I Found My Thrill....Bloomin Good Blueberry Muffin Recipe...

Who doesn't love a blueberry muffin? An official "superfood" wrapped up in a perfectly consumable cake! I whipped this recipe out this morning as we happened to have all the ingredients handy and some blueberries that needed a suitable home. One of the great things about this recipe is that you can actually substitute the blueberries for any berries you have around, even frozen are fine, just chuck 'em in, no need to even defrost!

Here it is:

10 oz (280g) self raising flour 

1 teaspoon (5ml) baking powder

1/4 teaspoon (1.2ml) salt

1 egg

4 - 5 oz (110 - 140g) fine white granulated sugar 

8 fl oz (240 ml) milk 

3 fl oz (90 ml) vegetable or sunflower oil 

5 oz (140g) blueberries 

Prepare muffin tins, preheat oven to 385 - 400 degrees F, Gas Mark 5-6 or 190 - 200 degrees C.

Grab two bowls, into one place the flour, salt and baking powder. Into the other add the sugar, milk, oil and egg and mix.

Add the ingredients of the wet bowl to the dry bowl and thoroughly, but gently, combine the two. It may be a little lumpy, that's fine, don't worry. At the last minute add the blueberries and gently stir through.

Scoop the mixture gently into muffin cases in your muffin tray. Try and make sure you get an even distribution of fruit. Roughly 3/4 fill each case, big muffins are good! 

Place in the oven for 20 - 25 minutes, remove when golden brown and springy. 

According to my calculations, they work out at 119 calories per muffin (if you make 14). I used 5 ozs of sugar and whole milk (because that's what we had the most of) but if you're dieting I reckon you could lose some extra calories by switching/reducing.

They come out beautifully soft, fluffy and, erm , muffiny. And they've got fruit in. Actual fruit.

Scoff wildly and be happy! 

Happy Muffin Sunday! 

Love, love,

Have you entered my giveaway yet?  If not, click the image below to be in with a chance of winning a selection of fabulous crochet gifts, good luck! 

The Incredible Smugness of Soup...

I love squash. I love the look of them, the colour of them and they are both delicious and easy to cook.   However, I don't like faffing about trying to peel them and chop them so any recipe that doesn't involve me skinning my knuckles trying to do just that is a good one by me!

Last week I decided to go crazy and buy a butternut squash from Aldi for all of 89p. I used it to make the most delicious, but incredible simple soup.  Honestly it couldn't be easier, it's the kind of thing you shove  in the oven and leave whilst you get in with something more important. 

You simply:

Scrub the skin of your butternut squash really well. This is important as it forms part of the meal. Chop it in half, remove the seeds and put them to one side.

Rub the flesh with olive oil, season and place in a roasting tray together with two fairly large potatoes and one red onion.  I hate this picture, it makes my baking tray look hideously grubby, but trust me it is clean, just well loved!!! I also added one clove of peeled garlic which I halved. Each half went into the neat little hole in the squash. 

Bake the whole lot in the oven for around 45 mins to 1 hour, until lovely and squashy (excuse the pun, hahahaha).

On a separate tray place the washed and dried squash seeds coated with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. Toast the seeds for around 10 minutes until they look crunchy and golden. 

Once the vegetables have cooked and they're lovely and soft, scoop them out if their skins and add them to vegetable stock.  Blend until nice and smooth.  Heat through so it's lovely and piping hot.  I use the end pieces of sliced bread, which nobody in our house seems to like eating, so make croutons.  Chopped into little squares, and toasted in a pan with a little salt and a little butter.  Don't do what I did and get distracted by a spot of washing up, as those pesky, but delicious little squares can catch in moments.  Lesson learnt!

Serve your soup with the croutons and the toasted seeds on top.  Forgot to take a picture, belly over brain.....

In fact, one squash and two potatoes made so much soup I had to refrigerate some to have for my lunch another day!  Not bad huh?

Are you a soup lover or a soup hater?  Do you make your own?  If anyone can suggest any flavours to try out I'd love to hear your recipes, I'm always on the look out!

Love, love, 

You'd Batter Believe It - Cherry Clafoutis Recipe

There are cherries, beautiful, gorgeous, squashy, fat British cherries out there on the trees RIGHT NOW. I love them and really like using them for cooking. Any Instagram followers will have seen that I was doing just that yesterday!

We went to a BBQ, it was definitely very British because it was raining. I decided to make a lovely summery dish to counteract this so I opted for Cherry Clafoutis. It's a delicious mixture of dark cherries and sweet batter like cake. It's dead simple, but it sounds dead posh. Plus, whilst I don't know the precise figures, I reckon it's fairly healthy (as much as cake can be) it contains only the teeny weeniest spot of fat, it's mostly fruit and barely any sugar. Hurrah! 

To make it you will need: 

1lb (10oz) cherries, washed and stoned. 

3tbsp kirsch (I used plum brandy)

4 large eggs 

75g (2.5 oz) caster sugar

Butter for greasing

1 vanilla pod 

100g (3.5 oz) plain flour, sifted 

300ml (10fl oz) milk

Icing sugar to dust

I love the look of cherries, they're so very dark. We have the most old fashioned cherry stoner, it looks like an instrument of torture, particularly when splashed with cherry juice. Works a treat though! 

Cover your cherries with a little of the sugar and booze and leave aside for around half an hour. They will release lots of delicious dark juice. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees.

Mix together the beaten eggs, sugar and the juice from your cherries. Add the centre of your vanilla pod. Slowly whisk in your sifted flour until you have a smooth, thick batter. Then whisk in your milk. The batter will become really quite thin. 

Arrange your cherries in the bottom of a well greased flan dish and pour over your batter mixture. I find it helps to make sure your dish is already on a baking tray, it makes it easier to lift into the oven when it's full.

Bake for 35 - 45 minutes until the edges are brown and the centre has set. 

Allow to cool for around 10 minutes and dust with icing sugar. Scoff warm. Enjoy cherry juice....mmmmm...

Have you tried clafoutis before? Any tips for me? I'd love to hear your thoughts...

Love, love, 

Adventures in Foraging: Strawberry Vodka

Things have been busy at our little allotment lately, we have been blessed with basket after basket of delicious strawberries. Strawberries are epitome of summer fruit, right? But now they're starting to wind down, the fruit aren't as lovely as they were at the start of the season. But all is not lost!! You can still use those fruit for something wonderful! I would heartily suggest using them up by making Strawberry Vodka....

My recipe is wonderfully simple. Once you've picked your remaining fruit, check it and slice it in half. Discard any bruised or bad fruit. Place your berries into a clean, sterilised bottle or jar. Add sugar. If you like a sweet drink, add lots, if you prefer a sharper tipple then add less. I'd recommend erring on the side of caution, but this stage it really doesn't matter about specific quantities as you will taste your drink at a later stage and can always add more if you feel it necessary. As a guide I tend to half fill my jar with strawberries, then add sugar until its just under 3/4's full. Then pour in your vodka, until your bottle or jar is completely full. Vodka quality is not important, you can quite use a cheapy version (I'd recommend Aldi's own brand) as the finished product barely even tastes of vodka, just delicious strawberries. Finally give your bottle a good shake. 

Then store your fruity brew away in the back of a cool dark cupboard. If the glass is clear you may like to cover it as this helps keeps the colour nice and bright. Give it a swish every so often just to muddle it up a bit. Taste it and add more sugar if you feel it necessary.  

When it goes into your cupboard it should look a little something like this:

The very hardest part of this recipe is that you have to store your vodka away without drinking it for (at the very least) one month, but if you can bare to leave it for three or even six months all the better!

When it's ready, strain your mixture removing the fruit. Then put it through a muslin or coffee filter to remove any little bits, seeds it pips. This makes sure it's nice and clear.

Don't leave your fruit in the mixture for more than six months as it will spoil. It's quite natural for the alcohol to leach the colour from the fruit. Indeed, this is a very good sign!!

This drink is delicious on its own, as a base for cocktails and particularly in a hip flask for sharing with friends! It also makes a lovely gift if decanted into a pretty little bottle.

It's utterly delicious and so simple! I love strawberries and I love vodka. Mixing the two is pretty much my idea of heaven! So what are you waiting for?!! Give it a try! 

P.S I will be sure to post some pictures if the finished product in a few months time...

Adventures in Foraging: Elderflower Cordial...

I mentioned in a previous post that I had been out and about collecting elderflowers. I LOVE elderflower cordial, in a big way. I love it's delicate summery and lemony flavour, I just can't get enough of it. It's like my secret squash just for Mummy. Plus those who know me know that I love a good forage, it gives me great pleasure to make something lovely from anything fresh, local and free! 

So here is my elderflower cordial recipe. First of all, find a tree with lots of beautiful fresh elderflowers. Make sure it's away from any roads and try to pick your flowers on a nice warm day when the blossom is open. Give the blossom a little shake just to make sure there are no little bugs hanging around. 

You will need approximately twenty large heads, with no brown flowers. 

Once home remove the flowers from their stems with a fork. There is a very small amount of a  cyanide-like compound within the stems, so best to chuck those! The flowers come off easily. You should be left with a lovely big bowl full of flowers which look a little like this.  

The remaining stems look like this. You don't need to be horrendously accurate and remove every single flower. They smell amazing! 

In a large, deep, clean pan dissolve 1kg of big standard white sugar into 1.5 litres of boiling water. Swish it around until its all gone. Then add 55g of citric acid and dissolve that too. 

Add your elderflowers and four lemons all chopped up. Then cover and leave it alone for 48 hours. Yeeps!! The elderflowers will steep, the lemons will release their natural oils and your kitchen will smell fantastic.

After 48 hours have passed strain the mixture through a sterilised muslin. Then do it again to make sure you have a lovely pale yellow liquid. Pour into sterilised bottles and store it somewhere dark and cool. It should keep for about three months. 

Enjoy diluted as an alternative to squash, add to lemonade or sparking water. Try it in gin and tonic for an unusual and refreshing twist. You can also drizzle it onto cake, add to gooseberry fool or pour it onto fresh fruit salad to make it summery. You can make fantastic ice lollies with it or even try it hot. Apparently it's beneficial for treating colds and flu!

Personally I like to take bottles to summer BBQ's as a gift for the host. It makes a nice change from a bottle of plonk and if you've made it yourself you feel like it's a bit special!

Have you ever made elderflower cordial? Do you have any other uses for it? 

To me it's like summer in a bottle. I've got to go and have some now, I've worked up a hankering for it now I've been talking about it so much!! If you're in the UK there's still time to get out there and snaffle yourself some flowers! 

The Best Cookie Recipe in the World....

Hello lovelies,

Because I flippin love you (yes I do, oh yes I do!) I thought I'd treat you all and share with you what I believe to be the best flippin' cookie recipe in the entire world.  I can remember my Mum making these cookies when I was a little girl, she used to freeze them (why?) and I would sneak to the freezer and eat them secretly whilst they were still frozen.  That's how much I love them!

I still make them today, in fact I made some for a friend the other day to cheer her up.  I didn't realise that she had family visiting when I dropped them over and apparently my timing was perfect as she'd forgotten pudding and these went down a storm!  Her Mother in Law ate three.  Mother in Law pleasing cookies!  I felt pretty darn proud of that....

So here's the recipe, I'm afraid I didn't photograph every stage in the process as it involves getting your hands sticky and I didn't want a sticky camera.  You will need:

8oz Self Raising Flour
4oz Butter or Margarine
4oz Sugar
2oz chocolate chips, I used a good quality bar and chop it up as I like my bits chunky.  You can use plain, milk or white, whatever you prefer, in this particular instance I used milk and white chips together. I know, I'm such a lush!
4oz golden syrup

This recipe is ridiculously simple!  You just:

Rub the flour and butter together into fine breadcrumbs, add the sugar and chocolate chips, then add the syrup and squish all the ingredients together until you have a sticky dough which should look something a little like this:

Mmmmmm, squashy!  See what I mean about not wanting to get that all over the camera?  Then you roll the mixture into small dainty balls if you're feeding a lot of people, or hoofing great balls if you feel in the mood for monster cookies.  

Space them out well on a baking sheet, squash them down a little bit and bake in the oven at 190 degrees for 10 - 15 minutes (depending on size you went for and the shade you prefer).  They should come out looking a little something like this:

Honestly, try them, they are AMAZING.  In fact, if these aren't the best darn cookies you ever tasted I'll eat my hat!  Ok, maybe not my actual hat, maybe just some more cookies so I can decide that you're definitely bonkers.

Let me know if you try them!

Love, love,

Stuck in a rut - baby food ideas

I'm going to say something that's bordering on blasphemous: I am fed up of Annabel Karmel.

That's it, I've said it now!  Should I hide for fear of releasing of whole storm of mummy-hatred?  Probably not.  It's not that I hate her, I own several of her books, it's just that I'm bored of her, and that can't be good, right?  Actually I'm also a little bit suspicious of her; she has perfect hair, perfect clothes and a perfect smile, how can a woman who looks like that SERIOUSLY be an expert in feeding babies?  Surely, to truly be an expert in this field you should have weetabix in your hair, blueberries all over your dress, (usually in a place where you can't see them but everyone else you meet can) very smelly milky vomit on your shoes and a weary expression.  To be really true to life she should probably also be toting either a massive coffee or a gin and tonic.

I'm sorry to say this Annabel love, but I don't consider "Take banana, mash banana - feed to baby" to be a "Recipe".  It isn't.  Neither is "Add lemon curd to Greek yogurt - feed to baby".   I'm bitterly jealous of anyone who makes their millions coming up with such silliness.

I think her ideas are great for those early stages, but we are currently at that difficult stage when puree is out but toddler meals aren't suitable yet.  I have to confess that we've fallen into a bit of a lazy rut recently, especially when we have had a few days away and This Baby was fed largely on jars of baby food.  That isn't something I have a particular problem with, I highly rate Ella's Kitchen and I think their pouches are bloomin' marvellous, they actually taste of what they're meant to contain.  And yes, I've eaten some!  If she's gotta eat it, the least I can do is try it.  No, the problem I have is that there isn't really much choice out there for this weaning stage and we all know that eating the same thing over and over and over in an endless cycle can soon get pretty tiring.

So I decided that I needed to pull my socks up a bit on the baby food front, especially as I had noticed This Baby had started producing red tinted poo due to an overload of tomato based products.  Sorry for mentioning poo, it's a Mother thing, our post-partum conversations take an instant nose dive from slurry Saturday night debates such as "What's actually in a Mojito?"  to biscuit in hand, tea fuelled chats with friends that seem quite normal dispute starting with the sentence "I was studying my little darling's poo the other day....."   Some sort of conversational assassin sneaks in and takes over without our knowledge or understanding.

I would spend sodding ages messing about in the kitchen producing delicious nutritious meals for my oldest, I once faffed about for hours producing a homemade baby version of baked beans which contained cheese, chives and gold dust probably.   Would she eat it?  Would she heck!  She still wont eat beans to this day, I probably scarred her.

I'm looking forward to the day when we can share our adult means with This Baby and just give her a simpler version of what we're having.  We can pull that off sometimes now, chicken casserole, lentil daal, roasts and that sort of thing come her way, but some things aren't really suitable for one so little.  If something is too grown up for her I noticed that she just spits it straight back out, this often seems to be when something is too dry for her palate, she needs some kind of sauce to help things slip down comfortably.

So yesterday I went about producing her a sauce with a base of fresh tomatoes, red onion, herbs and a little broccoli.  This was then cooled and put into the freezer with a view to taking out a chunk and adding it a little of our meals so that's it's easier for her to deal with. &nbsp I didn't take pictures whilst I was making it, as I was too busy, well, making it.  I'm also not going to insult your intelligence with a "Recipe" because it really isn't one.  Just some food, suitable for a little tinker with a big appetite, smooshed up. But it looked good, smelt good and tasted yummy.

I also roasted some butternut squash with a view to doing the same, it's handy for making a sauce out of and adding to a little rice and cheese to form a risotto.

I've never been a particularly big fan of buying too much food that's specifically aimed at children, but after becoming an avid reader of Hattie's inspirational blog Free Our Kids I've really gone off the idea. I feel bad that I've fallen down this slippery slope and on this basis I'm going to try and limit the food based kiddie crap that we buy in future.  One thing in particular that really annoys me is the concept of children's pasta.  Pasta is pasta, right?  There's no such thing as children's pasta!  Just buy smaller shapes, or mash it up!  Don't pay an extra £1.50 for the privilege of being told that's it's the perfect size.

One thing that I've stumbled upon for This Baby that I wanted to share with you that I swear by, SWEAR BY  is Orzo, otherwise known as rice pasta.  It's a fabulous size and a really interesting consistency.  I bought this whopping great big bag from Tesco recently in the world food section for £1.  There is a Tesco Finest one as well, but it costs double for the same amount and in my mind it's a less authentic version...

It's ideal for her little mouth, bulks out a vegetable puree or a sauce that I've made and tastes really good.  In fact I was trying to get a fabulously arty shot of This Baby's bowl with her spoon in, but she was having none of that and whipped some of it it into her mouth impatiently.  Now that's a very good sign!

I'd love to hear any hints or tips that you have for this stage of weaning.  Any favourite recipes?  Any suggestions or foods you can't live without?  Please, please let me know .  Hopefully we'll be able to stay off the jars for a little while!

Love, love,

Cheat's pesto and other business...

First of all I want to start this post by announcing the winner of the Lovely Little Giveaway....congratulations to Joann at Woman in Real Life: The Art of Everyday.  I'm so pleased that Jo is our winner, she's lovely and her blog is fantastic.  Check it out!  I also want to say a massive thank you to Tabetha for putting the giveaway together and for all her hard work organising eight unruly bloggers.   You really are a marvel Tabetha!

I also wanted to say a huge and heartfelt thank you to each and every one of my wonderful followers. I am so grateful to anyone who would take the time to follow my blog or read my bits and bobs.  Whenever I have a little nose at my figures I am pleased as punch, thank you all so much.  If you have a blog yourself and you don't use it to follow, please let me know your URL so I can follow in return!

Right, back to business....

I am a bad Mummy sometimes when it comes to feeding my children. For some reason I get "Meal Blindness" when I try and think of a suitable nutritious meal for them to eat that doesn't take six hours to prepare. I am also prone to suffering from "Google Blindness". This does not involve looking up rude stuff on the interwebs until my eyes stop working. It is the far more common phenomenon of sitting in front of the Google homepage without a flippin' clue about what I was supposed to be looking up....

Anyway, I digress....usually my emergency spare tea for That Baby is pasta & pesto. Quick, simple and she loves it. I've always been a little concerned about the lack of vegetable matter in this dish, but I try to console myself with the thought that it does contain lots of basil and she doesn't have it that often.

Yesterday we'd eaten a big lunch (thanks Dad) so didn't want anything else to eat til late, but we needed to feed the little ones. No problem I thought, I'll crack out the pasta and pesto! Yes problem I discovered, no pesto. Drat!

So I improvised! I boiled the pasta as usual, took two frozen spinach blocks and popped them in a pan on the hob to cook through. Once they had I added a little grated mature cheddar and a little olive oil and stirred.

It looked like pesto. But it contained spinach. In our house spinach is an elusive vegetable, loved by me, but treated with deep suspicion by everyone else. It's my own fault, when she was very small I'd sneak some into quite a number of That Baby's dishes to alleviate my fear of bad things happening upon the presentation of vegetable free meals. What can I say, Annabel Karmel looked at me with those eyes, those disapproving, step away from the nuggets, eyes. My cover was eventually blown when I was unintentionally outed by another Mum who casually presented my daughter with a tea of macaroni cheese that wasn't....gasp...green!

Last night I didn't tell the little scamp that we had no pesto, I just gave her the spinach laced dish and remained silent. She asked no questions and wolfed the lot!

I spent the next hour feeling incredibly smug that I'd tricked her into eating an iron rich vegetable dish without her knowledge.

Admittedly it's not exactly the four year old's version of haute cuisine, but I like to think Annabel would at least tip me a wink for not calling on the services of Captain Birdseye.

My Recipe for a Happy Child....

Today was a funny one, it was "That Baby's" first full day at school. It's not like it was her first day at school ever, she's been going for over a year now. First to the Nursery class before she moved up a class to Reception. The big girl's class (her words). It's just today was the first ever day that I didn't pick her up at lunchtime. Without my little helper for six whole hours. Just me and "This Baby" all on own little ownsome :(

I thought having lunch without me might be daunting for her, but nope. She was pleased as punch with her new lunchbox, talked about it the whole walk there. I worried that she wouldn't know where to go or what to do, that she'd be afraid to ask for help. I worried that she wouldn't be able to open things, that she'd struggle with cling film and end up not eating anything. I worried she wouldn't know where to get herself a drink and that she be dehydrated by the end of the day. I was pretty sure she'd gorge herself on crisps, ignore the good stuff and have a meltdown in the afternoon. As it turned out, I needn't have worried at all, she took to it all like a beautiful little duck to water.

After her first full day we had her swimming lesson. STRAIGHT AFTER. We had exactly fifteen minutes to get from one place to the next, get changed and into the pool. I'd planned it like a military operation. Earlier in the day I'd driven the car down and parked it outside her school, facing in the right direction, all ready to get in and zoom away. I knew if I left it until the end of school we'd never get a spot and we'd have to do battle with the posh Mummies in their unnecessarily massive cars. Oh yes, and when did people my age suddenly get enough cash to start spending £40,000 on a car? I don't think we'll ever reach that point!

I felt pretty smug, all the bags were packed and ready. This Baby's bottle was made and cooling ready to feed her at the pool. Then I realised I'd forgotten to put her car seat in the car; noooooo! Cue a mad dash round the corner and it was problem solved. So nearly a doh! moment.

Half way through the morning a friend advised me that "That Baby" would probably be pretty tired at pick up time. And grumpy. And hungry. Not good if you have to swim for a whole half hour straight afterwards.

So! I cracked out my trusty flapjack recipe, which I know she loves, and made her a big batch of almond and apricot flapjack. Not only did it give her a full enough tummy to get her swimming like a fish, it let her know that we'd missed her loads and that we love her to bits.

Here's our recipe:

4 oz butter
5 tablespoons golden syrup
2 oz sugar
8 oz oats
4 oz dried apricots, snipped into little pieces
2 oz flaked almonds chopped up a little

Preheat the oven 180C/425F/Gas mark 4

Put the butter and 4 tablespoons of the syrup into pan with sugar and heat gently until they melt (or until you can't feel any more crunchy bits with your wooden spoon).
Stir in the oats, apricots and almonds and mix. Spoon into a tin or onto a fairly deep baking tray (I've been using my new Pampered Chef Medium Bar cos it cost me an arm and a leg, it does work really well though) and smooth the top with the back of a spoon.
Sprinkle the top with a few more flaked almonds.
Bake for 20 - 25 minutes until golden, then remove from oven and while still warm and cut into huge great big rectangles, nobody wants a slither of flapjack! Finally dip a teaspoon into the syrup and drizzle the top with a little extra syrup for stickiness.
Leave to cool and remove from the tray.

Yum!

Let me know if you try it :)