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?

Macarons

The finished macarons

So, I've been frantically, and unsuccessfully, trying to finish a few christmas presents before Sunday, so all my spare time has been spent doing those rather than blogging, but I did find time to make some macarons  on Wednesday AND THEY HAVE FEET!!!!!! For those of you not as excited as I am, they are a mark of a successful macaron and notoriously difficult to achieve - they're the ring at the bottom of the shells that you can see either side of the filling in the above photo. The feet may have been going slightly outwards and there might be a few difficulties with cooking times/temperature but I'm so happy that it worked and they tasted good. The last (first) batch I made nearly reduced me to tears, although that might have been the pricey Valhrona chocolate bars that I'd just wasted!

Ready to go in the oven

I'm not going to give you a recipe just yet as I haven't perfected them but I will practice more in the new year and tweak it before posting my version of the classic. To make these I followed Entertaining with Beth's video and recipe with Ladurée's macaron book for additional guidance in french (it counts as work then!) and so many sites telling me how not to go wrong that I've forgotten most of them, although I do remember Chocoparis' tips as being particularly helpful in telling me where I'd gone wrong so I could avoid it next 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.