Autumn starts with Apple & Cinnamon

I thought I'd lead with the photo this time.  This was taken just a few moments after the muffins came out of the oven, and the Cinnamon butter had been added.  I'd pushed a bit inside each muffin, and left a generous blob on the top to start melting... making you want one yet?  Ha ha.  We posted on our Facebook page, to invite someone (anyone) for afternoon tea, but no-one came.  So these beauties were shared with some happy-to-help-out neighbours. 

I had a book on the shelf that I'd barely opened, and felt it was about time.  Called simply Muffin Magic, it has a selection of delicious and even healthy-sounding recipes.  I chose these because it said they were 'faff-free' (proved to be true, as they were easy to do) and as a way to help Mini-1 eat apples, as she has 3 wobbly teeth at the front (weeeeell, she is 6 and a half) and is complaining of sore gums.  So these contain 2 apples, finely chopped.  Plus the usual sort of ingredients and cinnamon.  And wow, did the house smell good or what?!!

Shame it happened to be one of the warmest and sunniest days of the year, ha ha.

Blue is for boys

I was asked to do a blue cake for a boy's upcoming 5th birthday, and had been unhappy with previous shades of blue buttercream icing I'd managed to achieve.  After some discussion with other bakers, we determined it was probably the case that my constituent butter was too yellow, thus turning the blue somewhat green-ish.  I was also using liquid colour, rather than paste, and wondered if this too may have had an effect. So I bought lighter coloured butter and Navy Sugarflair colour paste and thought I'd test it out on a sponge cake, in case the birthday boy wanted an actual blue cake as well as blue icing. 

I was also trying out a new sponge recipe that had been heartily recommended by the other bakers, and needed to know how long it took in my oven etc.  I did it in two halves, rather than the tall cake tin and was amazed to discover that my two 8" round cake tins aren't the same size, eek.  Looks like a trip to Lakeland is on the cards... (mind you, that'll explain why my birthday cake was wonky, ha ha)

Anyway, suffice it to say that it worked well and I filled the two cakes with some new blueberry fruit spread/jam and some icing then slightly iced the top with the remaining icing.  My plan had been to store the cake and taste it every day to see how well it lasted and how long too.  However, due to the incredible height of it, it barely fit into my container!  And ended up tasting good but of too much cake and not enough filling.  

My friend Tanya wanted to try some, so popped by the next day and gave this review on Facebook  'I have died and gone to heaven!!!! Oh no I haven't I have just eaten a piece of the scrumptious blue sponge cake, and the surprise was the blackcurrant jam in middle...... Total heaven thank u for letting us sample it, well recommended 20/10 xxx' 

The finished cake doesn't look like much I know - please keep following us though, I promise we'll try harder next time.

 

Marbled toffee brownies

We had friends visiting this week, on Monday and Tuesday mornings, and I felt like trying something a little bit different for them.  I had recently come across a little booklet that had been an insert in an old, old copy of BBC Good Food magazine (I know this because it said so on the booklet, tee hee) and it was all about chocolate and sponsored by my favourite brand, Lindt.  After reading through and discovering that we were short of some ingredients for many of the recipes, or they wouldn't suit for one reason or another, I chose the aforementioned brownies.  After a brief chat with Mr Becca about the house-bound availability of fresh double cream, we determined that I'd need to run out and buy some (it was the girls' dinnertime at this point, and hair-washing bath was soon to follow (a high point of the week for dearest Daddy, not) so kind of late).  Luckily, our nearest supermarket had some and I was home quite quickly.

The recipe required that you melt 250g of dairy milk toffee sweets with the cream to make the sauce, and I only had a bag of 200g so used that.  In retrospect, I think even 300g would be better, as I can't notice the internal layer of toffee when eating the brownies.  You were to layer most of the brownie mix with the toffee mix then the remainder of the brownie mix and bake for 40-45 minutes.  The recipe called for 100g of pecan nuts roughly chopped, but I only had nibbed hazelnuts and again, in retrospect, feel that this was too much.  After it had cooled, you were to warm up the sauce and drizzle it over the top, along with some melted chocolate too. 

Luckily, both mums and all the kids loved it, and didn't feel the same way as I about the lack of toffee and abundance of nuts.  Score.

Mr Becca comes home

Mr Becca is fast developing his own following on our Facebook page, and I've set him up with his own album.  As he loves to spend a Friday evening listening to the banging tunes courtesy of Judge Jules or Annie Mac on Radio 1, or downloaded podcasts on his iPod (often by internationally-renowned DJ Pier, yep that's right - this lovely man is Mr Becca's brother), I've titled the album Last Friday night.  He only cooks savoury food, and has a passion for Asian foods from scratch, especially since our months in India back in 2004.  He can quite easily spend 20 minutes with his mortar and pestle, crushing the required spices into the right consistency to make the sauce or whatever.  He has quite a collection of cookbooks and varies between Indian, Thai, Vietnamese and many Italian and mediterranean dishes.  His family background is Italian, and we have travelled in our youth, so he's always looking to recreate some of the flavour that we don't find locally. 

His current faves are Jamie Oliver and Thomasina Miers and on his recent mid-week trip to London to see his family he made sure to visit their restaurants.  And also to check out a shop he found recommended in the back of his latest favourite cookbook, Mexican Food made simple, by Thomasina Miers, Casa Mexico.  Where he bought some smoky-smelling Chipotle chillies, some fat and odd-looking Poblano chillies and similar oddities for himself and for me, he chose some fabulous pieces of useful kitchen stuff - a teatowel and potholder.  The fact that he prefers to use a potholder, and I prefer an oven mitt, didn't escape him ;)

Then he bought a fabulous, fun gift, ostensibly for Mini-1 but actually for me (she graciously agreed to let me use it on her behalf). 

I know, I'm a sucker but I love the London Underground iconic tube map.  Last time he was down there visiting, he brought me back a tube map tea towel.  And years ago when we lived in London I had a mobile phone fascia for my old Nokia in the same design and I loved it!