Dipping Sauce

I've been back in Manchester for a fortnight now and having a blast. Classes start in a week, though I already have a ton of work to do for one module, Serialised Crime. So far though, I've mainly been hanging out around food. A friend and I went to a fair on Saturday, where the most amazing chocolate was being sold (dormouse chocolates). On Sunday I entered a baking competition in which I sadly didn't get though to the second round but I lost to some truly amazing looking cakes so I'm not too upset.

Hi And Bye: A Very Quick Recipe

Argh!!! Exam season is upon me and I have only got a week before a major deadline AND my French speaking exam. Scarily, in a month's time I shall have finished my exams AND be half way through my degree *cue manic nail biting terror*. This means that my recipes will be uploaded somewhat erratically as it will be a nightmare few weeks but I do have a few posts up my sleeve for you pre-written to avoid me stressing out too much. On a brighter note, I got 67 in my last essay, which is worth 40% of one module's final mark - for those of you who aren't familiar with university marking - one teacher said she'd only ever given 80 once before and that was because she couldn't have sat down and written a better essay herself. 67 is equivalent to a high 2:1, which is great. I also had a presentation to do on Wednesday, so hopefully that went well, I think it did but I won't get the mark for a few weeks.

Don't Say Never Trust A Skinny Cook: Spanish Chicken

How are you all? University classes start up again for me today, and I'm really excited about my modules this semester. One module is called Identity and Power and is about French colonialism, another is named Culture and Conflict, covering first world war poetry, a book by Georges Perec about WW2 and then the war in Algeria makes up the third conflict that we study - it will be really interesting to learn about the world wars from a French perspective as up until now I have only studied in as part of the English GCSE and A level curriculum. My final module (ignoring the compulsory grammar one) is about careers and business management, which will hopefully be interesting and useful in the "real world"! As such meals are being planned in advance again, so there should be no shortage of interesting recipes for the blog, like this one that I'm sharing with you today. My current plan for meals next week involve a "light" katsu curry (see next Monday's Don't Say Never Trust A Skinny Cook), a lentil dish and the old favourite (with a homemade paste), thai green curry.

Baking Society

The finished article

I started my second year of university last week and it's going well, although I'm still getting used to the early mornings! There was a Baking Society meeting this evening and I went along (last year it clashed with Italian classes). I made a passionfruit and lime sponge cake and it went down a storm. In fact, it went so well that I came first in their impromptu competition! The cake also got demolished within the hour so I have to apologise to Sarah and Grace as I promised them a slice - if you come over next Wednesday to watch Les Enfants Du Paradis then there will be a replacement cake waiting for you to help the three hour film go down more easily.

Passionfruit curd

The passionfruit curd was bought from one of the many markets in Central Manchester (one of the ones in St Ann's Square last June and also from the Christmas market) and is made by The Cherry Tree. I highly recommend them as it tastes incredible and they have other lovely flavours, like raspberry curd. My lime icing involves the zest and juice of 2 limes and then enough icing sugar to make a thick water icing (I do it by eye and so can't tell you the weight of the sugar). I got a new citrus zester today and they're really hard to work out the correct angle but once you do they're awesome and much better than my blunt grater!

A purple rose

I also made a purple sugarpaste flower to top my cake as I got annoyed by the society's email asking us to bake something that shows off our skills - a little intimidating, I thought. Sugarpaste roses aren't as hard to make as they look but they do require patience. In a future post I hope to explain how to make them, with photos of course.

The demolished cake