Chocolate orange hot cross buns – a delectable chocolatey twist on the classic Easter bread. Perfect for breakfast or a snack.
It feels like we only just had Christmas but now it is somehow nearly Easter already; I don’t know where the time has gone! I need to do some more Easter themed baking to blog but for now I do have these chocolate orange hot cross buns to share with you….
Mincemeat, marzipan and apple bread wreath – an impressive festive centrepiece full of Christmassy flavours.
One last post before Christmas! This mincemeat, marzipan and apple bread wreath is an impressive centrepiece that would be perfect for a festive breakfast. I somehow ended up with about five jars of mincemeat leftover from making various things and there are only so many mince pies that one can eat (though that number is rather high); so I decided to make this bread wreath instead….
We are currently renovating our kitchen so cooking and baking is pretty much impossible at the moment (though I did somehow manage to make jam in the study yesterday!). So far I have learned how to plaster and next up is woodwork and tiling! It will be at least a couple of weeks yet before we are finished but hopefully the kitchen will be usable again in about a week once we put the sink in and actually have water downstairs! I will keep you updated on our progress and fingers crossed we will have a much nicer kitchen than the ugly, outdated one that we ripped out once we are done….
I opened up my kitchen baking cupboard the other day and was met with a pile of packets falling on my head. That seemed like a pretty clear sign that it was high time I had a bit of a clearout and used up a few half empty packets of ingredients that had been in there too long. These chewy, no-bake peanut butter granola bars were my attempt to finish off a random selection of odds and ends of nuts, seeds, cereal and dried fruit….
Rich Christmas fruitcake – a rich, make-and-mature fruitcake packed full of fruit and rum. Make in advance and feed regularly with rum.
So it is somehow December already and I have done no Christmas shopping or planning whatsoever; I wont be hosting Christmas lunch (my house is essentially a building site at the moment) but I do need to make dessert and some Christmassy nibbles….
Baking stollen is one of the very few Christmas traditions that I have and I make it in some form or another every year. I don’t think I have ever baked the exact same recipe twice, I like to play around with it and try new recipes, I have tried many variations ranging from a very traditional German recipe to cinnamon roll style stollen buns. The one constant is that it must contain marzipan; I LOVE marzipan and will happily eat chunks of it out of the packet as I bake, although I try to control myself so that I have enough left for whatever it is that I am baking……
I spent the day yesterday moving domesticgothess.com from wordpress.com to self hosted wordpress.org. I say I moved it…but really I spent the day watching over his shoulder as my fiance did it for me and asking stupid questions…It took a while, there were a few confusing moments and the site had a bit of downtime but we (he) got there eventually. I wanted to move to self hosted so I could use plugins and customise the site a little more so I will be having a play around and making a few changes over the coming weeks….
