Stash Avalanche

Ultimate comfort food

I love this. Loveitloveitloveit. Could eat it every day. What is it? Broccoli pasta cheese with salami. Ohmigod, I love it. Mr G and I somehow invented this in our heady student days, although it is quite possible that 50,000 people have also independently invented it. Sorry. Just had to share how much I love this with you.

And then there's pudding. Bread and butter pudding (with (rather old) pandoro and no butter actually, but let's not split hairs here). Quite a long time ago I discovered that brioche makes fabulous b&b pud, and I decided to see if pannetone would work just as well (and salve my conscience a bit because it doesn't have half the fat of brioche). And it does. You should try it.



And finally, cake. Well, the oven was on, what could I do?



As is my wont when I'm blog reading, I always end up reading the blogs I subscribe to, and all the blogs they link to, and all the blogs they link to... nearly ad infinitum. And because of this, I stumbled upon Smitten Kitchen and her walnut jam cake. I like nut cake a lot but somehow I've never made any and this just sounded delish, so last night I went for it.

You have to toast the walnuts in the oven before you grind them, and I have to say that the resulting ground nut and sugar mix tasted really synthetic and I became very doubtful that anything good would come out of the oven. But I was utterly wrong. The cake is (sorry, I have to say it again) delish - on it's own, and with the jam and cream as the recipe suggests - and nothing like it's uncooked self. I don't have a food processor so the nuts were ground in a coffee grinder and a bit on the lumpy side, but I thought this made the cake even better. I think next time, I will try with hazelnuts, and add the nuts with the flour instead of mixing with the sugar at the beginning. But in any case, it's fab and I recommend it to you.

Happy Saturday!

This week has not been entirely positive, but the positive parts are mostly happening today and mostly involve cake.

Yesterday I made a raspberry yoghurt cake, which we managed not to start last night, and will be post-squash fodder for Mr G and his friend C, and of course, me. It's basically a big pot of fruits of the forest yoghurt, mixed with a strawberry jelly and a bag of frozen raspberries, and all poured into a sponge flan case when it's on the point of setting. I could eat it for nearly every meal.



I make it all the time in the summer with different fruit and jelly combinations, and like to think of it as my slimming version of cheesecake. And when it's not supposed to be "diet" food, I use fromage frais or similar instead of the yoghurt.


Just out of the oven 20 minutes ago are a plain vanilla sponge and a caraway seed cake, both prompted by a Lack Of Pudding last night (and the taunts of the raspberry yoghurt cake in the fridge). These will go in the freezer in pieces, ready to satisfy The Need For Cake.



I just have to make sure these don't become post-squash fodder too although hopefully Mr G will be put off by the caraway.


And just to finish, two other jolly-making things from today. Firstly my hellebores are flowering...



... and secondly, the combination of stripey socks and my wonderful girly Clarks shoes, which always make me cheerful.



Happy Saturday!

Heaven on a plate

Oooooh. The last time I ate home made Boston Baked Beans was when I was about 12 and my mother made a pot full. I still remember how fabulous it was. And then last week, I got it into my head to make some myself. And today was BBB Day! And I have to say it was oooooh all over again. With mash. Double oooooh.

So much for telling you about sewing. I'll try to get to that tomorrow.