Food, Glorious food....

pizza, meringue and sponge traybake.....

OK, so that's not how the words to the song go but those are the things we made this weekend!

I'm so sorry not to have met up with you over the last few days but it's been busy, Busy, BUSY!  And thankfully (just this once) not with work!

It has been a friends and family, fun-filled weekend that went a bit like this....

On Friday night we had friends over and made pizza.  Look....

...we've got everything out ready to go.  We use a very old Panasonic breadmaker that we bought about a decade ago from Lakeland, they now do this version.

I also have some excellent Salter Kitchen Scales, purchased in a hurry from Argos, quick purchases I usually come to regret, but this one is great......they weigh lbs & ozs, g, ml and floz and you can just reset the button to zero and weigh your next ingredient...so fast and easy!    

                                                                  

As you can see I just pop on the breadpan and weigh my pizza dough ingredients straight into it.....no extra washing up....me LIKES!

Oh!  And talking of ingredients, here is our recipe - it's the one that came with the bread machine and is lovely.  We usually need to make up at least a double batch and use a mixture of part white and part wholemeal flour.

Hubby usually gets the task of rolling as he is the best.  Everyone 'decorates' their own pizza, not only because it's fun, BUT, because they only put on what they like and it gets eaten!

This is the pizza 'decorated' by my darling Tiddly Toes who is only 2, she put on a bit of everything (except mushroom which she just ate raw!)

I'm afraid I can't show you how beautiful they all looked when they were done as we had eaten them before I realised that I hadn't got a photo!  Sorry!

On Saturday we took our best decorating arms to my Aunt & Uncle and painted their hall, stairs and landing in exchange for dinner....mmmm!  And so nice not to have to cook.

On Sunday, we awoke to this...

..what fun and absolutely beautiful!  The large snowflake, as you might have guessed, is not a perfectly formed specimen floating from the sky, but a window sticker!  They are over EVERY window in the house....very seasonal and decorative compared to our usual nothingness.

This is the view from our backgarden into the woods behind our house....

 .... and to the front of our house.

Look how thick the snow is..... I opened the velux window to see and the snow was so heavy it took all my strength to hold the velux in one hand and operate the camera with the other!

This is my Tiddly Toes, all decked out in her snow attire making an Angel....

...and this is my beautiful Twelve-Teen daughter doing the same (in my wellies!)

This is the fall-out from an afternoons play in the snow.....

...reassurance that they have had fun!

My fun and a little sunshine in our lives, a £1 buch of Daffs from M&S and a market stall pot of what I think are called Polyanthus.

Here's three more in a bowl on our kitchen table.....

...and some beautiful tulips from last week from the same Market Man....gone now but I couldn't resisit showing them to you.

Anyway.... on Sunday we had been invited to Lunch by our neighbours.  So whilst the children were happily playing in the snow, I did a bit more baking.

First on the list was a Wrights Chocolate Fudge Cake Mix which we popped into the bread machine.....

...and hey presto 50 mins (and a few slices later) looked like this....

Very delicious with a cup of tea or with custard!

AND, as we had said we would bring 2 puds, the other was meringue!  So here we are again ready to bake.....

...and here's the recipe.  I think it came from the weekend section of The Telegraph one Saturday a year or two ago.  Needless to say (as you can see from the state of the paper) it is a well used recipe and a very reliable bake.

Hopefully that's big enough for you to read if you want to give it a try, please leave me a comment if you want me to type it out for you.

I only used half the ingredients which would make a good 6-8 sliced family meringue.  Once mixed I plop the mixture onto baking parchment on a baking tray and pile the sides higher leaving a well in the middle, like this.....

and 1 hour 20 minutes later it comes out looking like this.....

...crispy on the outside and anything from mallowy to chewy on the inside...yummy!

I'm not able to eat fat so instead of cream, I like to fill mine with low fat natural fromage frais and top it off with raspberries, but any soft or exotic fruit would be nice.

My last bake of the day was a traybake for a young friend of mine.

Here we go again!

I used the vanilla essence version of this recipe. After creaming together the margarine and sugar I added in the rest of the ingredients like this....

Once thoroughly mixed I spooned it into a foil tray (about 30cm x 20cm) lined with baking paper, and popped it into the oven, like this.....

...and 45 minutes later it came out looking like this......

My young friend has requested a lemon buttercream (made using Lemon Curd as the flavouring) with colourful sprinkles. 

Do you think this will do?.....

I hope she'll love her Lemon Rainbow cake and that it will brighten her special day.

That's all from me right now, I hope you've enjoyed sharing my bakes and busy-ness, so until the next time....bye, bye xx