Easy Pastry for Pie

Making pastry for the tops of your savoury pie doesn't have to be all bells and whistles.

You know how I like to keep things easy, lazy almost and still keep things tasty.

Now I warn you, this recipe isnt healthy, you wont win any awards for the ingredients and its certainly not going to impress a foodie to look at, but it keep them smiling once they eat it. Think pastry Nanna used to make, think glutton and all things nice made with the ingredients that you probably frown upon when picking up your expensive baking ingredients.

Well, this uses the cheapest of the cheap. smart price is your friend. ;-)

Soft Pretzels

Im a huge fan of large salted soft pretzels, the kind you get at a Disney park. Disney also have plain, jalapeno, cream cheese and cheese topped pretzels at their pretzel stands. But I always go for the salted. Maybe im a secret slug and salt is my weakness. I dont have salt on my food day to day, but I always tend to gravitate towards salted foods. Caramel, chocolate, popcorn, pretzels.

Ok, so you get the idea.... I like salt. I love soft pretzels. On with the recipe...

Happy 19th Birthday Naomi

My sister Naomi is 19 today. She shares her birthday with Davy Crockett, who has in turn, a link with Disney, and we both love anything to do with Disney.

My parents got her a Zoku, after the phenomenon happening in my kitchen earlier in 2012. I swear, every household needs one.

She originally mentioned ice cream cupcakes. So... many a pintrest and google search later, I found that you can bake a cupcake straight into a wafer cone.

Olympics Party!

Soooo did everyone watch the opening ceremony? Fantastic wasn't it. I had a busy Friday night baking my godson a 3 layered birthday cake (post coming this week) and 30 cupcakes for my Olympic Party happening the next day.

The party was an all day affair, filled with buffet, bbq and friends. I made 30 simple English vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream - You can get the recipe here. I baked them in Union Jack cases and displayed them proudly on a Union Jack stand.

Cupcakes for college

A few weeks ago one of my Disney friends Caron asked me to make her some cupcakes as thank you gifts for the teachers in her sons college. I was overjoyed to fulfil the order and had such fun thinking of flavour combinations for the occasions.

We decided to keep it simple and opted for Vanilla, Strawberry, Lemon and Oreo.

The recipe was adapted from my trusty vanilla mix, which you can find here.

For the Strawberry I made a strawberry buttercream using natural strawberry jam to flavour and colour the mixture. Strawberry puree was added to the hot cake and then it was topped with the buttercream when cooled. I used an open round nozzle.

The Lemon cakes were made in the same way, using the base mix but using lemon juice and curd to flavour the cake, and topped with a yellow lemon buttercream and lemon icing drizzle.

The Oreo had crushed oreos in the cake and frosting, as well as an oreo crust.

Birthday Cupcakes

This past weekend we all went to Kent for a family birthday. My Uncle Barry was 70 and it was my mum's birthday yesterday too.

Its weird how my mum, her brother and his two children all have a birthday in the same week. My cousins are even on the same day... 5 years apart.

So, with a big celebration I was tasked with making the cake. The brief was chocolate cake and enough to feed around 30.