Today I am supposed to do accountancy...and a mock

Right. Quick blog as yesterday I didn't blog. But didn't study. Pathetic. Here is somewhere I really, really want to go to. I've been lusting after it for ... approximately five years? They advertise quite regularly in our local free magazine Optima and thus I've been wanting to go on the basis of two pictures. The fact it isn't really local at all and I have to beg a lift from my brother is probably why I haven't been. Plus every birthday I've had in the past two years (er that's two then) I've either been - unable to eat hard foods, or just not up for a big meal.

The picture has that certain "I'm so beautiful, look at me, eat me, you want to eat me!" quality to it. Hence I've actually blown it up a bit. Here's another little teeny tiny problem with it though. There's a taster menu there. So if I eat a taster menu, will I have room for this little baby? Problem part two. There's a chocolate version... admittedly not the BIGGEST problem of the world since my family (I love my family) are very big sharers of food. We specifically order different things so we can try each other's plates. I thought this was entirely normal till I took a mate out and he thought it was akin to swapping bodily fluids (since we were at the time... PG13 style mind! it wasn't an issue but surely with family? You share the same DNA anyway??!)

Chocolate version below. And if you fancy giving it a go, the name of the place is the Barn Hote l in Ruislip. Please don't go before I finally make it there!!!

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Rachel Allen's Chicken Pie

Some things should be noted. I'm not a major fan of Rachel Allen. She always seemed such a poor man's version of Nigella. Some trophy wife of a producer somewhere making a lady of leisure's living of cookery shows playing up the Irish accent in a cavernous show kitchen. Perhaps it was because all her helpful "tricks" had already been touted by others a long time ago - like getting the garlic smell out of your hands... But over the years she's kind of grown on me. The format is a little twee, the pink accessories want to make me barf, but she isn't the spawn of all things faux goddess anymore. (FYI I have no idea with regards to her personal life etc, but like my distaste for Ashley Judd, one wonders how she gets good films with little acting skill.) So here I was, tapping away on the internet last week whilst she was on tv, and there it was. A beast of a pie. It was so beautiful. Her job was done. Out I trotted to buy a huge pie dish (we don't own cera...

Raspberry Cream Cheese Buns

What with my new cupcake books arriving from Amazon, one look at the Raspberry Cream Cheese buns on someone elses's site (made with blackcurrant there) and I had to make them. Knowing full well my family wouldn't touch them. Four of these babies were therefore made with big dollops of lemon curd instead, which made delightfully caramelly messes of the tin, but also on the buns, not that I get to touch those - I have eight buns to eat! The original recipe is from Buttercup Bakery book (New York) and one of these days I'll try the dried cherry one from Magnolias (since I own the book...) What you need to know about these is that the recipe is easy - as easy as muffins are, but they sink like heck given the amount of preserves you're putting in them. What they give back though, is something so moist and rich you just want to sink yourself into them. And since I've eaten two of them, I'm doing quite well! As you can see, massive craters. If you don't want that...

Lemon cake a la Raymond Blanc

I made this cake after watching Kitchen Secrets and thought WOW that cake is YELLOW!!! Sadly it seems, this was not something to be repeated with mine. Note to self - retune the tv. Anyway, the recipe is here , but oddly the voiceover lady gets it wrong (based on the producer comments) so when the recipe says add zest only to the cake, and she says add the juice, she is wrong. Ho hum. Having made the cake, I'd say ADD THE SODDING JUICE. Without it, it tastes distinctly... eggy. And not of lemon. So after the first mini cake (I split the cake into two batches - one for work and one for a taster for my hard-done-by dad who had to watch me make cheesecake yesterday and waltz off with it to a friends.) I made some adjustments. 1. Stab and drizzle. If you've made lemon cake before, the usual rule is when it's warm from the oven, stab it with a skewer and pour over lemon juice mixed with icing sugar. 2. His recipe calls for an apricot jam layer of glaze. I used lemon curd. ...

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