Chewy Gingersnaps Christmas Cookies - Guest Post

Today I am very pleased to welcome Bronwyn to the blog.  Over the years she has become a very good friend with constant emails and letters pinging backwards and forwards across the oceans. 

If you don't follow her blog already then your missing out.  She can often be found sharing her amazing travels overseas with her family as well as interesting days out in Canada around their hometown.  As if that wasn't enough there are often crafty treats usually created by her own fair hands with the help of her beautiful daughter and for those foodies with a sweet tooth you can also find some delightful recipes (one of which she is sharing with us today).  But enough from me, I shall hand you over to Bronwyn.   

Hi all!

My name in Bronwyn and I blog over at Queen B Creative Me. I am a married mother of three, kindergarten teacher, crafter, baker, and home-decorator. 

I have known Gem for a few years through our respective blogs and had the benefit of meeting her face-to-face this past March while on vacation in the UK with my daughter.  

We met up at the famous Columbia Road Flower Market (neither of us had been before!)......

.....then enjoyed cake and tea in a pretty little shop of Brick Lane. 

I'm already looking forward to a return trip and another cuppa with you, Gem!

Now onto the recipe I want to share with you all!

This is a favourite in our home and I make them regularly from the first of September all they way until March.  They are a "comfy" cookie  with spices such as ginger, cloves and nutmeg and they seem to pair perfectly with the warmth of autumn and the cosi-ness of Christmas!

Chewy Gingersnaps

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup margarine or butter, softened

1/4 cup molasses (or treacle)

1 egg

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/4 ts nutmeg

1/4 white sugar (for rolling)

(Festive candy for decorating!)

1.  In a large bowl, combine 1 cup sugar, butter, molasses and egg; beat until light and fluffy.

2.  Add in flour, soda, salt and spices; mix well.

3.  Cover ball of dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour.

(This is Treacle and Ginger.  They help with the baking this time of year!)

4.  Heat oven to 350 degrees (175 Celcius).  Shape dough into 1-inch (2.5 cm) balls.  Roll these balls in 1/4 sugar until they are light coated. 

5.  Place 12 balls on an un-greased baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.  The cookies will puff up then flatten out while they are baking. 

6.  If you want to add the flourish of Christmas candy on top, stick them into the warm cookies before they cool. 

I hope you give this recipe a try.  They are perfect for taking as a hostess gift this coming holiday season or for the simple enjoyment of family at home. 

Thanks so much, Gem, for inviting me to write for your blog. 

I love popping in to this little part of blogland and I hope to visit again soon!

Best wishes to all.  My this festive holiday season bring you tons of joy, love and celebration!!

XOXOXO

Bronwyn

Queen B Creative Me

London's Cake & Bake Show 2015

I spent my Saturday at The Cake & Bake show, held at London's Excel Centre.

It's the first time I've visited this particular show so I was a little unsure exactly what to expect from the exhibitors.

There were a whole host of food stands selling all sorts of things from marshmallows to sausage rolls.

The London Marshmallow Company

Macaroons to bread.  There was a whole heap of tasty food and treats I wanted to buy up and feast upon.

L'orchidee

Moving away from the food market and into the centre of the exhibition hall, the aisles were lined with beautiful bunting overhead, it looked so pretty.

We mooched around the stalls, taking in what each of the stands had to offer, admiring the workmanship that had gone into the products.

Boon Homeware 

As we wandered around we stumbled upon the BB Afternoon Tea Bus, a London double decker bus providing a tour around London while serving afternoon tea.  I've followed them on Instagram for some time and have looked into visiting, I was really pleased to see one of their buses in real life.

I shall be booking up a visit for sure.

From there we wandered around some more, looking at what else the show had to offer.

itsabakingthing.com

The Meringue Girls

And then of course there were the cakes.

Lots and lots of cakes.

The competition cakes were pretty impressive too.

There were so many great efforts, too many to show them all, but trust me they were fantastic.  

It really was a great, cake filled day, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  If you missed the show fear not, Cake & Bake Edinburgh takes place 30th October - 1st November and Cake & Bake Manchester 12th - 15th November.  you can book your tickets via The Cake & Bake Show website.

Happy Baking

~ Gem x

Apple Cake Recipe

I like the idea of baking and always enjoy it when I get started, but never seem to get the time to do it as often as I'd like, especially as there are so many other things that I like to fill my time with too.

On Sunday I made time to do a spot of baking.  We had some apples that needed using up so an apple cake it was.

My Grandad used to make a mean apple cake, it's something my Mum inherited too, I must get the recipe from my Mum because it's a good one.  I'll share it with you some time.  For this particular bake though I turned to BBC Good Food and used this.

Ingredients:

• 225g self-raising flour

• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 115g unsalted butter, diced and chilled, plus extra for greasing
• 115g light brown sugar
• 1 large egg, beaten
• 6-8 tbsp milk
• 225g Bramley or Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and diced
• 100g sultanas (optional)
• 2 tbsp demerara sugar (optional)

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 180C/160C fan/ gas 4. Grease and line a deep 20cm cake tin with baking parchment.
2. Mix the flour and cinnamon together in a large bowl. Add the butter and rub into the flour using your fingers, until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the light brown sugar. Beat in the egg followed by 6 - 8 tbsp of milk – you want to achieve a smooth, thick batter.
3. Add the apples and sultanas and mix to combine. Scrape the batter into your prepared tin and gently level out. Sprinkle over the demerara sugar and bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes or until golden and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
4. Allow to cool in the tin for 15 minutes and then carefully turn out onto a wire rack to cool further. Best served still warm with a little custard.

After devouring this bake it really makes me think I should do it more often.  Do you have a favourite bake that you could recommend?

~ Gem x

Easter Baking - Creme Egg Brownies

I don't bake half as much as I'd like to.  It's one of the things I don't allow any time for.  Perhaps I need to change that.  The last time I had baked was before Christmas, yes, Christmas, that was over 3 months ago (I did tell you I don't allow much time for it)

I've seen pictures of Creme Egg Chocolate Brownies for the past few years and have always told myself that I would attempt it, but up until now, still hadn't done anything about it.  I've no idea why because it was so easy.  I'll definitely be making them again because they tasted lush.

I got the recipe from the BBC Good Food website here.  It was really easy to follow and turned out really well.

So if you have thought about making it yourself, do it, your missing out if you've not tried it yet.

~ Gem x

Elderflower Cordial

Okay, so yes this post is way overdue but I figured I would type it up anyway, at least you can get yourselves prepared for next year.  Plus the fact I took great pleasure in taking lots of pretty pictures of the ingredients, it seemed a shame to keep them all to myself.

I have never made Elderflower cordial before and have often drooled over fellow blogger's pictures of the pretty stuff in years gone by.  When we moved into our little house I was delighted to discover and Elderflower tree in our very own garden, but what with one thing and another I seemed to miss the Elderflower season last year.  Although the Elderberries were lovely, I was determined not to miss the flower this year.  I've not been doing my seasonal bucket lists recently but if I had of been this would definitely of been on my summer to do list (makes mental note....Must start doing those lists again).

It has such a summery smell, very floral and fragrant, providing it isn't too over-powering, then I'm not so keen.

The sugar helped with the smell, boiling that up for a while made the kitchen smell very sweet.

Then of course there were the lemons.  Not many things say summer like lemons.

And washing all the flowers was a pretty job.  I felt like a proper country housewife making this I can tell you.

But then I had to boil it all up together and then I really wasn't too sure.  It looked very pretty but the smell, hmmm well I didn't like it.   It was so strong, it made me feel a bit sick.  I stuck with it though.  After it had boiled I had to leave it for 24 hours so it the pan it stayed.

  

I bottled it up the next day and took my first taste.  I was gutted, I hated it.  James quite liked it though, unless he was just being polite.  At least I can say I've tried it, I'm glad I made it but I shan't be doing it again, I'll just stick with the berries in future.  In the excitement of it being finished I forgot to take photos of the actual drink, sorry, but your really not missing all that much.

I found the recipe on the BBC Good Food website, I have used many of their recipes for various other things before and have always been impressed.  Give it a go, you may like it and if not, well you can say you tried as well :)

Gem x x x 

 

Chocolate & Coffee Cake

I spent some time over the weekend baking.  I wanted to make a coffee cake but not being a lover of walnuts I started my hunt for another ingredient I could use instead, then the idea of coffee and chocolate just seemed to good to resist,  so I scoured the web when I came up with this delicious recipe.

6 Eggs

250g Dark Chocolate

100ml Strong Coffee

110g Butter

75g Brown Sugar

40g Flour

50ml Creme Fraiche

3tbsp Cocoa Powder

50ml Coffee Liquor

1tbsp Icing Sugar

Salt

Gently melt 150g of dark chocolate in a bowl over a pan of boiling water along with the coffee. 

Roughly chop the butter, add to the mixture and mix well.

Preheat the oven to 150C / 300F

Separate the egg whites and yolks, putting the whites to one side.  Beat the yolks with the brown sugar until white.  Add to the melted chocolate and then add the flour.

Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff then add to the mixture.

Bake in the oven for 40minutes.

Once the cake has cooked leave to cool.

Melt the rest of the chocolate in the same way. 

Remove from the heat the pour in the creme fraiche and coffee liquor.

Leave to cool, stirring from time to time.

Take the cake from the tin then pour the icing all over. 

Chill for 10minutes then sprinkle with cocoa powder and icing sugar (optional)

I was so chuffed with how the cake looked and even more excited about the fact I would be able to post my first ever recipe, at last I felt like a real woman.  

~ Gem x

Virtual Coffee: The Last Bank Holiday Weekend For A While

Good afternoon,

Tuesday again, already?????  I feel all out of sync following the recent bank holiday weekend, it always seems to throw me off course, however I'm sure I could get used to it.  It makes such  a difference having that extra day off. 

Well if I were really meeting you for coffee today I would invite you to have a slice of Strawberry Flan homemade by none other then yours truly.

After seeing Gemma's post the other week I have been craving one ever since, and this weekend gave into temptation.  I made 2 in all, James has taken one with him to work.  But fear not, this one right here is made up of home grown strawberries as well : )  Impressed? You should be, this is good for me.

If I were really meeting you for coffee today I would tell you what else I got up to this weekend.  On Saturday myself and James jumped on the tube (London Underground) and made a visit to Greenwich.  I really like it there plus there are some great views from the top of the hill.

The Royal Naval College

Canary Wharf

The O2 (Where I saw Usher earlier this year) (TWICE J)

They are currently preparing for the Olympics so you will have to ignore the work taking place on the grass in front of the college.



While we were wandering around I spotted a poster for an antiques and craft market, you can imagine my excitement to see this, so we wandered some more until we found it and boy was I disappointed, so much so we didn't even walk around the whole thing : ( never mind, you win some you loose some.

Disappointment aside I did buy these little beauties from the Greenwich market - Love that place : )

How cute are these cake cases, almost too good to use.

I have a thing about postcards at the moment, couldn't resist this one (sorry about the lighting)

Other then this little trip the weekend was pretty quiet.  I bought a soap making kit a while back that has been sitting in the cupboard ever since, so I decided it was time for it to come out the closet and for me to have a go at making soap.  

It was surprisingly easy actually, and obviously looked like great fun as James had to get involved hehee.  For my first attempt I am pretty impressed.  It needs perfecting a bit still as we have quite a few bubbles in them, and I didn't melt enough to fit in all the moulds but I am going to melt it down and try again so that should be fine.  Hopefully next time I will be able to get some more photos as it all happened pretty quick and I didn't have time to get many shots.

So enough about me.  How was your weekend?  What did you get up too?

Thanks for coffee, hope you enjoyed the flan.

Love Gem xxx

Linking up with Lucky Number 13 for Virtual Coffee