Food processor giveaway

This competition is now closed, thankyou to everyone who entered and congratulations to Gill who won the food processor. x

I have a fabulous giveaway for you today, and it's something that I actually really need myself at the moment, but I'm afraid I can't allow myself to enter in case you accuse me of favoritism. 

It is a Kenwood food processor...hurrah! I do own a mini food processor but it is only big enough for a few herbs, and as I am busy testing recipes for Christmas pudding at the moment (coming soon)  it is taking an age to make all the bread crumbs that I need.

However this one would be perfect, and it comes with a blender. You can see all the details of the product here.

If you are getting ready for Stir Up Sunday and would love to save some time then I'll tell you how you can be in with a chance of winning. You do have to live in the UK though (sorry rest of the world!)

Let me know in the comment section how you would use this food processor, please leave an email address with your comment too.

Leave a separate comment if you follow me, if you link to this post via Facebook, Twitter or your own blog. So you could have up to five chances of winning.

The competition will close on Tuesday 26th November at 12pm.  The winner will be drawn using random.org.

Good luck.

(This competition is in collaboration with Argos, I haven't received any payment or products for hosting this giveaway.)

xxx

NOW CLOSED!

Figgy-walnut sandwich bites

Every so often, if I am feeling tired and sluggish for no discernible reason, I take a little break from wheat, but as you can imagine this is not easy considering a) I bake for a living and b) how much I really really love cake!

So after mainlining wheat based baked goods for a prolonged period  I decided to step away from the flour. I knew that this would be too hard to do without a stash of wheat-free goodies for me to turn to if I needed some of the good stuff. So I created these little biscuits to be my guilty pleasure (when the kidlets weren't looking.) I made them with wheat-free flour, which I actually really like, it has more of a gritty texture than normal flour and can feel drier in the mouth, but married with a delicious ganache filling they were perfect. Of course you can make them with a wheat based flour if you prefer and they would be just as yummy. I had to sample the biscuits as soon as they came out of the oven (naturally) and they were delicious, they would be perfect with a cup of tea or coffee in their naked state, but dressed with a dollop of figgy jam and some ganache they are quite scrumptious.

Place the chopped figs and caster sugar in pan and heat gently until the sugar has dissolved, bring to the boil and then simmer until it forms a jam (104C/220F.) If you don't have a sugar thermometer, when you think the jam has nearly set take the pan off the heat, then put a teaspoonful of the jam onto a saucer and place in the fridge, after a couple of minutes take it out, push the surface of the jam, if you can see wrinkling then the jam is set (if it is not ready then simmer for five minutes and try again.)

Put the remaining ingredients into a bowl and rub them together with your fingers until they form a dough. Pat the dough into a flat cake shape, cover it with kitchen film and place in the fridge for at least an hour.

Roll the dough out to a depth of 3-4cm.

Cut out the biscuits with a circle cutter measuring roughly 5cm, and place them on a lined baking tray.

Bake in a preheated oven 200C for ten minutes or until they are golden brown around the edges. 

The unfilled cookies can be stored in a tin for up to a week and will remain perfectly crisp.

(I'd like to point out that my fingers are not injured but just covered in food colours)

 

Melt 100g of good quality dark chocolate, then add 50ml of boiling water. Beat together until they have combined and leave the ganache to cool slightly.

Put the ganache into a piping bag. Place a small dollop of the fig jam in the middle of a biscuit. Pipe the ganache around the edge of the biscuit. Then gently press another cookie on top. 

The finished cookies need to be eaten on day you fill them, although they will last longer if you forgo the figgy jam and just use ganache as a filling.

You can download the recipe by clicking on the arrow in the picture above, or click on the printer to print out the pdf. 

I hope that you will enjoy these biscuits as much as I did (I pretty much ate the whole batch myself!)

xxx

Classes in Barcelona

I will be visiting Barcelona in January next year to teach two classes.

The basic rose class.

A mash up of the cupcake class and the cookie class.

See here for details on booking.

xxx

Cowgirl party

On the morning of the party I woke up in something of a panic. It was only the previous day that we had finished redecorating our house and I had invited fourteen seven year old girls around to play cowgirls! If it was a rainy day then we were doomed!

Fortunately the sun was shining ,and I breathed a sigh of relief. They could be thrown into the garden and banned from coming inside. Yee Haw!

Here are a few pictures of the dessert table I created for the party.

I based the cake on the neckerchiefs that we had given out as the party invites, with a cowgirl cut out as a topper. I photocopied one of the scarves and used that to cover the cake board. I hadn't had time to find hay bales so I used some straw from our rabbits bedding supply as decoration.

These were shotgun cupcakes, vanilla flavoured with popping candy sprinkled on top!

I also made cow hide refrigerator cake.

And hay bale cake pops.

My big kidlet made drawings of each party guest to go onto the goody bags and I made pony cookies.

I got the felt ponies for the goody bags from the always fabulous Heartfelt Handmade.

Obviously we had to have a pinata, which my eldest kidlet made for the party (it's great that I can give my instructions and then get on with other things!). You can find a tutorial for making your own pinata here.

The party girl enjoyed herself immensely, as did the guest. I'm not sure will prove to be last childrens party I host for my kids, the eldest is way past this stage and my littlest one shows signs of moving on too!

But I'm sure I can force myself onto some of my friends and party plan for their children.

Keep on Yee Hawing!

xxx

ps we did find some sticky hand prints all along our newly painted wall after everyone had left, (well we couldn't stop toilet visits) but fortunately they washed off!