So it’s English Grandma’s birthday, and I really wanted to take some time and make her some absolutely beautiful cupcakes. I love pistachio (and, more importantly, I know she does too!), plus it has the added bonus of making the sponge a delicate green colour. This pistachio recipe is adapted from Xanthe Milton’s amazing Eat Me recipe book.

For the white chocolate and lime ganache, I’ve done it a little differently.  Usually I would just melt the chocolate, then whisk the cream in until I get the texture I need, but I wanted the lime zest to infuse into the cream, so I heated the cream, then stirred in the white chocolate. You’ll need to chill it down, then whip it to get a lovely texture for piping.

For the cupcakes:

140g butter
250g golden caster sugar
120ml Greek yoghurt
170g self raising flour
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
50g pistachios, ground or whizzed (plus a few extra for decoration)

So preheat the oven to 180 degrees/gas 4 and pop some cupcake papers in a 12 hole muffin tin.

Beat the butter and sugar in the food processor or with an electric hand whisk.

In a different bowl, beat the eggs then beat in the yoghurt.

Set the beater going again and beat the yoghurt mixture into the butter mixture.

Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture, then add the pistachios and stir it all until just combined.

Plop a tablespoon of the mixture into each cupcake paper, then bake for about 15-20 minutes.  As with all cupcakes, take them out when they’re only just done, as they’ll continue to cook a little bit when you take them out of the oven.  As soon as the sponge springs up again when you press it, whip them out.

Allow the cupcakes to cool, then pipe on the white chocolate and lime ganache:

200g white chocolate

100ml double cream

Zest of 1 unwaxed lime

So as above, just warm the cream in a saucepan with the lime zest.  Pop in the white chocolate then allow to cool.  Chill very well in the fridge, then when properly chilled, whisk until light and fluffy and pipe or spread onto the cooled cupcakes.

Happy birthday, Mum!

Of course with 16 year olds, you get the hormones… the moodiness… the constant demands for money… the vast tranches of time when they’re lolling about making the place look untidy, or just unconscious…

But you also get moments like this:

I watched him on Saturday, playing with little Sweeney (Mad Uncle Ali’s girlfriend’s little fella)  in the sunshine at the cricket club.  He bowled, fielded and batted for hours… he played football, he spent quite a lot of time making out shapes in the clouds:

… and still more retrieving the cricket ball from under the fence. Later, little Sweeney stayed the night here.  The Prof was out with friends.  The little chap just couldn’t go to sleep… ‘is Sam back?  Is Sam back?…)  He has endless patience.  A gentle spirit that he certainly didn’t inherit from me (or his Dad)…

He’s not complained too much about being away from COD Black Ops for a whole two weeks…  it helped that he spent the whole of Sunday getting sweaty at paintball with his mate Steve – they came back filthy, bruised and knackered.  But still smiling.

He’s hugely different from his brother, but their differences make them who they are, and we love them both.  We’re so proud.  Happy birthday, Sam xx

So it’s the Death Wish Child’s birthday.  Actually, I might now have to change his name, seeing as he is now officially a teenager.

Yes, I am the mother of two teenagers.  Kill me now.

The dude’s most fervent birthday wish was for a pair of hideously expensive Remz OS4 skates.  Now, for 99 percent of you, these words will mean very little, but for most of the teenagey skatery-type chaps reading this, there’ll be all sorts of drooling and hyperventilating at the very thought.  Here they are in all their glory:

After some pretty terrible lying (mostly by his father), we managed to dupe him into thinking that there was ‘a man’ at the skate park who sold skates, and that we would purchase them on his birthday trip.  Happily, he’s a gullible sod and was completely surprised when we whipped out the aforementioned skates with a flourish on his birthday.  Remz.  Oh yes.  With blue trim.  Exactly what he wanted.

The dude has been feverishly googling Bay Sixty6 in London for several weeks now.  It’s a massive skate park under the Westway flyover and we promised him and his buddy Olly a birthday trip while we were over here visiting the folks.  Today was the day, and we set off – the new skates nestled securely on the DWC’s lap.

When we got there, he put on his news skates, headed to the highest ramp, and promptly fell over.  English Dad and I decided that we couldn’t watch and headed to Portobello Road market instead (more of this later).  Happily, when we checked back, he was still alive and had all his limbs roughly in the right place, which is a bloody miracle, given he did stuff like this:

Yup.  And you wondered why I couldn’t watch.

He also did a bit of this:

…and quite a bit of this:

Happily 4pm came with no broken bones, dislocated joints, smashed teeth or any of the other things I’d been trying not to think about, and we whisked him home, wondering how we could get out of EVER taking him there again.

Bah, who am I kidding?  He’ll be pestering me about every ten seconds from now on…

Happy birthday, Chipper.  Welcome to teenagerhood.  xx

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, I just make whatever I fancy.

This year turned out to be a bit different.  ‘I’m going to make your birthday cake’, said the Death Wish Child, confidently.  ‘What would you like?’.

‘Well’, said I, ‘what I would really really like is lemon meringue pie.  No, lime meringue pie, but don’t worry, I’ll help’.

‘Nope’, said the small confident one, while imaginary fireworks and laser beams went off behind him.  ‘*I* shall make the pie’.  So sit back and enjoy, while my wonderful offspring takes you through his birthday pie:

First you need a pastry bottom (although I suspect that I might already have one):

For the pastry, you’ll need:

200g cold butter

400g plain flour

Pinch salt

1tbsp caster sugar

1 egg yolk

4 or 5 tbsp cold water

Firstly, preheat the oven to 180/gas 4.  It’s easiest to do this in the food processor (the pastry, not the preheating. That would be silly. And anyway, you’d never fit the oven in there), but you can do it by hand if you’re not as lazy as us.

Chop your cold butter into squares and add it to the flour, salt and sugar.  Process it until it looks like breadcrumbs.

Now plop in the egg yolk and pulse slowly, adding tablespoonfuls of water until it just comes together.

Flour the work surface (and your trousers, and your mother, and the floor) and squish the mixture together into a ball.  Roll it out to about 5-6mm thick, then roll it onto your rolling pin and unroll over your flan dish or baking tin  (about 24cm should do it).  When it all breaks apart, swear a bit and kind of patch it together. Nobody will notice.  Push it in to the edges and trim the top.

Now to bake it blind: scrunch up a bit of greaseproof paper, then smooth it over the pastry and pour in some baking beans – you can use ceramic or whatever. I’ve got some old dried beans – for about 15 minutes.

Then take it out of the oven, remove the baking beans and put it back in to cook the bottom (ooer) for about another 5 minutes, then take it out and leave to cool.  Turn the oven down to gas 2/150 degrees.

Meanwhile, make the lime curd.  We use bottled lime juice in this house, but if you want to juice several limes, be my guest:

100g butter

6 tbsp lime juice (or for lemon curd, 2 lemons, zested then juiced)

150g caster sugar

2 eggs plus 1 extra yolk (keep the white for the meringue)

Take a saucepan and bung in the butter, juice, zest and caster sugar.  Melt it all together slowly until the sugar is all dissolved.

Meanwhile, in a bowl, whisk the eggs and yolk until well combined.  Now, take your warm, limey, butter mixture and gently pour a little bit into the egg, whisking all the time, then a bit more, then a bit more, until you’ve combined about half of it with the eggs.  Now bung that lot back into the saucepan and keep whisking and simmering until the mixture thickens.  Make sure there’s someone behind you at this point shouting ‘WHISK! WHISK FASTER!’.

Turn off the heat and leave to cool.  Remember to just stir it occasionally to keep it from getting a skin on.  When it’s about room temperature, pour it into the pastry case and pop into the fridge to cool.

Finally, for the meringue:

4 egg whites

225g caster sugar

Whisk the eggs in a very clean bowl until they form firm peaks, then keep whisking while you add the sugar, spoon by spoon, until it’s all incorporated and the meringue is thick and glossy.  Pile it all on top of the lemon curd and fluff it up a bit (or you can pipe it like my man here):

Bake in the very low oven (gas 2/150 degrees) for about 40 to 50 minutes, depending on how squelchy you like your meringue.   If it’s a Special Birthday Meringue Pie, you can decorate it and add candles.

Then sit down with some pink champagne and blow your candles out, wishing with all your heart that you get to spend every birthday just like this, with the people that you love.

Thanks, Charlie xxxx

Yesterday, for example, my lovely pals, the fabulous Tums and Foxy and I, planned to go out and have cocktails and dinner with our long-suffering husbands to celebrate my impending 40-ness.  But what to wear.  Well, I was determined to go girly, and with spring in the air and words like ‘brights‘ and ‘sheers‘ being bandied about amongst ‘those wot know”, I rashly purchased this:

And yes, it’s quite pretty.  In fact, it’s lovely.  It’s fabulously light and chiffonny.  Good times.

Trouble is, I didn’t bother to try it on.  And when I did, I looked sadly like several enormous, uncooked chipolatas stuffed into a very pale (and see-through) Bedouin tent.  Bad times.

I rushed to Twitter (as one does) and asked said sparkly-tailed devil for some advice.  St Tropez was the answer, or at least some kind of glowy/sparkly lotion or potion.  And a little cropped black cardi.  I tried it.  I looked as thought the chipolatas had had a light grilling and popped on a beanie hat, but the overall see-through tent/sausage theme was still present.

Oh, and a word of advice?  Don’t apply St Tropez to your lower extremities whilst 1.) In a hot, sweaty rush and 2.) When you are just about to go out.  I have two words: orange feet.

Sod it.  I wore something else.  We still had a fabulous time – laughed a lot, drank a lot (I can highly recommend Raspberry Collins cocktails), ate a ridiculous amount and walked home in a large, giggly and somewhat unsteady pack more suited to teenagers than parents who should know better.

And that dress? Oh I’ll probably keep it for my holiday. Did I mention my 40th birthday present is a holiday to Morrocco?  No?  Must have slipped my mind…

So you know the rules by now.  The birthday person is entitled to request, nay, demand, the birthday cake/dessert/artery clogging confection of his/her choice and nobody’s allowed to complain; especially not me, and I have to make the bloody thing.

The Death Wish Child, my smallest, most accident-prone offspring, when not frequenting his local accident and emergency department or engaging in some form of muddy violence thinly veiled as a contact sport, is a bit of a chocolate lover.  The child has miraculously survived to celebrate his 11th birthday.  I know.  It’s a miracle.  And his birthday request was for… and I quote… “a cheesecake.  Ooh, no, a chocolate cheesecake.  Ooh, no… a double chocolate cheesecake.  Yes.  With a meringue topping.  Erm, and sparklers”. 

So there you have it.  I’ll give you the recipe, not so much because I expect you to actually make one yourselves, more so you can marvel at the placement of so many calories in so small a cake tin.  Be afraid:

300g dark chocolate digestive biscuits

100g butter, melted

175g dark chocolate

500g cream cheese

100g icing sugar, sieved

200ml double cream

Soooo, whizz the biscuits in a food processor, or put them in a strong freezer bag and bash hell out of them with a rolling pin (this step is particularly therapeutic if you have an ex-husband, or so I’m told).  Then pour over the melted butter and mix well.  Press the mixture into the bottom of a springform cake tin lined well with plenty of clingfilm (make sure it overhangs the sides) and put it in the fridge to set.

Meanwhile, melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water (remember not to let the bowl touch the water) and put aside.  In a fresh bowl, beat the cream cheese, then add the icing sugar and beat well together:

Set that aside and in another bowl (yeh sorry, not very washing-up friendly this one), whisk the double cream until it’s lovely and fluffy, then set that one aside too:

Now check the chocky to make sure it’s blood temperature, and start to add the cream cheese mixture one spoon at a time, stirring well until it’s all combined:

Now fold in the whipped cream:

…and let the dog lick the bowl (awww, g’wan…):

Now pile the whole lot onto the cooled biscuit base and level it off with a knife and return to the fridge to set.  Now, if you’re sane, you’ll walk away right this minute and serve your delicious dessert with a flourish and maybe some fresh raspberries:

If you’re mental, though, and prepared to do anything for your child just because it’s his birthday, crack on with the meringue.  First, preheat the grill to very hot, then take 2 egg whites, plop them into a clean bowl and whisk until really fluffy and stiff.  Now gradually add 115g caster sugar:

Whisk until the meringue is glossy and thick, and a generous stolen fingerful doesn’t contain any hint of gritty sugar.  Take the cheesecake out of the fridge and carefully remove all the clingfilm.  Now pile all the meringue over the top of your cheesecake, smoothing it over to the edges but leaving some little peaks, and chuck it quickly underneath your very hot grill just to singe the very tops of the mountains, as it were.

Serve, with sparklers, to an overexcited child, happily hiding your exhaustion, whilst secretly dreading what concoction the Mad Professor’s going to be demanding for his birthday in less than 10 days’ time.  Phew.

There’s pink sparkly cards:

…beautiful pink flowers:

…and pink meringue too (more of that later):

Next comes the pink champagne…

So this week, Mr Lovely (D next door’s brother in law – it’s all so incestuous round these parts) turned 40.  Mrs L has been, somewhat reluctantly it has to be said, planning a big party and we had a little brainstorming evening to sort out the finer details.  Seeing as Mr L is a fireman, it made sense for someone to bake a fire engine cake.  Mrs Lovely didn’t volunteer.  Neither did I.  It turned into a bit of a staring contest and then we decided that we’d pursue other avenues – both of us being severely cack-handed in the cake decorating department.  We were chatting about cupcake towers and the like and looking on the internerd when it dawned: cupcakes…loads and loads of little cupcakes each decorated with a teeny fire engine.  Mrs Lovely vowed to have a crack at a fire engine cake too.  The nutter.

Saturday morning dawned, then, and I started on the cupcakes. While I baked batches of 24, passing children were enlisted to help melt chocolate and whisk ganache and stick on the little rice paper/icing cake-toppers that Mrs L ordered and had delivered to her sister in the UK, along with a big list of other baking stuff that’s hard to find here (she got stopped coming through customs with a big block of royal icing – ‘no officer, it’s not semtex – honest’).  We decided to stick to vanilla cupcakes with white chocolate ganache, and chocolate cupcakes with dark chocolate.  But honestly, after a while, it all kind of got a bit confused and anyone that happened to have made a bowl of ganache dolloped it on the nearest available cakes.

So for the vanilla cupcakes, then, you need

125g butter

125g caster sugar (vanilla sugar if you have it)

1 tsp vanilla extract (leave out for the chocolate ones)

2 large eggs

125g self raising flour (replace a heaped tbsp with cocoa for chocolate ones)

Couple of tbsp milk

Firstly, try to make sure everything is at room temperature.  Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add the vanilla extract and then the eggs, beating well after each addition.   Don’t worry if it curdles – that’s such an old wives tale – just add some of the flour and carry on.  Then gently fold in the flour (if you beat the hell out of it you won’t get a lovely light sponge) and lastly the milk – just enough to make the batter plop softly off a tablespoon into the cupcake paper.  Bake at 180/gas 4 for about 18 minutes until golden – they should spring back when lightly pressed.  Cool on a wire rack.  This amount will make about 12 cupcakes.  Remember you don’t want them too high, or the ganache won’t completely cover them.

For the ganache:

200g bar white chocolate

2 tbsp icing sugar

About 100ml double cream

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water (don’t let it spit everywhere as you risk getting water in the chocolate, in fact, once it’s boiled just turn it off – the chocolate will still melt).  When just melted, take it off the heat and sieve in the icing sugar.  Gently start to whisk that in, then while you’re whisking, pour in the cream until you have a thick, glossy bowlful – about the same consistency as melted chocolate.  Pour a generous tablespoon of it over each cupcake – ideally so that it just about reaches the top of the paper case.  Then just leave them naked or decorate with whatever you like: mad, printed cake toppers…grated chocolate… a big swirl of whipped cream… jelly beans… whatever.

Multiply that recipe by about 8, blow up your food mixer, scoff any disasters, make a few more and there you have it.  A 100 cupcake birthday extravaganza.  Happy birthday, Mr Lovely!  Oh, and she never did make that fire engine cake, y’know.  Great party though.

So I’m not arty at all.  In the lottery that is our family’s gene pool, I struck it big with The Disreputable One’s ability to fire off a really angry letter, me Ma’s filthy laugh and my Grandma Maudie’s penchant for a nice glass of Bailey’s, but sadly didn’t inherit any artistic ability at all.  Still, one can dream, and I was rather pleased when my eagerly awaited cake decorating kit arrived from Ebay.

As you know, it was Hubby’s birthday this weekend.  On Sunday, we had a big, heowge massive roast beef dinner with Yorkshire puddings and, as usual here at English Towers, The Birthday Person got to choose his birthday cake.  He wanted something really darkly chocolatey and fudgey.  And I may not be the Ace of Cakes, but I can certainly knock up a mean chocky cake.  Read it and put on weight:

150g dark chocolate

170g butter

170g soft dark brown sugar

3 eggs

145g self raising flour

25g cocoa powder

To decorate:

Pot of double cream

100g dark chocolate

So preheat your oven to 180 degrees/gas 4, and grease and line a couple of cake tins.  Melt the 150g chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.  Meanwhile, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then beat in the eggs one at a time (remember if it curdles just bung in a spoonful of the flour).  Next, sieve the flour and cocoa and stir gently into the mix, then add the cooled, melted chocolate.  Divide the mix between the two tins and bake for around 15-20 minutes until they’re just firm – watch them carefully, you want soft, moist cake, not a couple of Frisbees.

Now comes the fun bit.  I whipped half the cream and filled the cake with it, then stirred the other half into some melted chocolate to make a ganache to pour over the top, but hell, it’s your cake – fill your boots.  Finally, I mixed the last spoonful of melted chocolate into a teeny bit of whipped cream and piped a completely wobbly ‘44’ on it that looked as though it had been done by a four year old.  It just goes to show how bloody nice I am that I’m opening myself up for total humiliation by actually showing you a picture.  Ah well.  Hubby liked it and if you’re even vaguely less cack-handed than I am it’s worth a go as it’s really good fun.

Give me time, and a bit of practice, and I’ll be icing cupcakes like a pro.  No, really.

So it was the Disreputable One’s birthday on Sunday.  And seeing as his other half is in the process of dragging him kicking and screaming into the 21st century, she suggested that he might like a digital camera.  So I set about contacting my siblings.

Me (via text): Alright siblings!  Any chance of us clubbing together and buying Dad a digital cam 4 his birthday THIS SUNDAY?

Mad Uncle A (via text): Alright saves me a job. U get it send it & I’ll send u the cash. Don’t spend too much I’m not f*ckin Bill Gates.

Sensible Uncle I (via text): Fine.

Well, he’s a man of few words.  So, great, I thought, might have known as the token female I’d get lumbered with the shopping, so off I go, spending a happy afternoon researching cameras on the internerd… and finally I come up with an absolute corker.  Hubby is a Fuji man (he’s got one of those great big black yokes like the paparazzi are always sticking up Britney’s skirt), and my little red Fuji Q1 is fantastic, so I settled on a really flash new black Fuji Finepix one at 7dayshop.com – less than 2cm thick (ooer!), equipped with a 2.5″ LCD screen, 7 million pixel CCD sensor (no, I don’t know what that is either), a 3x optical zoom, image stabilising system, face detection and an infrared transmission system (not that I expect he’ll be transferring his photos wirelessly but hey, it’s there if he needs it) and an extremely fast shutter speed to ensure his photos come out clear and bright even with a little alzheimers-induced hand wobble (just joking Dad).  Anyhoo, I couldn’t get my order to work on 7dayshop, it kept asking me to login again, but Pixmania.co.uk had it too so I sent off my order and sat back all smug.  How easy was that?

So you know this is going to go all pear-shaped, don’t you.  Two days later, I got an email saying it was out of stock and would be delivered as soon as possible.  Poo!  I fired off a quick email: ‘No! It has to be delivered by Sunday.  It’s my Dad’s birthday!  Can’t you find something similar that you DO have in stock?’.  Another day goes past and, finally, I get an email back: ‘the black’s out of stock, but we do have Wasabi Green (oh dear), Sunburst Orange (oh dear again) and Cherry Red in stock.  Quick text to Dad’s other half and we settle on the red, which I order with another ‘please, please hurry up and deliver by Saturday’ message.

Long story short – Dad’s birthday came and went with no camera in sight – in either black or cherry red.  Sensible Uncle I sent him a card saying ‘hope you enjoy the camera’ (oops, that buggered that surprise then), but still nothing.  Then this morning, I check my email to find, completely out of nowhere – a completely new  ’thank you for your order’ email from Pixmania, saying that my black camera will be delivered in 3 to 5 working days.  Give me strength.  Next time he can have his usual port and stilton and bloody lump it.