Quick Scones

Hello my lovelies!

As you may have spotted, I’m attempting to keep my hand in with this blogging malarkey.  

My return wasn’t really planned, it was spontaneous, so I’m feeling my way right now.  Behind the scenes I’ve been giving some thought to where I might go with this blog in terms of content and frequency and, TBH, the time it’s worth me spending of this page.  And apropos that, you might like to help me out here.

Is there any content you’d like to see, prefer, and do you enjoy actually reading blogs rather than looking at the pictures?

Time is an issue and you may find you prefer to read short blog posts with lots of pictures, or maybe vice versa.  And is frequency a factor here?  Maybe you pop into blogs once a week and only have time to read one post from each blog.  Your time is precious and so is mine, and I receive no financial reward for my efforts so it’s important I allocate my time meaningfully, so  please tell me about this whole time issue. 

And lastly and very importantly, do you read my reply to your comment?  I spend a huge amount of time replying in detail to comments because I look on you all as mates, but I wonder if you actually read them, in which case my time could be spent actually producing content rather than writing into the ether.

I’d love it if you could take the time to give me some brief input in this direction, please be honest, and thank you verrrry much in advance for your time. 

So let’s move on to today. 

Fancy rustling up a quick sweet treat on a cold day?  Well oh my golly gosh, these are quick AND tasty ... and they really shouldn’t work.  But DO!

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ICE CREAM SCONES (?!!)

Yes it does sound a bit oxymoronic eh?

Ice cream.  In a scone.  

Those two words would not normally be juxtaposed, but they are, here, today.  

But, ignoring the fact that this defies logical thought and comprehension, here is the recipe.  For what it is worth.

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ICECREAM SCONES

Combine 1 cup each of Self Raising flour and ice cream. (Yes, REALLY!  You’re going to have to put your trust in me.)

Shape into balls and place on a greased baking sheet. 

(Since I made my first batch I’ve decided that patting each one down a little may give a more traditional scone shape.)

Yield about 6 scones. 

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Bake for about 15 minutes at 180c, till just slightly coloured. 

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Buttered and marmaladed - I had no jam.

EAT!!!

VARIATION

You can add fruit to the mix, such as sultanas or blueberries, but if you add fruit you MUST add 1tspn baking powder to the mix.  It’s a rule!

And of course a fruit mix will yield more than 6 scones

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Baking (and eating) really doesn’t get easier than that. 

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I admit I crossed my fingers when I made these because combining flour and icecream and sticking it in a hot oven felt soooo wrong*.   The result should be a hot sticky mess!  But it wasn’t and instead out came perfectly intact little scones for afternoon tea. 

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Alchemy must be a play here surely ...

* as weird as a cigarette to Sir Walter Raleigh!

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Hugs,

Mary x. 

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#alchemy #easybaking #easyscones #icecreamscones #twoingredients #basicbaking #bakingicecream

Fig and Feta Salad

Hello my lovelies!

My plate’s story. 

The figs were freshly picked from my garden. 

The salad’s beefsteak tomato and French beans came from a grower’s hedge stall around the corner, which I walked ten minutes to buy.

The rest of the ingredients were bought from a local firm who deliver to my door. 

I’m definitely doing my bit to save the planet, eh. 

Well, apart from the buying Greek feta cheese, but the rest was locally sourced. 

Oops, who’s going to be the first to point out the bad grammar?!

This is yet another dish that is so simple that I feel a rather embarrassed about sharing a recipe and even daring to call it a recipe, but I’m doing it anyway if for no other reason than to explain what this plated mush is!!

Fig and Feta Salad

Figs, 2 of and grown by me,  quartered and given a light drizzling with a little honey. 

Crumbled feta.

Salad of little gem shredded lettuce, beefsteak tomatoes, cut French beans. 

finely sliced red onion and radish and tossed in some homemade red wine vinaigrette. 

Done!

And here, after an insta foodie friend has come to my rescue with a quick tutorial on food photography.

I apparently needed a plain plate and a pop of bright red or green on top the feta to get it to “lift “ the plate.  And I agree that it looked a bit more foodie immediately by switching to a white plate.

For my lifting I added a shredding of basil.  I switched in baby plum tomatoes.  Both of which were home grown by moi. 

Yes, the dish itself is hardly foodie but I do think in summer especially, food is best kept simple to fit in with our busy schedules and our lighter appetites. One has to save room in the tum for ice cream eh!

I do love fruit in a salad.  Quartered figs, chopped apple, strawberries. peaches or mango, halved grapes, slices of orange or banana, all of these do their own flavoursome lifting to a salad.

And most fruits complement a variety of cheeses, one just needs to work out the right pairings to suit our own individual palates. 

IMHO. 

Do you add fruit to a salad or cheese, and if so. which?

Bon appetit!

A la perchoine,

Mary x 

Simple Summer Salad

Hello my lovelies!

Oh my, just seen, I’ve been absent for a few days.  It’s been busy at Chez Pout these past few days and I guess I’m still adjusting to having social come back into my life again.  You too?  Or are you in lockdown right now?

So whilst I reassemble all the numerous draft posts and ideas I thought it would be nice to kick things off again with food.  Is there a better place to start?!

I made this extremely simple salad last week. 

I love this sort of easy goodness in summer and with increasing social activity which invariable involves some form of eating, quick, simple and clean food is what my body needs for

meals at home. 

This dish is so simply it’s rather embarrassing to give it a recipe but here goes ...

Finely slice a couple of sticks of rinsed celery and a small red onion, and stir all together with half a tin of drained chick peas. (I put the other half of the tin in a huge vegetable curry.)

Stir in a homemade vinaigrette*, top with some fresh shredded herbs. And Bob’s your uncle!

This quantity gave me meals for two days, whilst TP are things sautéed, cream sauced and potatoed - it’s HIM who should have the weight problem!

 I used basil in this salad as my indoor basil plant is going crazy at the moment.  I’m doing something right and I think that is that I replanted it from small supermarket pot to something a little larger, placed the pot in a bowl and then I’ve been religiously watering it by pouring water into the bowl, not the pot - I think basil prefers it’s watering that way.  And I think giving the plant room to grow was the other essential of this winning formula. 

I’m hoping I can remember what I did right next time I buy a potted basil. 

I chopped in the delicious fronds from the top of the celery stalk - I love the oomph these leaves bring to a dish. 

*My vinaigrette dressing  is simple.  I make it in old chutney and jam jars, whatever is clean and to hand.  I put in some red wine vinegar, add 3 times thar amount of olive oil,  then flavour with salt, pepper, a teaspoon of whole grain mustard and a squeeze of honey then pop the lid on and shake it all together till it emulsifies.   I shove the pot in the fridge and use if it most days. It keeps in the fridge for a couple of weeks but in my house it’s always used up way before then!

What’s your favourite vinaigrette recipe?

A la perchoine,

Maey x 

Almond Cake for Sunday Tea?

Hello my lovelies!

Happy Sunday.  What are you doing today?  A bit of baking maybe for Sunday afternoon tea?

That used to be a thing in childhood, my dad (yes  my dad!) would occasionally bake a cake and it was such a thrill to bite into a slice straight out of the oven.  We didn’t wait around for it to cool in our house!  A coconut slab cake was his specialty. 

Now they do say that old habits die hard. 

They say that if you do something for 30 days it becomes habit. .

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Well 3 months of habit forming ain’t goin nowhere fast!

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I’m still comfort baking even though we’re pretty much out of lockdown.

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I’ve made this one a few times recently.  Almond cake with a butter icing.  Delish!

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And I made a pinky promise on Insta to share the recipe on the blog, so today I’m keeping my promise. 

Almond Cake

Coffee and a piece of cake!

Ingredients

4oz/115gr butter

6oz/170gr sugar

2 eggs, separated 

1 tspn vanilla extract 

6oz/170gr self raising flour

1/2 tspn baking powder 

4fl.oz/120 milk

2oz/55gr ground almonds

Butter icing filling: make up to your usual recipe.  For this cake size I use 4oz of sifted icing sugar to 2 oz softened butter, a dash of vanilla extract, then about 1 tbspn milk to give it a spreading consistency. 

Method

Line a 6in/15cm cake tin *. 

Pre-heat the oven to 180c/350f. 

Whisk the two egg whites to stiff peaks stage and set aside. 

Cream the butter and sugar together. 

Beat in the egg yolks and vanilla quickly into the mix to avoid curdling. 

Sift the flour and baking powder over the mix and blend together. 

Add the almonds and milk and mix well. 

Gently fold in the egg whites into the mix. 

Pour into the lined tin and take for 50-60 minutes, depending on your oven; mine is fast and 50 mins does it for me, so I suggest you test it around 45 mins.  It’s cooked when a thin knife inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean and dry. 

Turn out on a wire rack and leave to cool. 

When cool, slice carefully horizontally through the middle and smooth out your butter icing over the bottom half. Replace the top half.  Sift icing sugar over the top of the cake just before serving. 

NB: the cake keeps well for several days in a closed container. 

*my photographed cake looks a bit rustic around the edges because I used a cake tin liner larger than the tin I used. 

But at least it looks homemade!

Ok, my piece of cake wasn’t the whole of the cake, just a modest slice.

But you can always go back for more!

Enjoy. 

A la perchoine.

Mary x 

Life and Baking - A Reflection

Life and baking can be a game of two halves.

Sometimes life is an absolute pleasure.  

An amazing half term in glorious sunshine having fun with the grandkiddies.  

A cosy Sunday lunch for a family birthday celebration.  

That was life last week and I definitely don't blog when I'm having so much fun!

Sometimes life can be sad and difficult.

And just when I planned to write up a blog last weekend, sad life happened and my time was immediately allocated to pressing matters which needed dealing with immediately.

So what I'm saying here is that there will be times in a hobby blogger's calendar when blogging is put on hold and these last few days have been such.

But I'll share some of the nice stuff with you.  

Baking.  My baking game is one of two halves too.

Success.  And failure.

First, the rip-roaring success..

Merengues.

GD made these little clouds of yumminess

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using this cook book.

She's been going through the book in the school holidays and I'm always excited when I see her walk into my kitchen with The Unicorn Cookbook under her arm.  Every single thing we've tried has been delicious yet easy to make.  I really recommend this cookbook and what a great no-brainer pressie this makes to help engage children in cooking - Yumminess and UNICORNS in one!!

Dressed for the part!

Oh and just in case you go looking for the recipe in the book,  the actual recipe was for a piled up pavlova but we thought it would be easier to eat and share with the family if made as individual merengues.  

And it was!  OK, GD and I may have had a bigger share than the rest of the family but hey, isn't that the cooks' prerogative?!!

And then there was the den building whilst we engaged ourselves in our baking.

GS built an amazing Den City!  It was an all-mod-cons den with a secret extension under the kitchen table.  All manner of conveniences were amassed in there, including a water-filled bowl to create a bathroom area.  Ok granny did baulk a bit at this convenience,  but there was zero spillage!

So this is pretty much what my kitchen looked like last week.  Den City and merengues.  Not a bad place to be!

Then, the failure.

I made a birthday cake for the family lunch.  A birthday girl must have a cake, eh?  She is diabetic so I hunted around for a recipe. 

I chose this one, link below.  

It uses prunes to bring some of the sweetness to the party.  The rest comes from regular demerera sugar - but I decided I could  make it even more diabetic-friendly by replacing that with sugar substitute.

Here I should remind the reader that cake baking is absolute chemistry.  It belongs in the alchemist's corner of the kitchen.    I know that.  

I thought I was clever enough that I could adapt the recipe ...

The day before the lunch I set about making the cake and with hindsight I'm glad that I set out early on this journey.  The cake was an epic fail!  I got the sugar substitute to sugar conversion wrong - do not yet this at home as it was a solid as a rock.

It put me in mind of Mrs Cropley's* culinary experimentation.

Initially I thought I could double the sweetness in the ricotta frosting and mask my cock-up but I woke up in a cold sweat at 5am and resolved to draw a line under my failed alchemy and start again.  I then went back to sleep, peaceful in the knowledge that I had a plan B. 

 And thus, Sunday morning found me squeezing in some time around my chicken roastie lunch to put plan B in action.  

And phew!  Following the recipe to the letter, the cake was yumminess itself, deliciously moist and moreish.

Do try it, it's delish!

Italian-chocolate-ring-cake. HERE

So the lesson here is that in cake making DO NOT DEVIATE.

And when it goes rock-shaped, bin it and start again!

*And remember Mrs Cropley!

Now please tell me you've had cake fails too!

A la perchoine, 

Mary x.

WIW Wednesday

Hiya my sweet peas!

 Time for my Wednesday wardrobe round up again.  

There's been colour, there's been a couple of misses.  But this is my fifth WIW, AND I'm posting WIW Wednesday on a Wednesday, so there are many things to be proud of in this simple post.

Tuesday

Per Una bright chiffon blouse (old), white jeans and metallic sandals (M&S).

Topped with embellished cardi.

Wednesday

Soft orange Cashmillon twinset, metallic sandals, (M&S); Next white jeans.

Thursday

East aqua linen shirt dress.

Embellished cardi (quite a good match eh? Not bad considering there's 15 years between them)

And a summer outfit wouldn't be right without the Accessorize silk scarf.

This outfit got taken out for a fancy lunch (see HERE and HERE).

Friday

In town buying Next long sleeve T shirt basics.  A sign that autumn is fast approaching.

But not that fast approaching for I wore skirt!  Ecru linen skirt. The White Company cardi, taupe.

The jersey/ chiffon top is from Next (old).

I experimented with cardi tying - not my best achievement.

So I kept the cardi as the designer intended, open and flowing.

Saturday

The sun's still here! I wore another skirt!

This time a white line skirt with one of my new long sleeve tops.

Is there anything in my summer wardrobe this scarf dies NOT go with?

After walking I made brownies and rum balls for the next day's family BBQ.  Wearing pale pink and white?  Don't fret, I wore an apron and no clothing was harmed during my messy work with chocolate and butter!

Brownies (recipe to follow soon) and RUM BALLS see HERE, and see HERE for Leslie's yummy recipe.  These are things I take to  get-togethers; on the savoury side, my go-to is CORONATION CHICKEN, recipe HERE.

Sunday

A lovely day of socialising, starting with morning coffee and danish pastries with the family. 

And here come the misses - no OOTD shots!

I wore a variation on Saturday's outfit, swapping skirt for white jeans.

Afternoon at a family BBQ (Bro's burgers are legendary!)

Completely forgot about taking some good outfit pics, so the outfit didn't even make IG.

Monday

Rushing out the door to make my emergency dentist appointment, so slung on mum jeans, white vest top and UV cardi.  If I don't take photos first thing, it doesn't get done.  So again this outfit missed IG.

And that's my week in outfit pics, with a few omissions.  Oops.

Yesterday I  day-tripped over to a neighbouring paradise.  The weather was ok but not the best.

Today it most definitely has not been the best, drizzle mostly all day.  So after my housework, cooking and admin, I settled down with a coffee in my hand  and a cat on my lap, and I found myself gravitating towards cosy jumpers online. 

Are you starting to think about cosy jumpers too?

Or swimsuits and floaty kaftans if you live down south?

And what have you been wearing in September?

How's this month going for you? Super hot?  Super busy?

I'd love to hear.

A la perchoine.