Happy Halloween

Hurrah for the new computer, I am back. I had given up uploading pictures, then just opening a website and simply turn my old computer on. That's how bad it had gotten, but I have a new baby! The previous one lasted 7 years so I'm hoping this one will do as good. I am amazed by how quick it is, so I'm hoping it'll be a good motivation to get back into blogging and my Etsy shop and not just muck about for hours. Trying to install Photoshop unsuccessfully for 3 days in a row for several hours each day doesn't count as mucking about. But it didn't get me far either. I still have pictures from August I've been wanting to put out there but I wanted to correct the exposure beforehand. I was waiting on the new computer, but now I don't know if I should just upload them raw or keep them for myself. Decisions decisions.

We are back to my hometown for a couple weeks, I must say that I am enjoying the city life again. New trousers and dress within a few hours of our arrival... H&M made me an offer I couldn't refuse. My excuse was that I've been looking for tartan trousers for over a year and that green dress looked almost like a COS dress for a fifth of the price. If I can get over my crippling shyness in front of a camera, they'll probably make an appearance here.

Other than trousers and dress, we got two cute chestnut squashes. I wanted to make muffins like last year, but we couldn't find proper pumpkins. They were a bit more savoury and give the muffins more of a nutty taste, whereas the pumpkins is a lot sweeter. My mum and Tom love them, I am less convinced, I preferred the pumpkin ones. It's really a matter of taste. Chestnut squash has more flavour as well, which is a plus, it makes me want to experiment more with it and try to make it taste sweeter but still nutty. I'll let you know if I come up with the perfect recipe. Meanwhile the recipe for the muffins is here. Oh and now thanks to my sister I want a proper baking robot, it's brilliant!

Raspberry and apple loaf

This was Tom's birthday cake. His birthday is in August... My brain has been too busy and numbed by stress in the past weeks to even post a cake recipe. But this one was worth the wait, it is simple but oh so good. I found the recipe in The Primrose Bakery Book and it's normally apples and blueberries, I've tried it as well and it's just as good. I'm pretty sure any kind of berries would work wonders.

Ingredients:

• 2 slightly beaten eggs  (happy hen free range)
• 225g of flour
• 175g of sugar
• 125g of diced room temperature butter
• 1 pinch of salt
• 2 sliced apples
• 125g of raspberries (frozen or fresh)
• 2 tablespoons of apricot jam

Recipe:

• Preheat oven to 150°C and grease a loaf tin.
• Mix the flour, butter and salt with the tip of your fingers to obtain a breadcrumb like dough.
• Add the eggs and sugar to the dough until it's smooth. The dough is quite thick, you can do it all in a food processor if you prefer.
• Pour half of the dough in the tin, cover with half of the apples and half of the raspberries.
• Cover with the rest of the dough, arrange the rest of the apples and raspberries on top.
• Bake in the oven for an hour.
• When it's cooked, warm up the apricot jam and spread it on the loaf.

Enjoy! And now you can also Pin directly by hovering the pictures if you fancy!

Mirabelle plums and a recipe

For the past evenings, we've been picking mirabelle plums out of our tree. It's been on my family land for 20 years and it is the first year ever we get fruits. I tried the first one, it was sweat and juicy. It was a race between us and the magpies who had a wing advantage on us. Most of the plums were very high up so we used a mix a several techniques to get them: jumping, climbing the tree, shaking the branches and a ceiling mop taped to a broom stick. The last was the most efficient. We managed to get quite a few in the end and as Tom can't eat them raw because of allergies, we decided to make a tart.

Pâte brisée - Pie crust

Ingredients:

• 250g flour
• 125g butter
• 1/2 glass of water
• Pinch of salt

Recipe:

• Dice the butter at room temperature.
• Mix it to the flour with the tip of your fingers. Pour progressively the water while mixing. Don't work the dough too much.
• Once it all sticks together, wrap it in cling film and leave it to rest in the fridge.

Mirabelle Plum Tart

Ingredients:

• 500g mirabelle plums
• 1 egg
• 25g flour
• 1/2 glass of milk
• 50g sugar
• 20g butter
• Pie crust

Recipe:

• Wash, half and remove the stones of the mirabelle plums.
• Spread the crust in a buttered baking tin, pierce the dough with a fork and precook for 10 minutes on 180°C. To precook, cover with cooking paper and weight it down with dry peas, beans or uncooked rice. Leave to cool.
• In a bowl, mix the egg and the sieved flour. Add progressively the milk and the sugar.
• Sprinkle sparsely sugar on the crust and scatter the plums. Cover with the mix. 
• Sprinkle butter shavings and cook in the oven for 25 minutes on 220°C.

You can also serve it with ice cream. Enjoy!

Chocolate and pear clafoutis

Last weekend I was stuck at home with a fever, antibiotics and the whooping cough... Yep, I managed to catch the whooping cough. I'm completely run down and I have little energy for anything. Last week I completely lost taste and smell, it is a very odd and unpleasant experience. So when it came back to normal on the weekend, I was very excited and decided to bake with the little book and baking tins I got for Christmas. And nothing is better than a pear and chocolate combo. So here we go for a very easy clafoutis recipe.

Ingredients for 6 individual cakes:

• 3 pears
• 150g dark chocolate
• 2 eggs
• 2 yolks
• 50g cornflour
• 125g sugar
• 50g butter
• 40cl milk

Recipe:

• Heat the oven on 180º.
• Melt the chocolate broken into pieces into the milk for 3 minutes on low heat. Stir constantly.
• In a bowl, whisk the eggs and the extra yolks with the sugar until it turns a bit foamy. Add the cornflour and the chocolate milk, whisking constantly.
• Peel the pears and cut them in little squares.
• Butter the 6 individuals tins, pour the mix equally, divide the pear cubes between them. Sprinkle little bits of butter on top.
• Cook for 20-30 minutes. It needs to stay soft.

Pumpkin chocolate chips muffins

Last post of the pumpkin week and making the most out of it. While we were carving the pumpkins, we saved as much flesh as we could to make muffins. The first step is to make purée out of it. You can make them with can pumpkin but here the idea was to use the fresh flesh. With this recipe, the muffins were most and soft, really great taste and consistency. They didn't last long.

Pumpkin purée

Ingredients:

• Pumpkin flesh
• Water

Recipe:

• Make sure there is no gut left on the flesh, cut in cubes.
• Put in a pan on medium heat with a bit of water.
• Cook until the flesh is very soft and easy to mash with a fork. Add water if needed.
• Mix until smooth.

Pumpkin chocolate chips muffin

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cups plain flour
• 1 tablespoons baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 1.5 cup sugar
• 1 cup fresh pumpkin
• 0.5 cup soft butter
• 1/3 cup water
• 0.5 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 free range happy hen eggs
• 1 cup chocolate chips

Recipe:

• Preheat oven on 175C. Grease muffins tins or use silicone one.
• In a bowl, sieve the flour, baking soda and salt.
• In another bowl, combine the sugar, pumpkin, butter, water, vanilla and eggs. Mix until smooth. I whisked it with a fork, it works well if your butter is melted.
• Add the flour mix to your liquid mix and finally the chocolate chips.
• Put in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Every oven is different, keep an eye on them and when they are light brown on the top, dip a knife to check the inside.
• Let them cool down and remove from the tins.

Almond milk leftovers cake

I apologise for the very poor picture, our living room is a cave...

After walking all around north London on Sunday morning, I was in the mood to cook a bit. More precisely I wanted more almond milk (here is how to make it) for my morning coffee which was implying baking a cake with the leftovers of almonds. The recipe I've found is a sort of banana almond bread. Originally it was vegan and gluten free, as I didn't have all the ingredients to substitute, I did a non vegan, non gluten free version of it. My friend Aurélie from Oh, Almonds helped me to find the ingredients and proportions equivalents. Saying that, she is vegan and gluten intolerant, so check her blog for recipes.

Ingredients:

• 1 egg (happy hen free range)
• 250g of flour
• 150g of sugar
• 90g almond pulp left after making the almond milk
• 50g of butter
• 125ml of almond milk
• 2 bananas
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda

Recipe:

• Preheat oven to 190°C and grease a loaf tin.
• Mash the bananas into a bowl with the lemon juice.
• Whisk the egg, add the melted butter, vanilla extract, salt, banana mix and almond milk. Whisk until smooth.
• In another bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, almond pulp and bakind soda.
• Add the dry mix to the liquid ingredients and stir until combined.
• Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 45 minutes. It might need a bit less or a it longer, keep an eye on it.

Blueberry Crumble

I want to start by apologising for the poor quality of the pictures. We live in a dark flat and I cooked in the late afternoon which means blurry pictures with no flash or awful pictures with flash (my old digital camera is really not great). I'll stop here with the excuses, the photos might not be great but the recipe is. Easy and delicious.

Ingredients:

• 120g of plain floor
• 135g of brown sugar
• 160g of chilled unsalted butter
• 2 boxes of blueberries (or 3 if they are small.)

Recipe:

• In a large bowl, place the flour and add the butter cut in smaller pieces. Work with your fingers to obtain a bread crumb like type of mixture.

• It should roughly look like that. Don't work it too much otherwise it'll become smooth.

• Stir the brown sugar in.

• Back to the fruits. Rinse and drain them. I added a few raspberries I had as I had too few blueberries. Sprinkle two table spoons of sugar.



• Cover with the crumble mix and put in the oven on 180°C for 40 minutes until it's brown on the top. Keep an eye on it, it went a bit faster in our oven.

• Leave to cool down.

• Serve still warm with vanilla ice cream.

It easy, quick (apart from the oven cooking but then you don't do much), tasty and delicious. I found the recipe on What Katie Ate and changed a thing or two, well basically less sugar. I recommend it for inspiration.

On another note, we are going away to the south coast for the Rockabilly Rave. Hopefully I'll soon be back with loads of pictures of stylish people and bands.