Our building work is in full swing now so there isn’t really much cooking or baking going on at the moment. The work only started on Wednesday, and I’m missing it already! So it’s a good job that I have been saving up a few foodie posts to use whilst it’s all happening. I made this delicious buttermilk cake a long time ago now – it’s really easy to make and is great for any occasion. I had never used buttermilk before making this, but it makes the cake really moist. Yum! 

This recipe comes from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook.

Ingredients (for a 23 x 13cm loaf tin)

120g unsalted butter, at room temperature

330g caster sugar

3 eggs

200g plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 tsp salt

120ml buttermilk

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/gas mark 3.

2. Put the butter and sugar in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment and cream until light and fluffy (you can always use a handheld electric mixer or good old elbow grease and a wooden spoon to do this if you prefer!). Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well and scraping any unmixed ingredients from the side of the bowl with a spatula after each addition.

3. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a separate bowl. Add one third of the flour mixture to the butter mixture, followed by half the buttermilk. Mix well and then repeat the process, finishing with the flour.

4. Stir in the vanilla extract and then mix well until everything is combined. Pour the mixture into the prepared loaf tin and smooth over with a palette knife.

5. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until golden brown and the sponge bunches back when touched. Leave to cool slightly in the tin before turning out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Enjoy with a cuppa!

Post updated 17th February 2020.

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Click here for the original recipe.

Ingredients (serves 4)

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
420g turkey steaks, cut into 1cm strips against the grain of the meat
3 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons soy sauce
2 cloves crushed garlic
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger / pinch ground ginger
Roughly 250g green beans, cooked (frozen are fine)
300g cooked rice to serve

Method

1. Heat the oil in a large frying pan and fry the turkey strips for 4-5 minutes until golden and cooked through. Removed from the pan and keep warm.

2. Add a tiny splash of oil in the pan and add the garlic and ginger. Cook for around 1 minute stirring frequently so it’s cooked and soft but not brown or burned.

3. Add the honey and soy sauce to the pan and stir well over a medium heat. Simmer gently for around 2 minutes so it reduces slightly.

4. Return the turkey to the pan and mix it well so it’s all coated with the sauce. Add a splash of hot water if you think it’s too dry. Finally stir through the green beans and serve with rice (or noodles, like we did!).

Enjoy!

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Finding really tasty but healthy meals can often be tricky. I found ‘The Diet for Food Lovers’ in a bargain bin in TKMaxx, and it’s a fantastic book full of delicious recipes that don’t make you feel like you’re scrimping on flavour! This recipe is fast becoming one of our favourites – if you’re not home too late then you can easily make it on a weeknight, which is always useful. If you don’t use all of the pesto it keeps in the fridge for up to 5 days, so it’s good for another meal too!

Ingredients (serves 4)

500g baby new potatoes, halved
2 red peppers, deseeded and cut into bite-size chunks
200g cherry tomatoes
3 courgettes, trimmed and cut into bite-size chunks
4 garlic cloves
Small handful rosemary leaves, finely chopped
Small handful thyme leaves, finely chopped
4 skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
Olive oil (or groundnut oil)

For the pesto
Large handful basil leaves
1 tablespoon pine nuts
30g Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon olive oil

Method

1. Heat the oven to 200C/Gas mark 6. Place the potatoes in a large, shallow, non-stick ovenproof dish and cover with foil. Cook for 20 minutes.

2. Remove the potatoes from the oven and add the red peppers, tomatoes, courgettes, garlic, rosemary and thyme. Stir, then return to the oven and roast (uncovered) for a further 20 minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Stir occasionally while roasting to prevent sticking.

3. While the vegetables are roasting, make the pesto. Place the basil, pine nuts, Parmesan and olive oil in a food processor and blitz to a stiff paste.

4. Heat a little olive or groundnut oil in a pan over a medium heat. Add the chicken and stir-fry for 4-6 minutes or until it is cooked through. At the last minute, add the fresh pesto, stir and cover until you are ready to serve. Turn off the heat.

5. Peel the roasted garlic cloves, squash or roughly chop and mix back into the vegetables.

6. Mix the pesto chicken in with the vegetables before serving. Enjoy!

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This recipe is taken from the July 2014 edition of BBC Good Food magazine, and I’ve used our tried-and-tested recipes for the pizza dough and pesto. The magazine says to use half a quantity of dough for 2 pizzas, so you could make some rolls with the rest of it or make thicker pizzas if you’d rather. It also says that you can cook this on a barbecue – but to be honest, living in Newcastle means that we don’t really get to have one very often…! So I’ve adapted this recipe to be cooked in an oven.

Ingredients (serves 4, makes 2 pizzas)

For the pizza dough
400g strong white bread flour
1 sachet quick yeast
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
300ml hand hot water (150ml cold topped up with 150ml boiling water)

For the pesto
60g fresh basil leaves
50g pine nuts
1 garlic clove, peeled
130ml olive oil
Zest of an unwaxed lemon
Salt and pepper to taste

For the topping
1 small aubergine, thinly sliced lengthways
1 medium red onion, thickly sliced
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
75g/2 1/2oz firm goat’s cheese (I used Snofrisk goat’s cheese from Waitrose)
Chilli flakes (optional)
Basil leaves, to serve

Method

1. To make the dough, mix all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Add the oil to the water before pouring over the dry ingredients. Mix together until a dough is formed and then knead for five minutes.

2. Leave the dough in the bowl. Wet a clean tea towel with cold water and wring out so that it isn’t dripping, before placing over the bowl. Leave to rise.

3. Whilst the dough is rising, prepare the pesto. Place the basil, pine nuts and garlic in a food processor. Add the olive oil and blitz until smooth, before mixing in the lemon zest. Place in the fridge (covered) until needed.

4. When the dough has at least doubled in size, ‘knock back’ and knead again for a few minutes. Roll it out to fit a large, greased baking tray (use a bit of olive oil to grease the tray). Heat the oven to 220°c/425°F/Gas mark 7 whilst preparing the topping.

5. Heat some olive oil in a pan and then cook the aubergines until browned on each side (you could do this on a griddle if you have one, but we don’t!). You’ll need to do this in batches, so placed the cooked ones on some kitchen paper to drain.

6. When the aubergines are cooked, add a little more oil to the pan and then cook the onion until softened. Spread some pesto onto the pizza base and then add the aubergine, onion and goat’s cheese (broken into chunks). Add some chilli flakes if you want a bit of a kick!

7. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes and then serve with the basil leaves sprinkled over.

Enjoy!

The goat’s cheese that we used for the pizza worked so well with the other flavours – and apparently the goats are fed on mountain grass in the fjords, so they must be super happy goats! You might not need to use all of the pesto, but it keeps in the fridge for up to 5 days, so you could use the rest another time. If you’d rather have a tomato base on your pizza, try making your own low-fat tomato sauce!

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I’ve been wanting to make a quilt for so long now – I follow so many people on Instagram who are brilliant quilters, and Tom’s Aunt makes amazing ones too so I’m surrounded by inspiration! Our dear friends Luci and Simon are expecting their first baby in just a few weeks, so I decided that I’d have a go at making them a special quilt. They chose not to find out what they are having so I wasn’t sure if they were going for a particular colour scheme – so I decided to go for all the colours!

I had a look around for a basic square quilt tutorial online, but couldn’t really find exactly what I wanted. I guess that this is probably because this is one of the simplest quilts you can ever make, so most people don’t actually need to learn how to do it! There are some beautiful quilt blocks out there, and I loved so many of them but I wanted to make mine with simple squares – partly because I was running out of time to get it done, but also because I had seen the funky zebra and cat fabrics and I wanted to have fairly large squares of them to show off the pattern.

I started by collecting my fabrics and buying a few new quilting materials, so I now have a rotary cutter and a big cutting mat, as well as a handy ruler thingy. I didn’t realise how useful rotary cutters are – this has definitely revolutionised my crafting! In terms of fabrics, I chose a mixture of plain cotton solids and some funky patterns in matching colours. I didn’t want it to be all pattern, so the solids help to break it up a bit. I decided to use 7 x 7″ squares with a 1/2″ seam allowance, in a grid 5 squares across and 6 squares down. After drawing out my plan, I worked out that I needed 3 plain squares in each of the 6 colours, and 2 of each of the patterned fabrics. Then I got cutting!

When all the squares were cut, I laid them all out on our living room floor – this meant that I could work out where to pin them together before stitching.

I stitched the squares together so that I had 3 groups of 4 squares joined together, and 3 groups of 6. Then I joined each of those groups together.

Ta-dah! Once all the fabric was joined together, I cut out a piece of wadding and some red and white stripey cotton fabric the same size for the backing. I pinned it all together using some quilting pins and then started sewing each square.

I decided to sew each square with matching colour thread (which did mean a lot of changing bobbins!) and stitched about 1/2″ inside each seam. At first I was worried that the squares were a bit poofy, but the more I stitched the better it seemed – and it needs to be comfy for baby! I was also a bit bothered about the fact that my squares on the back didn’t line up with the lines of the fabric, but this also looked better the more I went on.

The final stage is to sew on the binding. I was going to make it myself, but bought some in the end because I was running out of time to finish my quilt! This was a bit tricky and I should probably look up a better way to do it (any suggestions would be gratefully received!). I stitched on the machine but finished a few bits off by hand.

I added a final final touch with this label, which I wrote with a permanent quilting marker pen. I just used some plain white cotton for this, and pressed the edges behind before hand stitching on with some blue cotton to match the binding.

I’m really pleased with how my first quilt has turned out! I’ve learnt a lot from doing it (mainly realising what I need to look into a bit more) and am looking forward to making my next one! Hope you’ve all had a super weekend

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This recipe is perfect for picnics or if you want to make a dessert fairly quickly – no baking is required and it just needs a couple of hours in the fridge to set. The original recipe comes from the BBC Good Food website.

Ingredients

200g milk chocolate
100g unsalted butter
2 tbsp golden syrup
125g digestive biscuits
135g bag of Maltesers

For the topping

200g dark chocolate (I used Green & Black’s 70%)
25g unsalted butter
1 tsp golden syrup

White chocolate stars (optional)

Method

1. Line a 20cm square baking tin with baking parchment. Place the 200g of chocolate, butter and syrup in a heat-proof bowl and melt over a pan of barely simmering water or in the microwave. Once almost melted, remove from the heat and gently stir until any tiny bits chocolate have melted. Allow to cool a little.

2. Place the biscuits and 35g of the Maltesers in a freezer bag, seal and crush with a rolling pin. You want mainly crumbs but a few small chunks of biscuit is fine.

3. Top the crushed mixture and whole Maltesers (save 1 or 2 for yourself) to the melted chocolate and stir until everything is coated. Press into the prepared tin and make the topping.

4. For the topping, melt the chocolate, butter and syrup as before and spread over the biscuit base.

5. Cover the tin with foil and refrigerate for 1-2 hours before cutting into squares. Store in the fridge in an air tight container, and remove a few minutes before serving.

Enjoy!

Post updated 26th June 2016.

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We love pasta, and have recently been trying out lots of new recipes You may have guessed from the picture that we didn’t use fusilli here, but instead went for some elk-shaped pasta that I found in Ikea (we love novelty pasta too, haha!). This is a simple but delicious dish that is perfect for a week night – if you’re making it veggie then make sure you use a veggie substitute for the Parmesan.

This recipe comes from Gino D’Acampo’s ‘Gino’s Pasta‘ and serves 4.

Ingredients

45g salted butter
250g chestnut mushrooms, sliced
2 leeks, washed and sliced 0.5cm thick
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
250g mascarpone cheese
3 tablespoons freshly chopped chives
4 pinches cayenne pepper (we used sweet smoked paprika instead)
500g fusilli
60 freshly grated Parmesan cheese (or veggie alternative)

Method

1. Melt the butter in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the mushrooms, leeks and garlic and fry for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.

2. Spoon in the mascarpone and continue to cook for a further minute, stirring continuously. Stir in the chives and cayenne pepper, season with salt and remove from the heat.

3. Cook the pasta in a large saucepan of boiling salted water until al dente. Drain and tip back into the same pan.

4. Pour in the mushroom sauce and stir everything together for 30 seconds to allow the flavours to combine.

5. Divide between four serving plates, sprinkle over the Parmesan cheese and serve immediately.

We actually cooked the pasta whilst cooking the veg because Tom likes his food really hot, so you could do it that way too if you prefer. Enjoy!

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1. Start collecting ideas and materials

There are so many ways to collect ideas for your wedding, but one of the most helpful is probably Pinterest. When we started planning I created a wedding board (which mainly consists of flowers and cake ideas!) and it meant that I could keep all of the things I liked in one place. It also meant that Tom was able to have a look too – from the start we planned things together, even though I did do most of the ‘making’ bit! The first thing we collected for our wedding was the paper to make the envelopes for our invitations, and then we designed the rest of the invitation around it (you can read more about them here). When collecting ideas, don’t be afraid to be selective – you might like a bit of that and a bit of something else. The beauty of putting something together yourself is that you can combine ideas to create the perfect thing for you, whether it’s your invitations, colour scheme, flowers or any other element of the day.

2. Make it personal

Making things for your wedding yourself will ensure that they reflect you and that they are totally unique – and it really is so much fun! When you start planning your wedding, you’ll realise that wedding stuff is everywhere! I remember that as soon as I changed my relationship from ‘single’ to ‘engaged’ on Facebook, I was bombarded by wedding-related adverts (and then, quite soon after, baby-related ones!). Although getting ideas from lots of other people and places is a great thing, I think it is really important to remember that your wedding day is your day – it’s about you and your husband/wife and the day should reflect that. There is a lot of pressure to do things in a particular way or have certain things, but you don’t have to at all.

I wouldn’t say that our wedding day wasn’t a traditional wedding, but we didn’t do things just because ‘that’s what people do’. So we didn’t have a theme or a colour scheme as such, but instead went for pinks, purples and creams in patterns that complimented each other. We kept the table decorations really simple, opting for simple name cards and lovely flower arrangements that Tom’s Mum put together on the day. We didn’t have the usual ‘line-up’ before the meal, we had a ‘first dance’ that wasn’t really a first dance as such and our guests joined in with us, and we didn’t have speeches except for a rather impromptu one that Tom and I gave in the garden! For many people those things are traditional and integral, and I’m certainly not saying that everyone should scrap them! But if you don’t feel comfortable doing something then don’t be afraid to leave it out – it’s your day and you want to be relaxed and enjoy every moment. Our wedding was just the most amazing day and it was a true reflection of us both, and I’m really proud that we planned it together.

3. Get your friends and family involved in the planning

I have played at weddings for several of our friends, and I always feel that it is an honour to be asked to do something special on such an important day. So no matter how big or small it is, get your friends and family involved in the planning! We are very fortunate to have very talented and kind family and friends who wanted to get involved with our wedding! Our friend Hannah made our beautiful wedding cake, and amazingly (with the help of her Mum) managed to get it from Stockton down to York in the back of her car! It made it there safely and Hannah has received so many lovely comments about her cake – read more about it here. We asked our friend Lee to provide the musical entertainment in the evening, so she brought along her PA and we hired some lights and did a brilliant job! We selected the songs we wanted her to sing and so the playlist for the whole night was very personal to us – I LOVE dancing, and I’ll never forget that wonderful night!

To decorate the venue we borrowed our family bunting that was originally made for Tom’s Aunt’s wedding a few years ago. When it was made, all the guests were asked to donate some fabric so that it could be made in time to be hung up at the reception. Since then, it has been used at several other weddings and family events – I always try to find my old pyjamas that contributed to it! If you would like to make your own bunting with your family and friends, follow my exclusive tutorial for The School of Thrift. It’s a great way to give life to old fabrics and get everyone involved in a special project!

4. Shop around

Weddings can get very expensive very quickly, so if you’re trying to keep costs down then you’ll certainly need to shop around. You can support local businesses by buying your supplies from them – we bought chocolates for each table at the reception from an independent shop in Alnwick (click here to read my post about them) and I bought most of my flowers from various stalls at York market! The main reason that I decided to make the bouquets myself was because I nearly fell off my chair when I started looking into the prices – £80 for the bride’s bouquet alone was an average estimate!

Whilst you may prefer to get your flowers done professionally, don’t rule out the possibility of doing them yourself. In my tutorial for The School of Thrift, I show you how you can make a beautiful bouquet – the flowers I used to make it cost me just £10! It is a really simple bouquet to make as it just uses roses and spray carnations, but even with just two types of flower in the same colour it looks beautiful. Once you have done a practice bouquet or two (which I would highly recommend!) you can get more adventurous with your choice of colours and flowers. For my wedding bouquet I used all of my favourite flowers such as peonies, roses stocks, freesias, gypsohila, and spray carnations in pinks, purples and creams. My bridesmaids had smaller bouquets with cream freesias, roses and spray carnations, and when they arrived the day before the wedding we made them in my Mum and Dad’s kitchen! We had such fun catching up and making the bouquets, and it is a lovely thing to do together with your friends.

5. Give it a go!

For many people (especially if you don’t regard yourself as being a crafter), the idea of a handmade wedding is very appealing but daunting. My advice is to not worry, but to just give it a go! You don’t have to make everything yourself, so you could start with something small and go from there – for example, you could make the buttonholes (see how to do that here). If there is something that you can practice before making the ‘final one’ then I’d always suggest doing that – and try to leave enough time to do it too! What you’ll probably find is that once you get started, you’ll get hooked and will want to make lots of things! I think that’s how I ended up making waistcoats…I asked myself many times ‘why am I doing this?!’ during the making process, but it is a project that I’m so proud of. I also made a stole for Tom’s Dad, as he conducted our wedding service. Everything that you make will become a special part of your day – no matter how big or how small.

Whatever you decide to make (or not) for your wedding, enjoy the planning process and the day itself, as this time will simply fly by. Everyone said this to us beforehand, but until it’s actually happening you can’t imagine just how fast it goes!

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I’ve seen lots of fabric covered letters around recently and have wanted to have a go myself – this weekend I finally got around to it! It is a project that you could complete on an evening after work (if you need a weeknight craft fix, as I often do!) and would make a great decoration in your home or perhaps a wedding gift. The possibilities are endless! I bought my letters from RE (if you haven’t seen my post about this amazing shop, click here) and raided my fabric stash – a fat quarter is more than enough for a letter. Tom chose this funky grey fabric with little buttons on it for his ‘T’, and for my ‘C’ I went for pink (obviously!) as I thought that the circle pattern would tie them together.

I decided against covering the ampersand for 2 reasons: the first was that I couldn’t decided on a fabric that matched the other two, and the second reason is that it would probably be really difficult…I’m pleased with the end result and think I made the right decision!

You will need:

Card 3D letters
Mod podge and a paintbrush
Some fabric (iron out the creases before you get started!)
Sharp scissors and a pencil

Step 1

Lay out some fabric and place a letter on top, and then lightly draw around the letter with a pencil. Trim the fabric so that you have a 2 cm border around the edge of the letter that you have just drawn. For this letter ‘T’ I cut out one T shape and a larger square so that I could cut some long strips to be able to cover the sides (but that’s in a later step!). For some letters, like the ‘C’, you’ll need to make sure that the fabric is the right way up for the front and the back (as shown in the second photo).

Step 2

Paint some mod podge onto one side of the letter and stick it onto the fabric. Trim the edges as required so that the fabric will fold neatly around the edges of your letter. For curved letters, you’ll need to snip around the edges at regular intervals so that you can fold the fabric around the curves more easily.

Step 3

Repeat step 2 with the other side of your letter. Cut out some long strips of fabric the same width of the letters, then paint on some more mod podge on the sides before sticking on the fabric.

Ta-dah! That’s it – you just have to leave them to dry now before displaying them in a suitable position

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Having made my raspberry curd I wanted to make something special with it. My friend Laura returned to work following her maternity leave this week, and this seemed like a perfect excuse! I had a little look online for some recipe ideas and was inspired by this one on the Smells Like Home food blog, but I actually decided to use my tried-and-tested recipe for lemon Victoria sandwich by Mary Berry and make cupcakes instead.

Ingredients (makes 18 muffin-sized cupcakes)

225g butter, softened
225g caster sugar
4 eggs
225g self-raising flour
2 level teaspoons baking powder
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

Filling/topping

Raspberry curd (click on the link at the top of the page for the recipe)
250g icing sugar, sifted (plus extra for dusting)
80g unsalted butter, at room temperature
25ml semi skimmed milk
Finely grated zest of half a lemon

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/160F/Gas 4. Place some muffin cases into a muffin tin.

2. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl. Beat the eggs and add the grated lemon zest and mix well. Pour the mix in a little at a time and mix well. Sift in the flour and baking powder and combine together. (Mary’s original recipe suggests using an electric whisk – put all ingredients into a bowl and beat for a couple of minutes).

3. Divide the mixture between the muffin cases – about 1 and a half tablespoons in each is enough as they will rise quite a lot. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until well risen and golden.

4. Leave the cupcakes in the tin to cool for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Ensure they have completely cooled before adding the filling.

5. To make the buttercream, cream together the butter and icing sugar. Add the milk and lemon zest and beat until smooth.

6. Cut out the middle of a cupcake, and then fill the hole with a spoonful of raspberry curd (you can eat the bit you’ve cut out!).

7. Fill a piping bag (using nozzle of your choice) with the buttercream, and pipe over the top.

8. Repeat steps 6 and 7 with the rest of the cupcakes.

I really need to get a new piping bag – the new one that I tried out for this was pretty rubbish! But they tasted really good so I was pleased with how they turned out. Definitely something to enjoy during an extended tea break!

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