Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey.... Stuff

It is my pal Sarahs birthday this month and I got her a signed 50th anniversary book of Doctor Who and when I saw the Doctor Who stamps I knew it was going to be a very Doctor Who themed gift. Which was great because it got me out of this painting slump I have been in. Even when I bring everything through and sit down and get ready to paint, I just haven't been doing it I am not sure what it is but whatever it is, its not good. So whooo! New painting as well. I hope she likes it. I usually struggle with persective and geometric things and this time was no different. But it was still a lot of fun. The picture of it is on a slight angle that I didn't notice til now and its been posted away so there is no going back now. Now I just need to watch more Doctor Who so I know whats going on! But where do you start?!

Now I have been having a painting slump I have been in baking mode, which has been super! This is a loaf made from a recipe on Paul Hollywood's program on the BBC, and I can say I haven't made as good of bread as this since high school, so I am pretty chuffed! Its a filled loaf with roasted veg pesto and mozzarella.

I also do not say enough about my niece and she is awesome so here is my niece with her mom (my sister) and my Grandma! Isn't she awesome. 

And an obligatory instagram of Edinburgh

Edinburgh In Instagram

This week has been very interesting weather-wise, to say the least. We have had sunshine, snow, hail, sleet, all in one day, but the mornings, the mornings have been gorgeous. So I have been taking loads of pictures as I am on my way to work. So that has been a lot of fun, I have filled up a roll on my Halina camera, but I do not have the money just now to get it developed, so we will just have to wait on that one.

We are looking at moving house, which is pretty exciting. We only looked at the house yesterday, but it looks pretty excellent. It does need quite a bit of work but it will definitely be worth it to have our own flat with a private garden and everything. I don't want to get too excited, so I probably shouldn't even be blogging about it, but I will know soon enough whether or not we get it. So if I post later on this month saying, yay! Then I probably have got it, if I don't mention it ever again, it is pretty safe to assume we are staying put!

Anyway, here are some photos of our changeable weather, 

I have walked past St Giles Cathedral a fair amount of times and, I don't know that I have ever noticed this massive plaque with a skull on it. How do you keep missing it? 

Its also been an excellent cooking week, well technically cooking day, yesterday I made, Homemade Lemonade, Cornbread Muffins, and Chilli. It was quite an evening! The Chilli came out super hot, I think it is because I have never really used fresh chillis before, and so I didn't really know how many to use. I even deseeded it! But in the end I added another can of beans and it seemed to calm it down loads, so we are going to have that for dinner tonight with rice and the Cornbread Muffins.

Again I found the recipe for the chilli at The Minimalist Baker, the Cornbread on the BBC Good Food Website. But I can't remember where I found the Lemonade recipe from, though its pretty easy, you just make a simple syrup with equal parts sugar and water (or 2/3 or the sugar if you want it less sweet) and warm in a sauce pan til melted, then squeeze 4-6 lemons until you have about a cup of lemon juice mix with simple syrup. Then add 3-4 cups of water and chill for 30-40 minutes. Easy-peasy!

Ninja Baker

So we had our pal over last night for some drinks and pizza and movies. For some reason lately I have been super tired really early, I fell asleep on the couch the night before, and tonight I went to bed at like half nine. So this morning, I was up at the regular time of half six in the morning! I don't even need to get up that early for my work!! So what do you do with yourself when everyone else is asleep at 6:30, well you bake of course.

So I have wanted to make these cookies since I made my candied ginger a couple days ago. They are candied ginger and chocolate chuck cookies. They totally didn't come out as sweet as I imagined and now I wish I put more candied ginger in them but, you know, hindsight. But it was a lot of fun, I probably haven't made cookies in at least two years so I'm happy they are edible.

Recipe by the Minimalist Baker

Ginger

So I have been on a wee kick of wanting to make new things, because always eating the same food its a bit boring and so even if you eat something new and don't like it, at least you aren't having the same old same old over and over again. So I found a new soup recipe online for Curried Carrot and Coconut soup, which sounded really good and all I need to buy extra was the ginger and the coconut milk, which was on offer so it was even cheaper! How brilliant, its like it was meant to be. As it turns out £0.61 worth of ginger, is actually a heck of a lot of ginger! About half a pound to be exact! So what do I do with this new found ginger windfall?

I found out that candying something is actually relatively easy, who would of though! So I made a whole bunch of candied ginger and it is excellent! I am hoping to make cookies with it later this week!

Now if I was a good food blogger I would have a picture of the soup, the process the whole shebang, but I am not very good at this. Perhaps next time with the cookies I will do better! But here is the ginger in all of its candied glory!

So for the candied ginger, there are loads of different recipes for it so the one I followed went a bit like this,

I peeled the ginger, apparently if your use a teaspoon it is way easier to get in all the wee nooks and crannies, unfortunately I didn't find that out til after I peeled all of it. Once peeled I weighed it as most recipes call for a pound of thinly sliced ginger I had about half a pound. so I used two cups of water to boil for 35 minutes. after boiled drain and reserve 1/4 of a cup of the boiled water. Rinse the ginger and add equal amounts of sugar to the ginger and boil in the reserved water until a thick syrup forms, stirring occasionally. Once satisfied with the consistency you can either drain and toss in sugar or pour it into a jar and leave to cool in its syrup. Though if you do drain it, the syrup is lovely for cocktails, pancakes and loads of other things. Its pretty easy.

Now the soup, the soup was lovely so I will be making it again, so fear not I will get around to pictures and sharing cause it is also super easy too!

Bread and Butter

Dixon woke me up this morning at 7:30 am, on my day off no less, and istead of being able to get back to sleep I decided to make dough, ah the Rock 'n' Roll lifestyle! I hope that I kneaded the dough long enough, cause I don't have a mixer so it was hand kneading all the way but I let it rise for quite a while so tha seems to have worked cause it definately rose in the oven! But the proof is in the taste! And it tastes awesome!

This is the Recipe I used;

500g Wholemeal Flour

(I used 300g Whole Meal and 200g White)

25g Butter

1 1/4 tsp Salt

1 1/2 tsp Yeast

350 ml Warm Water

2 tsp Sugar for more flavour and thicker crust (optional)

1) In a large bowl mix the flour, sugar (if using) and salt, rub in the butter and then stir in the yeast.

(Instead of stiring in the dry yeast I added it to the warm water to wake it up while I was incorperating the other ingredents)

2) Stir in the water and mix into a soft dough by hand

3) Knead dough with a Mixer with paddle attachment for five minutes or hand knead for 10

4)Shape dough and place into a 2lb tin or baking tray and cover with a clean damp tea towel and let rise for 1 1/2 to 2 hours

5) Uncover and bake for 30-35 mins

The baked loaf should sound hollow when tapped underneath!

6)Let Cool out of the tin

Now I wanna make some thing else!

Zesting Time

It is a beautiful day outside today, and even after three solid days of rain , I have decided to stay indoors and bake cupcakes. And delicious cupcakes they will be!

Hayley got me a cookbook from the Hummingbird Bakery so I have been pretty excited to try to make most of the things in there, I started simple with the Vanilla cupcakes you might have heard me talk about before and now I am making Lemon Cupcakes! Mostly the same but now I get to use my nifty lemon zester. Soon I will graduate to something a bit more challenging but for now I think I will play it safe and bake something I think I can do! Though I do think I need to invest in som piping bags. My icing skills are not what they used to be.

Now that all the baking is done and the cleaning is moooostly done, only need to wash the floors now I think I will take a wee break! Maybe I can convince Dixon to go for a walk later, just a wee one.. he has been working though. So.. we will see C:

Christmas.... AGAIN!!!!???

So I have been waiting ages to get Caryn's package she sent me, and then when it came only about a week later the one my mom sent me came!! I didn't think i would be arriving yet at all!!! So yesterday was very exciting when it came as well! Getting mail is the best thing ever! So opened it all basically as soon as I could!

I will sort of explain what everything is... Starting at the top left there is a white crocheted blankey, and a black ang grey zebra print scarf, moving along there is a Star Wars Lego Advent Calander! and just to its right the Lego Creator Light House!, below nad to its left is the dvd of Camille's wedding (yay), and then his and hers watches from my mom, as well as homemade cookies(yum!) then a collection of movies from both Caryn and my mom, then some make up ( I can't believe she remembered what kind of mascara I use, thats pretty awesome), and then a selection of souviners from Barbados, including, Pina Colada Rum Truffles, and KeyRings!

I know right I am spoiled!!!

Caryn got me an advent calander, though it was supposed to arrive

Gail and I watched this basically as soon as I opened the box, it was truely a beautiful wedding and I wish I were there more than ever, again saying congratulations to the married couple!!

Caryn got me an advent calander, though it was supposed to arrive at the beginning of December it mostly didn't arrive til the end of December! So I am deciding whether I should start opening it in February or wait until next Christmas. Gah!! Decisions decisions!

Thats all for now!! Merry Christmas again!!!

Cupcakes and FaceHandle!

I got the brilliant idea that I would make Cherry Chip cupcakes, unfortunately you cannot get Cherry Chip Cupcke mix over in the UK so I had to settle for Devils Food Cake and Chocolate Icing! So it wasn't a bad comprimise, but I am missing Cherry Chip cake a lot right now! They did turn out pretty swell I think even though Dixon had his doubts, but he will never know anywa because he hates chocolate. So with only me to judge I say they were pretty amazing!

They aren't iced yet, but I didn't think that they would stack as well so I just ice them as I eat them. Its a pretty good system!

I also made dinner for my lovely husband and we had a great big Chinese! It was veggie chicken with veg in a black bean sauce, fried egg noodles, and jasmine rice, it was very nice if I do say so myself, although I don't really like black bean sauce.

I also made wayyyy too much!

Took a bit of time but thats it all together C:

Later Dixon had a gig so we went to that but he wouldn't let me take any pictures so I don't have any of them, but suffice it to say, I am very hungover today and spent far too much money but it was a lot of fun so the sore head is worth it.

Facehandle