Easter Simnel cake

If you fancy something other than hot cross buns this Easter or like us you have family coming to visit and want to make something special, here is a recipe for a light fruit cake with chocolate and marzipan all topped off with mini eggs it really is just delicious as Sophie proves with a face plant to gobble it up.

Recipe
This recipe makes 1 big cake
175g light brown sugar
175g butter
4 large eggs
230g plain flour
50g ground almonds
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
350g mixed fruit
100g glace cherries halved
150g 70% chocolate
2 tbs milk
450g natural marzipan
apricot jam
mini speckled eggs
edible glitter optional

• Heat oven to 180 /gas 4
• Grease a deep 20cm tin
• Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy
• Gradually add beaten eggs
• Add almond, flour, baking powder and salt and mix
• Add fruit and cherries, roughly broken chocolate and milk and mix
• Spoon half mix into tin and add 1/3 of the marzipan rolled out top with the rest of the mix
• Bake for 30 mins at 180 then turn down to 170 and bake for 50 - 60 min or until you can insert a skewer and it is clean on removal
• Cool completely before covering the top in apricot jam and the rest of the 2/3 marzipan  
• Decorate with gold edible glitter and mini eggs 

On yer bike

With petrol prices soaring it really is getting to expensive to get in a car, and driving short trips around town to pick up earneds or do a bit of shopping really is not efficient with all the stop starting of town driving. last year i sold my car so no more costs on MOT services, insurance, tax as well as the ever increasing petrol prices.


So I got Ali to invest £80 in a bike seat for my bike.  My arguing for one was that as a family we sometimes go for a cycle on the canal toe paths to do an activities together and Centre parcs is all about cycling and as soon as we can afford a bike rack we will take our own bikes, also as i had sold my car i had no way to ship the little lady about. I hooked out an old ruck sack to put my shopping in which again please Ali as i could only come home with the stuff on my back another good way not to impulse buy. We also got Sophie a helmet which is to big for her even though its the smallest you can buy but she will grow into it, as Im one of those pains in the arse people who cycle on the pavements I'm not to bothered about her not wearing it, as it is rare see anyone on the pavements so its not that bad.

The bike has been really great ferrying the little lady to playgroup, swimming, town, shopping etc and we get to see so much more on the bike and can stop and look at things that interest us, like the field of cows on the way to playgroup or the ducks as we cross a bridge, stopping to see a fire engine with its siren and flashing lights or a big lorry which also helps to boost her vocabulary as everything used to be car on the road.

Another good reason for getting out on the bike was that the first year of Sophie in the world was hell she was not a great sleeper as she was really clingy and I would get 2-3 hours sleep so snacked a lot to get the energy to be able to be there and do my mum role, consequently I went up 2 dress sizes, and taking time out to go to a gym really isn't going to happen when your on 24 hour call, plus I'm not really a gym sort paying money to not go to a boring repeative gym. diets really don't work as you need to change eating habits permanently not just for a few weeks, and you probably see from my blog I enjoy to cook. I like to cycle so this fits in just nicely for my personnel exercise.

Its good fun especially on sunny or cool days, but when it rains I'm staying inside, i cycle at my own pace and enjoy the scenery and feel glad i don't have all these out going high costs that come with owning a car.

Too too cute tutu

When we moved into our house we had a Vegas party, and needed to use the conservatory for a casino so i made a tented ceiling and put up twinkling lights. However 3 years later it is still up as it looks so much better than the plastic roofing that is there, so ever so often i have to pull it down and and give it a clean as during the summer months it can become a bit of a fly trap.  If you see the above picture that pretty white chair with the real rattan seat which i rescued from the town dump, i actually got 4 of them and they didn't look like that when i got them, they had woodworm and were brown, someone had thrown them away.  I thought the shape was so nice so paid the dump keeper £10 and got them and took them home to treat the woodworm and restore them afterwards i painted them up white.

Easter day

Getting together for the kids for an Easter day ahead of the holiday on what must be the hottest day so far.
The day started with everyone looking their best which was very short lived, as the day unfolded everyone got messier and clothes where stripped off.

Raised veggie plots

Last year my clever Ali built me some raised veggie plots so we could save some money by growing our own food in the garden.  Ali beavered away in the garden over a weekend pulling together decking boards and stakes before digging hole to drop the stakes,  Sophie was walking by herself at 11 months so a month on she was very strong on her feet and was keen to help out by carry daddies tools, unfortunately off and up the garden.  What a funny little thing she looks here with a big nogging and her baby fat so different from now almost a year on where she is better proportioned but growing taller and faster than a weed.


The plots were built in August 2010 and to late for me to get my head around growing anything, also money was very tight and we couldn't afford to fill them with dirt, but we both were keen to get cracking and grow some grub and from February 2011 onwards we got growing,  if you have seen the gardening pages you will see that we have indeed been planting seeds feverishly and potting up.  see our gardening tabs.

Well our plants have been growing well and are ready to go out in the garden so being the naughty wife i am i went out and ordered some soil for the beds on Saturday morning and it turned up in the afternoon. 2 tuns of it much to the surprise of Ali, who was the one who was to shift it from the front of the house through to the back garden, luckily i wasn't in too much trouble as we couldn't let all our plants die.  Ali spent the day pumping up and down the garden with heavy loads getting an all over body workout and looking very buff by the end of the day and all our bed were filled in.  

As Ali was filling the beds i was raking them and making pea and bean climbers, planting out our crops and seeding in salads, i also made a make shift hooped netting protector out of some old hose i found and pea netting to make sure those pesky white butterfly's don't lay their eggs in our salads.

I also managed to buy a few plants which also needed bringing through so Sophie hitched a ride in the wheelbarrow, but her face tells it all as she was very unsure about the ride.  After the hards days work the plots looked really good and we all felt very proud of our efforts, and relaxed under our pear tree to enjoy the remaining sunshine.

Why are the weather men always wrong

One thing that bugs me is that the weather men are always wrong in their predictions, they have loads of expensive computers and satellites but no matter what they say the weather is generally incorrect, if they say its going to rain we usually have a grey or sunny days and if they predict sun we get showers they never get snow forecasts right and the council never get the much needed salt on the roads. The only time they get the weather right is when it has already happened.

Recycled gardening pots

Well we are getting busy in the garden and potting up is a job that requires a few different sizes of pots which i didn't  have so we headed out to buy some and when we found them in the shop 5 for £1.65 i kinda clenched up.

Home made beef burgers

Well the sun is out and BBQ season is upon us, we have always loved cooking outside and have cooked all kinds of things fish wrapped in banana leaves, whole legs of lamb etc 

A few years back we went to a friends for a BBQ and he had made his own burgers which is cool but he used horseradish sauce to bind them which i hadn't done in a burger before but had in kebabs and it hadn't really dawned on me to try in on burgers, of course they were really nice so i ditched the old favourite of egg to bind and am now fully converted into horse radish for binding, and make large batches of burgers for the freezer in the summer months in case the weather changes favourable to sunshine. 

Ingredients

This recipe has no qtys as its a bit of this and that as you like it and you can use almost anything you prefer flavour wise for a tasty burger.

Mince beef, i buy Aberdeen Angus steak mince

Onions ( i use red onions for decoration)

Chilli (fresh, i used red for decoration)

Garlic (whole bulb, i like garlic and in a big batch it melts away) 

Coriander (fresh)

Cumin seeds

Salt and pepper

a jar (and a half depending on how its binding) of horse radish sauce 

Method

Gentle heat the cumin in a frying pan with no oil to release the flavours

To a food processor add the following and blitz up

add 1 or 2 onions 

bunch of coriander 

Cumin seeds 

Garlic

Chillies

to you meat add the contents of the food processor and you horse radish sauce and mix well to fully incorporate all the ingredients.  

with your hands, take a medium palm full of mix roll in your hands then pat down to make a burger shape, you will probably notice that your meat has changed from the rich red colour to a more paler pink due to the horse radish. The mix should feel like its well mixed but more importantly that you have nice firm patties, other wise when you come to cook these if they are to loose due to not enough horse radish or not mix well enough they will fall apart. I tend to use about 240g of horse radish, but it really depends on how much meat and onions you want to use. 

Remember to wash your hands thoroughly as you have been handling fresh chillies.  Make sure you fully defrost burgers you have frozen before cooking.

Gardening in April

Well the gardening is really ramping up now it is April, and it's all about weeding, and its the best time to do it while they are still tender as you can pull them out root and all with out getting a shovel out. Planting seeds and watering has defiantly become Sophie's forte and she learnt to do pinching fingers and evenly spread seeds over the soil she is also a dab hand with her little pink watering can. re potting the smaller plants up a pot or in the ground was also on the agenda, we had 2 disasters where peas and cucumbers didn't come up so have had to start from scratch and buy new seeds and re pot. We also got grooming in the garden to help it look more structured, by mowing, striping and edging the lawn, squaring up the box hedges.

Jerk belly pork

                                         
Since becoming a mum which is a no pay job apart from kisses, and the recession we like to think about what we eat with meat becoming more of a treat as it is so expensive, so looking to cheaper cuts of meat really helps on budgeting family meals.  One such meat is belly of pork which taste delicious, just like my comment on my frugal use of 2 medium chickens where the legs and thighs tastes so much nicer than the breast, belly of pork is defiantly one to try.

Garra rufa fish pedicure

Lucky me i got a pampering treat recently of a fishy nature !!! Ohhh what ?

Mixed berry Cheesecake

I pre ordered and am the proud owner of the latest Hummingbird bakery cake days recipe book

Raspberry ice cream

What better way to keep your cool on a hot day than eat home made ice cream in a nice hat


Here's a recipe for some rather naughty sweet raspberry ice cream.

Ingredients
400g of fresh raspberries
half a lemon juice
8oz sugar
2 eggs
500ml double cream
250ml full fat milk

Method
toss raspberries in 4oz of sugar and lemon juice and put in the fridge for 2 hours visiting ever now and again to stir, you will notice the raspberries will bleed and get mushy

whisk eggs until fluffy about 2 mins the add the rest of the sugar and whisk until blended, then add the cream and milk and stir again until blended. Mash up the raspberries add to mix and stir until blended

I use a large plastic bowl or jug and transfer my ice cream mix into this and place it in the freezer and visit it ever hour with my whisk to give it a darn good stir to bash out the ice crystals you will probably only need to do this about 3 times, transfer into some plastic tubs and leave in the freezer over night if you can bear to, if you do the ice cream is worth the wait.

If you cant be bothered to make ice cream how about sitting in a big bowl of water

Centre parcs woodlands

The last week of March for us mean a trip to Centre parcs, since Sophie came along we have made it a family tradition and this is our second year.

Wroxham barns

 

At a recent visit to Granny and Grumps they suggested a trip to Wroxham barns for a fun afternoon here are the adventures of Sophie Poppy and a petting zoo and her first fun fair.

heavy breather

If you ever wondered who that heavy breather was on the phone here's the culprit.