Missing the big yellow thing in the sky.....

The cold I can cope with. The rain I can cope with. However I'm struggling at the minute to cope with the lack of colour!

Everything seems so grey, so colourless. I went through some files on my computer and found the photo above, taken from the garden of a gite that we rented near Bergerac a few years ago. It actually makes me ache for the sun again, and the green of the fields! We were surrounded by grapevines everywhere we went, along with sunflowers, fruit trees and sweetcorn.

When can we have the big yellow thing back in the sky please ??????

Clare xx

Double Chocolate Muffins

I must have made these Double Chocolate Muffins over 200 times in the past few years! I've tweaked the recipe a little over time and played around with changing flavours, but this is a recipe that I absolutely love. I've made over 200 in the past for a friend's daughter's wedding, and I'm always asked for them by friends and family at any party I attend. I even keep my mechanic sweet by keeping him supplied with them !!

Recipe

10oz plain flour

5oz granulated sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

4 heaped (and I mean heaped) tbsp cocoa - not drinking chocolate

200g chopped dark chocolate (cheaper than chocolate chips and I prefer finding a few large chunks in my muffins!)

8 fl oz milk

2 eggs

4oz butter

Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Melt the butter and combine first with the milk, then with the eggs (to cool the butter a little and prevent scrambling the eggs!). Then carefully mix the wet ingredients with the dry until the batter is only just about ready - never overmix muffin batter as you lose the wonderful texture that you never get with supermarket produced ones.

Fill 12-15 paper muffin cases about two thirds full. If the batter gets a little floury towards the end of the bowl, then add a little milk (a couple of tablespoons) and lightly incorporate it.

Bake at Gas mark 5 for about 20 minutes, checking from 18 minutes onwards to see if they're ready. The tops should be dark and glossy, the bottoms very soft and squidgy - the essence of a good muffin! When they're done, the whole kitchen smells of chocolate :-)

The other muffins in the photo above are Strawberry and White Chocolate. Replace the chopped dark chocolate with chopped white chocolate, and leave out the cocoa powder. Add a punnet of chopped strawberries and sprinkle with demerara sugar before baking as before. The sugar gives a lovely crunch to the cakes.

Happy eating :-)

Clare xx

Pie maker, pie maker

I bought an AWT Pie Maker in the sale at work (Sainsburys) yesterday, having wanted one for a long, long time. I couldn't justify the £40 that they are usually priced at, but at £23 - I used my Nectar points for it, so it was virtually free!!

Lucy and I have just spent a lovely day together, the last couple of hours using the pie maker. We made cheese, potato and onion pies - I didn't want to use meat whilst I was 'practising' in case I messed up and wasted the whole lot.

I shouldn't have worried - they're lovely !!

I used my usual 1lb plain flour/8oz baking marg and 10 tbsp water for the pastry, which was just the right amount for two lots of four pies. For the filling I used some Basics Mashed Potato Flakes, grated some cheese in and sauted a sliced onion and mixed together. I can honestly say they're as lovely as the cheese pie I used to enjoy at the pub where I used to work.

We also made a few batches of Strawberry and White Chocolate Muffins, and Double Chocolate Muffins as I sent some in to work today (but left plenty for hubby!!), and I tried another recipe from The Takeaway Secret. This time it was Chicken Chow Mein, and everyone said it was absolutely gorgeous! It's a bit of faff whenever I do chinese meals so I try to break it down into stages. First, chop/slice vegetables into one bowl, Lucy made the sauce and I made the marinade for the chicken. I left the noodles in a saucepan ready to just cover with boiling water when Dave was nearly home.

Then when we were ready to eat, brown off chicken, stirfry vegetables, add sauce, finish off noodles, then combine everything together and serve with rice and prawn crackers. It's very fiddly, but well worth it - it's a lot easier when Lucy helps, because at times I had three saucepans/frying pans on the go !!

We also used Lucy's sewing machine to turn some old towels and faceclothes into cleaning mitts. Just folding over and sewing up one long side and one short give me a mitt that's fantastic to slip on a hand, spray on some Flash and clean.

So busy, and this is my day off !!

Clare xx