Time To Cosy Up

It's the new year and the weather is definitely getting colder (finally) and so I thought I'd make the ultimate in comfort classics, tartiflette. Traditionally eaten after a long day on the ski slopes and appropriately filling, it's perfect for a winter night to be eaten by a roaring fire after a long walk in the countryside. Apparently, it's not such a rustic dish as one might think and was actually invented in the 1980s by the Reblochon (cheese) makers to boost sales!

Last Minute Gifts and Stocking Fillers

It's only a week until Christmas and while I'm sure most of you have already bought the majority of your gifts (if not check out my guides here and here) you might still be looking for a few little pieces, maybe to go in stockings? If so, then this is the list for you. All of these present ideas can be bought from chain shops (I love independents but by their very definition there's normally only one of them and that's just not practical for last minute things) and most cost under £10. With the other posts I have chosen a make and then suggested some of my favourites within their collection, while here I shall switch between item (e.g. biscuit cutters) and shops, depending on what you can get where - Paperchase have so many gorgeous things that it seemed silly to have a long list of ideas with only one item in each and all from the same shop!

Paperchase

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I think these christmas pudding bin bags (£10/12) are so cute and would make a great gift for the cook, and makes taking out the bins a bit more fun (as far as taking the bins out can be fun). Continuing the christmas pud theme is a set of juggling balls (£6) perfect for big and little kids alike. For me, recipe books are one of my ultimate weaknesses but I often find it hard to find my favourite recipes in a hurry (at university alone I have 30 or 40 cookbooks) so I write up my favourite recipes into a (now tattered and stained) Paperchase recipe book that a friend gave me for Christmas 2014. Paperchase sell fun patterned ones (£10 each) and a slick Molesine recipe journal (£18) that I aspire to, or finally you could go for loose cards and a box to store them in (paperchase £10), which are easier to transport. The other thing I rely on at uni is a meal planner to stop me from impulse buying my food (an expensive mistake). Normally, paperchase have a great selection in multiple sizes and also straight shopping list pads, but online they only seem to show this one (paperchase £8) which is a bit too cartoony for my tastes. Finally, for the cocktail enthusiast, there's a sweet gold toned cocktail shaker (£18) that says "Cheers!".

Gifts for Foodies

For those of you who would like to buy a present for a food-lover but don't want it to be, you know,  food, then here's a gift list for you. I've put together a few things that I have given or received in the past and loved, as well as a few things that I'm coveting. If you do want to give someone a food extravaganza for christmas then here's a link to my christmas hamper guide.

PANDORA

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Pandora have a few food related charms, my all time favourite being the cupcake (coincidentally the reason I bought a pandora bracelet in the first place). They also have some seriously cool looking cakes, including a three tiered one (that I can no longer find on their website). In fact, there are some many that I like it was hard to choose just three to show you. The cupcake (Pandora £40) was obviously on the shortlist but then, should there be an ice cream cone (Pandora £35)? A pineapple (Pandora £45)? or a teacup (Pandora £25)? In the end I decided to add to the list a pretty espresso maker (Pandora £35) for coffee lovers and a cool chef's hat (Pandora £35), appropriately named "I love cooking", for all those recipients who would just rather be cooking! If you need to get the bracelet (Pandora) to go with the charm then they start at £35 for a multi-strand strap and go up to £1,200 for a gold gold one! Don't worry though - the silver ones are £55 and hold at least 15 charms, or you can buy a leather one (£40-£50) although they recommend a maximum of 7 charms as the leather can stretch.

Christmas Time

Christmas is not very far away (where did the time go?) and the weather is not at all frightful (really Poitiers? Why is it 21 degrees celsius in mid-November?!) and an email from the lovely people at Cailler (read my review of their chocolate here) reminded me that I have a post mostly written about last year's food related presents that I want to adapt into a gift guide. First up, last year I made a hamper for my parents, which they loved and my bank balance hated. One word of advice? Set a budget and stick to it. I kept adding extra things and forgetting to total it up, so that I have no clue as to the total value of the hamper. It was worth it though - to be able to pull together all these amazing things that linked and expanded upon daddy's request for cheese and wine and that my parents loved.

Hampers take the most time to pull together, so I'll write and post my ideas for your hampers this week and over the next few weeks I will post other ideas for gifts, both edible and not, for foodies and gather them all together under the christmas tab on my navigation bar.

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Honey Mustard Ham

Hi guys, this is a recipe I made a while ago. My mum had brought me up a large gammon steak and it sat in my freezer for a couple of months as I simply had no idea how to cook it (I don't like pineapple). Come the Christmas holidays and there I am, trying to use up all the edible contents of my kitchen, still with no clue about the gammon. Cue Delia online and her gammon with honey and mustard recipe. Perfect, I thought, and then I realised that my steak was only one but much larger than her two (Liam was also eating it). What to do? What to do? I decided to follow her instructions and just increase the measurements to work for my steak. It was time to get my calculator out. I'm going to make things easier for you and say that if you have a steak that's for x number of people then just times the numbers by that. And maybe add a little extra, after all, more of this delicious sauce isn't a bad thing.

London

I've been juggling a cold with a lot of catching up with friends now that I'm home this week and haven't been paying you the attention you deserve. But. This is a quick set of photos to show you how I view London (clue: basically just an opportunity to eat) and to let you know that on Monday I made dumplings with my cousin's wife, who's from Taiwan, and one day soon when you wake up there will be a recipe and videos on how to pleat dumplings up for you to enjoy - maybe you could make a family project of it over Christmas? My first cousin/second-cousin-once-removed (not sure which way round they are), "helped" adorably by showing us how you should fold a dumpling (though without filling I'm not sure how great it was!). Also coming soon will be a recipe for bread that you can make at home. The reason these posts aren't happening immediately is two fold; firstly I'm shattered and secondly I need to send Charlene the photos from Monday first! However, I'm going away for Christmas, to a sleepy village where there's not much to do but curl up but by the fire and read/write blog posts/revise so I should finally start uploading more recipes.

Selfridges had giant bottles of popcorn on sale
Surely it would go stale before you could eat it all?

Red Velvet Cupcakes

So, it's terribly late and I've been rushing around all day sorting things out, but I did promise you the red velvet cake today. Therefore, with 10 minutes on the clock before midnight, I'm dashing this off. I apologise if this doesn't quite have my usual panache but I'm sure you can still tell it's me! And, to be honest, they say that a picture is worth a thousand words and this cake, if I do say so myself, is fairly spectacular. I also forgot to take photos of the snowman/penguin making process so I can't talk about that anyway!

Although all of these photos are of the cake I made for yesterday's christmas party, the recipe is actually for cupcakes, as I'm aware that students read my blog (hi there) and probably won't want to make a three layered cake and have access to all the tins etc. Cupcakes on the other hand only require cases and ideally but not necessarily a cupcake tray to support the sides as they cook. To make a three layered cake you just need to double all of the quantities and bake it for 25 minutes in three 8 inch cake tins. The mix makes 18 fairy cakes (the best size) or 12 american cupcakes (far too big, and anyway, you get less of them!). For the larger ones just add 3-5 minutes to the baking time.

Still Alive And Cooking

Red velvet cupcakes

Hmm, it's been ages since I last posted and for that I apologise. I've spent most of the last week huddled up on the sofa, tissues and lemsip to hand, watching food network and Gilmore Girls reruns. I have, however, still been cooking, though somewhat half heartedly. Also, on Friday, I had an early 21st birthday party (less than a month until I actually turn 21!) at Cloud 23 in Manchester, where we had a cocktail masterclass that was So. Much. Fun!!! As well as the excitement/illness I've also had a few essay deadlines but they are no more! Unfortunately it's now procrastination, I mean, exam revision time.

My 21st

I have a list of recipes that I need to share with you over the next week or so: if I get my act together I'll write them tomorrow and set them to post a day at a time, so keep checking back - I'll set them for 11am each day so you have something to look forward to. The recipes include: macarons; red velvet cupcakes; fougasse (a type of French ciabatta that I made for a uni food evening); pizza; more bread; the ever promised and half written about chicken and cashew nuts; and pork potsticker dumplings.

Peanut Butter Brownies and Apparently CHRISTMAS IS COMING!!!

Yes, you read the title right; Harvey Nichols has just sent me an email telling me that Christmas is just around the corner and I need to book Christmas drinks there ASAP. I know that it's now September and Christmas is in about three months (or 110 days, 5 hours, 5 minutes and 30 seconds away if you really want to get technical - thanks http://www.xmasclock.com - although that might be for a different country, I'm not sure!) but let's celebrate Halloween and Guy Fawkes night first!!

For a not at all christmassy, but maybe a just right for the start of  Autumn, snack I wanted to make David Lebovitz's dulce de leche brownies but didn't have the titular ingredient, so, after a bit of googling I hit upon the idea of peanut butter brownies (recipe from Good Housekeeping). Yummy! And I have about a kilo of peanut butter at home. Swirling the two mixtures together made it look so pretty and they tasted fairly good (apart from the edges as I forgot to set a second timer whilst chatting to a friend). In the future I would set another timer and cut the peanut mix by a third as it almost made two complete layers instead of marbled swirls. I used my Callebaut 54% chocolate in this recipe plus their cocoa powder and it made for a intense but not too strong/bitter chocolate flavour (NEWSFLASH I just got the Callebaut milk chocolate chips and the white chocolate ones and both taste good but the milk chocolate is divine, more chocolaty than high street brands and so moreish!)

Marbled Brownie Recipe

Oven at 180˚C

Baking tin required - I normally use an IKEA tin or a rectangular sandwich tin which lets me remove all bar one side of the tin for easier cutting. Whatever you use make sure it's well greased.

Cut as many slices as you want

Ingredients

175g butter

125g dark/milk chocolate

250g sugar - the original recipe says "light brown soft sugar", which has one too many adjectives for my liking! If you have muscovado sugar then use that, if you don't then regular sugar should be fine.

2 eggs - again, the original recipe says medium but really whatever size you have to hand

125g plain flour

25g cocoa powder

Peanut Butter Marble (this is two thirds of the original recipe)

17g MELTED butter (stick it in the microwave for 10 seconds at a time)

27g icing sugar

67g smooth peanut butter

¼tsp vanilla extract (not essence - essence is terrible as it is a synthetic flavour and not really real vanilla)

Method

Melt the butter and chocolate in a big pan on the hob (if you're concerned about burning it then use a bain marie - a bowl suspended over pan/bowl of hot water so that it doesn't touch the water but that the heat melts whatever is in the top bowl).

Take off the heat and stir in the sugar followed by the eggs and then the flour and cocoa powder. This is your brownie base.

For the peanut butter marble you need to combine all the ingredients in a separate bowl until smooth-ish.

Spread ⅓ to ½ the brownie mix into the bottom of your greased pan and dollop half the marble over the top.

Repeat the above step with the rest of the brownie mix followed by the peanut butter marble and then swirl the tip of a knife through the dollops to create a pretty pattern, but try not to over mix it!

Cook in the oven for 20-35 minutes, depending on your oven. I would start at 20 and then check before putting another timer on for five minute increments. You want the brownie to have a crisp/cracked top but still move slightly in the middle, so it's a bit gooey and lovely to eat but not to runny you need a spoon to eat it with (I have had to do that before and it's not great!)