The snow came early this year and when it came, it came thick and fast! Pascal (the tiger) annoyed his way out of the house, only to run back in after a minute in the mountain of white stuff. It was quite entertaining to track his progress around the garden, by watching his tail over the snow…

Hope everyone’s looking forward to Christmas. I won’t mention the Christmas shopping… (oops!)

x

Happy birthday, Lola.

T x

Meat, cats and bubbles… now October, slowly time to say goodbye to the British summer. At least we have the beautiful autumn sunshine to look forward to.

And something to look forward to next year…

150g dark chocolate
2 tablespoons of water
A few drops (or more depending on your likening) of kirsch or rum
150g soft butter
100g icing sugar

1. Melt the dark chocolate in a water bath, adding the two tablespoons of water into the mixture.
2. Add either the kirsch or rum. The amount depends on how strong you want the taste to be.
3. Separately beat the butter until it forms peaks.
4. Add the icing sugar to the butter and mix.
5. Then mix in the melted chocolate.
6. Leave the mixture to cool until you can roll it into balls between your palms.
7. Now let the chocolate truffle balls cool.
8. Just before serving sieve some more icing sugar over them.
9. Enjoy!

On a bloggage note: I’ve cleaned out the dead links of my blogroll, so it’s looking quite empty at the moment :( If you have linked me and would like a link back, let me know! Let the good old fashioned link exchanges begin.

On a geeky note: I’ve got more googlewave invites to giveaway. If you want one, let me know by posting a comment.

50g Marzipan
50g dark chocolate
Almonds

1. Divide the block of marzipan equally and then with the marzipan pieces between both palms, roll a ball.
2. Melt the dark chocolate in a water bath.
3. With the help of a toothpick, dip the marzipan balls into the melted chocolate and make sure it’s coated well. Place on a baking paper to cool.
4. As it cools, half the almond and stick each half on either side of the chocolate marzipan ball.
5. Leave to cool.
6. If you would like the bunny to have a face, decorate with sugar icing :)

Basic sugar icing:

50g Icing sugar
1.5 teaspoon of egg white

1. Mix the icing sugar and egg white together until it is shiny and smooth.
2. Depending what you’re comfortable with, you can place this mixture in a piping bag or dip toothpicks into the mixture and use the droplets to decorate. I tend to use the latter for small details.

As a reader recently commented, it’s crunch time! Now one week and four days to go and I’m starting to feel the pressure. But not all tasks were hair pulling, teeth grinding chores.

A pot, a mountain of almonds, sugar and cinnamon everywhere and Spotify playing in the background with our favourite tunes: we were a sugar roasting almond factory. Gebrannte Mandeln (sugar roasted almonds) are our wedding favour treat of choice and there’s nothing like it when it’s homemade.

Behold the gooey sugary mess that needed to be cooled and then divided!

Well, Mr H definitely enjoyed making the batches. I think in total we used 1.6kgs of almonds and 1.2kgs of sugar. Yes, they’re not exactly healthy ;)

Whiskey wasn’t happy. She wanted some too. Little kitty paws can’t undo wrapping and bow ties :(

We spent Sunday turning these potatoes, freshly pulled from the garden patch, into lovely home made crisps. Mmmmmm tasty! Nothing better than home grown!

A shot at some broad bean plants.

Never saw broad beans come in fabulous pink! ^_^

Coco Avant Chanel is the story of the young Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel and her beginnings. Audrey Tautou is wonderful in portraying the rebellious Coco.  The storyline is simple and straightforward, no surprises, but I did enjoy the complex relationship Coco had with Étienne Balsan. The film is full of beautiful imagery, which you would expect.

It’s a very safe film about Chanel, no hint as to her supposed involvement with the Nazis and her imprisonment. I now want to watch Coco Chanel And Igor Stravinsky, which closed this year’s Cannes festival.

With these two movies about Chanel coming out, it’s not going to surprise me if sales of Chanel’s goods skyrocket this year. I personally have been eyeing the following:

Cute!

For Mr H’s birthday, I decided to bake him a cake. After my last baking journey, which ended in green cardboard cupcakes (disaster!), I was understandably wary. But this carrot cake recipe worked like a charm and it’s dead easy. Safe to say it was a brilliant success and it definitely did not taste like cardboard :) It was enjoyed at a little barbecue get together in our back garden.

Whiskey wanted cake too, but had to be content with just a pair of pretty shoes.