Tails’ Blography

So! Yesterday I had an urge to make some hot cross buns…so I did! And they came out great! I even did a squeal of joy when I saw them after I took them out of the oven.

Ingredients:

Buns:

• 4 cups all purpose flour
• 1/3 cup castor sugar
• 1 packet of yeast
• 1 pinch salt
• 1tsp of both nutmeg and cinnamon
• 200g raisins and fruits (diced, the larger raisins pop out of the dough while you’re kneading it)
• 60g butter, melted
• 1 1/2 cups warm milk
• 1 egg, lightly beaten

Crosses:

• 1/3 cup flour
• 1/4 cup water
• Melted apricot jam for basting

Method:

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. You dont have to sift the flour if you knead it enough. Make a well in the centre and pour in the wet ingredients (mixed beforehand in a jug). Mix with a spoon til incorporated.

Knead on lightly floured surface for 10min or until elastic and smooth. I did mine for 5min. Leave in bowl to dbl in size (approx 1 hr). Knead again and roll into a sausage shape. Cut into 16 or so pieces and roll into balls.

Place in a lined pan, and they can be close to touching. Leave for another 30 min to rise some more.

After 30min, baste dough balls with jam. Make a paste from 1/3 cup flour and 1/4 cup of water (dont thin this down more like I did). Scoop it into a ziplock bag, snip a corner and squeeze a cross onto each dough ball.

Bake in preheated oven at 200 degrees Celcius for 20-25min or until golden on top. Remove and leave to cool for 10min before serving.

Leave to cool for 10min and then serve! Clearly my oven bakes unevenly lol as some are more golden than others The ones at the back left look downright anemic but they were more browned in person!

PS: Orginal recipe from the very entertaining One Pot Chef! Some great recipes on his channel guys! Check them out!

Posted via my HTC!

Making flapjacks for the rats’ photoshoot this morning! Yum yum! Added bonus is living close to the ‘rents so when you realise you only have 1 egg and no baking powder, its a quick trip over to borrow some!

Of course, I had to make for me too

In winter, thinking about homemade soup brings me to days of rain, wind and cold. Whilst preparing and making this soup, I cant help be thankful for everything I have. A warm bed at night, warm clothes, and a roof over my head to name a few. It’s heartbreaking to know there are so many out there without these essentials. If you can, donate a blanket or other warm items whenever you can to homeless shelters. Keep an eye out for collection boxes and try help where you can.

Homemade Soup!

This leads me to my homemade soup recipe. I’ve been eating too much bread lately at work so I’ve been making and bringing soup for lunch instead. Much healthier, warmer, and tastier. And if you prefer a little carbs in your diet, then a slice of toast would go down well with this meal too.

When making this soup, you can omit the meat if you prefer a plain veg soup, so just tweak it the way you’d prefer it. You could also blend it all to make a thicker, puree if you dont like chunky pieces (I’m a fan of chunks in the soup). Kids might prefer the puree version too. Also feel free to add pretty much any veg you’d like. The only thing to note, is potato doesnt freeze well so if you’re going to freeze it, remove the potato chunks first.

First, put your tomatoes into a bowl and fill with boiling water. Leave for a few minutes, then replace hot water with cold water. When tomatoes are cool, take a sharp knife and gently slice the skin down one side. The skin should peel away with ease. Dice this up and put in a large bowl.

Dice up your onion and cube your meat. Put this in a pot with a tiny dash of olive oil. Not too much oil, as the meat will provide extra when browning.

Peel your carrots, turnips & potatoes.

Chop & grate your veg and put it in a bowl

Chop up half your carrots into thin slices. I prefer using the end part of the carrot so your pieces arent too huge floating in the pot. Chop up your celery and potatoes and put all chopped food into the bowl with the diced tomatoes (if you’re going to take a while with the grating, put the potato chunks into a bowl of water so they dont go brown whilst waiting). Grate the left over ingredients and add to the bowl of chopped veg.

Prepare the brown onion soup mix/Ina Paarmen’s stock powder.

Brown the meat & onions, prepare the stock, add the veg and top up with water

Brown your onions and meat on high. Add the rest of the vegetables and samp. Pour in the stock, top up with boiling water and crumble in your stock cube. Turn to a low heat, cover, and leave to simmer for one to one and a half hours, stirring occasionally. Serve hot.

Store in glass when in fridge, as soup will sour when kept in plastic. Freeze in plastic, but remove potatoes.

I finally got around to making my Apple Pie that I’ve been talking about for ages! I must admit, I cheated and bought the dough to use for the pie, but then when I thawed it and rolled it out, there wasnt enough for both top and bottom crust So I decided to make it without a base…*gulp*

I mixed and matched a few recipes so I was very worried about how it would turn out. I also wasnt sure if I should put foil around the edges to prevent the edges of the crust from burning, but I decided not to in the end.

So, after preparing it, and baking it for an hour and 10 minutes, it was done!

I was like a kid on Christmas morning, running to peek into the oven-glass every 20 minutes or so and I even squealed with glee when I set it down on the table

I’ve yet to taste it (the bf is keen!) as I’m waiting for my mom and sister to come and taste it with us

In other news, my new babies arrive on Monday, and I finally worked up the courage to go officially get permission to keep my rats in my apartment block! When most people hear “rats” they think smelly, diseased, sewer creatures, which of course could not be farther from the truth, so I was very worried they’d say NO RATS ALLOWED! But, they didnt! She seemed a bit put off by the thought, but after assuring her that I dont breed, and my girls are kept in a cage, she said fine. So yay for us!! Now I can bring my rats from my car to my flat (and vise versa) without worry!

So the other day I decided to make Chocolate Fudge Brownies. It was my first attempt and I was pretty impressed with the results.

The recipe will stay a secret, because I’m going to work on it a little more and make it fully mine! It was fairly simple to make, and I enjoyed every minute of it, including watching it bake haha.

My new ratties are arriving on Monday, and I’m so excited! Poor Orlith is incredibly bored, since Xeon is rather old and just wants to sleep and cuddle. She’s going to be so relieved to have friends to tumble about with, but I’m not sure what to do while they’re still growing. The new bubs will be too small for the large cage, and if they’re anything as sneaky as Orlith was, they’ll soon find they can fit through the bars…thats if Orlith doesnt show them herself! LOL!

I took a few photos of my babies, so here are a few of the ones I liked:

More photos can be seen under “Recent Pics” slideshow…