What Delilah Did

New Bag Kit + Update

Afternoon all. The sun has disappeared behind a bunch of big fat clouds here today so I thought it was a good time to brighten things up and show you my new bag kit. I can't get my camera to do the colours justice, but they look awesome in person: minty aqua + chartreuse + mink. I always think the more unexpected combinations look the best. This one is in the shop now; I plan to add a coral version in the next few weeks too.

Peeking out of the top is my new favourite book - Lily Vanilli's Sweet Tooth:

It's almost the exact same colour as the aqua thread. I am a bit obsessed with that colour - I admit I wanted it before I even looked inside. If you haven't seen this book yet then you should absolutely get it, it is so good. We did secret santa gifts at Christmas and I bought a copy of it for the friend I picked out. I was so close to keeping it for myself but I was good and wrapped it up. Anyway, when we all opened our presents another friend had bought the exact same thing for me so I got one after all! Serendipity. I haven't had time to make anything from it yet, but the photos and recipes all look so beautiful that I can't wait.

Speaking of good recipes, I recently made up another batch of these:

It's been an age since I made them and I forgot just how yummy they are, and super-easy to make. Try them, you'll like them.

Oh, and I also just found out that my book is being released on 4th July! Exciting. I think it is coming out on 6th August in the USA too, so there won't be much longer to wait if you are there. I'll tell you more when I know.

I'm taking a few days off this weekend as I will be busy turning 24* and have all sorts of hijinx planned with my friends and family. I absolutely cannot wait. The shop will still be open for patterns but my last Post Office run will be tomorrow morning, so any kits ordered after that will be posted on Tuesday when I get back. Oh, and Royal Mail have treated us to yet more price rises, which means I will need to look at kit prices/delivery again before April...so if you want to take advantage of the current prices then now is the time.

Have a fantabulous weekend.

Delilah x

*I wish! It's the big 3.0. Hmph.

Winter Porridge

Well hello October! It seems as though I blinked and lost the whole summer. 

As far as months go, October is one of my absolute favourites - all the more so this year because it brings my book deadline, and with it my return to semi-normality. Making the book has been entirely all-encompassing, and whilst I have enjoyed it I can't deny that I am relieved my work is done. I am so excited to get back to blogging and working on the shop!

Before that though I thought I would share with you my favourite thing to eat for breakfast now the weather has turned. Well I say breakfast, but more often than not it serves as dinner when I want something warm and scrumptious but don't have the time (or the inclination) to cook something proper: my winter porridge.

It is not so much a recipe as an assembly of delicious things, but it is infinitely more interesting than bog-standard porridge I think:

***

Winter Porridge

(Ingredients per person)

Large handful of whole rolled oats

Milk - roughly 120ml/half a cup

Small handful of walnuts

Small handful of sultanas or raisins

1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

1 dessertspoon of honey (or to taste)

***

Put the oats, milk and cinnamon into a small saucepan an place over a medium heat. Break the walnuts into the pan and add the sultanas, then stir continuously until the mixture thickens (this shouldn't take any more than five minutes), adding more milk a little at a time if the mixture becomes too dry. Pour the porridge into a warmed bowl, stir in the honey and gobble it up!

Easier than pie and arguably scrummier.

Delilah x

Monday

For a long time now my intention has been to simplify my life; and yet at 4.30am on a Monday morning I find myself boiling eggs and ironing while the rest of England sleeps. All because I cannot switch my brain off for long enough to have a proper rest. Suffice it to say if I was succeeding in the simplification process this would not be a problem...

One of my many frustrations is that whilst I am creating more new things than ever before, I am not actually allowed to share any of them with you yet. And I really miss being here. I miss the writing for its own sake and because it helps give a little direction to my wandering thoughts; I miss the sense of community I get from sharing things with you all and hearing your thoughts on them; and I miss having something tangible that I can look back on to help me remember just what it is I have been doing with my time.

And so instead of running around doing chores in this bonus time that I should be sleeping, I thought I would stop and say hello. And I am going to try to do so more often, even if I don't have any new work to show you. I hope that's ok.

"That's all well and good," I hear you say "but what does it have to do with a picture of a quiche?". Well nothing really. I just don't like blog posts without pictures and it is the one thing I have made recently that I am allowed to show you. It is my first ever quiche and, as is my way, I sort of made it up as I went along and probably couldn't reproduce it. But it was really scrumptious - chorizo, cheese and red onion. I am pretty sure the pastry isn't actually supposed to look quite as rustic as that but I absolutely love it! It looked like an enormous baked crown and fed me for the best part of a week. I need to try a smaller one next time, and I will try and write the recipe down as I go along so that I can share it.

Delilah x

Herman the Friendship Cake

When I met up with a friend recently he came bearing gifts. Well one specific, rather random gift actually, courtesy of his mother: Herman the friendship cake (though at the time he was not a cake, just a little bowl full of bubbly yellowish slop). I freely admit that I am hopelessly out of touch with the modern world and was therefore a little baffled as I had never heard of a friendship cake, but thankfully he came with a sheet of instructions.

It is basically a bit like a chain email (which I loathe) but using cake (which I love!). Herman is a living yeast mixture that you have to feed with various ingredients over a number of days, before giving four parts of the mixture to friends to carry on the chain, and turning the fifth part into a yummy spiced apple cake. A little research told me this is not a new idea, but based on a traditional Amish sweet bread that uses a sourdough starter. I have never had much luck with yeast-based things as I can never get them to rise properly, but because this evolves so slowly it is foolproof.

I can't deny I was a little dubious at the thought of the mixture sitting around for goodness knows how long in various random people's houses, but I got over it and the resulting cake was really yummy (and I haven't died from food poisoning yet), so if the mixture reaches you and you can turn a blind eye to the health and safety quagmire, then I recommend you try it!

If you like the look of this cake but have yet to be gifted a bowl of yeasty goo, you could always start your own - I found a link to the recipe here. And if you can't be bothered with any of that never fear as Herman bears more than a passing resemblance to this apple loaf cake, so maybe give that a try instead...

Happy Sunday!

Delilah x

Cake-Cups

 
       

        

I found these brilliant little cupcake measuring cups in London a couple of weeks ago (I can finally make some of the American recipes I have now without having to faff about with converting everything to weight measurements first) and I have been just itching to use them ever since.

I finally got a chance to make these little pink cupcakes and they were scrummy. It was also my first attempt at icing with a piping bag...not as easy as it looks! The first one I tried was an absolute disgrace, but they got steadily less awful so that by the time I got to the last couple of cakes the icing was almost passable.

I suppose that means I will just have to keep making cakes to ice until I get them perfect...what a hardship.

Delilah x

Odds and Ends

A few things I have been meaning to share with you for a while...

 
1. My Very First Victoria Sponge

I have never had much luck with large cakes as I am not generally very precise in my baking methods and I have found that the larger the cake, the less room for interpretation there is. But as lovely as cupcakes and muffins are, sometimes only a big cake will do. So I put my trust in Mary and as usual she did not fail - it came out perfectly. I just cannot seem to leave it at that though...I have started imagining all sorts of scrumptious new versions of sandwich cakes now that I have successfully mastered the most basic one. I can only hope that my experiments will be more of an ode to Nigella than to Dibley's Mrs Cropley...watch this space.

 

 

2. The Amazing Giantess: Maggie

Very well, that may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but will you look at the size of her! Maggie is growing at a rate of knots and I can hardly keep up. Though I suppose that means all my hard work is 
paying off considering how tiny she was when I brought her home. She is becoming very lithe and elegant just like her namesake, and her eyes are now brown like mine. Don't be fooled by her appearance though...she still has enough mischief in her to spread between a dozen kittens and she is determined to make the most of it!

 

 

3. A Little Something New

In the small moments I have managed to steal between life and Maggie (the two apparently being mutually exclusive), I have been working on something new: above is a sneak peak. In the words of Rolf Harris...can you tell what it is yet?

Delilah x

Jammy Dodgers

 

Thanks to a lack of time and frequent requests for specific biscuits and cookies I tend to make the same recipes over and again rather than experimenting with new ones, but for my sister's birthday I thought I'd try something a little different. I say a little because technically its basis is one of my tried and tested recipes, but I thought it may be time to give it a twist...and behold, my take on the humble jammy dodger.

 

I used this recipe for the shortbread dough (leaving out the chocolate) but made the following alterations:

1. Roll the dough out to be half as thick as usual - i.e. 0.5cm - since the biscuits are stacked in pairs.

2. Cut out whole circles of all the same size and place them on the baking trays, and then once they are on the trays use a smaller cutter to cut the holes in half of the batch. If you try to do this before you move them onto the trays the biscuits will stretch out of shape. I used quite large cutters so the recipe only made a batch of 8 (once assembled) but the quantities can easily be doubled to make more.

3. Leave the biscuits to cool completely before very carefully sandwiching them together with about a teaspoon of jam per pair. I stress "very carefully" because I managed to break a couple of mine when I tried to do this. The trick is to gently sort of wiggle the top half onto the jam without pressing too heavily on the outsides of the biscuit with the hole in as this causes too much stress to the thinner parts and they just crack - once you get the knack it's a piece of cake though I promise! I used rasberry jam because that was what I had in the house, but any would do - though I do love the look of the deep red.

Et voila!

 

I was really thrilled with how they turned out, and they were very yummy too. All in all a rather good present.

Delilah x

Spiced Fruit Flapjacks

I have been meaning to post the recipe to these for quite some time now - as far as I am concerned they are the best flapjacks I have ever tasted: sticky, chewy, spicy, rich and with a little crunch around the edges if you cook them for long enough (which I ensure that I do since that is absolutely my favourite bit). I love regular flapjacks too (which you can make from this recipe too - just leave out the fruit and spices), but for something that tastes a bit more grown up I suggest you give these a try. They took a bit of perfecting but I got there in the end...

***

Spiced Fruit Flapjacks

(Makes 12-16)

225g butter (I prefer to use lightly salted butter)

225g demerara sugar

75 golden syrup

300g whole oats

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground mixed spice

150g mixed dried fruit (I use 50g each of raisins, sultanas & cranberries, but whatever you have in the house will do just fine)

***

1. Line a deep sided tin (mine is 24cm x 24cm x 5cm ) with baking parchment - it is best to cut a large square, enough to reach up the sides of the tin, and just fold it around the edges and corners rather than lining the base and sides separately. The mixture is very runny when it is in the oven and this way it won't leak. Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees.

2. Melt the butter, syrup, sugar and spices in a saucepan, stirring occasionally, until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is all combined. 

3. Next add the dried fruit to the mixture - stir for a minute or so to allow the fruit to absorb the syrup and plump up, then stir in the oats. It will look like there is barely enough syrup to cover the oats, but don't worry - any more and the flapjacks will not set properly. Make sure all of the oats are coated with the syrup mixture and then pour the lot into the lined tin. Using the back of a wooden spoon press the oats firmly down into the tin and even out the surface.

4. Bake for 30-35 minutes until they are golden brown and bubbling.

5. Let them rest in the tin for about 30 minutes or so, or until they start to hold their shape and the syrup is no longer runny. I then find it easiest to then carefully lift the whole lot out of the tin (baking parchment and all), and cut it into squares or slices on the paper before transferring them onto a wire rack to cool (this time without the paper).

6. Once this is done the only thing left to do is to gobble them up!

Enjoy!

Delilah x

Blondies

I fancied a change from brownies so I thought I would give these blondies a go. I used a recipe from here, but whilst they were perfectly nice in their own way, they just didn't stand a hope when compared with my usual brownies (I don't mean to sound big headed, but my brownies really are that good). They were too cakey and not dense and stodgy enough, and in my opinion that is the whole point of baked goods from the brownie family...gentlemen may prefer blondes but I think I will stick to brownies.

In the process of making them however I have come to the conclusion that my oven is pants. I had to cook them for twice as long as it said, and I don't think it is getting anywhere near as hot as it should be. It never used to matter as I just made things up as I went along, but I am noticing it more and more now that I am trying to teach myself to do things properly. It's also quite irritating as it means that the times and temperatures I have given in my recipes until now might be a bit dodgy...so until I am able to get a new oven (which could be quite some time!) I suggest that if you are lucky enough to be in possession of a properly functioning oven (I know all ovens cook differently anyway but you know what I mean) and you wish to make one of my recipes you should maybe cook things for a little less time than the recipe says.

Delilah x

Blueberry & Lemon Cheesecake

Yes, I know - more food...

It's not that I haven't been doing any stitching, it's just that the things I am doing at the moment are bigger, ongoing things that I am not quite ready to show you yet (soon though, I promise). So for now I'm afraid we will have to make do with scrumptious things.

I had never made a cheesecake before, which is ridiculous as it is absolutely one of my very favourite things to eat. It doesn't really travel well though so I thought I had better wait until there were enough people here to eat it or I would just make myself sick. The occasion was my family's first proper visit to my home since it has been finished, and this was dessert.

I wasn't organised enough to get all of the ingredients in beforehand so I followed one of Mary's recipes for the base and filling (since she hasn't lied to me yet I thought it a good idea to put my first attempt at cheesecake in her capable hands), but sort of made up the sauce for the topping which was surprisingly successful. It involved blueberries and sugar and a slosh of maple syrup and I can't honestly remember what else as I just added little things here and there until it resembled something one might be happy to put on top of a cheesecake. The only problem being that I may well struggle to repeat it, which is a shame because it was really delicious - fresh and zingy and the perfect dessert. And best of all, everybody had second helpings so I was not left with piles of the stuff to tempt me!

Next time I will have to try a baked version, as in my humble opinion they are my best kind of cheesecake - though I must admit I am hugely daunted as it seems there are so many little things that go wrong...any tips?

Delilah x