hello saucy – reprise

Posted on February 1, 2013 by modflowers

Just a quick post to let you know that the search is over.

Yes folks, this is the little beauty that will be taking pride of place atop our table, filled to the brim with a plethora, nay a cornucopia even, of yet-to-be-decided varieties of tasty sauce to accompany our future meals.

A thoroughly life-enhancing purchase, I hope you’ll agree.

And for £4.99 plus postage, an undeniable bargain!

The design is Springtime by Jessie Tait for Midwinter. I’m not sure of the date, but it certainly has that certain “je ne sais quoi” of the 1960s about it.

So you can all stop scouring the interweb for sauce boats, jugs and gravy pourers now, and carry on about your business.

Me, I’m off to make some custard.

afternoon tea

Posted on December 29, 2012 by modflowers

afternoon tea 1

We got out the best china this afternoon.

My sister made mince pies.

We ate them with brandy cream, Earl Grey tea, mini pavs, choc rolls (for the kids) and homemade shortbread.

On the deck. With a view of the rainforest.

In 30 degree heat.

Afterwards, the kids played Monopoly.

Christmas in Australia is full of such familiar unfamiliarities. afternoon tea 2 afternoon tea 3 afternoon tea 4 afternoon tea 5

festive mulled fruit trifle

Posted on December 27, 2012 by thelinencloud

Hello there, I’m back again. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are looking forward to New Year.

I’m going to keep my promise today and share my recipe for mulled fruit trifle. It’s simply delicious, if I do say so myself! This trifle makes a lovely dessert for Christmas or New Year dinner. We had it on Christmas Day. It is fast becoming a favourite in the linen cloud house.

So, on with the recipe.

Mulled Fruit Trifle

Ingredients: 150ml ruby port, 75g caster sugar, 1tsp mixed spice, 500g frozen fruits of the forest, 200g madeira cake, 300ml cream, 500ml quality custard

Method: Add the ruby port, mixed spice and caster sugar to a saucepan and bring to the boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer for 5-10 minutes and stir now and again until the liquid becomes syrupy. Add the frozen fruits, stir and leave to one side until cool.

Break the madeira cake into chunks and put in the bottom of a glass serving bowl. Cover the cake with the forest fruit mixture and mix gently. This ensures all the cake is coated with the syrupy mixture. Add a layer of good quality custard, or if you have time and the inclination, feel free to make your own.

Whip the cream and add as the final layer. You can be as flamboyant or reserved as you want with the final decoration. For this one, I attempted piping the cream to make pretty peaks. As you can see in the picture below, it was only slightly successful! But you can decorate the trifle to suit the occasion. Some dark chocolate curls always look pretty added on top.

note: a mix of raspberries and strawberries would work just as well as forest fruits

What do you think? Maybe some of you will give my take on retro Christmas trifle a go. I promise you won’t be disapppointed.

That’s it for today but I will be back tomorrow for my last guest post. Looking forward to seeing you. Bye for now, Bee x

my handmade christmas – cookies

Posted on December 20, 2012 by jenlittlebirdie

Hello!

Hope you are all well. Thanks for all your lovely comments this week about my handmade Christmas. Today I’d like to show you some cookies for Santa. I think Christmas Eve is probably my favourite part of the holidays. Simply because of the build up. My son is getting so excited, and putting out the little treat for Santa, a glass of milk and a carrot for the reindeer, just seems to highlight that wonderful magical feeling. This year, I wanted to make some cookies with a Christmas feel. So I opted for a chocolate spiced cookie with some stencilled icing. Hope you like them!

Ingredients:

450g plain flour

180g cocoa

1 – 2 tsp cinnamon or mixed spice

320g unsalted butter

360g icing sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:

1 Sift flour, cocoa and cinnamon into a large bowl.

2 Beat butter and sugar in a mixer on a medium speed until pale and fluffy.

3 Add flour mixture to butter mixture and beat until combined.

4 Divide dough in half and wrap in cling film.

5 Then pop into the fridge for at least 1 hour.

6 Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C.

7 Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface until it is about half a cm thick.

8 Cut out cookies with cookie cutters. (I actually used a small cup as I didn’t have any round cutters!)

9 Transfer to a baking sheet. Stick back in the fridge for another 15 mins.

10 Bake for 8 – 10 mins. Transfer to wire rack and then leave to cool completely.

To make them more festive I wanted to add a simple decoration, so I bought some cookie stencils online. I then just lightly dusted over the stencil with icing sugar. This works okay, but if you wanted to make for a gift you would really have to make up a batch of runny icing, paint it onto the stencil and then shake the icing sugar over it to stay firm.