Apple Streusel

Last Sunday we had extra family over for dinner, so of course I took this as an opportunity to go all out and make a fabulous Sunday dinner spread! For the starter I decided I'd make a fruit mix, so I had raspberries, strawberries, grapes and blueberries. Dad got a roast beef (not my favorite of meats, so I make an extra effort to make it really tender and yummy) for the main course, then I stocked up on loads of fresh veg for it also. I love loads of colors in a dinner, so I had about five different veg for the dinner! Baby corn, sauted mushrooms and onions, carrots and string beans. Mmm.

The night before I made the dessert- we had cooking apples in the house and I found an Apple Struesel recipe, so I whipped that up! It was delicious! I served it with a little bit of wonderful vanilla ice cream and it went down an absolute treat! I added raisins to the mix to jazz it up a bit and just a sprinkling of chopped nuts on the crumble. I take it as a good sign when there are no leftovers and safe to say Magnum didn't get any that day:)

Cakes for a Memorial Night

About two weeks ago (I'm so behind...) I went to the St. Clare's Orphanage Fire Memorial in Cavan. I'm on the committee and at one of the meetings whilst trying to organise the event, told the others I'd bake for it as some other women were making sandwiches and we'd have tea and coffee, so of course one would need some cake. I baked a bunch of cupcakes and made 2 cakes also. Needless to say they didn't last very long with near 400 people there on the night, but they went down very well! A lady asked me do I do wedding cakes... I said I don't and she said I should! Madness. They might taste nice, but I have an awful long way to go before I'm anywhere near that standard!:D

Here are some pics of the goodies! I made a plain buttercream sponge cake with Mini Smarties on top and in the bundt cake I added defrosted berries. You can get a great bag of them in Aldi and you just need to defrost them a few hours before you need them! Incredibly handy!:)

I also used a different buttercream recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook that I got one day in the library! Oh it's so incredible! It's American in style, such as recommending that you use what would be muffin cases over here for cupcakes, not the bun ones. They're much better that big as I see cupcakes as a dessert style food anyway, if they're decorated well and provide at least 4 mouthfuls:)

Vanilla Buttercream:
250g icing sugar, sifted
80g unsalted butter at room temperature
25ml whole milk
a couple of drops of vanilla essence

-Cream it all together. I dare you to try and not eat this from the bowl with your fingers...

Presents for Jo!

Okay, so a few weeks back I said I had recently made a new present, but I couldn't post it until I gave it, and now I can! Over the weekend I went to my darling Jo's and gave it to her- an apron:) Jo has recently been baking a bit (see her on Jen's baking blog over there-> )and I thought it would be cool to make her one. I measured my brother Conor (he's a little taller than Jo and closer to her height than me) for the apron and set about making it! I thought it would also be cool to put Jo's name on it and personalise it that little bit more, so I put a little bit of wadding behind a piece of cream material to puff it out a little and stitched Jo's name, then I also made her a little card cos I like making those too!:)

Here are some snaps of the apron and the cookies- the chocolate on top of the cookies isn't supposed to be there, I threw in the extra squares after baking and they melted...though it could work out well if I intend to add it the next time!
Sorry it's late Jo- you know what Cavan does to your life! <3

Flat Lake Festival!

Our little cake stand
So...this is over a week late! Es tut mir leid!
Last Sunday Slacke and I were at the Flat Lake Festival in Monaghan, selling cakes at the Cafe Sessions! However, before I get cracking on that, we must first pay homage to the late night spent in the Slacke kitchen the night before!. Bed was sometime around 3am and Denise had been baking all day. I baked the cakes of my batch (sans decorations) Friday night and sealed them up, packed up with the decorations I was bringing for the cake area of the tent as well as more baking stuff. I then made some funny looking cupcakes at work and brought them with me too...
The night before

Coco the amazing dog kept us company during the hours spent baking and decorating and general kitcheny activities and even stole a krispie cake for herself along the way. Hilarity ensued when Denise ran out to give out to her:D Come bedtime, Denise and I were so tired, we didn't even get to say goodnight to one another...
The wonderful Tom drove us the relatively short distance to Clones the following morning, boot filled with goodies, tea & coffee dispensers and laps carefully navigating the bendy roads and moving trays of cupcakes accordingly. At the festival, I got a lift with most of our stuff (poor Denise & Tom carried cupcake trays and a few other things!) via a quad and little trailer...my heart sank when I saw that that was how our cakes and delicate coffee equipment were being transported to the site! The drive was steep and bumpy, but thanks to my crafty driver, all was delivered intact! The day saw us entertained by Harry Bird and the Rubber Wellies, Henrietta Game, The Amazing Few and Riona Sally Hartman (links below!) who were my favorite acts! We had fun chatting to and feeding the Wellies and Harry and we even got the song Beard Snood dedicated to us later that night (it's about baking!) and I got to play the cymbal for the wonderful Wellies as well! Wooooo! It was also the first time I got to actually make money on what I've baked and Slacke & moi are very happy about that:)

All in all, it was a great day and Griffin and Ceri even came back to Slacke's with us that night! We stayed up much too late considering we were all shattered (especially poor Ceri!), but it was such a fun time.
I'm just going to post links here for you so you can have a little listen to the amazing musicians our ears were graced with for hours on end:)
A super big thank you to Mr Tom who drove us there and back! Stupendous man altogether.
Riona Sally Hartman
Harry Bird and the Rubber Wellies
Henrietta Game
If they were a three legged dog, I'd like to be their third wellie <3
Playing the cymbal and wearing my new skirt!

Lori Skirt for the Flat Lake Festival

It's been a while! Oops. But I've been keeping busy, so I guess that's a good thing!:)
Last night I made a skirt! Wooo! A proper one! With lining and a zip!
(But no pattern as such. Don't tell Nana.)
I've had this material since my 21st and have been too scared to cut it incase I ruined it, so at long last I did. I knew I wanted to make a flared skirt with it, waist high. So I laid out a skirt I already had similar in style and drew it out on an old sheet so I could have a practice run. The practice run went accordingly, so I finally used the lovely material Laura K got me. It was quite the Lori evening as I had on the mixed cd she made me, was using the material she got me and was contemplating the buttons she gave me...


Anyhoodle, I happened to have a zip I bought last summer, so I added it to the side and sewed all up! It's quite cute and I've named it the Lori Skirt after the lovely Kavanagh gal in my life. I had a little bit left over, so I made a sash tie put of it that I tie at the top of it and it doubles as a hair tie.
Here are some snaps of it! I'm going to the Flat Lake Festival on Sunday, so I'll wear it then with a white blouse:)
Last week I sewed something new too, but it's a present, so I can't put it up until I give it!:)

Rachel's Rustic Bacon & Cheddar Bread

This evening I was at my brother's Leaving Cert Graduation Mass and in the car home, reflecting on the lovely encouraging words of his principal, I got The Fear. For many, that Fear might be when you think you're at death's door from a hangover, but it also works for that sense of complete dread and bewilderment you might get regarding what the hell you're going to do with your life. As well as the immediate future. So when I got in the door, I decided I'd bake. Obviously.
I took out Rachel Allen's Bake book (at this rate I imitate that movie Julie & Julia and see if I can make all of Rachel's recipes) and decided I'd try some bread. Since I don't have yeast or buttermilk in the house, I was quite limited, so I tried the bacon and cheddar bread. Oh my wow it's yummy. And stupidly easy to make. It sounds strange, having bacon and cheese in bread, rather than on it, but it's soooo good. It says it's a good served with soup or just with butter, so I dished it out with a bit of butter to my parents with some tea and coffee when it was ready and joined them in sitting back and watching some girl try and make her dream of creating a B&B a reality on More4. The Fear had subsided. But only slightly.

Burgers for this amazing summer weather!

Technically this isn't like the rest of my posts, but there is a bit of baking involved! Plus they were so yummy it'd be silly not to put them up! This weekend the weather was just beautiful- everyone had their pasty white skin out on show, hoping to take the glare off it with some color. Well I know that was my intention today anyway! I made burgers yesterday for the family, my uncle and my little cousins who were up for the weekend. I used our loved Jamie Oliver recipe for the burgers from his book The Return of the Naked Chef. Then Mom made her potato salad and we all tucked in. Jamie says to bake the burgers, but I find if you quickly fry them for a few minutes, until they're about half cooked, then cover them in foil on a baking tray, it stops them crumbling. Put the oven to 200 degrees C and bake for about 15 minutes to finish them off. Here's a link to the recipe someone else posted online. Maybe I'm just lazy, but I don't add the cumin or coriander seeds, though I do add a sprinkling of mixed herbs. I highly recommend these! They're incredibly simple and sooo tasty:)
Jamie's Botham Burgers

Trying out my new baking equipment!

I also baked butter cookies the other day for a tea day we were having with Marion (before she left for France) in Cat's which has become my second home! I used the new cookie cutters the girls got me in my bag of goodies last week, so we had cookies shaped like cars, hands, snails, camels and stars! I also made jam sandwich ones with some chocolate which always go down well:) These cookies are just so yummy I'm going to put up the recipe; it's from a cookbook I got from my old school in NY and it's the one I always use for butter cookies- it's foolproof:)

1/4 lb. margarine
1 1/2 cup plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup sugar
1 egg

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C. Cream the marg and sugar together, then add the egg. Add in the dry ingredients and blend. Then add about 2 tablespoons of water and scrunch all together with your hands. Turn onto a well floured surface, roll out and cut. Place on a baking tray with grease proof paper and bake for 10 minutes.
Result: soft, fabulous cookies:)

Another (but slightly different) coffee cake

Early last week I was going to a BBQ birthday party with Conor, hosted by the dears Natalie & Brid who are the darlings behind the Two Knit Wits blog (link over there-> ) and I thought I'd bake for them, of course. However, I tried a new coffee cake recipe and while it looks okay, I'm not sure about the coffee topping! I don't recommend trying a new cake the night before you give it to someone...the nerves if you aren't really happy with it!:S The topping is a chocolate/coffee thing? I think I added too much coffee and maybe that's why I'm not fond of the taste, but I hope the girls liked it! The cake is quite nice with raisins and chopped walnuts in it which the other coffee cake didn't have, though I think I'll add them in future and use the Rachel Allen coffee cream. They both told me they like coffee cake and Brid hugged me when she saw the walnuts on top, so I'm hoping it went down well!:)
BTW- the BBQ party was spectacular <3

I have no words.

I actually don't. Language is ineffective a lot of the time, I find.

On Tuesday we had summer farewell drinks in Bakers as a class with some of our super cool lecturers. The girls had been acting suspiciously for a few days and were telling me they knew something I didn't... I found out in Bakers that this little thing was that for weeks Griffin had been orchestrating a round up to get me presents for being rep for the past four years! They presented me with a bag of what can only be described as amazingness. There was baking stuff, wall stickers, a beautiful notebook, a super cool clip that's a little hat, a fabulous scarf, earrings, a purse, then a voucher for MAC in Brown Thomas. Like, woah. And yes, I cried just like they thought I would. Lisa drew a card for me too which is beyond fantastic and the class wrote lovely little notes for me and it's now on my mantlepiece here at home. They also got Dave gifts for being my partner in crime. See- sheer amazingness.

Then on Friday I met Laura for tea who gave me even more presents, this time from my 3rd year palaroos. This included tea, chocolate, a notebook, a cupcake apron, and then the most beautiful scrapbook started by Laura and with many pages left for me to fill. I adore it.
I just had to post this because I'm just gobsmacked by it all. I really do have the most wonderful people in my life.
And THEN, last night I got an email from the Snow Patrol mailing list that Gary Lightbody's side project has an album coming out July 12th.
Oh yes.
Here's a taster for Tired Pony. I'm stupidly excited. The happiness just keeps growing!
Tired Pony- I Finally Love This Town