Don't you just love Christmas..

Well it took me quite a while to get in the mood this year but now iv'e done it..i can't wait!

The stars are handmade by P and S handmadecrafts They're Fab, i love them. I'm sure you'll agree they look amazing on our tree :)

Christmas starts early in our house!

I decided to make my own Christmas cake this year for a change.. I made the cake back in October and it's matured so well. I marzipaned,iced and decorated it yesterday and here's how it turned out!

I was so pleased how the cake turned out i made 2 ickle ones too which will be given as Christmas presents

Merry Christmas everyone, hope you have a yummy time!

Chocolate maniac back again!

Spent a lovely few hours this morning baking with my close friend..

We decided to go for a tray bake..

Its a quick and easy recipe and just look at the results :)

Click here for the recipe

Lake District Loveliness

Me and Deb enjoyed a really lovely and long awaited holiday last week.

Spent 5 night at Glenville House in between the towns of Windermere & Bowness

 Bowness pier on the banks of Lake Windermere

 It was a lovely cruise on a gorgeous day :)

 Beautiful Ambleside

The view from our room

Yummy brownies

I haven't baked in quite a while and Deb was looking through this months BBC Good Food magazine and came across her fav's... chocolate brownies. This is how they turned out..

The whole house smelt gorgeous while they were cooking.. oh and they taste LUSH too

Recipe

150g unsalted butter

225g dark chocolate

3 eggs

125g light muscovado sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

50g fine rice flour (we used plain)

1/4 tsp salt

100g pecans, finely chopped

Melt chocolate and butter over simmering water. Mix eggs sugar vanilla in separate bowl till light n fluffy, fold in flour and salt. Then add chocolate and most of the nuts to the eggs and sugar mixture. Pour out into brownie tray then sprinkle rest of the nuts over the top. Bake for 18 mins 180 degrees C.

Birthday Girl

It was Debs 30th birthday this week. I did think about having a cake made for her from Creative Icing which is where we had our wedding cake made. However i thought go on have a go yourself...so i did.

Fingers were firmly crossed at this point that it was gonna turn out ok

I was so relieved :)

Cake cut and filled with strawberry jam and vanilla buttercream

All done :)

Deb was really impressed and loved everything about it..especially the eeyore

Its so moist too :)

Recipe

Ingredients

• 350g butter, softened
• 350g caster sugar
• 350g S.R. flour
• 175g plain flour
• 6 eggs
• 2 lemons, finely chopped zest

These measurements are for an 8" square cake tin and took 1hr 35 mins to bake at 150 degrees C.