Baking Sundays

Sunday is usually the one day of the week where I take my time and bake. Be it a roast dinner, bread or cakes for the week ahead, I take advantage of having a slow day to cook and enjoy the whole process from start to the end!

Of late, I've been getting into baking bread. Its the one baking art I'm still mastering and the one thing I struggle with it is patience! Without it, the bread won't rise, it won't cook right and you are left with a harden lump of dough you can barely cut let alone eat!
Patience is something I am learning and its through baking I'm gaining this lesson! In this world of fast food and high demands, we are craving the tastier, home made, slow foods....and that in itself isn't instantaneous no matter how hard you try to speed it up!

Getting your hands on fresh products is a satisfaction you can't beat, and it really helps putting you in direct
 contact with what you are creating!

The senses are stimulated and comes alive and you become more alert, enjoying the moment...from feeling the dough being pounded beneath your fingers, to smelling the basil as you cut it....

Here I was making a cheese and basil pinwheel loaf and my own recipe of sandwich bread which is bread with the sandwich filling already in it...a popular thing amongst friends already!

Having a nice bright day to bake on really helps too!

 freshly baked bagel with home made danish blue cheese spread....simple but so very nice!

This piece of roast I picked up the night before for 89 pence just as the store was closing! Awesome!
I got it home, trimmed it up and applied a homemade rub of garlic, honey and spices and literally left it to slowly cook in the oven at the lowest temperature I can go for a minimum of 12 hours...!
The end result it beef so tender it really did melt in the mouth with wonderful sweet tang of the rub to flabvour it!

What days of the week do you find yourself cooking the most?  Do you enjoy it?

Birdie Love
xxx

A cake for nan

Today is my nan's 85th birthday. My nan as well as my grandad are the two most favourite people to me in this whole wide world. To me they are the matriarch of this family and with all their knowledge and history they have between them, I treat them with the upmost respect and fiercely protective of them and love them with every bone in my body. My grandad is a WW2 veteran in the Royal Auxiliary and was apart of the D-Day landing himself, coming abroad on either Sword or Juno beach (I forget) where the British forces landed. He even remembers Field Marshall Montgomery  in his tent headquarters, waving the forces onto the beach and into battle.  They are full of stories and knowledge from their travels across the world and each moment I spend with them, I’m still amazed at the vibrancy and youth they posses, they are still incredibly active and there is no stopping them!

I was asked to make a cake and I haven’t a clue which of the many recipes out there to use. Cake as we all know comes in variety of flavours, sizes, colours, textures, ingredients, decorations etc.... I wanted to give something a little different and so I came across Nigella Lawson’s Autumnal Birthday Cake. A cake loaded in flavour but simple to achieve... I hoped!

 

The cake’s main ingredient is maple syrup hence the autumn connection but the cake looked and sounded so good in the book than I decided it would still work! Maple syrup, I shall warn you is now  - like honey- EXPENSIVE! For 250g I paid nearly a fiver! So I have done my duty to warn you people, you wont be in for a nasty surprise here the next time you see the stuff and then the price!

The cake calls for a maple meringue icing...something very different to what I’ve made in the past.  I had to use the double boiler method (bowl over a hot water filled saucepan)and first whisk it until it becomes fluffy and then to help speed up time (and save my poor wrists!) I put it into a mixer.

  The stuff became this wonderful white fluffy icing that held its shape beautifully.

I worked until the end result came together to look something like this...

Impressive no? To get that wonderful ripple in the icing, ditch the spatulars and fancy cake stuff...use a fork!

You probably can't see in the crappy photo but there is also a tiny sprinkle of turquoise edible glitter blown onto the cake from dipping a brush into the glitter pot. Every birthday deserves a little sparkle no?

We went for a family suprise birthday meal at Kitley house, a popular wedding venue on the outskirts of Plymouth as it's a huge georgian (?) mansion in the middle of beautiful countryside. (and indeed when we turned up, there was a wedding there, the grand staircase all lit up in fairylights and the bride waltzing down the stairs slight worst for wear...It was half seven in the evening to be fair!)

The cake tucked away in the boot of the car, despite my insistent demands to have it in my lap, we took the 20 minute drive out to the wild and wet countryside thanks to the impeccable reputation of British weather. And every bump in the road had me biting my hand in the sheer horror of the poor cake being thrown around in the back!

But never mind the cake for a moment...I had no choice but to leave it and head inside to have what was a nice meal to follow, despite the head injury-related migraine I started to get.

To start I had flash fried breast of pigeon on a bed of spicy tomatoes and lentils. I like to order things I don't normally get a chance to eat at home or unusually things. I've had pigeon before and this isn't the best to be honest. The skin on the meat wasnt pleasant and rubbery and I think they could have done with frying it a little longer to crisp it up a bit more or remove it altogether. The tomatoes and lentils were on the other hand, really really nice! I'm not a huge tomato fan but I really enjoyed this, it held the right level of spice and the layers of flavour in it combined with the pigeon worked better than I thought. 

I had the steak Sirloin to follow. It was offered in replacement of what was essentially a beef wellington that I would certainly have had if they hadn’t ran out. The gravy sauce was rich and moorish and I would have really enjoyed it more if I was feeling better. It came with the usual vegetables and a really nice potato dauphinoise I enjoyed very much but as the dish as a whole was rich and it unsettled my poor tummy, I couldn’t eat all of it as I wanted.

I mainly avoided dessert but I had to take a snap of the sticky toffee and date pudding other people in my party received...I mean look at the presentation!  The biscuit work is amazing!

Remember the cake? By the time we got it to my grandparents it looked like this...

My dad's driving style hasnt helped it a bit! (thanks dad - I'm only joking!) -_-
so "Operation emergency cake-restoration ASAP now!" occured and with a knife I salvaged what I could whilst resisting the temptation to put my head in the oven in the misery of it all!
I even added some handmade real flowers that been sugared, hoping these would maybe detract from the little mess that occured...

...Its like putting make-up on a pig....it just doesnt hide anything!

But in the spirit of things, this is why we are all here...

Happy birthday Nan! 85 today! I hope to be as beautiful and amazing as you are if I ever get to live that long!

Fin

-X-

A week goes by...

Hi! Thank you for coming back!

First allow me to say thank for people's kind words regarding the last post. That was one of the hardest things I've written in a long time and the fears of revealing such a post have been outweighed and put to rest with the comments and messages I've recieved through Facebook.

I'm always strive to be honest and reasonable and as much as I would like to think I speak my mind, actually nothing could be furthest from the truth. I've certainly become more reserved and quiet as time gone by and I've learnt to fake confidence and a smile can hide many things!

The week gone by has been...interesting to say the least...

Another round of trips to the doctors, specialists and assessments. Another person admiting an mistake has been made in my line of care. And now things are looking more serious than even I had thought. I admittedly had thought a round of counselling or whatever they decide to throw at me will help but it turns out I'm beyond that and will need more than the standard short term care they offer to many people.

Where this will take me, I'm not sure but all I can do I guess is ride this part of the journey out and see and deal with what life decides to throw my way.

But I will say this, something in me had decided to snap. Just one thing after another one day this week just drove me to that point where I've had enough. I believe respect is a two way thing and of late it has been non-existant for me and I felt I given alot more than I received back. The effort, rejection, pain, fustration etc etc and so on is not acceptable any more. It really did wake a fire in me, not one that is fuelled by anger or the likes but a proper fire, one where its fuelled by me. A "wake-up call" as my muma said.

Already its like I've woken from a deep sleep. Already things are slowly changing fuelled by this strange firey energy in me. I waited around for too long and for what?....nothing! 

There are a few things in life I still have faith in. I'm not a religious person at all. Religion as a whole is flawed in my eyes though I respect it and other people's beliefs. Just only one thing, don't try to push your beliefs onto me and respect mine. I've still got all my life to find a belief if I do, I'm in no rush.

One thing that is apart of my faith, my self belief as it were is A.R.K.

Acts of Random Kindness. It doesnt take much to be kind to someone without being asked.

And it's something I always aim to do, I never ask or expect something back as a whole really. My act of random kindness this week?

I spontaneously baked my dear pops a cake!

A devonshire honey cake, something I've seen a parisian baker do once and one I've always wanted to try!

It first starts with melting down the butter (so much butter!), dark sugar and honey (beautiful, almost crystalized honey from a friend who owned several bee hives out in the deepest country nearby.) It then had to cool down and the eggs mixed in, otherwise if you did it hot...scrambled eggs anyone?!

I tell you now, the pan of melted goodness smelt divine! The honey has taken on a caramel texture and taste as you can see from the spoon...(I did lick it, I must confess...!) then the flour is added and the batter is put into the oven for a looooong time, all that liquid in that batter needs to evapourate and leave behind a nice, moist sponge.

End result?

Ymmy, especially with the added warm honey melted seperately and poured on top to glaze it and seep into the cake itself. Its a really nice cake and the taste of the honey comes through in a thick syrupy wave to leave a caramel-like stickyness in your mouth...what more, my pops was pleased to recieve a cake when he came home!

I'm pleased this turned out well, I dont have much luck with cakes as a whole and so I tend to stay away from them. As I gotten older, I appreciate savoury food and especially since the accident I find the texture of cake in my mouth...weird. But I do have space in my heart and on the table for a nice cake!

I've been lucky to get some smale scale sewing in this week. I'm apart of a local craft guild, that night it was the turn of the quilt group to gather and really, it isn't all to do with quilting at all and more about drooling over beautiful fabrics!

That night we started working on a small project, one I'm hoping to finish this coming week and post the results here!

Playing with lovely printed fabrics for free was a bonus! 

Don't worry! I do, do more exciting things in life than bake cakes and sew! Lordy, I'm not that fuddy-duddy!

I hope you all are enjoying the long weekend thanks to the queen! Take care of yourself now!

Birdie love.

xxx