YUM

I made Cherry and Amaretto Gelato this week and it was the easiest, most delicious thing I’ve ever made. You need to make it too. 

NaNoWriMo Snacks: Lemon Slices

I expect you are all* eagerly anticipating** 'Caitlin Day & All the Horror: Part 2'... but I haven't written that yet. This is about the things I've eating during NaNoWriMo . I am literally procrastinating by writing a blogpost about something I've been doing for procrastination. I should get some kind of award for that.

I want to rename NaNoWriMo InTwEaMo – International Twix Eating Month. I have eaten a lot of twixes during NaNoWriMo but I think it’s important to eat a lot of twixes when you are speedwriting a really bad novel! Sadly, I ran out of twixes and leaving the house when you should be WriMo-ing is bad. Instead I've been baking lots of the things I would have bought at the shop. I know this is illogical because it takes longer, but at least the baking provides some time to think about my NaNo, and my family are happy because they get to scoff some of what I've made.

Today’s recipe is homemade Mr Kipling Lemon slices. Lemon Slices, Bakewell Tarts and French Fancies were my ultimate favourites as a child in the nineties when everyone bought cake and all that people baked was the odd fairy cake or jam tart. I wanted some of this old familiar cakery but I watched bake-off, I know how much faff making fondant fancies is and I really don’t want to be dealing with pastry, so I made Lemon Slices.

Here is the recipe for my Lemon Slices:

Ingredients:

Cake Part (adapted from a lemon layer cake recipe in the Primrose Bakery cupcake book):

112g Caster Sugar

112g Self-Raising flour

¾ tsp Baking Powder

112g Butter (must be very soft)

2 eggs

1 large lemon

Icing (from my brain, hence the lack of measurements):

1 Lemon

Icing sugar

A little water

Yellow food colouring (optional)

Other stuff:

Square cake tin/baking tin about 22x22 cm (you could make it in one sandwich tin and have lemon wedges but don’t tell me about that because I won’t be impressed.) lined and greased etc.

For the cake:

Preheat the oven to 170°C (fan)/190°C/gas mark 5

Method one:

Put the dry ingredients into a food processor and mix. Add the rest and whiz until the ingredients are all evenly blended. Don’t over mix.

Method two:

Cream the butter and sugar with a wooden spoon (the qualities are so small it’s hard to use a hand-held mixer) until the mixture is pale and smooth. Mix the dry ingredients in another bowl. Add the eggs to the mixture, one at a time, alternating with the dry mixture and mix well after each addition. Add the lemon zest and lemon juice from one lemon, beat well.

Pour the mixture into the tin and cook for 25 mins/until they are golden and a tester comes out clean.

Leave to cool in the tin for 10 mins and then move to a wire rack.

The Icing:

Use all the juice from one lemon and gradually add icing sugar until it makes a thick icing. If you need more icing, add a little water and more sugar. Taste the icing to make sure you like how lemony/sweet it is.

When the cake is completely cooled, spread the icing thickly across the top of the cake.

Optional: keep back a bit of icing and add some yellow food colouring to it and decorate the top with it like a real Mr Kipling Lemon Slice.

Let the icing set before you chop it up.

Eat while you WriMo your NaNo (I am a loser)

*Ha. Hi Laura.

** Probably not as you were there...

JEWELS!!

(This is incredibly rambling and pointless but there are lots of pictures - including one where you can see a cleavagey-shadow)

A trillion years ago I won a competition to be chauffeur driven around London for the day, have a £150 lunch and a £100 Selfridges Giftcard. Not too shabby for Frances. 

It was all very surreal because they only chose the winner the day before, so I had no time to get used to the idea or properly plan the day or really have any expectations about what would happen. The surrealness didn’t really wear off and I was worried it would feel like it hadn't really happened. (Weirdly, I thought "I bet I've won" the second I saw a tweet saying they were picking the winner.)

So we were met at the station and went to places in the car & played with the fancy HP laptop.... blah blah blah. On to the important bit: THE FOOD! The meal was at HIX in Selfridges and it was so perfect. I was sitting there, munching away on the yummiest food, drinking champagne and feeling properly, properly happy for the first time in ages. That whole lunch is now my happy place. The food was so good and the waitress was completely lovely and it was FREEE!

that thing on the right is rice pudding...even if it does look like a beef burger surrounded by frogspawn

Between us we had:

Two glasses of champagne, two Mighty marbled Moyallon rib eye steaks (with chips and béarnaise sauce), green beans, two glasses of red wine, black rice pudding with mango and passion fruit, a slice treacle tart, a coffee, a pot of tea and an espresso.

It was the best meal I’ve ever had and I’ll probably never recover. 

The last part of my prize was the £100 voucher. On the day I was completely overwhelmed by the massiveness of Selfridges and all I managed to buy was a £25 Clinque foundation. So I took the giftcard home and kept it in its pretty box and all but forgot about it...

The other night I was browsing le internets and thinking about my love for Tatty Devine (as I do A LOT) and I remembered that they had done a collection for Selfridges (and a crazy-expensive collection in silver) Then I remembered I still had £75 to spend at Selfridges. I danced about with GLEEE and ordered some stuff....

Nearly ordered this Cat Tiara, but then I decided it might be a step too far (especially as I was wearing my cat kigu at the time...)

But in the end I went with the slightly more sensible Ruby Necklace and Diamond Ring (and a MAC lipstick in Russian Red):

the pretty packaging (doesn't the one on the left look like a hamburger)

Booooobies

The end. That pointless story that was just an excuse to show you my tits new tatty devine jewelery. 

p.s. My Mum totally thinks my mad jewellery collection with be really valuable one day. I think not, but I'll use it as an excuse to get lots and lots.

I love Butter: part 2

Oaty Biscuits of Glee

These are the greatest and easiest biscuits everrr and more proof that I eat too much butter.

The recipe is adapted from Delia Smith’s Whole oat crunchies recipe from Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course. (because I'm cool like that)

You will need:

a greased baking tin

an oven preheated to 190°C (375°F/gas mark 5)

75g Muscavado sugar

110g butter

120g porridge oats

Melt the butter. Mix the sugar and oats together and then pour in the butter and mix mix. Tip the yummy mixture (DO NOT TASTE IT BECAUSE YOU WILL EAT IT ALL) into the tin and press it down to make sure it’s all even. Pop it in the oven for 15 mins.

Divide the oaty yumminess into individual portions while it’s still warm and leave to cool in the tin.

TIP:

Never make these when everyone is out because you’ll just eat the whole lot by yourself and pretend you never made any. I speak from experience. 

Perfect Potato

Before you read this, you need to understand that 99% of things I eat are butter based.

Last time I was in London I had an AMAZING but incredibly simple jacket potato, it was so creamy and buttery and gooood. I recreated it at lunch today (and probably put on about half a stone in the process) and here is the recipe/ list of things to smoosh together/excuse for gratuitous pictures of potatoes. 

To start off you will need a baked potato (obv). I like to rub the skin with olive oil and a little salt and pepper so it crisps up nicely. Cut the potato open and mash in a little butter. 

Add a small dollop of creme fraiche to each side and then some grated cheese. 

Next, fold the potato back up so that the filling can melt and smoosh together. Open and scoff. Try not to have a heart attack. 

I literally only posted this so I could have a record of the GREATEST LUNCH OF ALL TIME. 

Hope you enjoyed the potato porn. 

Casseroles and Costume Dramas

Now is the winter of our casseroles and costume dramas (I’m sorry)

But truly, this is the season for which casseroles and costume dramas were created, it would be rude to ignore them! So get a casserole in the oven, find a cat/lover to curl up with and choose your costume drama.

For grey days and dark cold nights I recommend Jane Eyre, Bleak House or Little Dorrit. All three of these adaptations have a beautiful aesthetic which echoes this time of year in their use of light and colour. I know they are all very long (the whole of Jane Eyre is nearly 4 hours  and both Little Dorrit and Bleak House are over 7 ½ hours long) but this is a good thing because it means you can do it all again next week and the week after! 

I’ll leave the companion catching up to you, but don’t try to get anyone grumpy or whiney watch with you because it will kill your costume drama buzz. Definitely banish Costume Drama-hating boyfriends while you indulge your love.

For the casserole I recommend Beef in Beer, or, if you are veggie or vegan, the gluttonous vegan’s Beany Stew.

My recipe for Beef in Beer

This is far too yummy for something so easy! Get the casserole ready nice and early and by the time it’s ready the smell will have you drooling. It takes a fair bit of time so you need to get it started nice and early but then you can forget about it for a couple of hours. These quantities will feed three to four people (depending on how greedy they are) but you could easily scale up or down. (I made this last night and I should have taken a picture, but I was far too hungry and had no idea I would write this post!)

You will need:

-  800g braising steak, cut into chunks.

-  ¾ pint ale

- 2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into thick chunks

- 6-8 shallots (roughtly 2 per person), peeled

- 1 tbsp flour

- Salt & pepper

- Couple of pinches of Thyme

- 1 large clove of garlic, crushed

- 1 bay leaf

- 1 tbsp oil

What to do with it:

1) Preheat the oven to 140°c and heat the oil in a large casserole dish.

2) Brown the meat in batches, transferring the beef to a plate as it is browned.

3) Brown and soften the shallots in the casserole dish and then return the meat, along with any meat juices, to the dish.

4) Stir in the flour so that it soaks up the flavours and juices from the meat and onions.

5) Pour in the ale. Slowly bring the whole thing to simmer, adding the salt and pepper, thyme, garlic, bay leaf and carrots.

6) Once all the ingredients have been added and the casserole has been gently simmering, put the lid on the dish and transfer it to the middle shelf in the oven. You can add a sheet of tin foil under the lid to make sure no steam will escape.  Leave for 2 ½ hours.

7) Serve with brown rice, baked potatoes or mash. I think really creamy mash goes especially well with the flavours of the beer.

Nom nom nom.