Quick and easy pumpkin soup

Now the nights are drawing in and it's cold outside, there's nothing better than a bowl of homemade soup to warm you up on your return from an Autumn walk. 

I spotted a small culinary pumpkin in the supermarket for just £1 so, as it's Autumn I thought I'd make a seasonal soup. I kept it very simple and as well as the pumpkin used just two potatoes, an onion and vegetable stock for the soup.

I sautéed the onion first, before adding the pumpkin and potatoes, allowing them to soften for a couple of minutes before adding about a pint of vegetable stock (I usually just measure by eye how much stock is needed, ensuring the soup mix is all covered). Once the soup had been brought to the boil, I left it to simmer for about half an hour until the pumpkin was soft. Then I just blended the mixture until it was smooth and it was as simple as that. Whilst the soup was simmering, I roasted the pumpkin seeds and used them to garnish the soup.

Served with a buttery baguette it made for the perfect weekend lunch.

Making Ice Creams at Magnum Pleasure Store

The annual Magnum Pleasure store pop up is currently open and in July I went with my boyfriend to see if it lived up to the hype. We weren't disappointed! 

On arrival at the store the first thing you notice is shop windows which are filled with three giant ice creams in their special designer creations. 

Once inside there is a "look book" of ice creams from which you can choose one of the special creations or for £5.50 you can design your own. We picked the latter option and first up you pick whether you want your ice cream coated in milk, white or dark chocolate. 

Next you pick your toppings. I went for chocolate coated biscuit balls, fudge pieces and chocolate curls, finished with a white chocolate drizzle. My boyfriend went for candied lemon, crushed nuts and fudge pieces, topped with a dark chocolate drizzle. It's all finished off with a chocolate disc and then, after a quick photo of your creation in the ice cream 'insta booth' you can enjoy! 

I would recommend going along and trying it out before they close in September, it was a fun experience and they tasted even better than they looked!

Summer Food Markets

Over the summer I've caught a few of the weekend food markets across London. The first one I went to at the South Bank Centre had quite a buzz and a good variety of stalls, my favourite being a fresh coconut stall where you could quench your thirst with the water from a freshly sliced coconut and after you could get the coconut chopped open to eat. 

The second food market I went to was at Alexandra Palace. I was looking forward to this as it was advertised as a large food market with entertainment, but I was ultimately a little disappointed as it was smaller than I expected with less variety and it was overcrowded. That said, I did enjoy the food I ordered a lot, I had a burrito for lunch and a chocolate banana waffle. Sitting on Muswell Hill eating lunch and taking in the sights of the city definitely made the trek across London worth it. 

Most recently I went to the Victoria Park market. Again this market was not that big, but I found the variety of different food and the mix of food to eat there and products to take home good. I enjoyed a cheese and onion jam toastie with a refreshing berry juice drink and I purchased a couple of sweet treats from a stand called a pie party to take home. There was also a lady selling garden plants and as she was going on holiday the following week they were only £1.50, so I picked up a pretty Busy Lizzie bush plant for the balcony which I'm hoping to be able to overwinter. 

I'm keeping an eye out for any more food markets I can explore before the summer months are over.

two-tiered rose cake (attempt 2!)

My second attempt at a two-tiered cake was more successful than the first, but unfortunately i didn't have time to make enough roses to cascade down the cake this time. I guess that's a good enough reason to make a third attempt though!

ii

The paper doily was from Lakeland and came in a pack of 3 pretty designs featuring roses, swans and pearls, and with the largest doily covered in yellow roses it looked like it had been made to sit on my cake stand :)

Afternoon Tea

Last week I mentioned that I was going for my first Afternoon Tea experience. I was really looking forward to it, but unfortunately it wasn't very impressive, with a poor and limited selection of sandwiches, cakes which looked like they were straight out of a Tesco packet and being seated at a coffee table which was really uncomfortable for eating. A few days later we went to M&S for a quick lunch and discovered their Afternoon Tea for 2 package - sandwiches, scones, tea and tartlets - for just £10. You choose your sandwiches and scones, and although it was a little plainer with no choice of cakes I think it was good value for money. The only thing I missed was having it arranged nicely on a cake stand like the advertisement, which was a little disappointing, but having read other reviews online it seems that most M&S cafes do serve afternoon tea on a pretty stand.

My first Afternoon Tea Experience

P.s. I've also discovered a love of instagram - better late than never!

Two-Tier Rose Cake (Attempt 1...)

Last week I came across a beautiful 3-tiered cake decorated with cascading roses in my newest cake decorating book (£1 from the M&S sale, very much worth looking out for!) and thought it would be lovely to make for guests we're expecting at the end of the month. I wanted to practice it first, as I had grand ideas of a two tiered cake, with different flavour sponges and buttercreams, with a beautiful display of fondant roses. It was just as well I did because I'm a baking novice and as such encountered several hitches along the way, all of which lead to a less-than-perfect looking cake :( But at least I know what to improve for the real thing I guess! Namely;

- Do NOT forget the Marzipan. (I said I was a novice!) I completely missed this out from both the ingredient list and method, and it was only when I came to add the royal icing that it  seemed like icing the cake was a lot harder than it should be. I was right. As a result the icing didn't quite stick to the cake as well as it should have, and you can see where the sponge cakes are sandwiched together. It doesn't look good.

- Remember that baking a small cake means adjusting the cooking time. I forgot to do this and as a result my "strawberry" tier tasted predominately of overcooked cake.

- Make sure the cakes are level before applying the icing. Yet another rookie mistake and this caused a fondant rose to roll off the top of the cake, land in the middle of the previously smooth icing leaving a big dent and then proceeding to fall (and smash) on the floor.

I'm disappointed with the overall look of the cake (and didn't really want to upload the photo to my blog, but It's a learning curve right?) but not to get too disheartened by it, I was pleased with how the roses turned out - it took me an entire evening to make them all and it took a while to get a technique going, but I don't think they look too bad for my first attempt at making roses, and I do like the colour of them too. I also made a strawberry buttercream for the top tier cake and luckily that turned out very nicely and added some flavour back to the cake!

So, here it is...hopefully the second attempt will look a lot better!

(And yes the picture is small in a vain attempt to minimize the obviousness of the awful icing...I know it doesn't succeed however!)

Holiday ♥

I have the post-holiday blues already! So I thought I'd upload a few pictures from my holiday as I'm sorting out which ones to get printed. In the collage above I've included pictures of some of the amazing food we had for dinner one evening at a Lebanese restaurant (the falafel in particular was delicious!) an ice cream shaped like a rose (I bought it purely because of this, despite not actually being hungry as we'd just had a huge dinner!), the beach we had all to ourselves when we got up early one morning to sunbathe, and views over the city.

In other news, I'm on a bid to reduce my spending! Despite normally being relatively frugal, the array of summer sales have been not so good for my purse (or my already full-to-bursting wardrobe - and yet still, every morning I find "I have nothing to wear". I can't figure it out!). We'll see how it goes!

Chocolate Baskets filled with Ice cream / Vivien's Heavenly Ice Cream Shop Book Review

I have just finished reading Abby Clement's latest book "Vivien's Heavenly Ice Cream Shop," which is the perfect light holiday read. I won't give too much away but the book follows two sisters as they try to take over their grandmother's ice cream shop in Brighton, and as one heads to Italy to learn how to make gelato, the other is left to start running the shop, and both encounter setbacks along the way! I took it with me on holiday and luckily enough I spent some time in Italy so I could try out real Italian Gelato to see what the fuss was all about in the book, and it really was delicious so I want to try making gelato too!

Whilst looking for a recipe in one of my dessert books I came across one for chocolate ice cream in a chocolate shell, so as I didn't have the ingredients at hand to make the ice cream I decided to try making chocolate baskets and filling them with some from the freezer for my first attempt.

The method is simple, cover a small bowl with clingfilm and pipe melted chocolate around the edge and across it and leave to set. I didn't have any clingfilm only foil, and this proved quite difficult to remove resulting in a couple of broken baskets, so next time i'll be trying it out with clingfilm and hopefully will have better results.

Recent bakes...banoffee pie, white chocolate tartlets and savoury parcels ♥

I've been busy baking the past few weeks and trying out new recipes from old recipe books. Taking inspiration from my mum's mediterranean cookery book I tried a savoury dish for a change and tried a recipe for 'borek' (aka filo parcels). It's a simple recipe with cheeses and egg combined and then wrapped in filo pastry in triangle shapes. It's easy to make if a little time consuming and the parcels were delicious both hot from the oven and cool the next day. I've since tried a new variation of squash, spinach and feta pastries and have got a few in the freezer as they're ideal for a quick snack or picnic lunch.

I then went back to my trusty dessert recipe book and tried out the recipe for white chocolate tartlets, which I've been meaning to try for ages. It's a simple recipe with a basic pastry shell and white chocolate, vanilla and cream filling but they looked lovely.

Encouraged by how easy the tartlets were to make I then tried making banoffee pie. It was a little trickier to get the pastry into the dish neatly but it wasn't too bad for a first attempt and then it was simply covering the pastry with caramel, sliced bananas, whipped cream and flaked chocolate. I haven't tried it yet as it's still in the fridge for dessert this evening but it looks yummy!

Updates from the week

It's been a windy and cold day here following an otherwise sunny week, so I decided to stay indoors for most of the day. At lunch time I decided to quickly pot up the 19 cherry tomato seedlings which had outgrown their small propagator. I was beginning to regret this an hour and a half later when I still wasn't done and had run out of plastic pots, but got there eventually, and have found that water bottles cut in half make a good plant pot/greenhouse pot in one.

Yesterday I planted some pretty viola plants in old terracotta pots that had just been lying about in the garden. I had been to the garden centre and found some greatly reduced flowers, mostly just because a few out of the tray had withered, so I picked up a tray of violas for 10p, and watered them at home and left them overnight. The following day I moved them all into their own pots and 16 out of the 20 plants from the tray were potted up, and although one more has since withered away the remaining 15 plants have picked up and are looking very healthy.

As we have a guest for dinner this evening I've also made a chocolate cake for dessert, I've already had a taster of the fudge icing and its yummy. I'll add a few strawberries and might dust it with cocoa powder to serve.

And finally, earlier this week I had a second attempt at the cinnamon rolls which I blogged about here, and I think it was slightly more successful as they're looking a lot more like rolls now!

I've also purchased a few things this weekend but I'm off to Primark tomorrow so shall wait and see if I have anything else to add to my haul before I blog about them!

Happy Easter!

I've been spoilt with Easter treats this weekend and received chocolate eggs, lindt goodies and a joules baking set which I can't wait to use. The baking set has some cupcake cases, wraps and toppers, a biscuit cutter, flour shaker and a spatula which is useful as i've misplaced my old one, and came with a nice striped tin to store it all in.

I was also given a bag of ferrero hazelnut eggs which were so yummy that they didn't last long enough to make it in the picture!

Croissants and Homemade Easter Eggs

With snow on the ground outside gardening has been out of the question this weekend, so I decided to spend some time baking instead. In the fridge I had a can of Jus Rol Croissants which I've not tried before and was somewhat sceptical about, but I was pleasantly surprised with the results.

You simply unwrap the can, and unroll the sheet of pre-marked pastry and cut into triangles. Then simply roll up and twist into a croissant shape and pop in the oven.

The croissants were quite small but light and tasty, and being smaller than the ones you buy in the supermarket is the perfect excuse to indulge in a second!

 After dinner I was at a loose end so I decided to try out the new easter egg moulds I purchased a few days ago from Hobbycraft. They were on sale for £1 and contained 2 sets of small and 2 large easter egg moulds. 

I didn't want to spend too much money on chocolate as it was just a fun little project to fill my evening, so I bought 3 bags of Asda buttons on offer at 3 for £1 (2 milk chocolate and 1 white chocolate) and had plenty to fill the small trays. I also used some heart chocolate shapes I had in my cupboard in the mould and then poured in a little melted chocolate to decorate some of the eggs. 

And here's the finished result! They're a little messy but next time I won't fill the moulds as much. Even so they tasted delicious :)

Monday Brunch Waffles

This morning I decided to try out my new waffle maker which I picked up in Lidl earlier this year for only £14.99, and I wasn't disappointed! The recipe included in the box asked for 5 eggs and 500g of flour so I only used 1/5 of the ingredients and it still made 6 large waffles.
We topped them with chocolate spread and strawberries from the garden, delicious!

Recipe (adjusted to make 6):
50g Margarine or Butter
40g Sugar
1/4 tsp Vanilla Essence
1 Egg
100g Flour
1/4 tsp Baking Powder
75ml Milk

Stir the margarine/butter until foamy. Add the sugar, vanilla essence and egg and stir. Blend in the flour and baking powder. Stirring constantly, gradually mix in the milk. Beat the mixture for 2-3 minutes with a hand mixer.