Obsession

Today I decided to try some new recipes from my books. Corn custards from Marcus Wareing's book Nutmeg and Custard. Funnily enough, there's both Nutmeg AND Custard in this... It was a really basic recipe although I had to amp up the heat to Gas Mark 5 rather than 1/2 as after 20 minutes it still didn't set. It was lovely... but I'm not into it. It's too sweet as a side dish, and that's just from the natural sweetcorn! I also made mushroom risotto and a large meat stew. Naturally mushroom risotto took twice as long as usual and twice as much stock as it said on the back of the packet, but it did taste fabulous! This was from yesterday. Strawberry and cream chiffon swiss roll. It was my second attempt at chiffon as it's drives my mother's competitive streak so I try not to touch it too much. I used Sunflower (see blogs on the right) recipe for Orange Chiffon, replacing the orange juice with water instead. I poured far too much and therefore made th

Cookie cutters are a horrible addiction, bested only by my addiction to Bundt tins. However, whilst I use my Bundt tins, I rarely use my cutters because I reckon drop cookies (chocolate chip anyone?) taste sooo much better. Flooded cookies have been en vogue for awhile and Biscuiteers is definitely the most famous. So, when I was in town checking out the latest bookshop to go bust (boooo...) I found the Biscuiteers book. I have to say, I didn't buy it. There wasn't enough recipes for me to buy - probably about eight and most of them were "adjustments" of the basic recipe whereby you replace flour with cocoa etc. Moreover, it didn't take me long to spot an editing error whereby the Anzac coconut cookies didn't tell you how much coconut you needed to put in the recipe. Anyway, I digress. I didn't buy the book, though it was a very pretty book. You might like it all the same, but I'd rather have more recipes for my money. There were some handy points

After obsessing about the Sky High baking group pics from several years ago, and buying the Sky High book, I've funnily only ever made one recipe - the buttermilk cake recipe, that is *drumroll* up till now!! It was my brother's birthday and ... I realised that in our family we don't have any "favourite" cakes. My sister doesn't do raisins, my parents don't like cinnamon or anything other than vanilla sponge with whipped cream, but we have NO FAVOURITE CAKES. Which, can be quite handy. So today I made Banana and chocolate chip cake from the book. Shockingly easy, but also in the american way of baking, not so great on the results. Let me explain, if you gave me a list of ingredients I am almost always going to go butter, sugar, eggs, flour - in that order. This cake is almost muffin-like in it's creation. Dry meets wet, meets some more wet. I think the texture suffered as a result and it didn't have the lushness of banana bread. A bit more cream

You have to love January sales. But as it's me, I hit the 25% off deal online for the London Hilton Chocolate Tea on Park Lane . Which, on the date that I went was a bit of a horror. I must explain - Park Lane is just near Hyde Park. Where the students were having their protests that day. And the President of Bangladesh was staying at the Hilton as well so there was some protesters outside the hotel specifically for that too.  It gave us a rather odd feel of Marie Antoinette in a way. "Let them eat cake." We were also very grateful not to be sitting near the windows.  The service/protocol at the restaurant was mixed. They offered to switch the sandwiches if we wanted to, were generally lovely and doggy bags come as standard. When I say doggy bags, I mean hopelessly elegant pink cardboard and glossy carryouts. I'm saving it to carry my own cakes later. The bad side was that it's not a place where they pour the tea for you, but also that you feel a little pressur