Sweet

Today we are having double glazing fitted here at the Bramble house. We've had draughty single glazed aluminium windows since we moved in more than 20 years ago. We had hoped to afford replacement wooden sashes at some point. That's never going to happen (currently over £20,000 for a terraced house!) we now realise, so have opted for UPVC in green on the outside to give the illusion of painted frames as a compromise.

It's cold here so I decided to do some baking to warm myself up and keep myself busy.

I subscribe to these chocolates (yes, you can subscribe to chocolate!!!) and get twelve 35g bags a month.

I have a bit of a backlog so wanted to bake something where I could use them up.

And this is the recipe I chose - I must be the last person on the planet to try it and I can see why people rave about it.
It took thirteen packets of the chocolate to make the cookies and they are very rich, and massive too!
I was looking forward to eating one with a cup of tea, but as I've been nibbling the broken bits and now feel in need of a lie down from an overload of sugar, I shall save that treat for later!
Have you tried this recipe?
What do you think of it?
As the double glazing is going to take five days to fit I'll have to think of other bakes to keep warm - maybe a slightly healthier one next time (or maybe not, I am going to be the teenagers favourite person this week if I carry on like this!!)
Thanks for visiting.
xXx

A Revelation

It seems I am not a Domestic Goddess!

This will not come as a surprise to those who know me well.

Today, to celebrate myself and my two lovely colleagues working together (normally, only two of us work together at one time) and the evening session of Meet and Make, I decided to make some biscuits.

My recipe of choice was chocolate chunk pecan cookies, chosen from the BBC Good Food website.

This is how they were supposed to look

BBC

This is how mine turned out

I've renamed it chocolate and pecan goo!

Obviously, these (this?) cannot leave the house, they taste lovely and will be consumed but don't look pretty.

Although I had the ingredients to try again I did not want to be left with the equivalent of 24 biscuits waiting to be eaten if it went wrong again!

I sort of made the next recipe up, a basic biscuit dough with hazelnuts, cranberries and chocolate chips. They look better and don't fall apart (I can't face eating one at the moment!)

Here they are in the tins waiting to be eaten by

1. Home - the broken, overcooked ones

2. Work - 2 each for my colleagues and one for me

3. Meet and Makers

Fingers crossed they taste OK!

Can any of you clever people tell me what I did wrong? I wondered if maybe the butter was too soft?

Before I go I must show you the gorgeous bag I'm using to take my bits to work at the moment.

(click on the pic to see it in more detail)

It was a 'just because' gift from the lovely Lunch Lady Jan. Look at the beautiful fabric, lining and pink spotty buttons! I love it and this weather is perfect for using it as the colours are so bright and summery.

Thankyou very much XXX

As always, thanks for visiting.

xXx

A taste of Summer...

I do my food shopping online and occassionally (OK, quite often!) make mistakes. The best one was when I ordered a HUGE bar of chocolate thinking it was a standard size, the most ridiculous was when I ordered one carrot! This weeks mistake is this...

(I thought it was ice cream)

I made the best of it and made this...

A strawberry and cream sponge. Yum.

It's been another wet and dreary day here in Worthing, it did brighten up for a bit mid afternoon. I've been listing some items for selling on ebay, a job I really hate - it takes soooo long!

For years I've collected Emma Bridgewater Pottery. The time feels right to downsize my collection and just keep the bits I use, received as gifts or just really love. Although I use some on a daily basis, most of it is stored.

Hope I don't regret it at a later date!

Thanks for visiting.

I hope those of you in the UK had a great BH weekend.

xXx