Panettone – the rich fruited Italian Christmas bread - always reminds me of my mother. 

When I was little and Italian foodstuffs were not so easily available in the UK, a family friend who worked near Soho, then the heart of the Italian community in London, would always take a trip to one of the small Italian delis at Christmas and bring us a panettone for my mother’s Christmas treat.

Whenever I’ve spent Christmas with my Italian relatives, the table is always groaning with several different kinds of boxed panettone (and its richer, unfruited, cousin, pandoro).  Every Italian I’ve ever met has very definite opinions as to which brands are best and which are to be avoided.  My aunt sources hers from a small local bakery close to their home in Piemonte. 

I’ve never met anyone in Italy or elsewhere who has actually made one themselves though and it was only when I saw some paper panettone moulds in our local kitchen shop that I decided to give it a go.  I was a little worried that I might never be able to eat storebought again (as with mincemeat and Christmas pudding) but one just has to be courageous in these matters.

I used the recipe in the Macrina Bakery Cookbook as my starting point, which was enough to make two big loaves in standard paper panettone moulds. (The cookbook suggests making four loaves in small earthenware flowerpots, which is a nice, but seemingly unnecessary, conceit).

It’s a two-step process which takes some time, but it’s super fun baking.  I was doing this just before Christmas so didn’t have time to convert volume measures to weights for my UK readers. Just dig out the cup measures that have been sitting in the back of your utensil drawer.

The other major change I made was to replace some of the mixed candied peel with dried cranberries. If I say so myself this was a revelation and worked incredibly well. As for flavourings, I used the combination of citrus zest and vanilla given below. I used my homemade vanilla extract – of which more in another blog post – which is essentially vanilla steeped in white rum so you may want to add a tablespoon or two of rum if you’re using commercial vanilla.  You may also want to experiment with using lemon oil, orange flower water or fiori di sicilia, all of which can be used in Italian panettone recipes.  Whatever you use, the distinctive authentic taste comes from a combination of citrus and vanilla in some form.

INGREDIENTS FOR THE STARTER DOUGH

12 tbsps (1.5 sticks or 6oz) unsalted butter at room temperature

3/4 cup warm water

2 tbsps dried yeast (I used one sachet)

1/3 cup granulated sugar

3 eggs

2 tbsps freshly grated orange zest

1.5 tbsps freshly grated lemon zest

3 tbsps honey

1 tbsp pure vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose (plain) flour

PREPARING THE STARTER DOUGH

Cut the butter into small pieces and set aside.

Combine the warm water, yeast and sugar in a large bowl (I used my stand mixer) and whisk to dissolve yeast.  Let sit for five minutes so the yeast can bloom.

Add the butter, eggs, orange and lemon zest, honey, vanilla and flour. Mix on low speed to bring the ingredients together using the dough hook attachment.  Increase speed to medium and mix for around 6 minutes.  Transfer the dough to an oiled medium bowl and cover with a damp tea towel. Let it sit in a warm room until almost doubled in size.

INGREDIENTS FOR THE FINAL DOUGH

1 1/2 cups golden raisins (sultanas)

3 sticks (12 oz) unsalted butter at room temperature

3 eggs

3 egg yolks

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

2 tsps salt

4 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose (plain flour)

1 1/2 cups total dried fruits.  I used a mixture of dried cranberries and and candied orange and lemon peel. I would imagine that dried sour cherries would also be good.  But it would be fun to experiment here.

PREPARING THE FINAL DOUGH

While the starter dough is proving, place the raisins/sultanas in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Leave them for around 20 minutes to plump them up and then drain thoroughly.

Cut butter in small pieces and set aside.

Punch down the starter dough with floured hands

Whisk together eggs, yolks and sugar in a bowl (I used my stand mixer) until thick. Add the starter dough, salt and flour. Using the dough hook attachment, knead on a low speed for 2-3 minutes.  Increase the speed to medium and keep adding the butter piece by piece.  This should take another 3-4 minutes. Mix on medium speed for another 10-12 minutes until the dough has a satiny finish and stretches easily. Let the dough rest in the bowl for 5 minutes to relax the gluten.

Add the soaked raisins and mixed dried fruit to the bowl and mix into the dough at low speed. Transfer the finished dough to an oiled medium bowl and cover again with a damp tea towel.  Let sit in a warm room until doubled size – 3-4 hours.

Oil two paper moulds and divide the dough between them.  Leave to rise one final time until the dough rises above the top of the papers.

Position an oven rack so that is it close to the bottom of the oven. Preheat oven to 335 degrees Fahrenheit/ 170 degrees Celsius.

Brush the panettone with eggwash then place on a baking sheet in the oven. Bake for around 90 minutes or until deep golden brown on top.

Here is my baby baking in the oven  - it’s amazing what you can do with an iPhone nowadays. 

I was doing all this while rushing around packing to go to Whistler at Christmas and decided to experiment by leaving the second panettone to do its final rise in the fridge while we were away.  These lovelies had the most delicious flavour and a soft though robust texture, somewhat like a chewy brioche; and, though not as light and airy as the store bought ones, were in fact very similar to the ones made by the artisanal baker my aunt buys from in Italy.

The real revelation though, came with the loaf we left in the fridge for five days.  The long slow rising gave the loaf an indescribably complexity of both texture and flavour, noticeably more interesting than the one which had been baked immediated (and that was pretty darn good).

I’m going to be experimenting more with slow rising in future.  And yes, unfortunately panettone is something else I will never be able to buy from the store again.

Some favourite Instagram photos from last week. Come and find me, I’m ‘mirrormirrorxx’.  (Going to try and do this every weekend).

As you can see it’s been a week of snow and soft pastel colours.

We had a massive snowstorm in Seattle last week which meant that the Minx and I were both trapped at home.  What with that and going away on a jolly with the Husband’s job last weekend, I’ve still trying to catch my tail after Christmas.

Normal, hopefully better than normal, blog service will resume tomorrow.

I think it’s gorgeous and I would love to emulate it, if only I had a cool small white keyboard and and not an ugly black ergonomic monstrosity.  But I dunno, this might even be worth suffering the RSI.

Fortunately I can continue to indulge my love of pretty tape.  This bowl of lovelies comes from Lotta Jansdotter’s new shop. And yes it is an Instagram photo.

Over the last few months a lot of people have asked me whether I was on Instagram or not. 

I wasn’t because I couldn’t really see the point – I was already taking plenty of iPhone photos and sharing them on Twitter and Facebook and I didn’t really need to be on another social media time-sucking platform, did I?

How wrong I was.  As I mentioned before, one of this year’s resolutions was to try out Instagram, mostly because I thought it would be an easy way to do a ‘365 project’ and post a photo a day.  On January 1st I posted one solitary photo from our New Year’s Day walk in Gasworks Park and thenceforth I have become gently obsessed.  Instagram is like Twitter for photos. Follow some great photographers and you’ll have a constant stream of scrumptious eyecandy delivered direct to your phone. Take a photo with your phone (iPhones only at the moment unfortunately), or a upload a picture you took earlier, apply a suitably retro filter and then have it delivered to the Instagram network and also to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flick.

It’s been a great way to reconnect with blogger friends away from the noise of Twitter and Facebook and of finding new creative and imaginative people online as they go about their beautiful business.

And it’s easy to produce lovely images.  The camera on the new iPhone 4s is crazy good and the various photography apps and filters available (I’m using Camera+ and Picfx as well as the Instagram filters) make it fun to create all sorts of effects. 

I’m enjoying the challenge of working within the iPhone’s limitations – wide-angle lens, tiny aperture, rubbish in low light, square format, not many pixels - and love the fact that the phone is usually to hand, when you see pretty lightshades at the opticians or a pile of soggy, but colourful leaves on a rainy trip to the dentist.  It’s not a substitute for a fancy camera, but a very fabulous adjunct.

Already my Instagram feed is proving to be a cool visual journal of January 2012, and seeing all the photos grouped together has shown me that I do in fact have photographic style – colourful and graphic yet dreamy – which has never leapt out at me before. 

Rest assured you’ll be seeing more Instagram photos on the blog in the days and weeks ahead (I’ll format them as Polaroids here so you can spot them).

And of course the whole network is riddled with cute pictures of cats.

Are you on Instagram?  What do you like about it? Which apps do you use? What’s your username so I can follow you? I am mirrormirrorxx.

When we got back from Whistler we tucked into the Christmas puddings which had been gently maturing since November.

It was my first time making Christmas puddings, so I was somewhat nervous as to what they would taste like, but I shouldn’t have worried. They were delectable – moist and boozy with dark marmalade-y depths - and, like mincemeat, I will never go back to buying them again. Thank you America for your ridiculous ban on importing beef suet products, which has made me stretch my cooking horizons.

We shared the first one at a small family dinner. Here she is in all her moist and sticky splendour. I had to send the Husband out in the rain to get the traditional sprig of holly, so couldn’t be too particular when he came back with a sprig without berries.

And here it is anointed with warmed and flaming brandy in the traditional way.

The Minx was mesmerised.

We shared pudding number two at a drinks party for friends on the second day of the new year. It was fun to see the kids and Americans all equally excited by the idea of setting dessert on fire. The actual taste of Christmas pudding is more of an acquired one though it seems.

I got a Christmas present that made me so happy it brought tears to my eyes, I’ve wanted one for so long.

As a weight-loss incentive the Husband said he would buy me a Canon 5D Mk II and this Christmas, since I am so close to goal weight (or I was before Christmas), he decided to put it under the tree for me.

This baby is fabulous and terrifying in equal measure – it has pixels and ISOs and features a go go and can produce some ridiculously amazing images.  Most of the professional photographers I speak to use it and love it, so I now no longer have any excuse not to produce top quality images.

And therein lies the rub.  I no longer have any excuse.  Before I could blame crappy images on my not so stellar camera, but now the only reason not to produce amazing photos is because I’m not a good enough photographer. 

Because I have to admit to myself that I am a photographer, albeit not yet a very good one. There is nothing, apart from maybe knitting, that gives me so much pleasure and satisfaction – how with the press of a single button, you can tell a story, capture a mood, transmit an emotion, or, as is too often the case with my photos, convey absolutely nothing at all.

So this is the year when I start to take this craft seriously – when I upgrade my kit, study hard, practise tons and put myself out there.  I still have no idea where, if anywhere, it all might lead, but I’m going to bust my ass getting there.

To kick things off  I’m going to finish up my Christmas photo book, have signed up for an online Food Photography course with Lara Ferroni, am committing to posting at least a photo a day to Instagram (I’m @mirrormirrorxx come and join me), will read the stack of photography books next to my bed, will start using Flickr again and build a photography portfolio website. One day I want to be worthy of my new toy, in a way that I’m just not at present.

This year I’m only making positive resolutions, no more thoughts of ‘giving up’ or ‘losing’, or ‘stopping’.  Instead I want to do things that help me grow and develop, take me to new places and bring me new opportunities.  I want to throw a metaphorical stone into a metaphorical lake and watch where the metaphorical ripples end up, and am super intrigued and excited to find out where this photo journey might take me.

Are you starting any new journeys this year?  Where do you hope to get to?  What do you want to learn or achieve?  Spill the beans and we can hold each others’ hand along the way.

I was just about to press ‘publish’ when this post by Tara Austen Weaver popped up on Facebook. Of course she talks about following through on all things intriguing so much more eloquently than I can.  I think she must have been reading my mind.

Thought you might like to see the Minx’s knitted Christmas present – that you managed to guess so cunningly -   in all its final glory.

Snowy owl on snowy balcony in snowy Whistler

I have to say that this was a rather frustrating knit. 

Being my usual organised self, I’d left it until Christmas Eve to finish the top of the head and the face when disaster struck and I ran out of white yarn before I’d even managed to finish the ears. This despite having purchased the recommended yarn, used the recommended size needles and knitted to the recommended gauge.

So I had to rip the head back, miss out some rounds without giving him too truncated an appearance and reknit.  This time I managed to scrape through to the end, though I still didn’t have enough white yarn to add a white circle to the eyes as in the pattern.  You can imagine how thrilled I was by this at 3 am on Christmas morning.

All, however, is well that ends well. The owl is gorgeously soft, smooshy and snuggly and big enough to make for very satisfying cuddles (here he is sitting next to a standard-sized cushion). The Minx is also very fond of ‘Owly’, which makes a change.

More details on my Ravelry page. You can find the pattern here courtesy of the Purl Bee.  I DON’T recommend using their suggested yarn though.

Christmas, packing for Whistler, being in Whistler, returning from Whistler and unpacking from Whistler put paid to all my good blogging intentions over the last week or so. Ho hum. I hope you all had a marvellous and stress-free holiday season.

And yes, I know I should be leaving you with an eloquent elegy to 2011 and divulging all sorts of self-improving resolutions for 2012 but I’ll be doing that tomorrow, as I have to make blinis for a party tonight.

Instead may I encourage you all to wear your red underwear for luck in the Italian tradition and eat plenty of lentils.

And if you have time watch this video.  I wish you all this and more in the New Year. Thanks for all your comments, emails, advice and encouragement over the least year. It means a lot.  Mwah!

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art – write or draw or buil...d or sing or live as only you can. May your coming year be a wonderful thing in which you dream both dangerously and outrageously.
I hope you will make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and you will be liked and you will have people to love and to like in return. And most importantly, because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now – I hope that you will, when you need to, be wise and that you will always be kind. And I hope that somewhere in the next year you surprise yourself."

A couple or three weekends back, while I was also in the throes of Thanksgiving baking, it was Stir Up Sunday and I also had to get going with my Christmas baking. 

The name apparently comes from the collect from the Book of Common Prayer which begins ‘Stir up, we beseech you O Lord’. This was said in Anglican churches on the last Sunday before Advent and reminded cooks and bakers throughout the land that they should be making a start on their mincemeat and Christmas puddings, so that they would have time to mature before the Christmas festivities.

It’s a good job the Puritans objected to Christmas puddings and so never really brought them to America as I have to say the combination of Stir Up Sunday and Thanksgiving is enough to drive anyone to drink.

After the success of my mincemeat last year, and since the wonderful RainShadow Meats in Seattle is now rendering beef suet, I decided to make Christmas puddings for the first time as well as the mincemeat.  After reading through several recipes I decided to stick with dear old Delia and make some minor tweaks.

Her detailed recipe is here. Tweaks I made included adding substituting some glace’ cherries for half of the mixed peel and replacing the orange juice and zest with a spoonful of the Husband’s fabulous homemade Three Fruit Marmalade as suggested by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

As is traditional we also added some foil-wrapped coins to the mixture, to be found when we cut into the puddings – and yes, I really ought to get myself a more photogenic mixing bowl.

Since this is mostly a mix of dried fruits, beef suet, breadcrumbs, spices, beer and brandy, the puddings look surprisingly pale and anaemic before being steamed.

The Husband, being an engineer, was then commandeered into covering the puddings with a double layer of greaseproof paper, covering them with tinfoil and manufacturing string handles for them, so they could be lifted in and out of the steam bath.

The Internet then informed me that Christmas pudding can be steamed in the slow cooker, a Christmas miracle indeed.  No more having to keep an eye on the pudding and making sure they don’t steam dry.

The larger one was steamed in the slow cooker for around 10 hours on HIGH and the smaller steamed overnight or for around 8 hours.

I don’t know what the alchemical process is that makes them come out all dark and moist and sticky at the end, but they sure looked good and smelled unbelievable.

The Husband then re-wrapped them so they could be steamed again at Christmas and now they sit ‘maturing’ in my cool closet, and delighting my heart every time I walk in there and glance at them.

I shall report back.

Here’s this year’s batch of mincemeat.  I’ve already used a jar to make mince pies and can report that it is very delicious indeed.

Our next prompt was to remind us to take a few moments to enjoy the view.

This is  the view I have from my desk in a corner of my bedroom as I work.  The chair is my knitting chair. We had some lovely sunny days in Seattle last week so I decided to render this in black and white to emphasise the beautiful wintry light.

This is the view you get from that chair.

Wow! You guys are good.  Too good in fact.  I was hoping to keep the tease going a little bit longer at least.  However, my undying admiration goes to Stephanie and Rebecca who both guessed that it was the Purl Bee big snowy owl.  Oh and please don’t tell the Minx.

I just hope I can do this one justice.  It looks like one of those projects where it’s all about getting the face right.  I’ll carry on pasting up progress reports.

In other competition news, I realise that I forgot to draw the ‘Edible Seattle’ prize. The winner is Dana. Congratulations! I’ll be emailing you shortly so we can get your ‘Edible Seattle’ subscription to you.

Oh and look for another giveaway on Monday.

Last week I went along to a cupcake decorating class at our local cupcake emporium Trophy Cupcakes and got some fabulous idea and tips for Christmas cupcake decorations.

Owner Jennifer Shea herself was on hand to demonstrate the techniques and also talk about her experiences and astonishing success with Trophy, together with Nicole, her head cupcake decorator, who is responsible for planning all the new designs.

The great thing about this class was that cupcakes, piping bags filled with coloured buttercreams, sprinkles, decorations and all the right tools were all lined up and ready to go – in my kitchen even finding the icing bags and correct tips and nozzles is a challenge.

First up Jennifer and Nicole demonstrated how to make sparkly bauble cupcakes. These were super easy, but still very effective.  You just scoop a blob of coloured buttercream onto the cupcake and then dip and press the cupcake in a bowl of sparkling sanding sugar, moulding the buttercream into a dome as you go.  Then decorate as you want with white buttercream and a writing tip. Finally pipe a small swirl of yellow at the top (which you can’t see on this cake) to represent the hanger.  I do love the effect of these and I can see me using this technique a lot in future.

For the snowman, we started with a large round #809 tip and made a triple swirl of white buttercream. Then edge the bottom of the snowman in coarse sanding sugar.  Add a scarf using green buttercream and flat tip #44 (getting this to follow the line of his ‘neck’ is fiendishly difficult) and then pipe on black buttons, eyes and mouth. Use red buttercream and tip #8 and swirl to make a hat and finally use tip #4 and some orange buttercream to pipe a carrot nose.  You will note that this cake required five different bags of buttercream and five different icing nozzles, so is not likely to be made in my kitchen any time soon, much as the Minx adored him.

The wreath decoration though is much more accessible. Spread a little white vanilla buttercream on the cake.  Make leaves round the edges with a #366 leaf tip.  Sprinkle with sanding sugar and little red non-pareils for holly berries and then pipe a red bow with a #4 tip.

Finally we made poinsettia cupcakes.  These are surprisingly do-able if you can get the hang of the #366 leaf tip (the same as for the wreaths)

Here is Nicole demonstrating the in and out technique you need.

Once you’ve got that down, all you need to add are some extra green leave and a sprinkling of yellow non-pareils (sorry, I didn’t manage to get a good close up of the poinsettia).

After the demonstrations we all go to decorate our own cakes.  Definitely not as easy as Jennifer and Nicole made it appear, but do-able I would think with a bit of practice.

Here are the ones I made, first attempts at all four. The snowman has clearly been at the mulled wine, but my wreath had definite possibilities.

Trophy will be doing more cupcake decorating classes in future and I highly recommend them if you live in Seattle. It was lots of fun playing with all the icing bags and sprinkles and I picked up some good tips and ideas.

I also snapped a pic of some simpler Christmassy cupcakes they had in their shop which I might even attempt over the next few weeks.

For this prompt I had to photograph something that helps me to slow down, take a deep breath and enjoy the moment.

And it will come as no surprise to any of you that I chose knitting as my thing.  I love the satisfaction of seeing the puzzle of stitches work itself out on my needles, of watching yarn forwards and knit togethers line up where they’re supposed to as a pattern slowly emerges before my eyes.

And then when the puzzle is figured out, it becomes a meditation. Each stitch pattern ebbs and flows in its own rhythms and my mind ebbs and flows with it.  And if you take things one little stitch at a time; if you rip back, correct your mistakes and press on; if you’re patient and persevering and just keep going, however daunting a project might seem; one day you will be able to look back on your work and see that you have created something beautiful.

We’ll be putting up our Christmas decorations this weekend and I would love to be able to justify buying this utterly fabulous ‘Superstar’ Christmas tree by Modernica, available in either a full-sized floor-standing version or for the table top.

In the absence of a significant lottery win between now and Christmas I’m going to have to content myself with my much-loved and much cheaper Muji mantelpiece version. For some reason these never seem to be available on the US Muji site, though they do have them online in the UK.

The one on the left is the version we have, I’ll snap a picture of it in situ when we get it out this weekend. The one on the right is the current version, which is maybe a nicer shape, but has far less charming decorations. 

I think this one’s pretty much self-explanatory.  Not exactly creative, but I couldn’t pass this one up.

Our next prompt was to ‘Reframe the Season’. 

The hint talked about using a literal frame and focusing about what we put it in, but I couldn’t think of what to do with it.

Then I glanced out of my window and saw the December garden in all its mellow wistfulness.  It seems to me that this season is one that we very much experience through the window frame, rather than being out and in the thick of it.

This December I’ve decided to try my hand at putting together a ‘Picture the Holidays’ photo prompt book put together by Tracey Clark of Shutter Sisters via Paper Coterie.

Every day I am emailed a photo prompt to inspire me to take a photo, which I then upload into a photobook on the Paper Coterie site, which I can then have printed if I wish. I know I’m crap at following through on these sorts of projects, but a month of photos seems just about manageable.

Yesterday’s prompt was entitled ‘Holding On To Gratitude’, encouraging us to think about what we’re grateful for. Funnily enough the night before I had gone to sleep thinking particularly grateful thoughts as I’d been reading a thread on Ravelry where people had been asking for good wishes and prayers because they were going through some particularly horrible things in their lives. I know I am insanely lucky in so many ways.

Unfortunately, the things I am most truly grateful for – my health; my bright, beautiful, healthy daughter; my lovely husband and his lovely job; my wonderful friends; even my fabulous blog friends, were either too abstract, or too absent at school or work to be photographed yesterday. 

Instead I hit up on something rather random. When you’re doing the Dukan diet you do become incredibly grateful for that morning cup of joe, which is permitted – oh joy! – if made with non-fat milk.  This photo for me sums up the warmth and comfort of home; reminds me how lucky I am to be able to afford a fancy coffee machine to make fancy coffee in a fancy mug; makes me think of my husband, and of Seattle, where I’m so lucky to be able to live. And in a literal interpretation of ‘hold on’ I like that this pictures is full of handles.  Oh well, it made sense to me.

What would you photograph given that prompt?

In a spectacular photography fail yesterday, I took my camera out last night to see the Christmas Ships without its SD card. So you’ll just have to image the fabulous pictures I would have taken of my daughter’s shining face as she gazed at the lit-up boats, next to blazing bonfires, against the sparkling backdrop of downtown and the Space Needle.  They might have been a little more appropriate for the above challenge too. Grrrrrr.

Oh and Dine & Dish is doing this too, go to her blog for a different perspective on things.

It’s the first of December so we’re allowed to start talking Christmas (or ‘the holidays’ if you prefer).

The Minx’s advent tree, which is yearly supplied with small treats by one of the Minx’s godmothers, will go up tonight and I thought it might be fun to round up some other advent type things I’ve come across in the last few days.

One of the Minx’s other godmothers (yep, we did a good job picking those) has sent her a link to this gorgeous-looking online advent calendar by Jacquie Lawson featuring Christmassy London scenes. I don’t seem to be able to share the demo, but do click on it, it’s really charming.  I don’t care about the Minx, I’m excited enough to start open the first link when she comes home from school tonight.

Also tonight, we’re off to see the Christmas Ships as they set off on their nightly December odyssey round Seattle’s waterways. Rain has always conspired to stop us seeing them before, but it looks like it will be OK tonight.  Hopefully pictures tomorrow.

The Daily Suze found two beautiful, more grown-up, advent calendars.

This from the White Company (how I miss that shop).  I love this idea of having a tasteful tree decoration for every day and transferring them one by one from the calendar to the tree. Maybe when we get back to having tasteful trees again we’ll do this.

This calendar is also minimalist and lovely, and even I wouldn’t have trouble making it.  It could be made to fit into any décor too, if you changed the colour of the boxes.  I still don’t quite see the Minx appreciating it yet though.

If you want an advent calendar for yourself go along to Paper Coterie where they are doing a project called ‘Picture the Holidays’. Every day you will be emailed a prompt to take a photograph and at the end you will get the chance to put all your gorgeous images together into a photo book.  Facebook friends who have done one Paper Coteries’s Prompt Me projects before have said that it’s very fun, so I’ve decided to sign up.  Let’s see how it goes.  I’ll put more details up in dedicated posts as the month progresses.

Finally, if you’re into shopping rather than photography, Abigail*Ryan, purveyors of beautiful homewares, are doing a 12 Days of Christmas Sale. Search for the snowflakes on one of their gorgeous handprinted teatowels or cushions and get it on sale for one day only. And if anyone wants to buy me one of their teatowel gift boxes, please feel free.

After last year’s tiny little needles and tiny little stitches for Carmen Banana, I am treating myself to chunky size 15 needles and chunky weight yarn to make the Minx’s knitted Christmas present.

I’ll post regular updates before the big day and the first person to guess what it is wins my undying admiration.

Apparently it takes a village to make a pumpkin pie.  Not a literal village you understand - who’s got one of those nowadays? – but an online village. 

Having never made a pumpkin pie before; indeed having spent the vast majority of my life thinking that putting pumpkin in a PIE, instead of say, soup or ravioli, was a vaguely barbaric act;  I put out pleas on here, on Facebook and on Twitter for pie-making advice.

TOP TIP #1 – USE CANNED PUMPKIN

This was not entirely helpful.  As I mentioned, I mostly wanted to make a pumpkin pie because the Minx and I had managed to grow two little pumpkins in our vegetable garden this summer.  However, convinced by the many, many comments I received, I did buy an emergency can of pumpkin just in case.

Which was fortunate, as when we halved, deseeded and roasted the homegrown pumpkins, we found them to be extremely anaemic and tasteless. One up for the online village.

TOP TIP #2- USE THE MACRINA COOKBOOK’S MAPLE PECAN PUMPKIN PIE RECIPE

I received a lot of recipe suggestions but one that struck home was to use the one from the Macrina bakery cookbook. This sounded good because a) I actually have the book b) the recipes I’ve cooked from it before have been excellent and c) it included maple syrup in the pumpkin custard and a topping of pecans and maple syrup.  Since I don’t actually much like pumpkin pie, these sounded like good additions to me.  Here’s a link to a pdf of the recipe.

TOP TIP #3- BLEND THE PUMPKIN VICIOUSLY

The Macrina recipe uses canned pumpkin and roasted fresh butternut squash (which we always have in the freezer to make risotto) which are both comparatively smooth.  Nevertheless a few minutes attacking them with the immersion blender made them even smoother and creamier. Definitely a good thing to do whatever type of pumpkin or squash you’re using.

TOP TIP #4- USE COCONUT MILK IN THE CUSTARD

Another person to send me her recipe was Seattle pie queen Kate McDermott.  Her recipe is for a more traditional pumpkin pie, though it had one intriguing ingredient – lite coconut milk instead of cream or condensed milk.  I used it instead of the buttermilk in the Macrina recipe and Kate is right, the texture and flavour are exceptional,   I did of course also use Kate’s superlative pie crust recipe.

TOP TIP #5 – USE GINGER SYRUP INSTEAD OF FRESH OR GROUND GINGER

This top tip was invented by me! And I think it’s a good one.  Stem ginger, or preserved ginger in syrup, is a very traditional British preserve, which I managed to get on Amazon. The ginger pieces are preserved in a tangy ginger syrup and instead of freshly, grated ginger I added a little ginger syrup to the pumpkin custard and the maple pecan topping.  I’ve since seen that in the US you can also buy a delicious-looking ginger syrup here (with great packaging) which might also work.

This pie turned out incredibly well, and was wolfed down by pumpkin pie traditionalists AND pumpkin pie disparagers alike.  Thanks to everyone in my lovely online community who contributed the tips that made it possible.

I see that November has been and gone, and I’ve got nowhere close to posting every day. Oh well.  Might try for December, though posting over Christmas could be a little light (and possibly drunken)..

Our baby pumpkins ripening in the sunshine (about two weeks ago)

It’s been absolutely pissing it down in Seattle today, so it was a pleasure to flick through my summer photos and find some that I had been meaning to share back then, but never got round to.

This summer we finally had some fabulous raised beds built next to the sidewalk/pavement in front of our house so we could grow our own vegetables.

In the US homeowners are responsible for the street area in front of their homes (in the UK this is the responsibility of the local council) which has led to a great trend of street-level vegetable gardens, especially in my neighbourhood where the front gardens are often steeply sloping.

Our garden met with mixed success, mostly because it wasn’t built until the end of June, so we sowed our seeds really late, though we did manage great crops of French and borlotti beans, quite a lot of salad and herbs and a few sprigs of broccoli.

The Minx enjoyed helping out and the cats thought we’d built an extra specially huge giganto litter box, so the they were a great hit with the whole family.

Harriet models her 'cat bib’ (www.catgoods.com) which is meant to stop her catching birds. And it works!

The Minx was desperate to grow pumpkins, so we dedicated half of one bed to her ‘pumpkin patch’. Again the late planting and cold summer was not a recipe for success but we ended up with two small pumpkins (another one was stolen out of the garden on Halloween, would you believe?) which we have been desperately trying to ripen in time to make pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.

Tiny French beans basking in the sunshine

Harvesting French beans, bolted salad leaves and broccoli

So the pumpkins have finally ripened and I’ve signed up to make pumpkin pie with them for Thanksgiving, which is a bit scary as I’ve never made pumpkin pie before (or even eaten them much). Hit me with your best recipes, secrets and tips for a great pumpkin pie. PLEASE.

I’ve only ever done cross-stitch once before, when I decided to make a sampler from a kit for a friend’s baby, because it looked like it would be quicker than knitting a sweater.  Yeah right.  I just hope that the cross stitch fabric wasn’t somehow imbued with all the cursing that occurred in its presence.

And yet, and yet.  These fabulous iPhone covers from fabulous NYC yarn shop Purl Soho are enough to make me want to pick up the cross-stitch needle again. Only the thought of having to buy lots of different expensive packs of embroidery thread is preventing me.

If you’re braver than I am, full instructions are on the Purl Bee blog here.  The iPhone covers themselves are available to buy in the PurlSoho shop here. The only problem is choosing what colour to get.

Every year around this time I get sad that I can’t buy poppies in the US.

In the UK it’s a huge big deal, with poppies for sale in every public building and in many shops, worn by every public figure, sold out on the streets and laid in wreaths around the war memorials which are in every city, town and village. Even schools get in on the act and since the donation amount is not fixed, ever since I can remember I was supposed to hand over a little of my pocket money to buy a poppy.

So this year I decided to crochet poppies for the family. I used this pattern with full details on my Ravelry page.  The shape is based on the paper poppies for sale on behalf of ex-servicemen and women in the UK.

It was a good excuse to start talking to the Minx about the horrors of war and the debt we owe our soldiers and she went off to school this morning wearing her poppy with pride.  We even read In Flanders Fields together, though I suspect most of it went way over her head.

Today I went out for a stroll to grab a coffee.

I really must admit that Seattle does trees extraordinarily well.

Remember when I posted this nightmare-inducing room from MyHotel in Brighton earlier this year? 

Well, I was reminded of it yesterday when I caught a glimpse of the nursery Christina Aguilera had decorated for her son Max. (I know this is old, but I didn’t see it when it came out).

That child is going to need years of therapy.  Is this a trend?

Keep reading, I’m hosting a giveaway at the end of this blog post…

Following on from my astonishing third place triumph in the Queen Anne Farmers' Market Pie Competition almost exactly a year ago, I thought it was about time I entered another baking competition, this time Edible Seattle’s Cake v Pie Competition. Since I am an equal opportunity baker and like baking and eating both pies and cakes, I decided this time that I would play on Team Cake.

My cake and its competition (Photo by Myra Kohn)

The only catch was the theme - ‘Trouble in Pearadise’ or pies and cakes featuring pears. Making a pear pie or tart is easy peasy lemon squeezy but there aren’t so many pear-y cakes out there.  I started to think about what flavours go with pears – chocolate, of course, and all kinds of nuts, and hit upon the idea of incorporating pears into a torta alla gianduia, the traditional chocolate and hazelnut cake of Piemonte, my mother’s home region in Italy.

Gianduia has a long and illustrious history in Piemonte, where expensive chocolate was stretched with the addition of hazelnut paste, from the hazelnut trees which grown in abundance in the region.  It’s one of the most famous flavours in the world today, as Nutella, from Ferrero, a great Piemontese company, is just a commercial form of gianduia paste.

The climates of Piemonte and the Pacific North West are not dissimilar and I was delighted to discover that hazelnuts grow well in the PNW too, most famously in Oregon. So this cake would be both delightfully seasonal and local.

This cake is a little complicated, but you’ll end up with a dense, fudgey, chocolatey, delight, which perfectly complements the sweetness and delicacy of juicy pears. But don’t just take my word for it. 

Step 1 – Poaching the Pears

I found David Liebovitz’s guidelines on poaching pears here to be super useful.

Ingredients

4-5 firm ripe pears (I used some lovely Bartlett pears from my organic box)
1 litre/1 quart water
1 1/3 cups (250g) sugar
1 miniature bottle Frangelico (Italian hazelnut liqueur or another liqueur to taste)

Peel, core and quarter the pears. Heat the water and sugar together until the sugar has dissolved. Add the pears and cover them with a circle of parchment or greaseproof paper with a small hole cut in the middle.  This ensures that the pears don’t float up from the liquid and turn brown. Simmer gently for 10-15 minutes making sure the pears don’t turn mushy. Remove the pears and boil the peary liquid down fiercely until you have a thick syrup. Turn off the heat, pour in the bottle of Frangelico, add back the pears and set aside to cool.

Step 2 – Making the Cake

This recipe is based on this one here by Annamaria Volpi, with a few tweaks.

Ingredients

1½ cups (180 gr) ground hazelnuts (you could substitute other nuts such as almonds or pistachios)
7 oz (200 gr) semi or bittersweet chocolate, finely diced (I used Guittard 72% cacao)
4 + 4 oz (115 + 115 gr) sugar
7 oz (200 gr) butter, at room temperature
8 eggs, separated
¾ cup (110 gr) plain or cake flour

Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C).  Oil a 9 inch (23cm) Springform cake tin and line it with parchment paper.  Sprinkle the paper with cocoa powder. I wanted to make a three-layer cake. You could bake yours in a 10 inch (25cm) pan and just cut it in half for two layers instead.

Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie or glass bowl set on a saucepan of simmering water.

Cream the ground hazelnuts, 4oz (115g) of sugar and the butter together until soft and fluffy. Add the melted chocolate and mix together until smooth. Combine the egg yolks one at a time with the hazelnut-chocolate mixture, reserving the egg whites.  Sift the flour and stir it in thoroughly.

Beat the egg whites. When they are half beaten add the remaining 4 oz (115 gr) of sugar and beat until stiff peaks are formed.

Fold the egg whites carefully into the hazelnut-chocolate mixture. Pour the mixture into the cake tin, level with a spatula and bake it for approximately 30–40 minutes (for a 10 inch cake) or 50 minutes for a 9 inch cake. The cake is ready when a stick of spaghetti poked into the centre comes out clean and dry.

Remove from the oven and let the cake cool at room temperature. Then remove from the cake pan.  When it is fully cooled, slice into two or three layers.

Step 3 – Making the Chocolate Ganache Filling and Topping and Assembling the Cake

Ingredients

1 cup (250 cc) double (heavy) cream
12 oz (340 gr) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, diced
2 oz (60 gr) butter, at room temperature

Pour the cream into a heavy-bottomed saucepan and heat over a medium heat until just starting to bubble. Add the diced chocolate and beat together until the chocolate has fully melted into the hot cream. Beat in the butter. Leave to cool at room temperature for 2 hours. I hurried mine along in the fridge which is fine, but make sure it doesn’t get too cold and stiff.

Take your cake layers and spoon a few tablespoons of the peary poaching syrup over the cakes. Wait for it to soak in.  Spread the bottom two layers with chocolate ganache and then top with sliced poached pears. Assemble the cake and spread the remaining ganache all over the top and sides.  Put the cake in the fridge so that the ganache sets firmly.

Step 4 – Glazing and Decorating the Cake

You only need to do this step if you’re feeling fancy, though I’m glad I did.  The first ganache layer (step 3) will produce a perfectly delicious cake. This is what you need to do if you want to create a smooth, shiny finish, say for example if you’re entering a cake competition.

Ingredients

¾ cup (180 cc) double (heavy) cream
6 oz (180 gr ) dark, bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate, diced

Pour the cream into a heavy-bottomed saucepan and heat over a medium heat until just starting to bubble. Add the diced chocolate and beat together until the chocolate has fully melted into the hot cream and the ganache is very light and soft.  Immediately spread the glaze over the refrigerated cake with an offset spatula.

In Italy it is traditional for some reason to write the word ‘Gianduia’ on the cake in script.  So I melted a little white chocolate and piped it on.

Here is my cake basking in the sunshine.

Here’s a glimpse of its fudgey insides.

And here I am after my cake won second prize! Told you it was a good recipe.

Photo courtesy of Myra Kohn

My prize was a year’s subscription to Edible Seattle – a monthly magazine focusing on the fabulous food bounty of Seattle and its surrounding area, and the farmers and chefs who bring it to us. The only problem is that I’m already a subscriber. So I have a subscription here to give away.  It would obviously be most relevant to a blog reader from the Seattle area, but it’s so full of great recipes and fascinating articles that I’d encourage anyone interested in food to enter.

If you’d like to enter the giveaway, please leave a comment below telling us what is your favourite autumn ingredient. I’ll draw the winner at random on Friday 11th November. Good luck!

Do you have a favourite foodstuff you remember from childhood that is no longer available but that you’d love to magically taste again?

For me that foodstuff was something you may not even have heard of – rosehip syrup.  During the war citrus fruits were extremely scarce in the UK and a cottage industry grew up picking homegrown rosehips and preserving them as syrup, as they are apparently astonishingly high in vitamin C and packed with antioxidants.

Even into the 70s rosehip syrup was available at the ‘chemists’ and we always had a bottle in the house, either drinking it diluted as a cordial or eating it spooned neat over tinned rice pudding or stirred into ice cream.  Because, you see, even though it was born out of austerity, rosehip syrup is extremely very delicious indeed.  Imagine a complex but delicate sugar syrup redolent with tastes of tangerine and apple and perhaps the odd echo of something tropical, mango perhaps, in the background, and you’ll see where I’m coming from.  Unfortunately for me, the manufacturers Delrosa stopped selling rosehip syrup in the UK some time in the 70s, though it is apparently still available in some developing countries.

So it happened that I was out blackberrying in Seattle one day in September and came across a row of rosa rugosa bushes, complete with fat, juicy sunset-coloured hips. Would it be possible to recreate my childhood memories? I decided to pick some and find out.

It seems I’m not the only person trying to recreate their British childhood and if you search there are a number of recipes online. I decided to follow the instructions given in this blog as they seemed very thorough.

The process is, however, surprisingly easy.

I had around 1/2 lb of rosehips which I ground to a pulp in the food processor.  Did you know that rosehips are full to bursting with hundreds of tiny seeds?

The next step is to add the rosehip pulp to 3/4 pint of boiling water, turn off the heat and leave it to stand and infuse for 15 minutes. Filter the pulp through muslin or cheesecloth set in a sieve, until fully strained, about 10 minutes.   Take the pulp left in the muslin, place it back into the saucepan and this time add 1/2 pint of boiling water and repeat the whole process.  It’s important to make sure that the little itchy hairs which are apparently inside some rosehips (I didn’t see any in mine) don’t get into your final infusion.

When the infused liquid has fully filtered through, tip it back into the saucepan and reduce it down to half a pint.  Add 5 oz of sugar, boil it all up together until a syrup forms, about 5 minutes, and then pour your finished syrup into sterilised jars or bottles.

I served it to the Minx poured over Greek yogurt and fresh berries, or you could add it to sparkling wine to make an elegant cocktail, soak it into a rich, dense almondy cake, use it in place of maple syrup on pancakes or waffles or swirl it into ice cream or whipped cream.

Or you could do as I did.  Take a dessertspoonful, add some chilled sparkling water and travel thirty odd years back in time.

If you could, which foodstuff would you make magically reappear?  Have you ever tried to recreate it from scratch? Am I weird that I like eating roses?  Talk to me!

I finished my shawl.

I’ve been knitting this as part of a ‘Mystery Knit Along’ on Ravelry with a different ‘clue’ released every ten days or so. To be perfectly honest I don’t think I would have knitted this if I’d known what it looked like beforehand , it’s a bit too baroque and lacy for me, though I do like how it works with the coral and turquoise beads. I would have at least gone with a smaller needle or thicker yarn as it’s definitely too loose and webby.

Still, I did learn that it’s possible to knit up something rather fast, if, instead of just playing with it in desultory fashion in front of the TV, you REALLY focus on progressing from step to step.

Clue 1.

Clue 2.

Clue 3.

Here’s the final pattern, if you’d like to knit this. The design is called Polaris and is inspired by a starry night which is rather lovely.

I think that’s me done with mystery knit alongs for the time being.  It was far too terrifying not knowing where this was going.

Now that we’ve got Halloween out of the way, it’s time to start thinking about Christmas.

Ha! April Fool! (Or whatever the November equivalent is).  I refuse to even think about Christmas until the beginning of December.  However I was waylaid on my Facebook by these cute chair ornaments from CB2 and I was wondering how I could justify buying some.

They’re a bit too modern to go with our other tree decorations and to be perfectly honest don’t really say ‘Christmas’ to me at all, which might be a good thing as they can be used in other ways.  But how? Nicole at Making It Lovely is going to use them as porch furniture in the dollshouse she’s decorating.

I think they look great, if a little random, used here for table decorations.  I might get a couple just to sit on our living room shelves.

Anyone else got any bright ideas?

Here I am at 10pm on a Friday night writing a blog post.  NaBloPoMo is not getting off to a particularly auspicious start.  And I’m apparently supposed to be blogging over the weekend too. Whose silly idea was this?

November 2009              (at around 175lbs)	November 2011                  (at around 144lbs)

Remember how I’ve tried to lose weight before on this blog? With very little success?

I’d been trucking along at around 175lbs for the previous couple of years and the arthritis pain in my knee was getting worse and worse.  So on June 1st this year I started yet another diet. This time a friend in the UK recommended a regime called the Dukan Diet, a French diet which had recently become very popular in the UK, as it was reportedly used by Carole Middleton (mother of Kate). 

The Dukan diet is sort of Atkins on steroids and has four phases.

First you ‘Attack’ which lasts for 3-7days (depending on how overweight you are) and where you eat NOTHING but lean protein (0% dairy, chicken, fish, eggs, seafood, lean beef etc.) and two tablespoons of oatbran to keep things moving.  This is HARD, does horrible things to your blood sugar and bowels and has I’m sure contributed to the diet’s reputation for unhealthiness.  However it was effective, I lost 6lbs in 5 days.

Then you ‘Cruise’, alternating 1 day of lean protein +oatbran with 1 day of lean protein + all the low carb vegetables you can eat +oatbran. And you’re supposed to do this until you reach your target weight. I’ve been cruising since June and have lost a total of 31lbs, with a 11lbs to go until I reach my target weight and a normal BMI. 

If and when you hit your target there are two more phases, ‘Consolidation’ and ‘Stabilization’ but I’ll talk about those when I get there.

I’m finding the diet comparatively easy as it doesn’t involved any weighing and measuring and counting, you’re allowed as much as you want of the permitted foods. Also, and interestingly, it seems that my tastes are changing, my carb cravings have gone right down, I feel nauseous if I eat too much fat and things like cakes and biscuits seem much too sweet (you’re allowed Splenda on the diet but that’s it).

I also feel really well in myself – my skin is good, I have loads of energy and the arthritis pain in my knee has GONE, which is incredible, as I was almost crippled with it back in April on our trip to San Diego.  I’ve also been upping the exercise, either doing a Jillian Michaels DVD every day or walking as the diet suggests, and doing lots of swimming over the summer. Nothing too crazy though.

Unfortunately recent weeks have been a struggle and it’s only going to get harder as we get closer to December, but I am DETERMINED to knock this on the head once and for all and get rid of those last 11lbs if it kills me.

Let me know if you’re interested in finding out more, and I’ll blog about some of my menus and stuff in the upcoming weeks.

In the meantime on the left is a picture I had taken in May 2010 wearing a sweater I’d just knitted and on the right, as I am today, wearing the same sweater.

I thought I might try NaBloPoMo, where I commit to posting every single day for a month,, as a way of getting back into blogging again.  Of course, I’m two days late even starting, so we’ll go to December 3rd. ‘K?

I FINALLY managed to persuade the Minx not to dress as a Disney Princess.  Oh happy day!

I always get very curmudgeonly about Halloween as I hate getting dressed up myself (and believe me Halloween provides lots of opportunities to humiliate the parents of six year olds).  But the people of our neighbourhood put on the most fabulous display of Halloween decorations yet again and there was something very fun about skipping through the autumn leaves in the dark singing ‘We’re Off To See the Wizard’.

Hope you all had fun.

As an often frustrated stay at home mum who loves colourful things, this gorgeous editorial from Vogue Italia spoke to me at a visceral level.  After all I do spend an awful lot of my time hiding under the sink wearing killer stilettos and a cocktail dress.

Welcome to my world.

Thanks to the ever fabulous Tom and Lorenzo for this dose of pretty.

After the the Husband, the Minx and the wedding album, I do believe my Kitchen Aid stand mixer would be the next thing I’d rescue in a fire.

However, that’s not to say that I can’t still admire these Kenwood Stand Mixers from afar and be grateful that someone is having a little fun with kitchen design.

Would you have one in your kitchen?  Or am I just succumbing to my inner five year old again?

 The Firecracker colourway is also available from John Lewis. Unfortunately I don’t think Kenwood has arrived in the US. 

If you’re still feeling battered and bruised from the whole Missoni for Target experience, you may want to take solace in a nice soothing knitting project.  This is delightfully simple but an incredibly satisfying knit which I think ended up being a little Missoni-esque in flavour.

As with so many other knitting projects, I have Ravelry to thank for this. Someone organised a swap whereby twenty-two of us sent in one skein of gorgeous Sundara sock yarn and then received back twenty- two little mini skeins in different Sundara colours. I mixed these colours in with my own sock yarn leftovers to create a random pool of about thirty colours. You don’t need so many though. Others on Ravelry have created the scarf with a much more restricted colour set and it still looks fab – you just need leftovers in the same weight of yarn throughout.

After that came the really fun bit. I then just wallowed in the colours choosing one colour per row and combining them using a stitch called ‘linen stitch’ which is not hard and ‘weaves’ and mixes the colours together ending up with an approximation of woven fabric.  It was fascinating to see how the colours changed and interacted and looked so different depending on the other colours near them.

I knit through the back loops on the first and last rows and then pulled the ends tightly to create a self fringe.

Take that Target!

Full details here on my Ravelry page. Come and be my friend.

I’m wondering if the Minx would still have such appallingly bad taste if I’d started her off on these?

These great new baby gifts are available here.  I WISH Orla Kiely would open a US online store. 

These satchels, yes or no? And if yes, what colour?

I’m old enough to have had one of these in chestnut to take to school when I was very tiny. Why on earth didn’t I keep it? It was deeply and BEAUTIFULLY distressed too. 

The clues are coming thick and fast and I’m really liking how this one’s shaping up.  The pattern is reminding me a bit of Turkish carpets and I think the two bead colours work well with that idea.

There are apparently three more clues to come, so it should all be done and dusted this month.

Look here for clue 2 and clue 1.

I thought you might like to see how nice the Missoni for Target cube looks in situ. 

I am so pleased with it.  It’s sturdily built and covered in printed cotton canvas with a cool contrast piping detail and provided a useful extra bit of seating at a recent dinner party.  If Target manages to get more in stock it seems well worth the money.  In fact I’d go as far as to say that it might even be worth braving eBay to get hold of one (or one of the other fabulous designs). Apartment Therapy agrees with me.

Unfortunately there’s nothing like putting taking photos of a corner of the house to highlight stuff that still needs to be done. Highest priority currently is replacing the ugly-ass front door and I still need to do something about the jellyfish light fixtures and find a striking bit of artwork for above the sofa.  I’ve also been looking for a throw to cover up the huge telly (given that our basement with TV room remodel is not looking like it will be done any time soon).  This could be the perfect opportunity to actually start crocheting the Babette blanket, instead of just hoarding yarn for it.

Still, it’s looking a heckuva lot better than it used to.

I seem to have been making rather a lot of chocolate brownies this summer, which is strange as I’m not supposed to be eating them on this diet (though one or two might have accidentally fallen into my mouth on occasion).

They were my contribution  for the Food Bloggers Bake Sale and the Husband also requested some for his birthday, where I copied Nigella’s idea of piling the brownies up in lieu of a cake.

After extensive taste testing, I have found no better recipe than that for Chocolate and Sour Cherry Brownies from Unwrapped – Green & Black’s Chocolate Recipes which is a fabulous and much underrated cookbook. (I can’t get Nigella’s brownies to be anything other than dry and cake-y)

These brownies have just the right gooey interior and firm, crusty, satisfying edges, while the cherries impart an extra chewy dimension. And the sultry dark chocolate and sweet, tangy cherries are of course a match made in heaven.

It’s not surprising they’re so good, since the ingredients are insane. If you’re on any sort of diet, I suggest you walk away from the computer now  and go get yourself a nice cup of cottage cheese.

Ingredients

300g (11oz) unsalted butter

300g (11oz) top quality dark chocolate

5 large eggs

450g (1lb) granulated sugar

1 tbsp vanilla extract/essence

200g (7oz) plain (all purpose) flour

1 tsp salt

250g (9oz) dried cherries*

Extra chocolate chips for topping if you’re greedy like me

 *dried sour cherries are easily obtainable in the US but maybe not so easily in the UK, though I’ve definitely found them at Waitrose. However, I’ve successfully substituted dried cranberries and you could also use any other dried berries, nuts or just leave them out altogether. 

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 C/ 350 F. Line a 34x25cm / 13x10in rectangular baking tin with baking parchment.

Melt the butter and chocolate together in a bain-marie or heatproof bowl suspended over barely simmering water.

Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla until thick and creamy. Then beat the egg mixture into the melted chocolate.

Sift the flour and salt  together and stir into the mixture until smooth. Stir in the cherries.

Pour the liquid mixture into the baking tin and then bake for 25-35 minutes until the whole thing looks like a giant brownie with a slightly cracked surface.  When you start to smell them, it means they’re almost done. 

Try not to overcook the brownies.  If they seem too squidgy after you’ve taken them out, it’s not a problem to put them back in the oven for a few more minutes.  But if overcooked they get cake-y.

Just after you’ve brought the huge brownie out of the oven, sprinkle the whole thing with chocolate chips.  They will partially melt in the heat and slightly embed themselves into the mixture but then cool back down into chocolate chips again, imparting an extra chocolatey crunch to the surface of the already perfectly textured brownie. I got the idea from the brownies served at Pret a Manger, and it’s well worth the extra calories.

Leave the giant brownie to cool for about 20 minutes before cutting into large squares in the pan.

I’ve just finished clue two (of five) of the Mystery Shawl knitalong and very much like how it’s shaping up.

If you remember I was thinking of knitting it with three different colours of beads, and with the pattern becoming clearer I swapped out the orange seed beads for larger coral Swarovski pearl beads (I’m lucky enough to live 10 minutes walk away from here).

I tried to incorporate the copper beads, but they seemed a bit too blingy for what I’m intending to be an ‘everyday’ shawl and not a glitzy evening affair. My plan now is to try and find one more place for the coral beads in the bottom lace section of the shawl, and also try to incorporate them in the lace edging which there apparently is along the top.

Next clue is due in about five days time. If you’re interested in joining the knitalong, it’s not too late.  Full details here (Ravelry link).

It also looks fabulous next to our new Missoni duvet cover.

So have you got over the much-hyped, much anticipated PR-disaster, retail extravaganza which was Missoni for Target? If you ended up disappointed you may want to stop reading this post now.

Given the exuberant pattern, colours and Italianness of the Missoni aesthetic, you would be right in thinking that the collection was right up my alley, and I made a resolution to get up early on the 13th and get in line.  I even went through the lookbook carefully to plan my shop, with the fabulous espresso cups at the top of my list.

Of course I forgot all about it (I’d be such a crap fashionista) and only remembered when I got on Twitter at 8.30 am.  I decided to make an unprecedented effort, MISSED BREAKFAST, and chased up the freeway to my nearest Target.  When I arrived at 8.45 am the whole place was picked clean. No womenswear, no homewares, no menswear, no. espresso. cups. Just long lines at checkout of women with their carts piled high with thousands of dollars of Missoni stuff.  I picked up a couple of skirts and sweaters for the Minx, two pairs of socks for me, nearly had a fight with the woman in the check out line who tried to pinch my meagre pickings and returned home feeling that being a shopaholic really is much too much like hard work.

I halfheartedly opened the website and was of course greeted by the irritatingly cute dog.  So I thought no more about it and got on with grumbling about Target on Facebook and Twitter.  And then my habit of not closing a browser window paid off, when the Target website flickered tantalisingly to life around 11 am.  And there was still lots of stuff left because no one else could access it either.  Not much womenswear, not much dinnerware, no. espresso. cups, but bedding and towels, and kidwear and poufs.

So I may have got a little carried away. 

It’s all surprisingly well made and extremely good value for money.  I hope Target can find a way to restock in a month or so, as there are still a few bits and bobs I wanted (women’s ballet flats, tumblers and loopy pillow).  Harriet likes it too.

Did you wait in line that morning? Did you get what you wanted? Do you think this has been bad PR for Target? I have to confess to doing what I never do, and resorting to Ebay for the espresso cups which are apparently on their way.

I’ve featured her before but I can’t help loving Greek designer Mary Katrantzou’s gloriously colourful prints, shown at London Fashion Week, which this season are inspired by flowers and crushed car parts (natch).  I just want to take all the models home and hang them on my wall.  I obviously also need to rush out and buy some turquoise lipstick.

In her eyewateringly hilarious neo-feminist diatribe How To Be A Woman, UK journalist Caitlin Moran mentions in passing that ‘yellow shoes go surprisingly well with everything’.  And, though I’ve never owned a pair of yellow shoes in my life, I can see that this may very well be the case.

I’m also wondering if that is also case for interiors, but I suspect that is mostly so I can have an excuse to buy this – the IKEA Trollsta sideboard (which is apparently now only available in black instead of yellow, seriously guys, the yellowness was by far the best thing about it).

{From Planet Fur via Designer Junk Finder}

Perhaps fortunately for the people who have to live with me, we have absolutely no space for this – otherwise I’d be sorely tempted to drag home the black version and a pot of yellow paint.

So is it true? Does yellow go with everything? Should I buy yellow shoes? Do you want to sell me your yellow sideboard? Got any other examples of fabulous yellow accent pieces?

I daresay I’m too old for them, but I really need to knit these socks as a matter of urgency. 

Why am I still only thirty in my head? I think I’m starting to veer into mutton dressed as lamb territory.

Ken has finally made an honest woman out of Barbie! (When did he start looking like someone out of a boy band by the way?)

Fortunately wedding photographer Beatrice de Guigne was commissioned to record the occasion. Check the album out to see Barbie getting ready – close ups of her dress and shoes, the bridal party, the flowers and and the table decorations.  All the details of how Beatrice coped with such a famous and temperamental bride are here.

I love how this set features (as is only appropriate for Barbie) every wedding album cliché in the book. How many of these poses do you have in your own album? (Beatrice dG really is a great photographer though. I loved this Parisian wedding album on her blog). 

There’s quite a lot of self-reinvention going on around here.  I’ve lost 26lbs and counting since June 1st on the deadly but effective Dukan diet and am the thinnest I’ve been for about eight years (and yes, I will blog about it early next week).

This time I’m determined to see this thing through to the end, and as a result am holding off on buying too many new clothes as I’d still like to lose another 16-20 lbs. Instead I had to find another way to up the glamour factor round these parts – I’m feeling better about myself than I have in a LOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGG time – and give myself a bit of a reward.  And this treat fits whatever size you are.

I’ve been a fan of Julep ever since entrepreneur Jane Park opened her first salon about ten minutes from my house. They now have a presence throughout Greater Seattle and have launched their line of nail polishes online throughout the US.  These are beautiful polishes in glorious colours with lots of seasonal changes, all named after Hollywood stars.  I’m shallow enough that I find this occasionally problematic – I don’t care what colour it is, I am not wearing ‘Keira’ or ‘Gwyneth’.

They’ve also launched a monthly subscription service called Julep Maven.  You do a fun quiz to find out your style and they email you every month with personalised colour selections.  You can choose whether to take the colours, request another ‘shelf pull’, have the box sent to a friend as a present or just skip the box altogether.  And for around $20 a month, they guarantee at least $40 of product, including two nail polishes in either new seasonal colours or cult favourites, together with other hand care products.  Shipping is free and you also get 20% of other products on the website.

The quiz decided that I was an ‘American Beauty’, somewhat amusing as I’m neither leggy, nor blonde, nor even American, and the website said they’d be sending me ‘Alfre’ – a cool dusty lilac and ‘Carrie’,  a useful innocuous pink.  Since I have no idea who ‘Alfre’ is, and since I still have some residual affection for ‘Carrie’, despite SATC2, I thought these sounded good.

Everything arrived beautifully packaged, with a letter from the owner. As well as the two polishes, I received a bottle of Nail Therapy nail strengthener (which has been GREAT for my brittle nails), a full size 3 oz glycolic hand scrub and a couple of little samples.

The only problem was that they weren’t the right two polishes.  I’d been sent ‘Zoe’, a gorgeous autumnal copper and ‘Molly’ a true red, which isn’t really me.

I emailed instantly to inquire after the whereabouts of cool and beautiful Alfre, to be told that I’d signed up just as the monthly colours were changing. However they did offer to send Alfre to me free of charge, which was rather nice of them.  So here are my three ladies (plus nail protector) in all their glory.

Here I am modelling Zoe and wishing that I wasn’t such a f*cking amateur when it comes to giving myself a manicure.  I love her as she is glamorous, yet neutral and seasonal, and not a colour that I would necessarily have picked out for myself, which is sort of the point of doing this sort of thing.

I find myself strangely excited to see what colours are in my next box (I’m such a sucker for good marketing).  If you live in the US and want to give yourselves a little monthly treat then here’s where you can sign up.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I get $15 in store credit if you sign up through the link above.  However, as usual I haven’t been paid for this review, nor have I been sent free stuff, it’s something I decided to do for me).

I’m still trying to work on my food photography – don’t know why, love doing it.  I’m going to set myself a weekly challenge to photograph a ‘difficult’ food subject. 

This week’s was Chocolate Banana Bread, which is basically a big brown blob.  I wanted to show the fudgey moistness and gooiness of the cake whilst introducing a bit of colour and getting everything properly exposed.

The colour bit was difficult – I had no fresh bananas left in the house, none of the other fresh ingredients are particularly colourful and flowers seemed a bit random.

In the end I settled for using my embroidered Mexican tablecloth, though I’m still wishing I had a brightly coloured cake stand or a knife with a brightly coloured handle. (More prop shopping obviously required.)

Anyway, did my photo succeed?  Does it make you want to eat the banana bread? What would you have done differently?  Critique away, I want to LEARN.

The recipe I used is here.

For my recent escape to San Francisco, I was looking for a hotel that was not TOO pricey, centrally-located and yet still a luxurious treat.   Through various Seattle foodie events, I’ve had the great good luck to get to know the wonderful Sheri Doyle of Pacific Northwest Journeys, who specialises in travel-planning throughout the Pacific Northwest.  What she doesn’t know about travel throughout the region and booking hotels in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver and Victoria really isn’t worth knowing.

So I followed her advice and booked the Hotel Monaco (a sister hotel to the Hotel Triton, where we’d enjoyed staying before).  Sheri made the arrangements, got me a great rate, asked if I wanted a goldfish in my room (!), and passed on a secret password which would get me a ‘nice treat’.

The treat proved to be an upgrade to a Junior Suite, the goldfish was delivered to the door of my room with a note telling me his name was Speedy, and I spend the next 24 hours just WALLOWING in the hotel. The staff were all delightful – friendliness and helpfulness personified - which is great if you’re travelling on your own.

I have to admit upfront that the décor – like the lovechild of a louche gentlemen’s club on acid and a fantasy French chateau - wasn’t really my thing and seemed a little dated, but it was bright and supremely comfortable and had that touch of crazy fantasy that characterizes all the best hotels. You may not want to try this at home, but goodness it’s fun to visit.

My room was very, very, very stripy. No other adjective seems appropriate somehow.

As for Speedy the goldfish?  Well, he’s about the weirdest gimmick I’ve ever encountered at a hotel and I only said I wanted one so I could blog about it, but there was actually something strangely companionable about having a fish in the room. And he did have the most excellent manners – no snoring, no farting, very quiet.  I was sad to leave him behind.

If ever you’re thinking of travelling around the Pacific Northwest, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Sheri. You’ll end up with a detailed itinerary, the best recommendations out there for accommodation, eating out and things to see and do, and the savings that she’ll get you on room rates will probably more than pay for her services. Oh and she is incredibly organised, friendly and helpful and a pleasure to do business with.

Those of you who know me in person know how much  I DON’T like surprises. I’m the sort of person who sends the Husband long lists of links for potential Christmas presents, who plans trips with meticulous precision and who always reads the spoilers.

So I surprised myself last week by joining in with a mystery knitalong on Ravelry. This is where a designer releases a ‘clue’ (a few lines of a pattern) every few days or so and a bunch of people knit along and chat about the process online.

So here’s my latest knitting project after the completion of the first clue.  All I know is that it’s going to be a crescent shawl, can be knit on laceweight or fingering weight yarn and has optional beads. I thought it might be fun to post up my progress so we could all see what it turns into.

The shawl is by the same designer who designed my Annis and my Abrazo so the chances are that I’ll like the finished product.  I have also satisfied my inner control freak by choosing a comparatively cheap wool/silk yarn for the project (I’ll only need about a third of the skein). No 100% silk for this one.

As for the beads, I’d love to incorporate three colours, however, I’m not sure that I’ll be able to work out of the symmetry and pattern of the bead placement with the next clue, so I might stick to turquoise.

The next clue comes out on the 19th and then I have 10 days to knit it up.

I’ve always found it difficult to describe Aussie singer Sia Furler’s music – it’s somewhere between dance-pop and soulful jazz, with an almost folksie vibe thrown in.

Suffice it to say though that she has an amazingly powerful, rich yet tender voice with an appealing break and I adore her music.

A week or two back the Husband and I escaped for the evening to go and see her on tour in Seattle. The music was amazing; the band was cute; the support act (Danish singer Oh Land) was fabulous, Sia herself is as nutty as a fruitcake, with an appealing whimsical Aussie bluntness which made me laugh more than most stand-up comedians, and as the total icing on the cake, she had decorated her set with crochet. granny. blankets. Be still my beating heart. Really, who needs fancy lighting and special effects when you can have CROCHET?

Here are some photos of the awesome. Please excuse crappy phone photos

The backdrop comprised two huge granny square blankets on painted stripes, with ‘Sia’ picked out in balls of yarn.

Everything – amps, stools, mike stands etc. was wrapped in crochet.

Here’s Sia in concert at the London Roundhouse from the same tour. You can just about see the set in action.