ENGLISH MUM

My sister in law (who is a sweet, gentle creature) once told me that many moons ago, during a lovers’ tiff with my brother, she was so cross she took the tomato sauce bottle and wrote ‘SHIT’ on the kitchen floor in ketchup.  You see?  Naughty words are a form of therapy.  And with this in mind, laydees and gentlespoons, I bring you the arsebiscuit. I’ve been banging on about them...

UPDATE: Okay, so the results are in.  And yes, I know, I know, this is just a bit of fun, not a competition, but Toria has chosen her faves: 1st Heather’s from Eggs, Cream and Honey.  They look mouthwateringly gorgeous and I want to stuff my face with them! Yum 2nd Mummy Limited’s heart cupcakes. Loving the sparkliness with the glitter and hearts that look fab on the cream frosting. Too pretty...

  *sigh* It’s bloody January again (to quote Flanders and Swann). Apparently there is no news in the whole world apart from the fact that it’s snowing.  And if that, plus the fact that fate decided to dump 4″ of it upon English Towers II wasn’t quite bad enough, it seems that no teacher can possibly drive in slush, so the kids are off as well. It’s enough to make you want to...

So if you’re snowed in, or just fancy a nice afternoon of Christmassy cooking in the kitchen, I can think of nothing finer than stollen.  Not only is it yummy, but the smell of it cooking is just the finest thang ever. As you can see from the picture, I actually made mine when I was back at English Towers in Ireland (it was for a magazine article, so they were unseasonably made in October), but they...

Deep breaths, then, and enough of this doom and gloom.  Hell, it’s Christmas.  Seeing as I’m currently obsessing about mince pies, I thought I’d share my latest ressup with you.  It’s the pastry, see?  I thought I had it perfect, but it was too short, too ‘dissolve into crumbs as soon as you pick it up’, which is perfect in some ways, but mince pies need to be handled. ...

Well, well, well, hello again!  We’re all moved over to the UK (after much swearing and broken fingernails packing the house up, then a ferry crossing from hell with storm force winds and high seas).  We’re moved into English Towers Mark 2 (kitchen is a B+ but garden’s a C-) but sadly I’ve no internet connection, so I’m going to hand you over to my lovely friend Mise for a little...

So English Grandma was visiting last week.  It was her birthday and as usual here at English Towers, this meant that the birthday person had the honour of choosing their own cake.  Except of course English Grandma didn’t really want a cake, in fact, didn’t really want to be reminded that she was 70 at all.  It’s a great age, though,  I reckon.  It’s the same age as Raquel Welch...

So things aren’t going well  here at English Towers.  In fact, that’s a total understatement.  Things are going shite (recession, you b*stard, go take it out on somebody else for a change).  Anyhoo, instead of making you read a whole big chuntering moan all about how terrible my life is, I thought I’d tell you about my little trip to the  lovely little local school yesterday where I took...

So you know when you have that afternoon lull and you think ‘hmm, what I need is a nice cup of tea and piece of cake?’  Well Hubby had exactly that feeling this afternoon – a sudden, inexplicable craving for Christmas cake.  A quick rummage in the cupboards revealed a bit of a motley assortment of half packets of various golden sultanas, raisins and ‘fruit mix’ (arrghhh! Peel!) and it got me...

So this week is National Cupcake Week (as if we needed an excuse to eat cupcakes anyway), so I thought we’d go ‘back to basics’ today with a ressup for the perfect deeply darkly chocolatey cupcake with added… (you can get this)… chocolate!  ‘Tis dead easy and a thing of beauty. Brace yourselves, then: For the cupcakes, you’ll need: 200g bar dark chocolate (something...