six word saturday – baking

CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES WITH PEANUT BUTTER FROSTING

I did some baking.  All I can say is … yum.

 

For more Six Word Saturday participants go on over to Cate’s blog Show My Face

the question of the shrinking Cadbury’s Creme Egg

After I had posted about my feeling that Cadbury’s Creme Eggs are shrinking, there was a suggestion that perhaps it’s because we are getting so used to larger chicken’s eggs nowadays that the Creme Eggs seem so small.  I felt some research was necessary.  Of course this meant I had to buy another Cadbury’s Creme Egg – such a hardship, but I think I will cope with having to eat another one. 

Here’s a series of photos, which I think demonstrate that Creme Eggs are definitely a lot smaller than they used to be.  For the purposes of this research I have used the egg cups we were given when we got married in 1985, which is before we started being able to buy large and x-large eggs (I think), so I presume they were made to fit ‘standard/average’ eggs of the time.

This first photo has a UK small egg on the left and a large egg on the right.  I think the small egg looks too small for the egg cup and the large egg seems to fit nicely.

Now here’s the small egg next to the Creme Egg.  The Creme Egg is almost lost in the egg cup!

Finally here’s the large egg and the Creme egg.

Not very scientific research, I know, but I think it shows that the Creme Egg is tiny.  I remember when Creme Eggs used to sit in the egg cups properly – just like a real egg.  Do you remember the little knitted egg cosies that we use to have, to keep our boiled eggs warm?  I’m sure they used to fit over the Creme Egg just like a normal egg, and the surprise would be when you lifted the cosy off there was a Creme Egg instead of a boiled egg.  I think you’d have to pad the cosy out with something to bulk it up a bit if you were trying to hide a Creme Egg under it these days!

creme of the crop?

I’m sure Cadbury’s Creme Eggs have shrunk.

On Friday I had my first Cadbury’s Creme Egg of the season.  I like Creme Eggs and usually I will have eaten one or two (or maybe three ) by the time Easter comes around.  They have been in the shops since just after Christmas (actually I think they were on display before Christmas) but I was so outraged at how early they were on sale that I refused to buy one and then I must have blanked them out of my mind – they were there, but I didn’t see them – until Friday morning when I spotted them in the local shop.  There was a basket of them and they were calling my name.  At that point I realised that I hadn’t had one at all this year so I bought one.  It seemed tiny!

I’m sure they used to be much, much bigger than they are now – I’m sure they used to be at least the size of an average chicken/hen’s egg.  I measured it against a small chicken’s egg.  This chicken’s egg in the photo weighs 50g (1.7 oz) and according to size charts it is a small egg  (medium in the US).  It seems we are paying more and more for something that is getting smaller and smaller.

Does anyone else agree that Creme Eggs are shrinking?

A blurry photo again I’m afraid – I really must start wearing my reading glasses when I am trying to take close up photos using my phone!

chocolate – can you afford not to eat it?

LOTS OF CHOCOLATE IN THE HOUSE (but we are being very good and waiting till Sunday)

Time for a chocolate post – especially as it’s the Easter weekend and there’s the prospect of an Easter Egg or two. 

I came across these two quotes on James and Terri’s blog Gallivance.

“My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace
 is to finish what I start. So far today, 
I have finished 2 bags of M&M’s and a chocolate cake.
I feel better already.”
– Dave Barry

“Your hand and your mouth agreed many years ago that, 
as far as chocolate is concerned, 
there is no need to involve your brain.”  
–Dave Barry

I couldn’t agree more! 

Choc Rose Cake (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Just in case you (or someone dear to you ) need some persuading about the benefits of eating chocolate:

1.  Chocolate is a valuable energy source.  There is enough energy in a chocolate chip for an adult human to walk 150 ft (45 metres).

2.  Chocolate has great health benefits. It helps with depression, high blood pressure and pre-menstrual syndromes. Chocolate is able to act as an anti-depressant by increasing serotonin and endorphin levels in the brain.

3.  Eating one or two servings of dark chocolate a week can cut the risk of heart failure.

4.  A square of dark chocolate each day can lower blood pressure.

5.  Eating chocolate can add an instant glow to your face – people have been eating it for centuries to keep themselves looking fresh and healthy.

6.  Chocolate can improve cognitive function.

I think there is enough ammunition there to convince anyone that they should make their way immediately to the nearest chocolate-selling establishment and invest in a few bars!

photo credit: topfoodfacts.com

This post is part of Six Word Saturday.  Pop over to Show My Face to see more sets of six words.

a day in which nothing much was planned

Yesterday, with nothing in particular planned for the day,  we decided to battle through the snow (only about 1 millimetre of it lay in the end!) and go out for lunch.  A new Carluccio’s restaurant has opened nearby and we were interested to try it.  “Should we phone and book a table?” I asked Mr I*.  “No, it won’t be busy,” he said, decisively, “not at this time.”  Bowing to his superior knowledge we set off, un-booked, aiming to arrive at said restaurant about 1pm.  I’m sure you can imagine what happened next.  Yes, unsurprisingly on a Saturday, in bad weather, at lunchtime, the restaurant was busy and there were no tables available.   They were confident of having a few tables ready in about 20 minutes, so we went into the shopping centre to browse at printers.  Our printer has stopped speaking wirelessly to my laptop, and no amount of coaxing, removing and re-installing software, and hitting with a hammer can persuade it to re-open the path of communication, so we are thinking of updating to a newer model.  We saw one we thought would fit the bill, but of course it was out of stock.

Heading back to the restaurant I spotted a rather nice Easter/Spring tea towel.  It was calling my name so, going against my usual indecisiveness, I was completely decisive and bought it.

The lunch was delicious, and I’d happily go to a Carluccio’s again.  I forgot to take photos until my pudding arrived, but I had a very nice pate to start, followed by spinach and ricotta ravioli, washed down with a glass of crisp, white Sicilian wine.  I wasn’t going to have had anything else, but I noticed coffee ice cream on the menu and succumbed to temptation.  Coffee ice cream is one of my favourites but it isn’t very common for some reason, so I thought I’d better take the opportunity to have it!

The restaurant also has a small shop, selling all sorts of Italian temptations.  I was mesmerised by the size of the meringues!  Look at them!

So much to tempt me in Carluccio’s shop.

Just look at the size of these meringues!

Coffee and bitter chocolate ice cream. Delicious.

I managed not to buy any of the delicious goodies in the shop – probably because I was so full after my lunch.  Had I just been popping in for a coffee, it might have been a different story!

After our leisurely lunch we headed home for a leisurely afternoon of watching rugby on television, and catching up with reading blogs.

* I have decided to re-christen him Mr Decisive as writing Mr I is getting confusing (well, for me at least!), and he is not at all indecisive.

lemon drizzle cake and the hunt for 1lb loaf tins

It’s been a quiet week work-wise, so I’ve had time to do lots of house-wifey sort of stuff (you know – laundry, ironing, tidying, sorting, taking stuff to the charity shop, cleaning, grocery shopping) and some baking.

On Wednesday I decided to make Lemon Drizzle cake for the first time, following a Mary Berry recipe given to me by a friend.  I had most of the ingredients I needed except for a lemon and the two 1lb loaf tins required (the loaf tins I already have are 2lb ones, of course).  No problem, I thought, I’ll pick them up in the supermarket when I’m getting the lemons (yes, I know I should have gone to the local greengrocer for those, but they don’t sell loaf tins there…).  Were there loaf tins in the supermarket?  No, of course not, that would have been too easy.  Luckily the High Street is just a short walk from the supermarket so off I set, confident of getting the loaf tins in the first shop I tried.  I should have known that that would have been too much to ask.  Four shops later, I finally tracked some down.  It seems that 1lb loaf tins are not as ubiquitous as I had imagined.

Armed with my new, and more expensive than I had thought (although it could have been worse – the shop was having a buy-one-get-one-half-price offer), loaf tins I followed the recipe, which was really simple, and here’s the result.  Luckily I took the photos very soon after they were ready, because the cake didn’t last long!  It was delicious, if I say so myself.

I’ll copy the recipe below in case you fancy giving it a try yourself.

Mary Berry’s Lemon Drizzle Cake

Ingredients:

For the cake:

2 large eggs

6 oz self-raising flour

6 oz caster sugar

4 oz softened butter

1 tsp baking powder

finely grated zest of 1 lemon

4 tbsp milk

For the lemon icing:

4 oz granulated sugar

juice of 1 lemon

You will also need:

2 x 1lb loaf tins, greased and lined

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/Gas Mark 4

Beat together the eggs, flour, caster sugar, butter, baking powder and lemon zest until smooth then turn into the prepared loaf tins.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 35 minutes, or until golden brown, shrinking away from the sides of the tin and springy to the touch.

While the cakes are baking, make the topping by mixing together the granulated sugar and lemon juice.

When the cakes come out of the oven, leave them in their tins and pour the topping over them.  (I used a skewer and put some holes in the top of the cake to allow more of the juice to go into the sponge.)  Leave to cool before removing from the tin.

weekly photo challenge: phoneography – lunchtime

It’s phonoegraphy month, and what do we love to photograph with our cameraphones? Food. So why fight it? This week’s theme is “lunchtime.”  Time to show us your lunchtime.

During my most recent trip to Scotland it was Mother’s Day/Mothers’ Day* (10th March here in the UK) and my sister and I took our mum out for lunch.  We decided to go to a small tearoom in a small village called  Brig o’ Turk, which is on the road between Callander and Aberfoyle.  From the outside it is very unprepossessing, and you might even be inclined to drive right past, but we had been there before and so knew that it was excellent.

photo © iusedtobeindecisive

The tearoom was built in the 1920s, of wood, and has been preserved very much in its original style.  The inside is lined with dark wood (walls and ceiling) and the tables and chairs are sturdy and mismatched, which adds to the charm.   The owners are a lovely, welcoming Hungarian husband (the chef) and wife (everything else) and, in addition to Scottish dishes they offer there are some traditional Hungarian ones on the menu.

I decided to be adventurous and try a couple of the Hungarian dishes.  First I had a Hortobagyi pancake – a thin crepe filled with minced meat, folded up with the ends tucked in and served with a creamy paprika sauce.  It was delicious and went very well with my glass of red wine.

Hortobagyi pancake
photo © iusedtobeindecisive

Next I had a slice of a delicious Hungarian cake, Dobos Torte.  Apologies for the blurry photo – my phone obviously doesn’t take such good close up pictures as I thought!   The cake was thin layers of sponge alternating with chocolate buttercream and topped with a thin layer of hard caramel/toffee which reminded me of the toffee you get on the outside of a toffee apple.  To finish I had a cup of peppermint tea.  I love the fact that the cups, saucers, tea pots and cake plates are all different.

Dobos torte
photo © iusedtobeindecisive

photo © iusedtobeindecisive

Here’s a link to the website – if you are in the area I recommend a visit.

* It always used to be called Mothering Sunday and I’m not sure when, or why, it changed its name, but I wish it hadn’t because then there would be no apostrophe confusion!

For more lunchtime photos go to WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge.

haggis flavoured snack anyone?

When I was doing some shopping for my mum I spotted these potato crisps/chips on the supermarket shelves.

Perhaps it’s because I don’t like haggis, but I can’t imagine why anyone would want to eat this flavour!

For those of you not familiar with haggis, it is a traditional Scottish dish made from minced sheep’s pluck (heart, liver, lungs) mixed with onion, oatmeal, herbs and seasoning and encased in a sheep’s stomach.  To cook it is boiled in water for about three hours and is traditionally served with mashed potato and turnip.

Do you think you would like to try them?

theatre treats

The trip to Sleeping Beauty last night (which I suppose is better described as a dance performance rather than a ballet – there are no men in tights, no tutus and no dancers on points) was excellent and I thoroughly enjoyed it again.

Apart from one thing…

Sitting behind us (we were there with 5 friends) were three women – adult females,  not children as I thought before I turned round – who had no idea, it seemed, about the appropriateness of the treats/snacks they should take into a theatre.  Not for them the glass of wine, the box of chocolates or the tub of ice cream.  No, they chose to take in the loudest bags of sweets it is possible to imagine.  Not only were the bags very, very noisy as the women rustled, endlessly,  into their depths for their sweet of choice, but they always seemed to be dipping into them at the quietest parts of the music!  It was infuriating.  Perhaps they were more used to going to the cinema where the sound is so loud that it can drown out some of the other noises.  Of course everyone was too polite to say anything directly, but turning round and directing stares at them and sighing deeply didn’t seem to make a bit of difference.

About half an hour into the performance it went quiet after one particularly loud rustling session, so I presumed the sweets were finished and that was the noise of the bags being put away.  At the interval the women went out and got coffees which they brought back with them.  No problem, they were in cardboard cups – no rustling opportunities.  Then the lights went down for the second half, the curtain went up, the bags of sweets came out again and it was RUSTLE, RUSTLE, RUSTLE….   AAAAAAARRRGGGHHHHH!

I think they rustled on for about fifteen more minutes.  Thankfully the sweets were finished before one of us climbed over the back of the seat and throttled them with their own loud, rustling sweet bags!

 

 

ice cream cake recipe

There have been some requests for the Nigella Lawson recipe for the delicious ice cream cake I made for lunch on Boxing Day, so here it is.  It’s a great pudding to make ahead because it can just wait in the freezer until you are ready to use it.  The original recipe includes peanut butter morsels and honey roasted peanuts, but some members of the family are not keen on them so I substituted chocolate chips and added extra Crunchies.

(The measurements are metric I’m afraid)

Ice Cream Cake

1.5 litres vanilla ice cream

200g chocolate chips/morsels (I used dark, but it could be milk, or a mixture)

4 x 40g Crunchie bar, broken into shards and dusty rubble (this is a chocolate covered honeycomb bar)

150g Bourbon biscuits, broken up into crumbs and rubble

Method

1.  Let the ice cream soften a little

2.  Line a 20cm springform tin with clingfilm, both in the bottom and up the sides of the tin so that you have some surplus at the top

3.  Empty the slightly softened ice cream into a bowl and mix in the chocolate chips, half of the crushed Crunchie bars and 100g of the Bourbon crumbs

4.  Put the resulting mixture into the springform tin, flattening the top like a cake, fold the excess clingfilm over the top and place in the freezer.

5.  Serve the cake straight from the freezer, unmoulding from the tin and pulling the clingfilm gently away before putting it on a plate or cake stand.

6. Before serving sprinkle the remaining Crunchie bars and biscuit crumbs on top.

7. Cut into slices and serve with a jug of hot chocolate sauce.

Hot Chocolate Sauce

75g dark chocolate, 70% cocoa solids

125ml double cream

2 teaspoons instant espresso powder dissolved in 30mls (2 tablespoons) hot water

1 tablespoon (15ml) golden syrup

Method

1.  Break up the chocolate and put into a heavy-based saucepan

2.  Add the remaining ingredients, then place the pan over a gentle heat and melt everything together

3.  Once everything has melted, stir well, take off the heat and pour into a jug to serve.