Oat, Chocolate and Cinnamon biscuits

Someone kindly delivered me a batch of oaty chocolatey cinnamony biscuits recently. It's amazing how much baking you get when people are thinking of you.

Annabel Langbein's Ultimate Chocolate Cake

I believe that cakes are good for celebrations, but I have also discovered over recent months that baking is good for the soul. So when my soul and I didn't know what to do with ourselves this afternoon, we baked.

Scottish Oatcakes

Kent's Mum likes to cook and bake things she has never done before (perhaps she should write a blog), and we have often been recipients of her experiments. Recently she dropped off a few samples of some Scottish Oatcakes, and I must say they didn't look very appealing. They just looked so plain, but I think I also expected some unpleasant flavour lurking beneath. But I had a try, and they were indeed plain, pleasantly plain, fairly crunchy, and just right for carrying butter/cheese/avocado/cream cheese, or whatever you like on your crackers. 

I have been looking at cracker recipes lately, I'd love to be able to make my own, and just needed to decide on a recipe to begin with and get going. Reuben loved Gran's Scottish version and I was curious, so what better place to start.

This time of year

Happy New Year friends! I'm having real trouble getting started today. They say you should never start a post saying sorry that you haven't posted for a while, so I won't do that, but perhaps you could just read in between the lines? It's been a tough few weeks. In my upside down life the best times become the worst times, and getting through Christmas was a challenge. You will be proud of me though, we put up the Christmas tree and I bought presents for all. I even finished making those Christmas stockings that bring back memories of this time last year. And yes, I made some food for Christmas Day...

Caramelised Onion and Blue Cheese Focaccia

Shall we just get down to the nitty gritty? I made my upgraded focaccia a week ago and seem to have been struggling to get it on the table (metaphorically speaking of course, believe me, it's been eaten). As I mentioned, we went out for dinner recently with the KR family and had this amazing bread that inspired me to try making focaccia, in the hopes that I could replicate it.

Focaccia

I have been thinking of tackling bread for a long time. It's on my list of things to try and has kept coming to mind lately. Today I had some semi-quiet time at home, as in, Reuben was out and Esther was at home. Despite the great opportunity, I frankly didn't feel like doing anything. I do get stuck like this as times. I tried to settle in to making christmas stockings for the kids, a job I was in the middle of at this time last year, when my whole world fell down around my ears and I haven't looked at them since. It didn't go very well. So I abandoned it and escaped to the kitchen, and, once again, getting out the flour and the mixing bowls and turning on the oven brought the life back to my bones.

Banana Berry Icecream

Reuben requested icecream recently when I was in the middle of a haze of glucose experimenting. I froze at the idea (ha ha, hope you like the pun) of him eating sugar and wondered how I could get around it. Actually no, I didn't. He eats very little sweet food, he's just not in to it (with a few exceptions). He turns his nose up at my baking and tells me his favourite food is broccoli (though I can hardly believe it). So I wasn't afraid of a little icecream.