Pink and White Tattered Lace Shoe Birthday Card

 

The beauty of Tattered Lace dies is that they are so intricate and well-designed that you barely need to put anything else on the card. Take this card, for example- I have one of the Tattered Lace stiletto dies and cut out a shoe on pink card.

 

I bought some circle die-cuts from Ebay – these are also from the Tattered Lace range but I don’t know what the actual die is called, which is a shame as I’d quite like to own it! Does anyone know?

 

I had a fairly small 5x5 card blank and put the pink die cut on to take up most of the card, and mounted the shoe on top. I found a small ‘Birthday wishes’ sticker and put that underneath the shoe for a simple, elegant and feminine birthday card.

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Restaurant review: Thiwanya, Holborn, London

If your meal had been sitting in front of someone else for five minutes, would you eat it? This crossed my mind as I sat in Thiwanya Thai restaurant in Holborn not long ago.

 

I’d met a friend after work and she knew the area so suggested this place – she hadn’t been there before, but thought Thai would suit us both (she’s vegan, I’m fussy!). It’s a cosy (ie fairly small) restaurant and totally non-pretentious despite its city centre location. There is a good selection of vegetarian choices on the menu and my vegan friend had no problem finding something.

To start I had dim sum, with pork and crab meat dumplings, followed by a Pad Thai, which was delicious.

However, my food arrived several minutes before my friend’s so I waited and didn’t start until hers arrived. As the waiter put her meal on the table, she noticed it wasn’t what she had ordered – prompting me to look more closely at my dish and realise it wasn’t what I had ordered either. The waiter apologised and had obviously brought the food to the wrong table – as he promptly picked them up and gave them to the people on the table behind us. I hadn’t touched my food but as it had been sitting in front of me for at least five minutes he had no way of knowing that! I assume the people who received our meals hadn’t noticed – in their position I would have refused it and asked for one to be made fresh.

 

It left a disappointing tint to our meal; the food was actually very good and the service (aside from the mix up) so-so.

 

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Restaurant review: Pan de Vie matcha cafe, London

There are plenty of restaurants and cafes in London that focus on one dish or ingredient – be it hot dogs, cheese or arancini (deep fried risotto balls) – but Pan de Vie is the first one I’ve heard of to make a hero of the Japanese green tea powder matcha.

 

The café/patisserie opened not long ago and invited me along with lots of other bloggers to a launch event. Just off Leicester Square in New Row, the café is likely to get a lot of passing trade but I can imagine it’s somewhere that people will specifically seek out as well. You don’t have to be obsessed with matcha to eat here – but it helps!

 

The café has plenty of other things – some of their cakes looked to die for – including macarons and madeleines, but their speciality is Japanese treats, many of which are flavoured with matcha. At the launch, we tried a selection of sushi which was good, but to my untrained tastebuds seemed pretty much the same thing I can buy in Tesco or M&S. The more unusual items really stood out though. We tried buns stuffed with chicken teriyaki which were delicious; there is also a sweet version containing matcha custard which was a bit like eating a cream doughnut but intriguingly different. I was also told Japanese cheesecake is something really special – I’d never even heard of it, but tried a small slice (matcha flavoured, of course) – it was so creamy and light, I’m definitely sold! The café offers them by the slice or box of 5 and you can eat in or take away – there is a small seating area downstairs.

 

We tried a variety of other small treats, but I have to admit I didn’t get the name of a lot of things – there was a cake flavoured with red bean paste; the small green circle is a white chocolate tart (with matcha, as if you couldn’t guess!).

 

Matcha is an anti-oxidant and is supposed to be effective in improving mental focus; it is used in both Japanese tea ceremonies and in cooking (you can get matcha ice cream, noodles, cocktails and of course cakes). It’s not a fad that will disappear and I gather Pan de Vie wants to roll out more branches in London. Their cakes are not cheap but are delicious.

At the launch event they had hired someone to demonstrate origami; I chatted to him for a while and watched him make amazing flowers so quickly without even looking as he was looking at me while we were speaking! Samuel Tsang teaches origami as a mindfulness technique - I always find it very frustrating as I can't do it, but Samuel said that it's something you have to learn, and following the instructions is like being able to read music - you can't just expect everyone to open a book and be able to do it - but once you have mastered the technique it's very therapeutic. I'll have to take his word for that!

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Oxo Butternut Squash and Coconut Milk Soup

Oxo is pretty much a store cupboard staple for me – I always have Oxo cubes and use them in all sorts of recipes. Recently I’ve come across Knorr stock pots and branched out a bit, so was pleased to be sent a selection of Oxo stock pots to try recently – and they even threw in an Oxo cookery book!

Oxo is an iconic brand in the UK and has been around pretty much forever. Did you know that Oxo was invented in the 1840s after a German chemist developed meat extract? And as official sponsor of the 1908 London Olympics, Oxo supplied marathon runners with fortifying drinks of Oxo (I can’t quite imagine drinking beef broth while running a marathon but never mind!). In the First World War, soldiers were given Oxo cubes in their ration kits.

The company has now launched three flavours of stock pots, which I would describe as a sort of concentrated gel. They are: garden vegetables with parsley and bay; beef with onion and rosemary; and chicken with garlic and thyme. They also do a range called ‘herbs and more’ of flavours like lemon and thyme, which are not stock but ‘flavour pots’, which I’d also like to try. The stock pots sell for around £1 for 4 from major supermarkets.

My only criticism is that once you open the pot, you have to use the whole thing – you could probably refrigerate the rest for a day or two, but as I only cook for one or two people, I often cut a traditional stock cube in half, wrap the other half back up and put it back in the box, and you can’t really do that with the stock pots. They do however add a real depth of flavour; you don’t have to boil a kettle and wait for the stock cube to resolve, as you can add them straight to a pan to melt. You do still need to add water or some other liquid (tinned tomatoes perhaps) as the flavour is quite concentrated.

They are really easy to use though and definitely gave a nice flavour to my recipe.

I was working from home one day just after they arrived so flicked through the Oxo cookery book and found something I could make from store cupboard ingredients: a spicy butternut squash soup with coconut milk. Be warned, it does have quite a kick from the coconut milk alone (so you could perhaps miss out the chilli).

To serve 4, you need:

1 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, chopped

1 small piece fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

½ red chilli, finely chopped

900g butternut squash, peeled and diced (seeds discarded)

1 Oxo Garden Vegetables with Parsley and Bay stock pot, made up with 500ml boiling water

400ml coconut milk, reserving 2 tbsp to serve

1 tbsp chopped fresh coriander to serve

Heat the oil in a large saucepan, add the onion, ginger, chilli and garlic, and fry for five minutes until softened. Add the butternut squash, stock and all but the 2 tbsp of coconut milk you are reserving.

Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes or until the squash is cooked.

Blend in a blender until smooth (you may need to do this in batches). Serve in bowls with half a tbsp. of coconut milk swirled on the top and sprinkle with the chopped coriander.

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Meal Planning Monday Week 12

It's going to be a really busy week when I won't be home for many meals...

Monday
In Edinburgh on a training course, with a very early start and lunch and dinner provided

Tuesday
In Edinburgh on a training course with lunch provided then dinner in my hotel as I'm staying on for an extra day

Wednesday
Shadowing another team at my company's head office in Edinburgh (I do a similar but different job in London); will have lunch in the staff canteen and dinner will be at the airport

Thursday
Home in Surrey at last! There won't be much fresh food in the house though so will do something simple from the freezer like sausage and chips

Friday
Teriyaki salmon balls with ginger-pineapple rice from Inspiralized for me; something different from the freezer for the other half who doesn't eat any of that!

Saturday
Lunch fresh pasta and garlic bread
Dinner The beef pie I was going to make last week but didn't

Sunday
Lunch - with my parents - off to Wiltshire as my wedding venue has a wedding fayre; we've already booked everything but I want to show my parents around and where everything will be on the day
Dinner - not sure what time I will be home so either something on route or from the freezer

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Easter Mini Egg Ombre Pinata Cake

Making something very elaborate for a bake off at work is hard when you have to finish it on a weeknight after work and transport it by train and bus into the office. I thought about making essentially the same cake as last year's winning entry again, but with mini eggs – I still intend to do this, but thought it was a bit of a cop-out for the bake off as it was really just the same thing I’d done last time. As I won last time I also thought the judges wouldn’t award first prize to the same cake again – forgetting that last time the bake off was a departmental one, and this time was sort of company-wide (being held in 4 of our largest offices at the same time), with different judges who wouldn’t have seen my malteser cake!
 

By the time I’d remembered that I’d already decided to make something else though, that didn’t actually take that long to make and wouldn’t be too fragile to transport. I came across a brilliant Easter ombre piñata cake on Taming Twins, and essentially just copied that. So I’m not going to reproduce Sarah’s recipe and instead suggest you hop on over to her site; she’s even done a video showing you just how you get the mini eggs inside.

I did take a few photos as I went along the way, so you can see how the cake came together and how I coloured each layer.

Adding food colouring to the cake batter and baking each layer:

Make a hole in two layers of cake cutting around something like a glass or an egg cup

Place a complete layer of cake on the bottom, spread with buttercream, then do the same with the two layers with holes in, and pour Cadbury Mini Eggs into the hole until the top is level. Then place the fourth complete layer of cake on top, with more buttercream in between each layer.

I mixed the same three colours (as one layer of the sponge is its natural colour) with some buttercream and spread it around the side of the cake, one colour at a time. It doesn't matter if the layers of icing are that neat, because you then take a spatula and spread the buttercream so it's even, blending the edges into each other.

Finally I put the cake on a board I had covered with fondant, where I'd stuck a yellow polka-dot ribbon around the edge which I bought from Fantastic Ribbons, which I thought was quite appropriate for Easter. I then spooned my remaining buttercream on top and fixed on a little heap of Mini Eggs.

I didn't know what the inside was going to look like until the judges at the bake off cut it open, so it was quite nerve-racking. It looked great the Mini Eggs spilled out and the other bakers were very impressed. However, the judges said I hadn't used enough buttercream between each layer which made the cake a bit dry, so I didn't win this time. I will have to come up with something better for the bake-off next year….

I'm sharing this with Love Cake, hosted by Ness at JibberJabber UK, as her theme this month is Sport Relief and this cake was made for a Sport Relief bake sale.

I'm also sending it to Simply Eggcellent, hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen; the cake uses quite a lot of eggs and of course the Mini Eggs are the star!

Another challenge I can enter this in is Tea Time Treats, hosted by Jane at the Hedgecombers and Karen at Lavender and Lovage, as their theme this month is Easter and Spring.

And finally because it's Easter, I'm sending this to the Food Year Linkup, hosted by Charlotte's Lively Kitchen.

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Spiralized Butternut Squash with Prawns and Mascarpone

I realised I hadn’t used my spiralizer for a few weeks and was inspired to get it out again by this recipe from Ros at A Twirly Whirly Blog.

 

It was absolutely delicious and something that I would definitely make again. You do need to oven cook the spiralized veg for about ten minutes so it was good that I had the oven on anyway to make dinner for my fiancé (I’m never going to get him to eat spiralized veg!).

 

I altered the recipe a little as I don’t like mushrooms and didn’t have any spinach (as I don’t like it much either). I was going to add in some broccoli but realised I had run out, so there was nothing green in my dish in the end. It probably would have benefited from some extra green veg but it’s still a vegetable-based meal and was very filling.

 

I spiralized half a butternut squash – as it’s a chunky veg it is quite filling. I laid out the pieces on a roasting tin lined with foil and drizzled with a little oil, and baked it in the oven for ten minutes.

 

Meanwhile I fried half a chopped onion with some chopped bacon – I didn’t have any pancetta either but did have bacon and prawns in the freezer, so this was a good meal to make without having to buy any extra ingredients. I stirred in some mascarpone cheese so it would melt, added the prawns (already cooked) and the butternut squash and stirred it all through. You can sprinkle the dish with grated parmesan as Ros did, but I think it’s perfectly nice without – and if you are counting calories, a little bit of mascarpone in the sauce is probably enough.

I'm sharing this via my Spiralizer Saturday challenge - please link up any spiralizer recipes!

 

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