cooking

Taking the Biscuit and the Great British Bake Off

We love biscuits in our house but we much prefer ones we have made over shop bought ones. I’m also a fan of the Great British Bake Off (GBBO) and I’ve often done bake alongs in the past years. I was going to share an old post for today’s blogtober and use a biscuit post, but there are so many! So here is a round up of some of my old posts.

Biscuits, Biscuits and Biscuits

This post contains three different biscuits that my children came up with. We have chocolate creams, Iced biscuits and even a Minecraft selection.

Cheddar Biscuits

They don’t always have to be sweet biscuits. Many years ago I used to do a feature each week with the kid’s in the Kitchen. Here’s one of those old posts with a lovely cheese biscuit recipe.

Christmas Pudding Biscuit

These lovely chocolate biscuits looked so seasonal with a little decoration to make them into Christmas Puddings.

Christmas pudding chocolate biscuit — Christmas pudding Biscuits

Strawberry Shortcake Biscuit

Another one from the kid’s. Here they made lovely Strawberry Shortcake Biscuits and the recipe is included.

Pinwheel Biscuits

This was a great recipe for yummy biscuits that can be made in all sorts of combination of flavours. Here are our pinwheel biscuits.

Easter Biscuits

We’ve had Christmas puddings, now it’s time for our Easter Biscuits. We still make these every year, I do love cookie cutters.

Sprinkle Cookies and Cookie Dough Recipe

Way back when I was healthy, I took Boo to a cookery class with Bee Berrie in London. She made cakes and cookies and this post gives you a fabulous recipe for cookie dough you can keep in your fridge and make cookies with when you are ready.

I hope you have enjoyed my biscuit post and that you are inspired to go and make some of your own…or even better, get the kid’s to do it! I don’t bake along with the GBBO very often now but I love it when I can get in the kitchen with my kids and biscuits are our favourite bake.

Are you a dunker with your biscuits? A lot of people judge the quality of their biscuits by how they dunk but to do that you need a really good drink to dunk them in. I’m a big fan of dunking in a cup of tea but some might like to dunk their biscuits in a really nice cup of traditional Indian Coffee Do you have a favourite?

Do you like baking?

Join us for Blogtober 2021 Check out the hashtag #blogtober21 and the Facebook group and get linking up with other bloggers who are blogging their way through October.

My Sunday Snapshot and Ordinary Moments – Happy Birthday

by Anne Sweet 10 Comments

Our Summers are all about birthdays, and this week we had birthday number 4! We also had car trouble, did some knitting and some baking.

image shows a row of birthday cards with a pink happy birthday banner in the background

Eldest daughter was born June 30th, Boo on July 27th, The Little Man August 9th and Star August 24th. That’s four birthdays in eight weeks weeks!! Three of them fall between four weeks!

Thankfully the kids are older so birthday parties have not been missed this year. It was a shame we couldn’t have done something special for Boo’s 13th, or celebrated Star’s birthday at Pizza Hut like we usually do. But we have been very strict with outside contact.

The birthdays are all over now, the kids all a year older.

Ordinary Moments, Cars, Knitting and Baking.

The car broke down. We had it serviced last week, and this week the gear box goes on us. I’m glad I wasn’t in the car. We have the car booked into the garage but they can’t pick it up until Tuesday because of the bank holiday. We did get a courtesy car sorted pretty quick though. Or should I say Van! It’s Ford Tourneo with 8 seats.

image shows a black Ford Tourneo car behind a hedge. — *image from the door cam!*

I’ve not been in it yet but I do have a hospital appointment in the morning.

In other news this week, apart from Star’s birthday, I have been learning to knit with Boo. I can vaguely remember my Mum trying to teach me but I never really caught on so it’s just as hard for me as it is her. She was so excited to manage to cast on and knit her first row. Then she put it down and hasn’t picked it up again yet. 🙁

I also did some cooking with the Little Man. I subscribed him to a cooking kit and the box arrived this week. There is just something about receiving a box that makes you want to get stuck in and make the stuff. Well, it’s always worked before, it was a bit more difficult this time to drag him away from his computer games. But we ha a go and made some key lime pies. The recipe was quite involved with lots of blending and mixing. The results were not quite as I expected but they taste okay, and they are gluten free. We will attempt the fish cakes next.

image shows a hand holding a key lime pie which is cut in half — *Key Lime Pies*

My Sunday Snapshot and Ordinary Moments – Granny Squares

This is Halloween the Main Event of Blogtober!

by Anne Sweet 8 Comments

two little witches — *My girls dressed up as witches when they were younger*

I’m not a fan of Halloween if I’m honest. I get spooked pretty quickly and I definitely don’t like monsters, and spiders and anything creepy. It’s not always been the way though. When I was 13 yrs old I discovered James Herbert, my neighbour gave me his copy of The Rats to read and I ended up getting a whole pile of books from the library. I did buy copies later on and as a hoarder, I still have a few of his books. Rest in Peace Mr Herbert, please don’t come back and haunt me.

Horror

I still read the occasional horror story now but I don’t like watching films, unless they are zombie films. There is something about zombies that fascinate me. I’d be no use in a zombie apocalypse. I have no survival instincts, I’d just be meat. (Unless they were the zombies from World War Z that avoided sick people.) Maybe Brad Pitt would come and rescue me. (I can dream can’t I…if not Brad Pitt then it has to be Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead.)

I like horror games so long as someone else is playing. I like to watch. I remember the infamous P.T. which was meant to be a playable teaser for an up and coming Silent Hill Game. (I loved the Silent Hill Games, although not the film.) I also love watching through the Resident Evil Games and the best was the latest one, The Village, which my daughter played through on her PS5 keeping me up way past my bedtime.

What About the Kids?

Well, the girls have lost interest in Trick or Treating, and the Little Man has always refused to dress up. So each year we try to do something just to mark the day. We have had Halloween food and treats including these rather nice Toe Nail dusted cakes.

We do love to pimp up a pumpkin for Halloween though. Here’s some we made earlier. We do tend to go for Pokemon themes, or cats, cats are nice!

We used to carve our pumpkins at home but for the last couple of years we have been going to a local farm where they hold Pumpkin carving sessions. We buy our pumpkins and carve them in a huge marque while surrounded by witches and demons and spooky music. We are doing this again on Wednesday but here’s a photo from a couple of years ago.

three children and a purple witch holding pumpkins inf ront of a spooky background. — *Pumpkin Parlour at Beckett’s Farm*

Way back in 2014 (Was it really so long ago?) We visited local Hatton Adventure World where we picked our own pumpkins from the pumpkin patch and had a fun day out as well. Unfortunately, pumpkin patches are not that wheelchair friendly so we haven’t been for a while.

My kids don’t seem to get scared easily, I mean my Little Man even picks up spiders eek. I’ve decided that this year I’m going to do a bit of a spooky Halloween Scavenger Hunt which I downloaded for free from Justins Juggles. I don’t know if I can get all the little items but I can subsitute some of them for pictures and a little sweet treat. It will make up for not going Trick or Treating. I will try and get the girls involved so they can work together, and I’m turning the lights off and giving them a torch.

More Ideas

If you are still a bit unsure of what to do for Halloween here are a few more ideas.

Kim has made some Halloween Spiders to munch on…oh yummy!

Ashley shares her favourite Halloween Movies to Binge Watch

Some more Spooky not Scary Movies from the Marvellous Mrs P

Amanda shares some spooky stories to read

How about some cute dogs dressed up for Halloween from Jo

Joanna shares a photo of an old fashioned Halloween dressing up costume

How to make a pumpkin spiced creamer from Cheryl

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a spooky Halloween whatever you do.

BLOGTOBER 2019 POSTS

Blotgober Day 1 – All You Need is Love
Blogtober Day 2 – Coppafeel – Breast Cancer Awareness.
Blogtober Day 3 – Out of Spoons (a poem)
Blogtober Day 4 – Smile
Blogtober Day 5 – Autumn Fashion
Blogtober Day 6 -Baking
Blogtober Day 7 – missed
Blogtober Day 8 – The School Run
Blogtober Day 9 – Avon Give Away
Blogtober Day 10 – What I’m watching (or have watched) Lately
Blogtober Day 11 – Blogtober
Blogtober Day 12 – 6 Reflections on Autumn
Blogtober Day 13 – Impractical Jokers
Blogotber Day 14 – Weekly Meal Planning
Blogtober Day 15 – Everybody Hurts Sometimes
Blogtober Day 16 –The Horrible Craft Book
Blogtober Day 17 – missed
Blogtober Day 18 – Word of the Week – Worry
Blogtober Day 19 – Christmas Crochet Along
Blogtober Day 20 – My Sunday Photo – About Me
Blogtober Day 21 – Momentous Events in the Life of a Cactus – review
Blogtober Day 22 – missed
Blogtober Day 23 – Explaining the Different Types of Eating Disorders
Blogtober Day 24 – Stiff Person Awareness Day 2019
Blogtober Day 25 – Word of the Week – Sleep
Blogtober Day 26 – missed
Blogtober Day 27 – My Sunday Photo – C is for CAL
Blogtober Day 28 – This is Halloween

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My Sunday Photo – 17th June 2017

by Anne Sweet 10 Comments

When the kids met the chefs!

Yesterday we went to the BBC Good Food Show and had a fun but tiring day. We didn’t get to see many chefs out of these we only saw Michel Roux Jnr and that was only on the big screen while we were outside the theatre he was in. But..we did get to see Joe Wicks in action in the theatre.

It was a real good show and we saw Joe cook two very easy and tasty looking meals in just 15 minutes each. There was also some Q&A sessions and some audience participation. The kids loved the show and Boo insisted we go and buy one of Joe’s Books afterwards. It’s actually a pretty good book with over 100 healthy recipes, Boo really wants to try some out.

I’ll be writing more about our day at the show later in the week.

Banana, Honey and Walnut Tea Loaf Recipe

by Anne Sweet 5 Comments

Banana, honey and walnut tea loaf with a cup of tea

You know when you get some over ripe bananas left in your fruit bowl and you don’t want them to go to waste? They would be perfect for this recipe, the riper the bananas the better.

I love a nice tea loaf that is packed with flavour, but the added chopped walnuts also add nice crunch to this loaf, giving it that little bit extra.

Enjoy it on a Sunday evening with a nice cup of tea!

Banana, Honey and Walnut Tea Loaf

Ingredients:

115g butter, softened
115g soft brown sugar
115g thick set honey
2 eggs, beaten
225g self-raising flour
2 large bananas
squeeze of lemon juice
60g crushed walnuts

Method:

Preheat oven to 180C/gas mark 4
Grease and line a 900g loaf tin
In a large bowl place the butter, sugar and honey and beat together until light and fluffy
Gradually beat in the eggs
fold in the flour
mash the bananas with the lemon juice
fold them into the batter along with the crushed walnuts
spoon mixture into tin and level the surface
Bake the loaf for 1 hour until risen, golden brown and firm to the touch.
Serve warm or cold.

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