Tonight I made some stuff for Christmas!

Well this year me and my fella are heading to my sister-in-laws mums house for Christmas so, not really knowing what the etiquette is, i pet to make a couple of puddings! 

Now then, banoffee pie and nutella cheesecake are in the fridge setting , waiting for a good dollop of whipped cream and some decoration tomorrow night :-)

I'm right excited for Christmas this year! I've got a brand new nephew to play with and, by the looks of it, a fair few bottles of cava to get through! Game on! One more day to work then I'm on it! 

First the banoffee pie!

Digestives blitzed

Buttery biscuit base setting in the fridge

and on with the bananas

Ariel view (there's a few of these)

I cheated and got ready-made caramel

Another ariel view,  just the whipped cream to go tomorrow!

And now for the Nutella cheesecake...  

Cream cheese first...

Add lots of Nutella-y goodness!

Mixed it up with some icing sugar...

Gave it a whirl...

Popped it onto another buttery biscuit base!

And ta-da!!!  It's now in the fridge with the banoffee!

As a wee aside, I attempted to make cranberry sauce.  I just followed a basic recipe but added some clementine juice to it tonight to try and make it a bit nicer :)

I hope it goes with the turkey!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Tonight i took photos of the stuff i made yesterday!

Well, yesterday i was meant to be revising for a new autism module I'm doing with the open uni  for work. So naturally i found any way possible to distract myself from sitting down with my books. 

The result was a nutella cheesecake, meringues, and homemade vanilla ice cream.

Lovely, chewy meringueness!!

Questionable vanilla ice cream.

All in all they weren't too horrible - i was quite chuffed with myself if truth be told!  The cheesecake was a Nigella effort but with no hazelnuts. The meringues came from a basic Mary Berry recipe and the ice cream was the first one that came up on Google that didn't involve an ice cream maker! 

Nutella cheesecake.  Bloody awesome!!

Previous to these, i also made some blueberry and white chocolate cupcakes (that i made up myself really, and hoped for the best )and some pancakes that are slowly going hard in the kitchen as i type this! 

White choc and blueberry cupcakes.  I forgot to take the pic when they looked less stale...

Its my birthday on Friday so i think I'm might attempt some nice savoury food for then. Who am i kidding, I'll probably get a steak and eat it blue with an onion. I'm classy, me.  If anyone reading this  (anyone??) Has some nice birthday treat suggestions please let me know. I do enjoy a challenge :-)

Tonight i made traybakes

Well, tomorrow is my best pal's wedding party after she got married 2 weeks ago. I originally said I'd make lots of cupcakes but someone else who is better at them offered instead so when i asked her what she wanted she said traybakes! So here i am! 

My stuff!!!

The plan was to make about 7 different ones to cut into wee bits so everyone could get a bit of something. So far I'm  finished 4 of them! 

First off was the base for peppermint slice, then when that was in the oven i smooshed up some custard creams for a different one.  Then i made a mars bar crispie because that's the easiest one. With the mars cooling i made peppermint icing (a bit too minty i think but fuck it) and popped the tons of condensed milk i bought into the  custard cream thingy! 

Peppermint slice base and custard cream thingy.

And then i was done! Its amazing how simple things still take bloody ages to make!

But then i thought no- if i finish now them I'll have even more to do in the morning! So i made some fudge which -by the way- is fucking amazing! First time I've ever made fudge and its just brilliant! It doesn't look very much portion wise, but it says it cuts into 60!! 60!?! That should be interesting! 

Mars bar crispy.  Nom.

Custard cream slice with rainbow drop top.  How fancy am I?!?!! :)

So tomorrow I'll get cracking with boiled fruit cake (smiddy loaf to my friends), tiffin cake and millionaire's shortcake.  I'll probably have to buy more syrup as Andrew realised the other night that the combination of syrup and digestives was his favourite thing ever (wee shite).

Off to bed with a bottle of wine :-) see yall tomorrow!

Fudge, 74c

Fudge, 112c

Fudge, 118c

Goodies in the fridge!!!

Today i made some Mars Bar krispie.

Well, not exactly.

It was made from Titan bars- ALDIs own tale on a Mars Bar.  Titans, butter, syrup and ALDIs own brand rice crispies and voila!

I'm enjoying a sweet supper tonight, with some Seed&Bean chocolate for good measure.

Yum!

http://www.seedandbean.co.uk/

Today i enjoyed some of my wares

Tonight i enjoyed some Perthshire ginger oatcakes spread (spreaded?) with crunchy Biscuit Butter and Nutella, washed down with ginger chai tea by The Wee Tea Company :-)

I never actually made any of it myself, and it was far from crappy, but it's definitely worth a mention!

Yum!!!!

This morning I used up stuff that was about to go bad.

This morning I woke up with the intention of making a cake.  I still intend to, but first I decided to make stuff with the butternut squash and potatoes that were in the process of going off in the kitchen.  I always do that - buy things with the intention of making something lovely, then just don't!

So I made roasted butternut squash.  Ooh how exciting...  

Squtternut Bosh

I was thinking of doing something else with it so my next task is to find something to make with roasted butternut squash!!!

I also had to use up the tatties, so I opted for dauphenois (I had some double cream that I got earlier in the week, that actually went off a couple of days ago - but it still smells ok so bugger it).  Creamy, potatoey, garlicky goodness :D 

Dauphenois. Nom.

I'll probably be back later to update the cake attempt.

It was disastrous.  The first attempt of chocolate buttercream split bad and - as per the next photo - it was cuttable with a knife.  Not ideal.  But I pressed on and made another batch.

Which I then split again!!  This time I didn't use butter, only melted Dairy Milk and icing sugar.  It still split.  

But fuck it, I used it anyway!!

It's very dry, and could probably so with a ganache or something over the top of it but I'm out of ingredients lol!!

TA DA!!!

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