It’s been a long time

A seriously long time. Well where do I even start?

Mikey was born 6 weeks early on September 30th. He weighed only 4lbs 6oz and spent nearly one month in the NICU attached to monitors and tubes.

We moved house last January, and then moved countries last month. We now live in Germany.

Mikey is nearly 10 months old, doing well and learning to crawl.

I’ve finally had the desire to update this thing. Hopefully I’ll continue with it, documenting travels etc. Now we’re in Europe we’ll be travelling a lot.

That’s it from me. I’ll update with some photos of Mikey etc next time.

Grown-up CupCakes

This website has the most beautiful cupcakes I have ever seen. I hunted around for a while and found something I could make myself with the ingredients I already have in the house.

Coffee and Chocolate cupcakes.

Coffee Cupcake Recipe – [link]
Chocolate ButterCream Frosting – [link]

I made these without an electric mixer, completely by hand. You need good stamina and good strong arms to make it without a mixer and they probably would have turned out better with a mixer, but still taste great.

How to make the perfect cup of British tea

You will need –

A kettle, preferably stove top but it doesn’t matter too much. Electric would be fine.
A teapot, preferably china
A teacup, again preferably china
A tea strainer
A teaspoon
Loose leaf Assam tea
Milk
White sugar

• To begin, fill a clean kettle with more than enough fresh water for the amount of tea you would like to make. Tap water is best, do not use water that has already been previously boiled. Put the kettle on the stove to boil.
• Gently heat the teapot by running it under the hot tap.
• Put the tea leaves into the teapot, you should only need one teaspoon of tea leaves per person and an extra teaspoon if you are making tea for more than 2 people.
• When the kettle has boiled pour into the teapot. Leave to brew for 2 minutes, no longer or the tea may become astringent.
• While the tea is brewing pour the milk into the cup. Milk with a lower fat content is best and it must also be cold straight from the refrigerator. You will probably only need to pour an amount of milk that is the width of your thumb. Some people like less milk and others like more.
• Hold the strainer over the cup, or place it onto the cup depending on what kind of strainer you have, and pour the tea through it into the cup.
• Add white sugar to taste.
• Drink it while it is hot!

Notes:

• Tea really does taste best when drunk from a china cup.
• Assam tea is my personal favourite, although you could substitute it with another kind of black tea. George Orwell, English author and journalist, in his essay titled A Nice Cup of Tea claims that “First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays — it is economical, and one can drink it without milk — but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase ‘a nice cup of tea’ invariably means Indian tea.”
• Boiling water absolutely must be used when brewing black tea, however it can ruin the taste of delicate green tea.
• According to the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) “At high temperatures, milk proteins – which are normally all curled up foetus-like – begin to unfold and link together in clumps. This is what happens in UHT [ultra heat-treated] milk, and is why it doesn’t taste as good a fresh milk,” which is why the RSC recommend having the chilled milk massed at the bottom of the cup, awaiting the stream of hot tea. Because this allows the milk to cool the tea, rather than allowing the tea to ruinously raise the temperature of the milk.
• If you like sugar in your tea, then white sugar must be used. Sweeteners or brown sugar just don’t cut it.

Further British Tea education – http://www.tea.co.uk/

Texas Sheet Cake

A few days ago I stumbled upon a fantastic recipe blog – The Pioneer Woman Cooks!

Ree has some absolutely delicious recipes including one for what she calls The Best Chocolate Sheet Cake Ever but may be known to others as Texas Sheet Cake. The recipe is really easy and tastes absolutely gorgeous. Although if you’re not attempting to feed a whole family then you should probably halve the recipe as there is quite a lot of it! If you don’t want to do that you can always cut the cake into bars, wrap in foil and freeze them. Then when you want to eat a piece you can just take it out of the freezer and leave it to thaw for a couple of minutes. It tastes just as delicious from the freezer, I promise.

Here’s my attempt -

Uno

This is the first post in my new blog.

I will be updating this blog most weeks, in it I will include photographs I have taken, things I have written, recipes and cooking as well as general accomplishments and musings.

At the moment I spend my days during the week at home. I clean the house, spend time browsing the PunkyMom forums, reading books and cooking. At weekends we have friends over, watch movies and go out for breakfast. Sometimes we go and visit friends who live in other towns.

For more of an introduction and a general biography please see the biography section

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