On the move!

We've sold the house again and hope to move back to the UK at the end of September.
Have just come back from a visit to family and friends and to see our new granddaughter - Emily Kristen.
She was 10 lbs at birth and has long feet and hands. Going to take after her Grandad I think, who's 6'6"!

We also went to look at some houses, and on our return, put in an offer on a house we'd seen twice, and it was accepted. We hope to complete on both houses at nearly the same time, so we can move back and get into the new house to redecorate. We'll rent a holiday cottage nearby until we've done what we want to do.

There's a lovely big kitchen in the new house so am looking forward to cooking in it. It has a gas cooker, and I've not used one for many years. Have had gas hobs in the last 3 houses and this house, but have had electric ovens.

Don't know this area very well, so am looking forward to a new chapter in our lives.

Lemon courgette cake

It's that time of year again - courgettes. They're so prolific that if you blink, you miss one, and it's become a marrow! We decided to only plant one plant, but it's still prolific. Reminds me of 'The day of the Triffids'!

I've tried a chocolate courgette cake, so wanted to find something different.

I found this recipe on the excellent site - http://www.allrecipes.co.uk/ and I tweaked it a bit.

200g grated courgettes
150g caster sugar
1 egg
125ml veg.oil
200g plain flour
1/2 tspn salt
1/2 tspn bicarb.
1/4 tspn baking powder
1 heaped tspn cinnamon
2 tspns lemon zest

Icing sugar and lemon juice if you want to ice it.

Preheat oven 160C/gas3
Grease a loaf tin.
In a bowl beat together the courgettes, egg, sugar and oil.
Sieve the flour with the baking powder and bicarb. then add the cinnamon and lemon zest. Stir this into the courgette mixture and gently mix together till just blended.
Pour into the tin and bake for about 40 mins.
Leave in the tin till cool, then turn onto a wire rack.

I made some lemon icing by mixing icing sugar and lemon juice, and poured it over.

You can peel the courgettes before grating, but I like the green specks in the cake.

Banana cake

I had 2 very ripe bananas to use up so decided to make a cake. It's very easy and delicious [I sound like Ina!].

2 ripe bananas [about 400g]
150g butter at room temperature
150g soft brown sugar
100g sultanas
300g plain flour
2 tspn baking powder
1/2tspn bicarbonate of soda
1 tspn cinnamon
2 medium beaten eggs
100ml vegetable oil

Preheat oven 180C/gas4/350F

Grease a 2lb/900g loaf tin
Peel and mash the bananas.
Put the butter and sugar in a bowl and beat together till fluffy. Stir in the bananas and the sultanas.
Sieve together the flour, baking powder and soda.
Add the flour mixture and the eggs to the banan mixture, adding about a third at a time of each.
Mix together well. Then stir in the oil.
Put into the loaf tin and bake for about 40 mins. Leave in the tin to cool and then put onto a wire rack.

I didn't have the 400g of bananas so used more sultanas. I also didn't use any oil this time and it's still a moist cake.

Blackcurrant pavlova

I've made lots of small meringues and meringue toppings, but this is the first time I've made a pav.

As it was Father's Day, and Bob's favourite fruit are blackcurrants, I decided to make him a treat.

The cream didn't whip as thickly as double cream, but it turned out fine.

This is the recipe I used, but I didn't swirl the blackcurrants throught the cream. Think I used more fruit too!

http://www.blackcurrantfoundation.co.uk/recipes_pavlova.html

Chocolate cake

 chocolate I fancied doing some baking this afternoon and having found a bar of 70% chocolate in the cupboard, decided to make a chocolate cake.
I tried a recipe from a book I've had for many years, but never used. It's Jane Pettigrew's 'Teatime - a complete collection of traditional recipes'. This is her 'Moist chocolate cake', but to be honest, I prefer my old Victoria sandwich recipe. We both found this cake rather dry, despite its buttercream filling.
If I try it again, I'll use less flour.

                                         

Didn't decide to blog about it till I'd cut us each a slice, and I'd had another one!

The recipe:

100g plain chocolate

150g butter of soft margarine

150g caster sugar

3 medium eggs

15ml [1 tbspn] milk

225g sr flour

Preheat oven 350F/180C/gas 4

Grease and line 2 x18cm [7"] sandwich tins.

Melt the chocolate over water or in a microwave.

Cream the fat and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

Stir the milk into the melted chocolate then add it to the mixture. Beat togther.

Fold in the flour. Mix well.

Pour into tins and bake for about 30 mins [my oven is hot and they were ready in 25mins] Leave to cool in tins and then turn onto a wire rack.

Make the filling:

15g softened butter

50g icing sugar + some for sifting on top

5ml [1 tspn] milk

1 tbspn cocoa powder

Cream the butter and icing sugar together then add the milk and cocoa powder. Beat well.

This amount is fine to sandwich the cakes together. It's half the amount given in the recipe.

You can sieve some icing sugar over the top to finish off the cake.

Dinnertime

Having packed all my cookery books into boxes ready for the move, I'm having to improvise my cooking. Decided to only unpack one box which has my favourite books in it.

Bought some turkey escalopes today, so decided to serve them with roasted veg. Breaded them with some of my home-made bread crumbs.

Have missed out on veg. eating whilst on our UK visit, so made up for it tonight. Used carrots, courgettes, shallots and sweet potatoes and some rosemary from the garden. We really enjoyed it.

Looks rather blurred! Haven't had any alcohol, honest!

Garden tour

As I'm still feeling rather shell-shocked about the house sale, I thought I'd have a short tour of the garden. It really cheered me up.

I grew this parsley from seed last year and it survived the snow and frost this winter.

This is the Willians pear tree. Doesn't seem to have many pears on it this year. I love the little bird house which attracts so many birds in winter and spring.The piece of wood across the front is to stop the magpies eating all the sunflower seeds. 

Looks like it's going to be a good year again for Bramleys. We brought 2 trees with us and they've done really well. Need to take off 2/3 of these little ones to get a decent sized apple.

At last the French beans have started to grow. They badly needed some sunshine. The cabbages are doing well and the beetroot.

Going to have a good crop of gooseberries. There are red ones too.

I love this climbing rose. It's Zephirine Drouhin, which has no thorns and a lovely perfume. Its flowers are prolific this year.

If you look throught the fence you can see the maize growing in the field in front of the house. The first year we were here, we thought it was the same as corn on the cob, so we snitched a couple, only  to discover that it tastes awful - it's for cattle feed! Serves us right!!

Life's a rollercoaster!

At 8-45 on Saturday morning the phone rang; it was our estate agent saying he was outside the gate and could he come in. He told us that the couple buying our house had split up, so the deal was off! We were so shocked! Only a week before they'd been here, telling us what they were going to do, and even buying a few bits of furniture from us.
In France when you want to buy a house you sign a 'compromis de vente', and in this there's a legal clause which says that you have to pay a certain amount if either party drops out. We don't know how much this is yet.
So we had to cancel the removal van, scheduled for July 8th. Three of the bedrooms are full of boxes and stacked furniture.
 The house is back on the market.

C'est la vie!

Big decision made!

We've decided to return to the UK and our house is sold. We now have to wait till mid July to sign the contract and get our money. We're moving to Northamptonshire, to be near our son and family. It's a new area for us, so another adventure! Haven't made anything worth blogging about lately, and we seem to have been very busy. We've been here 7 years and it's been like a lovely long holiday.

 This is our house. The garden goes all around the house and we're on the edge of a lovely hamlet of 20 houses. There are fields in front and behind us.We're going to have to downsize quite a lot when buying a UK property!

This is our Mairie in the local village. It's a chateau that the commune bought and restored, and everyone is very proud of it. There's are lovely grounds behind where we have open-air concerts in the summer and picnics. There are 200 different types of trees.

This is le Donjon in our nearest town, Niort. It was built by Eleanor of Aquitaine. There's a lovely market nearby every Thursday and Saturday morning.

These are our wonderful local donkeys called 'Baudet de Poitou'. They were becoming quite rare, so they began a breeding programme and now their numbers have grown to several thousand.

I'll be sad to leave, but life moves on, and we'll be able to help our children and see more of our grandchildren.

Apple and spice loaf cake

If you read this blog, you'll know that we love teabreads. Wanted to try a new recipe, so found this one on the BBC Good Food site. You'll find it  here.
I tweaked the spices and used some 'quatre epices' which is much like mixed spice in the UK. I found it rather sweet so maybe less sugar next time. I like the sliced apple on top; it gave the cooked teabread  an interesting look.

We had a slice of it with a cuppa.

Apple puree cake

This is a lovely moist cake with a soft, dense texture. Make sure, if you do try it, that you grease the cake tin well, as I used my 2lb silicone loaf mould and even thought I did grease it, the cake still stuck to the bottom.

Apple puree cake

100g butter or margarine, softened

225g soft brown sugar [I used light brown muscovado sugar and it gave the cake a lovely flavour]

2 eggs, lightly beaten

225g plain flour

1 tspn ground cinnamon

½ tspn grated nutmeg

100g apple puree

1 tspn bicarb.

2 tbspn hot water



Preheat oven 180C/gas4/350F

Grease a 2lb loaf tin well



Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy

Beat in eggs and stir in flour, spices and apple puree.

Mix the bicarb. with the hot water then stir it into the mixture.

Spoon into tin and bake for about 50mins. Test with skewer to see if it’s cooked.

American chocolate cake

This a recipe I've used before and it's a lovely moist cake and it keeps well too [if there's any left!!].

275g sr flour
3 level tbspns cocoa
175g caster sugar
1 level tspn bicarbonate os soda
300ml milk
150ml corn oil
3 tbspns golden syrup
1/2 tspn vanilla essence

icing:
25g cocoa
3-4 tbspns hot water
25g soft butter
100g icing sugar [sieved]

Preheat oven 180C/gas4/350F
Grease and line 2x20cm sandwich tin or a 20cm springform tin

Sift flour, cocoa a nd sugar in a bowl. Make a well in the middle.
Dissolve the bicarb in 1 tbspn of the milk and then pour into the flour with the rest of the milk, oil, syrup and vanilla essence. Beat well till a smooth batter.
Pour into tin/tins and bake for about 35-40 mins till the cakes spring back when pressed with fingertip.
Turn on wire rack to cool.

Make the icing - put the cocoa in a bowl with the hot water and butter and beat till smooth and butter is blended in. Beat in the icing sugar and then sandwich the cakes together or smooth it over the top of the large cake.

The cake has a lovely texture, moist and dense.

This is my Easter cloth which has had it's annual airing today!