Claire's Cake Bake & Other Foodiness

What a mad few days! I really don’t know where to begin.

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and Santa brought you some nice gifts. He certainly stopped here as I am now overwhelmed by lots of glorious & mostly foodie presents. To mention, but a few, I am now the proud owner of Simon Rimmers the accidental vegetarian which I cant wait to use. I also have (having arrived today!) the Best-kept Secrets of the Women’s Institute Jams, Pickles & Chutneys. I have a spoon rest, a new super-dooper set of scales, a years subscription to Delicous magazine, the very large & new Gordon Ramsay book and a beautiful Nigella cake stand in cream.

I also got my very own website which I will be moving to soon (I very much hope you’ll join me there). All I can say for now is Hubby is a lovely and very talented man - I have a new logo already - we just need to work on the website layout & content. So keep your eyes peeled for that!

Food-wise, we enjoyed a fantastic (as usual) Christmas day dinner at my mum & dads. We had smoked salmon blini with avocado, mango & chilli salsa. It was really really nice. Hubby had a sausage (its a long term joke in our family) as he doesn’t really like smoked salmon.

The main meal was Turkey with sausages, the-bestest-ever-stuffing (this is my favouritest part), roasted potatoes & roasted parsnips (in goose fat) so they were really crispy, carrots, sprouts (or for me, just one for tradition, I’m really not keen), bread sauce & cranberry sauce (i forgot to take mine, duh!).

Pudding was either Christmas pudding & brandy sauce or my mums triffle - loaded with sherry.

I will be making a smaller version of our feast, hopefully, at the weekend just for Hubby & I.

Oh, and our main present between ourselves was our lovely new digital SLR camera. My Gran was amused as I just took photos of anything that didn’t move all day long! So here are some of our snaps…

I’ve been fancying some scones for a few weeks now so when we where at the supermarket the other day we picked up some clotted cream & strawberry jam.

This afternoon I baked the scones. This is the second time I’ve made them with the Mary Berry recipe and both times I found I needed much more flour than it says (otherwise you end up with a soggy gooey mixture that you cannot knead nevermind roll out!).

Here is the recipe

1. Sieve 250g self raising flour & 2 teaspoons of baking powder into a bowl
2. Add 60g butter - in small cubes
3. Mix with your hands into breadcrumb type mixture
4. Add 30g sugar
5. Put one egg into a jug & add milk upto 1/4 pint (beat lightly)
6. Add liquid to mix & stir into dough
7. I added a good handful of Sultanas here (not in original recipe)
8. Knead dough (you will probably need to add more flour at this point until mixture is more dough like)
9. Roll out to 1cm-1/2″ thickness
10. Cut into scone size circles & put on a buttered baking tray - use excess milk to brush tops of scones
11. Cook at 220°c for approx 10 mins or until risen & golden brown

Cool on wire rack

Serve with cream & jam or just butter and a nice cup of tea. Enjoy