Sausage Rolls

 Sausage rolls (literally sausages in pastry) are a staple of British party food, and actually pretty easy to make (with pre-made pastry sheets). We like to have these for Holiday and Birthday celebration, or just for tasty snacks . Here's my recipe. 

16oz ground pork or pork sausage (I see no reason why this couldn't be recplaced by ground beef or turkey, but traditional in the UK is pork)

Bread crumbs ~1 cup

1 egg (mixed - put about half in the sausage mix, reserve some for an egg wash)

1 tsp ground sage

2tsp thyme

salt and pepper to taste

1 packet puff pasty sheets

Preheat oven to 425 F

Mix meat, breadcrumbs, most of the egg and flavourings together well. 

Cut puff pasty sheets in half. 

Make long "sausages" with the meat mixture down the middle of the pasty 

Paint egg wash around the edges and seal into a long roll. 

Cut each into 6 (or size as desired)

Egg wash the top, make small knife cuts to decorate.  

Cook for ~30 mins until meat is cooked through and pastry golden brown. 

Chocolate Orange Pokeball Cake

Made this Dark Chocolate and Orange Cake, well actually two of them. I substituted regular oranges for Seville as couldn't find Seville.

Decorated with ready-to-roll icing to look like a Pokeball.

Also made my favourite ginger biscuits, in heart shapes, and decorated to resemble Pikachu (inspired by this baker, but not quite up to her standards!).

Went down well to celebrate the birthday of a friend at work!

Stegasaurus Cake

Octonaut Cake Photos

Octonauts Gup-A Birthday Cake

Birthday time again, and this year an Octonauts Gup-A cake. Pictures will follow soon, but for my own recollection here's the blogs I used for inspiration:

Octonauts Cake from Mummy Wife Woman (this one really close to what I did).

Octonauts Cake from Bronnies Bakes - for making models of the characters, although in the end I used the toys.

Shellington Amigurumi

Lottie Doll Beret and Poncho

Spring Celebration Ballet Lottie

My daughter got a Lottie Doll for Christmas. She got the "Spring Ballet Lottie" which comes with a leotard, and tights, but Lottie looked a bit cold.

So I wanted to make Lottie some winter outer wear. Something simple and quick, and using some remnants of sparkly purple wool I had from another project. There are many Barbie clothing items online, but Lottie is a bit shorter than Barbie. So I modified a poncho pattern I found on Ravelry, and also made a beret to match with the same wool (also slightly modified from a barbie pattern online).








Here's the details:

Beret 

(based on "Barbie Basics" beret by Lynne Sears)

Lottie in her beret and poncho.

Cast on 24 st
Row 1-2 K1, P2 rib for 2 rows
Row 3-4 st st for 2 rows
Row 5 Inc in each st across
Row 6 (and all even rows) P across
Row 7 as 5 (or if tighter fit desired knit across)
Row 9, 11, 13 - K2 tog across
Cut thread
Pass thread through loops, draw and finish.

Poncho

(based on Poncho Barbie, by Silvana Catallo - modifications are making it shorter, and to knit in the round)

Cast on 88 sts, place marker

Row 1 (and all odd rows until Row 17) K around

Row 2 K10, 3x(s2kpo,K19),sk2po,K9 (80 sts)

Row 4 K9, 3x(s2kpo,K17),sk2po,K8 (72 sts)

Row 6 K8, 3x(s2kpo,K15),sk2po,K7 (64 sts)

Row 8 K7, 3x(s2kpo,K13),sk2po,K6 (56 sts)

Row 10 K6, 3x(s2kpo,K11),sk2po,K5 (48 sts)

Row 12 K5, 3x(s2kpo,K9),sk2po,K4 (40 sts)

Row 14 K4, 3x(s2kpo,K7),sk2po,K3 (32 sts)

Row 16 K3, 3x(s2kpo,K5),sk2po,K2 (24 sts)

Rows 18-24 K1, P1 ribbing (6 rows, 24 sts)

Cast off. 

(Patterns provided free for use, but with no warranty. This is my first attempt at writing down the modifications to a pattern). 

Pirate Ship Cake

It's early spring, which means birthday time in our house. The kids get to pick what I try to make.

The first choice for our son (4) was a pirate ship cake.

I based it on these instructions, and partially also this design.

As usual for a novelty cake I bought a cake mix, and also pre-made chocolate frosting.

I baked the mix in a baking tray, and cut into four pieces.

Shaped the pieces like a ship.

Sandwiched with some of the frosting, and cocktail sticks to help. 

That's all the layers on. This went into the fridge for a while before frosting (with frosting at room temperature). 

Covered in frosting, with portholes (rolos) and railings on the deck (rolos+flakes). Back into the fridge to set like this.

And here's the finished result. I'm pretty pleased with this one.  

DNA Scarf

I knitted my Mum (a retired A-level biology teacher) this DNA scarf using the "Rosalind" pattern  by @alicebell. It was part of her Christmas present last year.

My Urban Allotment

I enjoy growing a small amount of food each summer. I've done tomatoes, spring onions, lettuce and herbs for several years, but this year also have corgettes, potatoes, beet root, and did have som peas (thanks to a Riverford Buy to grow box). I don't have much space though, just a small border, and some pots in an area just bigger than a driveway (really not enough for the Riverford box), so this site Urban Allotment looks like it might be great for me. Thinking about buying a cherry tree to grow in a pot.

Custard Tarts

Tried to make Cantonese Egg Custard tarts from this recipe. I used pre-rolled puff pastry, and regular milk not evaporated. Wasn't a complete success, although tasted good. Think the filling needed to be deeper. Will try again sometime.

Jupiter Cake

I have to try to make this Jupiter Cake. It is so awesome.

Castle Cake (Take 2)

Here's version 2 of the castle cake (this time in purple by request).

And some intermediate steps. Here's all the bits ready for construction. I broke my own rule and did my own cake mix (instead of a box mix, which is more reliable for structural cakes). The squares indeed came out a bit flat and heavy. 

Lots of buttercream frosting with lots of red and blue food colouring in it. 

Add the chocolate coated icecream cones. I used a ganache recipe to make the chocolate coating (chocolate and cream melted together). 

And once more - the finished result. My daughter helped with the final decorations. 

Easter Bunnies

I made these Easter bunnies for my kids.

I used this pattern found via Ravelry, but I didn't like the eyes, so I decided to copy the face from these bunnies (thanks Google). Also I made the head and body in one piece, which mean doing the pattern for the body upside down.

I like how they turned out, and my son liked them so much he wanted one for each hand (they're just about toddler hand sized), so I ended up making a third one for my daughter. Each takes me about two nights of making (which TV watching).

Castle Cake (Take 1)

This is a castle cake I made 2 years ago for my daughter's 4th birthday.

It's a square chocolate cake, with swiss roll towers, and icecream cone roofs. The door is chocolate fingers, the windows are chocolate buttons and it's sprinkled with chocolate stars.

I based the design on pictures of cakes shared here: http://www.coolest-birthday-cakes.com/castle-cake.html

Also today I found this pinterest page of castle cakes with some idea (but very professional looking): http://pinterest.com/lovingly/castle-cakes/

My task for today is to repeat this cake - only in purple. I'm going to try to do better with the icing (OK by cheating and buying ready made frosting - I just can't get homemade icing to stay on cakes!).

Penguin Cake

Yesterday I made a penguin cake for my son's birthday party. I am really happy with how it came out.

I copied the idea from this blog: "Fowl Single File: There's a Penguin in my Fridge" which I found after doing a google image search for "penguin cake".

I used a box of (Betty Crocker's) Devil's Food Cake mix and baked a bit less than half of it in an 8" small round cake, and the rest in a pyrex bowl which roughly the same diameter (this will took about twice as long as the baking time for the round cake). I put these in the fridge overnight. In the morning I trimmed them to match, and stuck them together with some (Betty Crocker) chocolate frosting. I then put an entire tube of black food colouring in the rest of the chocolate frosting (which made it dark brown) and iced the cake. The eyes, tummy, nose, feet and hat are fondant icing. I bough white ready to roll icing. The pupils were dabs of the chocolate frosting, and a lot of orange and green food colouring when into making the orange and green bits! If I did this again I might buy ready coloured fondant icing.

Panda Hat

I just finished this panda hat. I modified this pattern for a bear hat (link) by adding a panda face from this design (link) and doing in the ears in black. The only problem is it's too small for my son (intended recipient) who is 3. It's probably suited for a 6-9 month old, so I will have to decide which friend's baby is to get this soon. :) 

Added: my Mum suggested if I had a border at the bottom it might be modified still to fit my son... Going to have a think about that.

Chocolate Covered Cheerio Biscuits

With the leftover chocolate from decorating the star biscuits I made chocolate covered cheerios. I added a bit of honey and some raisins in case the chocolate wasn't sweet enough. They're pretty good actually.

"G" and Star Shaped Biscuits.

I made "G" and star biscuits to send into nursery for my son's 3rd birthday.

They are simple American sugar biscuits from my copy of the 1001 Tempting Treats book.

I decided to try decorating with chocolate. The G's didn't come out that great. 

But I like the effect on the stars. 

Hello World

I don't really need another blog! I currently have two personal blogs (a private one for pictures of the kids, and a public one about science/astronomy). I also contribute to/run an additional 3 blogs about science topics (Galaxy Zoo, LOFAR-UK and the University of Portsmouth Athena SWAN blog).

But still.... this is going to be a place where I post about cooking, baking and knitting projects. Mostly for myself to remember what I did but I'll leave it publicly viewable in case anyone finds it helpful.

So hello world.