SUPERGRAN'S "ANGRY MESS!"

Recipe Ingredients

4 peaches

1 tbsp castor sugar

punnet of raspberries

50 grams icing sugar

homemade sponge flan using 2 egg mix

a couple of spoons of warmed apricot jam

1 pt custard 

Hundreds and thousands

Recipe Method

1. Poach peaches with castor sugar for 10 mins then cool, skin and slice.

 ( Don't worry if the skins don't come completely off and they go mushy!)

2. Sprinkle icing sugar over the raspberries and leave for 20 mins

3. Make your sponge flan, remember to use a tin that you haven't used in yonks but make sure it is  well greased and floured!

4. When your perfect sponge flan is cooked, let it cool slightly and tip it out onto a wire rack.

 (Don't worry if half of the flan remains stuck in the tin, just hook that out with your finger and eat it!)

5.  Stuff, or should I say place, your broken pieces of sponge flan into a dish and drizzle the warmed apricot jam over the top in a frantic action.

6. At this stage you should sieve the raspberries and icing sugar through a fine sieve to make a coulis  

but to be honest at this stage why bother. Why do one thing right when the rest is all so not right! Spread the raspberries over the jammy sponge.

7. Spread your peach slices or mushy peaches over the top of the jammy, raspberry, sponge.

8. Conceal the whole lot with a covering of at least 1 pt of custard.

9. Finally, sprinkle with hundreds and thousands and pop in the fridge to hopefully set.

And so there you have it, a

de- constructed 

fresh peach sponge flan with raspberry coulis

I'm thinking of applying for master chef, what do you think?

DROPS ALPACA BABY BLANKET

Now that it is finished I'm really pleased with this baby blanket. I've made it for one of Kate's friends who's expecting in September. Now she tells me that another friend is expecting, so I need to get my thinking hat on again and get back to the wool shop. 

Meanwhile while I'm thinking I've picked up my crochet hook again and I'm back working on my granny square blanket.

 One of best things about summer is that you can enjoy all the summer goodies. Last Sunday we had our first bbq of the year and this fruity dessert that I had conjured up after seeing a Mary Berry recipe in the Radio Times was divulged by my very hungry family fairly quick until not a berry or crumb was left on the plate!

Another thing about summer sunshine is that it makes you feel that you want to get out and have fun. 

Yesterday as schools were closing for the weekend we collected our grandchildren and set off for the seaside. 

Considering my husband is of the "all things boats" fraternity and we also live a stone's throw from the river we can never seem to judge the right time to arrive at the seaside, when the tide is in. This is despite owning two tide clocks, one upstairs and one downstairs.  

So as we drove over to Mersea Island with two children in the back clutching their fishing nets, it soon became evident and no surprise when we crossed the Stroud to find that the tide was completely and utterly out!

We soon however got stuck in to some serious digging and sand castle design

 and I made use of the fishing nets and created a hopscotch course. This kept us amused for a while, while Michael went off to buy us some dinner.

As the seagulls flew overhead, we dined on fish and salty chips straight from the paper. The girls thought that was great and eat hungrily, probably because they were worried that the seagulls would swoop and pinch their chips.
Then after dinner as the tide was now on the turn my three intrepid explorers set off to find the sea!

They didn't quite get there as they had to turn tail and return to sandier ground. Unfortunately they got a  little muddier than was intended. Their grandad had one of his best pair of shoes on as well, oh dear!

PEPPER PIG BIRTHDAY CAKE

Jessica will be 3 this week and a huge Pepper Pig fan. So, the request was put in for Granny to bake the birthday cake.
This is just 2 plain sponges that were baked in a swiss roll tin and sandwiched together with butter cream and jam. After covering with white icing I used an oversized picture of peppa as a template and cut out first the body in pink and then the red dress which I laid over the top. I added the arms, legs, ears, tail and feet and eyes (liquorice) at the end.
I cheated with the letters, managing to buy them, which was handy.
We took the cake round for Jessica at lunch time today as we had a family tea party.
By the time we left, Peppa was legless.
The cake tasted very nice.

I have another post which will follow in a day or two with a sky scarf update.

A BIT OF A PAVLOVA!

It was Kate's birthday on Wednesday and I prepared dinner for us all to celebrate. A quick and easy lasagne for main course, or so I thought. I have an old and trusted friend when it comes to making white sauces, my old and battered Tefal Saucier, it never falters!!!!

Until yesterday!

Would the sauce thicken, no it wouldn't. I added extra cornflour, flour, it made no difference. I decided that perhaps the Saucier had come to the end of it's life so I wrapped my hands round it to see if there was any heat in the poor old girl and found very quickly that it was indeed very hot. Ouch!!

Out came a saucepan and as soon as I'd put it on the gas the sauce became thicker and thicker and thicker so I added more milk and even more milk. You guessed it, it didn't manage to thin the sauce.

So my quick and easy lasagne ended up with lots of blobs of sauce over the top, covered by a heavy disguise/garnish of grated mozzarella.

It cooked nicely though and tasted lovely!

Thankfully the dessert wasn't as stressful and was gorgeous!

I'm also very pleased to have received this award from Miriam this week.

The Liebster Award is a blog award, which apparently originated in Germany, to showcase bloggers with fewer than 200 followers.  Upon accepting the award the recipient must then pass it on to five more blogs of note, which is a wonderful way of introducing bloggers to your own favourite blogs.

The Liebster Convention says you must:-

1. Thank your award presenter on your blog and link back to him/her;

2. Copy and paste the award to your blog;

3. Present the Liebster Award to 5 blogs (with less than 200 followers) that you love;

4. Leave a comment on their blog to let them know;

5. Have faith that those award winners will spread the blog love.

I now get to pass this award onto five other blogs that I read and enjoy, easy I thought, but I discovered it's not as easy as you might think. The problems I found are not all bloggers publish their followers and a rule of this award is the blog has to have under 200 followers. I wish I could give all the blogs I read an award you all deserve one but here are my five;


Diane Dianehobbit
Katie M Katie yarngarden
Hawthorn 11am
Snoopydog Snoopydogknits


And 1 to follow!

ALL CHANGE

My daughter in law's hours and days have just changed at work. Now she'll be able to collect Charlotte from school every day and I will only have to look after Jessica on a Tuesday until about 2ish. It's going to be strange not seeing them both on a Wednesday. Swimming, baking, pom pom making and drawing were just some of things we got up to in those couple of hours before Jo came to collect them.

Poor Michael did have words to offer when I told him about the impending change but his "well, at least you've had nearly 6 years!!!!" didn't actually hit the right bar of the comfort stakes in my opinion.
After all, I'm the mother who cried when her daughter announced she wasn't coming on holiday with us anymore and I cried even more, great big bucket loads when my son left home - the first time. Don't worry I was much better the next time he went!

 It was nice to spend time this morning with Jessica. She's not quite 3 but with my guidance, (I thought it best, I didn't want cake mix shooting up all over my newly painted walls) I let her loose with the electric cake whisk and she made these lovely little cakes to take home to share with Charlotte when she gets home from school.

Tomorrow afternoon, I will catch up with Charlotte after all as we're going to go and watch Jessica have her first swimming lesson.

When I asked her about it today she said, "it's not just wimming Granny,  it's a esson and I'm doing it on my oooown!"

She's a very confident little girl where wimmimg, sorry I mean swimming is concerned so I asked her if she was going to show the teacher that she could swim under the water with the fishes.

"Yeh" she said, "with my doddles on!"

Oh bless!

BACK TO BAKING AND MAKING!

This is coconut ice, Charlotte & Jessica's version!

Now we are back to normal in our house and we have a fully functioning kitchen I promised my grand daughters that on their next visit they could make coconut ice. 

I'd been given some neatly sliced, neatly wrapped free samples of this very sweet delicacy back in January when we'd been checking out caterers for my daughters  wedding and when the children tasted it I told them that I used to make it with my mum when I was a little girl.

Charlotte was eager to make it too so I found this Lesley Waters recipe on the BBC good food website and went in search of condensed milk at the supermarket.

When Charlotte came out of school on Wednesday we came back here donned our aprons and the three of us set to with our task of making coconut ice. For the first time, Charlotte had a go at reading the recipe herself and actually it was a good recipe to start off with as it had only three ingredients to measure and three stages in the method. Also it was good because Charlotte could mix the pink together and Jessica the white. The only slight deviation with the recipe came when Charlotte decided that she didn't want the ices one on top of the other, just side by side. But don't all great chefs use their own imagination!!

 It did look a little bumpy, somewhat uneven when it left here and my kitchen looked like a coconut bomb had hit it but the main thing was that the children had a great time making it. 

A DELIGHTFUL BAKING EXPERIENCE!

My week has been really good. Lots of knitting, some christmas shopping and on Wednesday my two little chefs came round to bake their christmas cake. They were brilliant! Charlotte beat the butter and sugar together, Jessica whisked the eggs for what seemed forever and then they both combined the two parts together and mixed in the fruit.  

AND
all super gran had to do was, clear up the mess and wipe the grandchildren down!

After 4 hours the cake came out of the oven looking and smelling delicious.
They really are master mini chefs!