice things happened this weekend, I wrote a list! Here are 10 good things about my weekend.

1) Larking about on the beach with Iris and some friends.





2) Flowers grown by friends.



3) An unexpected parcel of magic from Katie.



4) A stolen day of electronic music, for Paul and I, at the Loop Festival in Brighton. In the drizzle, Brighton was the epitome of faded seaside glamour.









5) Delicious sushi here.

6) Discovering a new band to love, We Have Band. Check them out here and be sure to listen to their cover of West End Girls!

7) Seeing Fever Ray (aka Karin from The Knife) headline said music festival. She played her set in almost complete darkness, with flickering table lamps, incense, dry ice, shamanic costumes, face paint and incredible lasers. Spooky, exciting and one of the best live performances I have ever seen. Quite a spectacle.





8) A surprisingly successful car boot sale haul, given I turned up half an hour before the end. (More of that later).






9) A proper summer fete, with table tops sales, cider, cream teas, bunting and very very good cake.

10) Bringing home some lovely things from the fete, including this pull-along clown (seem to have a circus-y thing going on right now) and two outrageously chocolatey brownies made by these clever people.



So much fun crammed into a tiny space of time! Lovely, but boy, am I tired!