recipes

I made this cake to celebrate Alice's birthday, it was soooo good I made another one the next day!  

Ingredients 

200g (8oz) Greek yogurt

2 Large eggs

200g (8oz) Caster sugar

Zest of 3 lemons

100g (4oz) Ground Almonds

140g (5oz) Gluten-free self-raising flour

1tsp Baking powder

Ingredients for lemon drizzle syrup

140g (5oz) Icing sugar

The juice of 5 lemons 

The Easter bunny has been and gone. For Easter I made chocolate muffins, I wanted them moist so I tweaked my carrot cake recipe. I replaced 2oz (50g) of the plain flour with 2oz (50g) of cocoa powder

INGREDIENTS 

1. 6floz (175ml) corn oil

2. 6oz (150g) caster sugar

3. 3 eggs

4. 1tsp vanilla essence

5. 8oz (200g) carrots

6. 4oz (100g) walnut pieces

7. 4oz (100g) plain flour

8. 2oz (50g) cocoa powder

9. 1tsp bicarbonate of soda

At the weekend, whilst Alice was at home, she made some chocolate treats. If you want to find out how she made them take a look at her website Bake n'Beebz 

This is an idea for a Mother's Day. I am always on the look out for interesting shaped glass storage jars in shops, charity shops or at car boot sales. The jars make lovely containers for home made treats like Rocky road, fudge, cookies and chocolates, it just makes them more of a gift. This idea is of the non fattening variety, buy a bag of night light candles, the scented kind would be good, and fill a jar with them, tie a ribbon around the neck for the finishing touch.

At the front of the house we have a bank of lavender, it smells wonderful as you brush past it, especially with a wheelie bin! I have seen recipes for lavender biscuits but have not tried them, today I rectified that. I chose a recipe from Meeester Nik it looked like the biscuits would be light and fragrant, and they were.

In Poundland I found some silicone ice cube trays, in the shape of really cute animals. In the pack you get two sets of animals, I chose the ones with ducks, dogs, squirrels and rabbits. I looked at them and thought the moulds would be perfect for chocolate. I melted some chocolate, in the microwave, poured it into the moulds and left to set. Because the moulds are made from silicone it was easy to remove the shapes from the trays. The animals are just the right size to decorate a cupcake or you could use a few of them to decorate a cake.

This is a substantial hearty soup for cold winter days

 INGREDIENTS

Today I made the brown bread and marmalade version of the classic bread and butter pudding the recipe for it is here It's so simple but delicious! 

Recently I was looking at my grandma's cookbook, dated 1935, for cooking inspiration. Some of the recipes have stood the 'taste' of time, especially the cakes and pastries, but some have not. Curried tripe with eggs to name one. I have tried tripe, cooked in a white sauce with onion. It has to be said honeycomb tripe really doesn't taste of much, it's more of a texture! Some of the recipes in the book look quite interesting and might be worth reviving. Here's a taster