{bird feeder fail}

Have you always wanted to use every bowl and utensil you own, all at once, and cover your kitchen in corn syrup and birdseed? Yes! Try this -- make bird feeders with three toddlers. 

Tilly's friend, Selah, was a pro at mixing and cutting out the animals, while little Radley enjoyed banging the measuring spoons together, and Tilly tried her hardest to sneak mouthfuls of the birdseed from the spoon, while exclaiming "Yummy!"

We got to try out our new IKEA woodland creatures cutters -- lovely hedgehogs, bears and moose, and, of course, a Dala horse -- which took on a more abstract quality when created in birdseed. Sadly, the recipe I'd found (from here) wasn't very good, or we measured wrongly, as our menagerie of feeders never hardened. Twenty-four hours later, slick and shiny with grease, their heads fell off as I slipped a spatula beneath them.

The food was still enjoyed by the birds, but as sticky blobs and crumbling hunks, scattered on the grass, rather than prettily hung in the trees.

With three-quarters of a bag of birdseed still left, we'd love to hear about your (successful) homemade bird feeders, if you've got any, and give them a try...

{a bun in the oven}

Over the next few days, you might see my belly starting to expand. Is it a boy? Is it a girl? No, it's a batch of The Best of the British Bake-Off's double chocolate buns.

Like muffins, but a bit thicker and richer, the chocolate buns gave all of our kitchen equipment a work-out, including the little digital kitchen scale that I got for Christmas, and every single mixing bowl we own, plus a couple that I'd put in the garage to give away -- sorry, local charities, I guess we're keeping them!

I've never really enjoyed baking before, (eating, yes, baking, no), but I loved the challenge of this recipe.

"Fold in the flour with a metal spoon", it said -- could the book could see me, there in the kitchen, a cheap partially-melted plastic spatula in my hand, advancing towards the mixing bowl?

Mum? Is that you, in recipe form?

Anyway, if you like the look of the buns (or like the sound of anything with "double chocolate" in the title), here's a link to a similar recipe, by one of the Bake-Off contestants, which also has directions for filling the buns with more chocolate. Just when you think life can't get any better...

{the leaning tower of cupcakes}

Step back in time two weeks. Take one ninetieth birthday party, two days to get it all sorted, three tons of moving supplies from my parents' garage, and a glimpse of this Lakeland cardboard beauty. It could only be a job for the butcher, the baker, and the cupcake stand maker.

It all centred around sliding artist's palette-shaped cardboard pieces onto an old kitchen roll. Now, if Kate Spade or Paul Smith made kitchen roll, this is what it'd look like: brightly striped. Unfortunately, neither of them has had that idea yet, so I used coloured tape (that matched our cupcake flags) to cheery the whole thing up a bit. Because, let's face it, bare cardboard hardly says "Get your party on." 

What does say "Get your party on" is a dozen Bakewell cupcakes (again, from our recipe, inspired by Britain's second best amateur baker, Holly). As do the Union Jack cake cups. But what most definitely does not help the party mood is when adding the cupcakes to your cupcake stand makes the whole thing topple over. Ever think you're going to be the least popular person in the room? Well, drop twelve Bakewells on the floor fifteen minutes before a hoard of hungry pensioners arrive, and you will be. Guaranteed.

Kitchen weights to the rescue. Of course, meticulous Holly might throw a razor-edged meringue at me if she were to see her prized cakes being served on such a precarious pile of old cardboard and rusting metal. But she'd have to throw it rather hard to reach me in Texas, so I feel relatively safe showing you the photos now.

So, there you have it -- cardboard box to cupcake monstrosity in twenty-five moderately difficult steps. What can I say, at least it didn't overshadow the cakes. Which were, as always, scrummy. 

{a ninetieth birthday in photos}

It's the end of a long day of party poppers, pass the parcel, and Polo mints -- a ninetieth birthday party with personality. As all of our energy has been used up, scrambling to get the biscuits baked before the old folks arrived for their lunch, I'm simply going to show you some photos and go to bed. (With a leftover biscuit... or two!) 

{the great british cake off}

Round here, we are crazy about The Great British Bake Off, a BBC cooking competition that has contestants cooking everything from loaves of bread to meringue pies. An hour of deliciousness every Tuesday evening at 8pm. (And, lucky for those of us outside the UK, episodes can be seen online here)

Of course, after seeing all that amazing food, we wanted to try it for ourselves. Many of the recipes are available on BBC Food, and we've also found that some of the contestants have blogs -- not only do they share the things they cooked on the show, but add other things that they're cooking in real life, too. My favourites are Jason (because I wanted him to win) and Holly (because her recipes seem the tastiest, if a little too perfect), but the whole list of sites can be found here.

The first dish to be cooked up by our very own home cooks: Best Ever Bakewell Tart Cupcakes, (our recipe, based on Holly's recipe). Slightly almondy sponge cake, raspberry jam, and a dollop of icing. Here's Chef Alice gently blowing crumbs from the tops of the cakes, while Chef Louise finishes filling them with jam, Chef Mum adds the icing, and lucky little Chef Tilly eats the cut-out middles of the cakes.

Twelve of them disappeared frighteningly quickly. Make sure you check out the finished cakes over at The Fable of the Table -- with fresh raspberries on top, they are rather pretty. And, dare I admit it, we're making another batch tonight, with a different kind of icing...

Cheeky Chocolate Mousse

The situation: it's four o'clock, and you've got people coming over at seven for dessert. The cupboards are bare. And these people know their food -- picking up a box of Betty Crocker isn't going to cut it.

What do you do?

It's Nigella to the rescue, with her super chocolate mousse recipe. While most mousses take four hours plus to set, this one is firm and ready after barely an hour in the fridge.

Here's what you need:

• 3 cups mini marshmallows
• 1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 9 ounces best quality semisweet chocolate, chopped into small pieces
• 1/4 cup hot water from a recently boiled kettle
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Put the marshmallows, butter, chocolate and water in a heavy-based saucepan.

Put the saucepan on the stove, over heat, though keep it fairly gentle, to melt, stirring every now and again. Remove from the heat.

Meanwhile whip the cream with the vanilla until thick and then fold into the cooling chocolate mixture until you have a smooth, cohesive mixture.

Pour into 4 or 6 glasses or small dishes and chill until you want to eat. (About an hour)

Serving mousse in tea cups is a little something I picked up from my favourite dinner party guru, The Fable of the Table. I love the idea of eating out of tea cups, and these mini polka-dotted ones just give the mousse an extra bit of sweetness!

Pepperkaker

We dusted off our aprons and oiled up the rolling pin today, and got baking some pepperkaker (or 'papa-nacker', as Justin calls them!) using this recipe. With lots of golden syrup in the mix, our dough was extremely sticky, hence the flour everywhere! 

With rather a shortage of cookie cutters, we ended up freehand-cutting our little pepperkaker people: a Justin, an Astrid, a Tilly and a (rather horsey) Bella.

Yes, Tilly is about twice the size of Justin and I... we're not winning any prizes for photographic accuracy!

They're very tasty, although perhaps a little thick -- the recipe said it made 30 to 40, and we got about 12 out of our dough!

And if you're in the mood to make a batch of your own, perhaps try out some of these beautiful designs:

(source)

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And there's a delicious-looking recipe for fancy-schmancy pepperkaker (or 'Pfefferkuchen' as Mum calls them) over at The Fable of the Table, if you're up for a bit more of a zesty biscuit!

My First Pie Success

I can do a pretty good Texan accent. I can strut around in my cowboy boots. I know the difference between "grilling" and "barbequeing". But, until yesterday, I could never pass as a real resident of Texas because I had never successfully baked a pie.

Yes, I'd tried. I tried using the easy, ready-made Graham-cracker pie shells... which promptly fell apart. I tried making a chocolate-pudding pie, thinking that if I avoided using the oven, perhaps it would work... but the pudding never set.

I was a real pie-making failure.

But, yesterday, I had to try again. I'd given Justin a little book of coupons for his birthday, back in January, and one of them promised him a freshly baked pumpkin pie. I don't really know what I was thinking. I guess I thought he'd lose the coupon, or forget about it, and I'd never actually have to do it! But, he stumbled across it while packing up his bookshelf, and so off I went to the supermarket to find pie crusts and cloves.

And, you know what, it actually turned out just fine! I used the Pillsbury pie crusts, which taste very good, and simply followed the directions on the back of a can of pumpkin! Justin was very happy, and scarfed down almost half the pie before I could get a photo of it!

Now, to be honest, I really can't stand pumpkin pie. (So, I'll never really be a Texan!) It's so mushy. It's so bland. But, I tried a tiny sliver of this one, and it was just about as mushy and bland as all the other pumpkin pies I've been forced to try, and Justin seems to like it, so I am officially calling it my first successful pie!

Pretzel Num-Nums

Here's an easy little recipe I just learnt about, which makes surprisingly tasty treats. I don't think they have an official name, so I call them Pretzel Num-Nums.

All you need is salted pretzels,

Hershey's Kisses, and M&Ms,

and an oven!

Just unwrap the Hershey's Kisses and place one on top of each pretzel, on a cookie sheet (no greasing needed).

Stick them in the oven for a bit (I did about 7 minutes at 250 degrees), checking every few minutes to see if the chocolate is melty.

Once the chocolate is getting soft, remove from the oven, and press an M&M into each Kiss, then let them cool. (Or eat them while hot, if you prefer that, like my husband!)

So tasty... enjoy!

White Elephant Gift

Work at the Writing Centre is over for the year, and today we have our office Christmas party. We'll be doing a White Elephant gift swap, and since we're all complete nerds, I thought I'd make something with a bit of a grammar theme:

Felt ornaments, adorned with my favourite punctuation marks! (Semi-colon, exclamation point, and an apostrophe/comma, in case you weren't sure!)

They were so simple to make, just felt circles with punctuation marks cut free-hand and sewn on, then stuffed!

Here's the gift ready to be wrapped, with a little note explaining what they are!

And, the dessert I made: an English trifle, with real imported Bird's custard, but no sherry this year! (Cran-raspberry will have to do... I hope you know the sacrifices I'm making, baby!)

Yummy looking, but again, oh so simple. Angel food cake, jello, frozen strawberries and raspberries soaked in juice, custard, more frozen fruit, and heaps of freshly whipped cream... in that order!

This should be the best office party ever!