Family, food, travel, gin and a touch of hysteria…
Currently Browsing: Cakes & biscuits
Posted by
English Mum |
Sep 21st, 2011
Guilty pleasures: Individual chocolate fudge brownie ‘cupcakes’
My lovely friend Taralara does The Gallery every week – a place where you can share photos (they don’t have to be good, or professional, which is why I can join in). This week the theme is ‘guilty pleasures’. I’m so there!
So you know I love a cupcake, right? They’re definitely my guilty pleasure. And I love a chocolate brownie too. So what better, I thought, than...
Posted by
English Mum |
Jul 18th, 2011
Little Matty’s Christening – and a bit of cupcake tower trauma
So after promising my lovely cousin, Moon and his wife Miska that I’d make cupcake towers for Mattie’s Christening, I’ve been having Laura-like cupcake anxiety dreams for the last week – nightmares about everything from collapsing towers to rock-hard icing have plagued my sleep. I was almost glad when Saturday arrived and I could stop worrying and get on with it. Brace yourself,...
Posted by
English Mum |
Jun 17th, 2011
How to make a cake: a step by step guide
My fellas aren’t bad at cooking. I’m pretty sure that if they were let loose into the big wide world right this instant, they’d be able to cook themselves decent food, know how to shop for ingredients, and appreciate (if not exactly adhere to) the rules of nutrition. Not bad for 13 and 16, I reckon. Like most fellas, though (*cough*), they’re not particularly keen on baking. Well,...
Posted by
English Mum |
Apr 29th, 2011
Congratulations William and Catherine!
Check out my Union Jack biscuits on Ready for Ten
Posted by
English Mum |
Apr 14th, 2011
Freeze ahead brown sugar cookies
I made a batch of these the other day (the plain ones – these ones in the pic have actually got a dollop of salted caramel in their centre), and the Death Wish Child, somewhat of a cookie connoisseur, declared them to be the best cookie that I make.
‘What, these old things?’, I asked, surprised.
DWC: ‘Yup’
Me: ‘Not the double chocolate chip cookies?’
DWC: ‘Nope.’
Me:...
Posted by
English Mum |
Apr 6th, 2011
Salted caramel double chocolate cupcakes (what? I eat in a crisis)
So after all the emotional turmoil of Monday’s blog post (thank you, from the bottom of my heart, if you took the time to comment), my thoughts obviously turned to cakey buns. What I needed was some serious yummage. Stat.
Firstly, a little admission: they went wrong. Oh yes, spectacularly so. What I intended was a soft chocolate spongey muffin, topped with a dollop of salted caramel and enveloped...
Posted by
English Mum |
Mar 29th, 2011
Lime meringue pie: In which the DWC makes me a birthday surprise
As you know, it’s one of our slightly less mental traditions at English Towers that the birthday person gets to choose whatever they like for their birthday cake. Usually, da brevren compete with each other to find the most complicated (The Mad Professor), chocolate-filled (the Death Wish Child), or retro (English Dad) recipes they can possibly find. And then, of course, when it’s my birthday,...
Posted by
English Mum |
Feb 5th, 2011
Taralara’s extremely gorgeous walnut teabread
My lovely friend Tara, over at Sticky Fingers, was talking this morning about her walnut teabread. I was fascinated as it doesn’t contain any butter, but still looked really moist and delicious. I had to give it a go (well, you do, don’t you), and can confirm that it really is very gorgeous. And, if it lasts that long, is equally as nice cold with a chunk of crumbly Cheshire cheese.
Because...
Posted by
English Mum |
Nov 11th, 2010
Christmas Countdown: An easy two step ‘personalised’ Christmas cake
One of the things that fascinates me about cooking is the alchemy: why you need x when you bake with y, or how one ingredient affects the others in a dish. This nosiness (teamed with an endless desire to be baking), often leads to disaster, but hey, if you don’t make mistakes you never learn.
I dislike the snobbery surrounding food, and, like Nigel Slater, believe a recipe is a guideline, not a set...
Posted by
English Mum |
Oct 28th, 2010
The scary spider cake (toddler styley)
Okay, so we’re clear that cake decorating is not my forté, evidenced by this hideous monstrosity that practically made my husband weep on his 44th:
I don’t know what it is. I mean, I love cooking, love baking… but I just don’t seem to have an artistic bone in my whole body.
Still, it’s Hallowe’en and I thought ‘sod it, I’ll give it another go’. Here,...
