Uncategorized drink, food, win stuff 3:14 pm
This May, all you foodies can enjoy 30 days of culinary bliss thanks to a truly awesome coalition of food bigwigs, including Good Housekeeping and Sainsbury’s.
Registering here will allow you to take advantage of fabulous offers, enter delicious giveaways, and hear about droolworthy gastronomic events, every day in May. Just for starters, you can enter to win a VIP tea party in London, then enjoying priority seats at a screening of Sex & The City 2. Now, who brought forks and plates?!
Uncategorized birthday, bunnies, cake, easter, eggs, hens 12:52 pm
The new lexical hybrids above of course refer to the close incidence of my birthday and Easter.
For the former. I made myself a coffee cake, usingDelia Smith’s (or Saint Delia as my mum calls her) recipe.
It was pretty nice, although next time I think I’d omit the fromage frais from the topping, replacing it with extra mascarpone and icing sugar. The fromage frais gives it a weird tang that detracts from all the other good stuff about the cake. On the up side, the boy was unduly impressed that I managed to write my name on the cake (thanks to Vahiné chocolate icing tubes, I’ll have you know). Go me.
My aunt and mother also share my birthday, but I didn’t ask what kind of cakes they had.
For Easter here in France, they do sell eggs, but they’re not as central to the whole proceedings or as flamboyant as they are in the UK. They’re much more sophisticated and (as a rule) generally much more expensive. In the supermarket you can get the occasional low-end cheaper egg but they are mostly aimed at children (and I do have some dignity left). The chocolate hens that are sold are often better value than the eggs, even though you get the same amount of chocolate. Inside the hens (and the eggs) you get lots of little chocolatey trinkets, such as mini chocolate eggs, mini chocolate fish (remember this is still a Catholic country) and mini chocolate squid (**** knows why). They are usually quite nicely presented, coming with a ribbon wrapped around them, and with their own dinky little fake nests:
(Hey, look, you even get a better photo this time.)
In addition to this (because I am greedy), I not only had all of the usual Easter paraphernalia brought over for me from England by the mothership (including mini Creme Eggs and proper Mini Eggs), but I also invested in the following:
Baby bunnies!!!!!
This little ensemble was maybe a bit more expensive than it deserved to be (€13,50 for the mug + 10-12 tiny Lindt bunnies, several of which were already – ahem – given a good home prior to this picture being taken), but at least you get to keep the mug after. And they’re just so damn cute! Shame I didn’t buy a big Lindt bunny as well so that they could all bow down to it like a god.
Uncategorized food, food tv, gordon ramsay 12:38 pm
Him indoors (‘him indoors’ meaning my fiancé, who’ll be taking chief responsibility for the wine posts on this blog): they’ve got to be scripted/use actors. There are just too many funny one-liners and too regimented a plot to the programmes to be otherwise.
Me: surely not?!
Your thoughts?
Uncategorized baking, cakes, cookbook, cupcakes, desserts 12:35 pm
For my birthday, my sister bought me the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, and I have thus spent many a happy hour drooling over it. My first attempt was the basic vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting: 
(I know, the photo’s quite dark. I’m sorry 😦 My paws get in the way sometimes 😦 )
They tasted gooooooood. But they were extremely sweet and almost more frosting than cake. This was a shame really as I tasted a little bit of the cake when slicing off the tops so that they would be flat when I iced them, and the cake on its own was lush, but couldn’t be tasted in its full glory once the truckload of icing had been added.
The cake recipes, as far as I can tell if this one is anything to go by, are fairly idiotproof. The cake itself was light and fluffy and the instructions to get there were extremely straightforward. While a reduction in icing could be beneficial, these are a delicious, indulgent treat.
Going back to the book itself, it’s full of high-quality photos and a range of dishes – the bakery cookbook doesn’t just tell you how to make cupcakes, but also muffins, pies and brownies…and cookies…which I’ll be trying out later on today. I’m also much looking forward to my visit to the original Hummingbird Bakery in London next Thursday (the 29th). Bring it.
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