Labour of love

I'm making our wedding cake!

Tiers one and two are done (one and two being the top two) and tier three will be done on Sunday. We're freezing them and will take them out the week of the wedding to decorate, so the adventure will be finding somewhere to freeze it on Sunday. Our freezer isn't big enough for a 12" square cake. Some would say that we ought to find somewhere big enough first, but that wouldn't be so much fun that driving around looking for friends or relatives who are better freezer endowed than we are.

We decided on carrot rather than fruit partially because of the house move and fruit cake baking all within a week was a bit much, and also because I don't want to be tired of fruit cake by the time Christmas comes around...

The ingredients:



We have a cake in the oven!


The finished top tier...



OK. So as it turns out I haven't done such a good job at documenting the baking of the cake. But actually, the photos of the bowls of mixed ingredients ended up looking like sick (and I didn't want to put the wedding guests off) and the photos of the baked second tier looked just like the photos of the baked first tier...

Perhaps the decoration photos will be much more amusing...

In with the new

It is now the 7th week in the new home, but already it feels so much longer than that! The furniture has arrived, the unpacking is mostly done, the smells of the old people have dissapated (they weren't bad smells...just other people smells) and it is starting to feel like home.

At the door about to take our first steps inside...



Poking around (or actually, trying to figure out how to open the back door now that no one else was there to do it for us) and reading instructions left for us by our lovely vendors...




The truck and the moving mascot (I didn't have a hat box so the hedgehog had to wear it)



Popping the champagne (in the garden, so that we didn't break anything, obviously)




Oh yeah...we have to unpack all this....

Out with the old...

Please excuse the lack of posts, however one will appreciate that the times, they are a changin'

Way back when I lived in London, on my last Sunday before moving away from said large inner city, Mr P and I went for a walk around his marathon training route (although we only walked about 14 km of it, not his whole 22 km training route...) because I hadn't ever walked along the entire South Bank from Greenwich to Tower Hill. I loved it (and I loved the assortment of random statues and sculptures along the way too). The idea was that P would run to Greenwich while I walked to Canary Wharf and took the DLR from there and meet him on the other side of the river. However, I was rather enjoying the walk and so I decided to walk to Greenwich so poor Mr P had to jog laps back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth to wait for me. So while I walked about three miles he ran about 12. Bless him.

Photos:

Mr P running along the North side across from Greenwich approaching the Greenwich Tunnel (he ran back and forth along the North Bank between Canary Wharf and Greenwich to accommodate the fact that I walk about 1/10 of the speed he runs)



Following the walk through the rather dodgy estates that surely would frighten any tourist, but are rather endearing to me as I have lived on one myself, we once again emerged into trendy territory where we found a lovely set of stairs in the middle of the path just so...



And the ship repair yard...



One of the things I liked about this area is that they have kept the old docks largely intact whereas they have been changed quite significantly on the North Side...



And some men just "sitting of the dock of the..." oh, just sitting on the dock...



Another random sculpture across from Canary Wharf:



A City Farm (with pigs, if you look really hard...)



We had a stop at a lovely pub that served some of the best Thai Food I've had in ages..



...and we befriended a ladybug...



Represent!



The Anchor is here, but the boat appears to have got away!




Phil checking out what they read just before they boarded the Mayflower...



The Mayflower Pub...at the site (or thereabouts) of where the Mayflower left from. Not sure the Puritans stopped in for a pint first though...



King Edward Park (my local) from across the river...




Ah! Tower Bridge! The beginning of the home stretch!



Butler's Wharf. One of my earlier discoveries but still loved location...



Truth be told, my feet were terribly sore, so I'm afraid that St Katherine's dock to my house on the north side got neglected!

Church Desert...

I phoned home tonight and spoke with my parents who were puttering about doing random things. My mom mentioned that dad was making a desert for an upcoming church dinner. I asked what he's making and he said "Sex in a Pan". I couldn't imagine bringing that to a Church of England Bring and Share. I'd forgotten all about it though, so for those of you who have as well, please indulge yourself (recipe courtesy of about.com and picture randomly found on a very yummy looking blog called Jam on Your Face which I encourage you to check out. I tried emailing to ask for permission to plop it here, but it wouldn't accept my comment...I didn't see any copyright information so I hope it's OK)

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 25 minutes

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine
• 3/4 cup chopped pecans
• 1 (8oz) package cream cheese, soft ened
• 1 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1 tub whipped topping, 32 ounces
• 1 package (4oz) vanilla instant pudding
• 1 package (4oz) chocolate insta nt pudding
• 3 cups cold milk, divided
• 1 square semisweet chocolate, shaved, or mini semisweet chocolate chips

Preparation:

Combine flour, butter and pecans and press into a 9x13x2-inch baking pan. Bake at 350° for 25 minutes. Cool in pan on rack.

Combine cream cheese and confectioners' sugar and spread over pecan mixture. Spread half of the whipped topping over the cream che

ese layer.

Mix package of vanilla pudding using 1 -1/2 cups of milk. Spoon evenly over the whipped topping; spread until layer is even. Mix package of chocolate pudding using remaining 1-1/2 cups milk. Spread on top of vanilla pudding. Spread remaining whipped topping on top and sprink le with shaved semisweet chocolate or mini chocolate chips.

Blog or bust...

I realised the other day that I haven't blogged in almost a year. I thought "maybe I should just delete it entirely" But then I thought "maybe I should persist. So this is my attempt at persisting...

I have been doing Christmas baking over the past week or so.

This is how my kitchen normally looks:




This is how it looked with two Christmas pudding steaming for 8 hours, the other ingredients out, lunch being cooked, and my slow cooker on the go...





Traditional family cookie recipes



The Gingerbread Men A&E Department...


My first proper attempt at Home made Mince Pies...

Common Sense Doesn't Sell

A Yahoo! Article on how to save money in the January Sales:

http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/23122008/401/golden-rules-successful-sales-shopping.html

My thought was "don't go shopping", but apparently that's not the slant they were looking for...

My pleasant pheasant experience

Mr P came around for dinner last night to bring in the New Year, and something inspired me to cook a feast featuring pheasant (having never done that before!).

The menu consisted of:
Roast Pheasant with Lemon and Rosemary
Pan-friend brussel sprouts and shallots with pomegranate and purple basil
Boiled Potatos
Crusty Bread
Dark chocolate mousse with Baileys and mascarpone cream.
Mr P had picked up a lovely 2007 Zinfandel from a wine show we went to in October and it complimented the meal perfectly (apparently pheasant and zinfandel are a good combo!)

I got the pheasant recipe from Mike Robinson on www.bbc.co.uk/food. He very helpfully had a video on how to prepare the pheasant, and while it looked much easier to get the backbone out than it was (although it wasn't too hard - just more messy than it looked on the video and he didn't say anything about dissecting the giblets out either!) it was very helpful and very yummy!

In the end, it turned out rather well (if I may say so myself!)


The pheasant - in packaging...



The pheasant just before the preparation...



The final result...

Who baked what with the what now?

I never would have believed it had I not tried it with my very own little hands. It was two weeks ago now, but certainly worth a repeat (especially since my courgette plant keeps turning them out like nobody's business!

Chocolate Courgette Cake:

Batter:

1/2 cup margarine (i used butter - go hard or go home, eh?)
1/2 cup oil
1 3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup sour milk (interestingly, I didn't bother with the milk + vinegar trick - I just used milk that was slightly off, and it was fine!)
1 tsp vanilla
2.5 cups unsifted flour (does anyone still sift flour these days?)
4 tbsp cocoa
1/2 tsp baking power
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cups finely diced courgette (I grated mine, and it was fine!)

Topping:

3/4 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup crushed walnuts

Method:

1. Cream margarine, oil and sugar
2. Add eggs, vanilla and sour milk
3. Mix all dry ingredients together and add to the creamed mixture
4. Beat well
5. Stir in diced courgette
6. Spoon into a greased and floured 9x13 inch pan
7. Sprinkle topping on batter in pan
8. Bake at 350F (that's gas mark 4, for my British readers) for 40-45 mins or until a toothpick, when inserted into the middle, comes out clean.

It is just heavenly!