Stand Up To Cancer

I initially wrote this massive thing about losing both my parents to cancer, but it was awfully depressing.  So i just deleted it and replace it with this.  

Live every day like it's your best day.

Stand Up To Cancer
CRUK
Macmillan

xx

Tonight i used up the rest of my pumpkin puree

Well tonight i watched the GBBO Masterclass and decided to make something with the rest of my pumpkin puree that i done last night. I didn't want another roulade  (i didn't have enough pumpy left and also it was bloody messy!) so i took to t'internet and found a cupcake recipe :-)

Plain flour, bicarb and mixed spice combined with pumpy, egg, milk and a fair wee whack of sugar and i ended up with a no bad looking mixture!

Batter :)

I went to pop it into my cases them remembered i bought an ice cream scoop just for this very purpose :-D unfortunately, i overestimated the first cake and had to scoop half of it out again  (but i live and learn! !)

Ice cream scoopin :)

25 minutes in a 170° oven and wallah!

They wouldn't win a beauty contest, but well neither would I :)

There no bad eh? I've got the rest of my frosting left over from last night to use up so that'll get used up when they're cool!

I'm not counting my chickens yet, they might be mingin! But at least they're made :-)

Tonight i pureed my own pumpkin!

Right I'm doing this from my phone so i don't even know if i can post pics BUT tonight i found a method on the Pioneer Woman  to tell you how to puree your own pumpkin.  So i did. Try. 

This is what I'm aiming for...

I roasted it in chunks and then took the skin off. It was awfully watery, which it wasn't in her photo, but I seived it to get rid of the excess. Then i blitzed it in a food processor and drained it some more! Them i looked for something to make it with. 

My pumpkin.

Yesterday i found a Hummingbird bakery book at 2 for  £10 in WH Smith (i got Tom Kerridge too) and in there is a pumpkin roulade thing. 

So its in the oven just now. I'll update when it's out...

Ooh i also started making my Christmas limoncello so that's happily infusing in the cupboard!

Fingers crossed...

Limoncello stage one!

15 minutes later...

The cake's out the oven!  It's a bit pale!

To be fair, the other side looked a bit better!  Well, darker.

Cream cheese frosting...

Unfortunately I forgot that butter wrapper has metal in it, and I put it in the microwave to soften it a bit.  Oops.  

It was a lovely light show though :)

And all for..  Doo doo doo dooooooooo...

IT WORKED!!!!!

Look at all that lovely cakiness!!!

The view from above!

Unfortunately (I should probably get that word on auto-use, I can tell it's going to be used a lot lol) when I attempted to slice it, a lot of the filling squished out the end.  I never understood how people managed to make roulade neatly.  

Anyway, I just scooped up the frosting stuff and shoved it on top!!  It's bloody lovely :D  Even Andrew likes it, and that's saying something!!!

A slice!

An actual bake!!!!  I made that!!  From a book and I didn't even make any of it up!!!  WOOOOO!!!

Ooh i meant to say...

I'm going to the BBC Good Food show in Glasgow on Sunday! I'm right excited!

James Martin at 11 :-) hoping to fill my wee shopping bag full of goodies!!!

The sweet stuff!

Hopefully I haven't bored you to tears yet. 

Now the good stuff.  Starting with...

Fairy cakes.  I think.

These were part one of a 2-part concoction I made for work a few years ago.  I wasn't really into baking much back then, but decided to try these fairy cakes.  The icing was mint flavour and I hoped that the mintiness would seep through into the chocolate of the sponge and be lovely.

It didn't.

If I remember correctly, most of them went in the bin.  It takes a lot for a ward full of nurses to refuse cake.  I managed to make it happen.  Part of the reason was also these...

Mint chocolate truffles

They were vile.  I'm not sure how I could have got it so wrong but, alas, I managed.  They also ended up in the bin.

I did manage to make decent fairy cakes eventually, but the first ones I tried to ice went a bit wrong.  I honestly don't know how people manage to ice cakes well.  I'll do it one day, I hope.

I'm getting to something now that I'm right proud of.  I used Jamie Oliver's Bloomin' Brilliant Brownie recipe as my first ever attempt of brownies.

They. Were. Amazing.

I opted not to use the chopped fruit and nuts that he uses, and instead used even more chopped chocolate in their place.  Best move I ever made. I also took these into work and they were gone within about 20 minutes.  That was when I knew I'd done good :)

Once Blogger allows me to add more photos, you'll be treated to the delights of my first ever attempt of lemon drizzle cake:

The cut off bits from the burnt lemon drizzle cake.

Burnt lemon drizzle cake.

and a pimped-up, giant jaffa cake that looked brilliant but was unfortunately too dry to eat without at least a pint of tea!! 

Also, my rhubarb crumble float.  It moved about a lot in the dish.  It was pretty tasteless.  Looks a wee bit like a map though, don't you think? :)

And a half-decent attempt at scones (as in gone, not as in bone).  As I obviously can't get guidance from mum anymore, I use Mary Berry as my substitute, and she helped me make right nice scones.

Oooh, and the Richard E Grant recipe for sticky toffee pudding that I made at my pal Johanne's house one day (I can't remember the occassion, and I got toffee sauce all over her cooker as I didn't expect it to boil quite as high as it did...)

So that just about brings me to tonight, and the reason this blog started.  Today I attempted to make profiteroles.  I'm sure I've made choux pastry before, but unfortunately todays effort didn't quite work as planned.

They were very flat.  And the caramel didn't quite go to plan.  But on the plus side, I didn't burn myself this time!!  And the pan got to go back into the cupboard, unlike the last attempt where it had to go in the bin!!!

Go me!

And there I shall leave you for tonight.  To whet your whistle, I recently bought the Sweets Made Simple book that was on the telly recently, and I plan to attempt some sort of sweetie soon!  That, and whatever else takes my fancy for my friends and family to devour (or bin when I'm not looking!!).

See you soon,
S
x

Here we go again.

Sorry about that, I'm not quite sure what happened.

Because of that, I'm going to just quickly pop up some pictures of my savoury stuff, then my sweet stuff (ooh, aren't you in for a treat...). 

Stuffed peppers.  Bachelors Savoury Rice is my favourite ingredient :)

The inside of the stuffed peppers.

A homemade burger that didn't fall apart!!  Well, it did when all the juice started running out and ruined the roll, but still...

Minestrone soup.  This looks ok, to be fair.  Tasted amazing!

Massive stir fry fail.

Now, for some reason, I cannot make a stir fry.  The one in the picture above was totally tasteless.  In it, I put beef strips (yum), stir fry veg (yum), soy sauce (yum) and some sort of stir fry sauce (yum).

You know what it tasted of?

Nothing.  Just nothing.  Not even meat!  It tasted of texture.  It was totally rubbish.

Quorn lasagne.

A while back, I went through a Quorn phase.  The mince I found to be a half-decent substitute for cow.  The lasagne in the picture above was actually not too bad.  However...

Quorn casserole.

This was totally tasteless.  I used the Quorn pieces instead of chicken, and basically just shoved in other random stuff I could find that was in the cupboard and fridge.  I needed a fair amount of juice to wash the portion I had down. 

I think the rest went in the bin.  I'm not usually one for waste, but sometimes things just can't exist.

My first ever Yorkshire puddings :)

My final step in the savoury journey that brought me here.  These were the first Yorkshire puddings that I managed to make.  There were many, many variations of this before I reached this (unfortunately I can't find pictures, sorry).  I now think I'm quite a Yorkie master (as long as I still have the recipe in front of me!).

So that's my savoury journey.  Join me next time (haha) for my sweet adventures.

Right here we go.

It all started with tomato pasta.  It looks rubbish, but tasted lovely!!

From here, I decided to start sharing my experiences.  The following have their own wee stories, so I'll try and remember them to share them.  In order to make things something close to organised, I'll start with savoury :)

Med Veg

I found a pack of Mediterranean vegetables in Asda, and thought "Ooh they look right nice".  And they did!  Look at them, all colourful and herby.

I burnt them.

Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the burntness.  I still ate them though.

Pasta n Sauce quiche

Ahhh, Pasta n Sauce.  Now.  This isn't just your average Pasta n Sauce - no no no!!  This is Pasta n Sauce quiche!  It looks bloody awful.  But tastes amazing.  Do you want the recipe??  Of course you do - who could resist this???
 - Make Pasta N Sauce (I tend to use chicken and mushroom, but have become partial to cheese, leek and ham and also cheese and broccoli) according to packet instructions.   At the same time, boil some sweetcorn until it's cooked.
 - Whisk up an egg or 2 and mix it in the pasta pan with the pasta.
 - Add the sweetcorn to the eggy pasta mix
 - Chuck it in an oven dish and pop it in the oven - about 180 for about 25 mins or so.
 - Eat.
 - Yum.

Squtternut Bosh soup

This is spicy butternut squash soup.  It was my first attempt at using a butternut squash, as I just assumed I wouldn't like them.  How wrong I was!!

I love butternut squash.

Chicken pie stage 1

 This was my first attempt of making a proper pie.  I didn't make the pastry, I bought it.  I've still not attempted puff pastry.  One day I might be brave enough!!

Chicken pie stage 2

Doesn't it look pretty :)

Chicken pie stage 3

Now, I was quite disappointed that the wee leaf pattern I'd made had disintegrated, but the pie was bloody good!!

Oooh, this is Mary Berry's Christmas Chutney.  I made it a few years ago to give as Christmas presents and had enough left over to enjoy it myself.  I highly recommend anyone to make it - you need some fairly big pans and a LOT of jars to keep it in (and a shed load of patience) but it's right worth it.

As a matter of fact, I've made it again this year to give as presents.  Lucky pals :)  Still, it's not attractive!

In American telly programmes and films (the above was inspired by The Devil Wears Prada, where Andi's boyfriend makes her grilled cheese when she's moaning about work) they don't seem to do toasties the same as how I was taught.  I grew up with a toastie machine that made the edges join up and be all nice and crunchy.
I decided to try and make it like an American, in a frying pan.

I burnt it.

Ah, now this I'm proud of.  This is my mum's lentil soup.  See when you're ill and you just want something comforting and that reminds you of being looked after when you were wee?  This is mine.  I'm sad to say my mum died in 2013, and since then I've tried to make the things that she made so that I can have those instant memories of standing watching her in the kitchen, via my senses of smell and taste.  Her scones -  I haven't mastered.  Her Smiddy Loaf (I'll come to that in a later post) - I've not quite managed that yet either.  But her soup.  That is my comfort.

I'm going to post this just now and continue with savoury in another post.  I've tried to add more pictures but Blogger doesn't seem to like it.  Back in a mo...