treacle soda bread (with sesame seeds)

This has been a very productive revision session guys(!)

Well it's Friday night so it doesn't really matter, besides I've been desperate to post this all week but couldn't get the photos sorted because the application wasn't working properly, 'twas very annoying indeed.  

Just realised just now that this bread recipe is from the same recipe book at the last post! I have loads of baking books with little sticky notes in them with the hope one day I will bake them, I just need to get a move on. This is one of those books where you want to bake everything out of the whole book, possibly at the same time, and taste test all of them, I'm sure humans will evolve to have more arms purely for cooking purposes.

I cannot praise this bread enough though, it was eaten within less than two day (remember there is only three of us in the house), I'm pretty positive I ate over half of it. It's also the second time I'd baked it within two weeks after never trying the recipe before. At first I thought that something had gone wrong with the bread as the texture was so dense (as you can see in the photo above) but after a second baking I determined this is how is was suppose to be which is probably how I ended up eating over half of it.....I've never baked a soda bread before so I hope this is the right texture if anyone would like to advise me? 

Chocolate and Banana Bread [happy new year!]

Happy New year! 

Just finishing blowing off the cobwebs from 2013, I can't believe I've had my blog just over a year now. I remember this time last year thinking to myself 'hmm a blog sounds like a fun idea, this year I'll try do a blog', and here I am one year later still doing it (which is a big achievement for me because I get bored so quickly). 

I also remember no having a clue what to write or to have a theme or just my daily life, that's why if you look at my very first posts they're a little vague and... well..... strange! I can't believe I wrote a post on how we failed to make a frangipane for Burns night complete with a picture of the failed pastry case! 

Well I like to think my blog has progressed a little from this time last year, thank you to those who follow me or post comments and even if you just happen to be reading this! I hope you had a very nice new year too and best wishes for 2014! 

I just thought I'd share this from Innocent smoothies facebook page because it made me smile about the year ahead....

I also need to mention that next month and up until June I will be revising and doing my GCSEs (exams you take in England in year 11) so I may be posting even more infrequently than normal :( 

but please bare with! I haven't forgotten my blog (how could I!?) I will just be revising as that should probably be my number one priority.........

ANYWAY I will stop boring you now and commence onto the subject of cake! :D

christmas craft (pinecone garland, coat hanger tree, wrapping paper)

As if the last time I posted was the end of November! What have I been doing all this time? COUNTING DOWN TO CHRISTMAS!

For this post I just thought I'd kinda suggest some christmas crafts since I haven't done any craft in ages because it's quite hard to write out the methods but these are kinda just ideas. I got lots more ideas on my Pinterest, I've kinda gone crazy with the festive pinning lately! And gift wrap too...... Anyhoo here's how to make a pinecone garland!

These pinecones reminded me of Icicles, plus they're covered in Glitter! And who doesn't love glitter!? Apart from the people who clean it up of course, so first of all you're gonna gave to find your pinecones!.......... I made this la'al video to show us finding them but it then escalated to me washing, drying, painting and hanging them! Enjoy :) 

 Once you've found and washed your pine cones leave them to dry, I was kinda impatient so I put them on newspaper on the back of our aga to dry quickly. I think if you might want to put them on a very low temperature in the oven because leaving them to dry naturally might mean they stay a little damp.