Is soup a winter food?

January 25th, 2011

I don’t think so, I probably wouldn’t eat it on a 40 degree day, but i definitely don’t think that we should have rules where you can’t eat soup in summer.

I made this lovely pumpkin soup on the weekend.

Its an old recipe of my mothers, and making it is easy as pie…

Pumpkin Cream Soup

750g pumpkin

15g butter

1 medium onion, chopped

2 bacon rashers, chopped

1 litre (4 cups) chicken stock

¼ cup cream

  1. Remove skin and seeds from pumpkin, cut into small even pieces.
  2. Melt butter in large saucepan, and onion and bacon, stir constantly over heat until onion is soft.
  3. Add pumpkin to pan, then stock, bring to the boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes or until pumpkin is tender.
  4. With a hand held blender blend until smooth.
  5. Stir in cream.

Serve with crusty bread and garnish with a small amount of chives and a swirl of cream.

Go on,  make it tonight.

Enjoy!

xo Rachael

Tags: ,
Posted in Cooking | 2 Comments »

Once upon a time. I went out shopping

January 20th, 2011

While I was out shopping I found a cool little thing called Doily News. They are doilys made from unsold newspapers. How cool are they! Use them as coasters, decorations, even to decorate your wrapping paper, your imagination is your only limitation.

Doily News

 

Doily News

Designed by Ela Cindoruk, they orginate in Paris. You can get them in europe via ode-eshop, but you can also pick them up in Australia via Pulp Creative Paper.

Have fun shopping.

xo Rachael

With the huge floods going on over the weekend, I’ve been thinking about my Dad. He like many of the farmers up home have their work cut out for them over the next few months, getting things back to normal.

So i thought I would tell you how spoilt he was for his 60th this year. Not only did he get lovely presents and taken out to dinner but I made him a cake!

What?? He’s a farmer, he likes sheep!

It’s a bit rough as I was just learning the delicate art of cake decorating. I used butter icing for the face, it was very interesting trying to get it black (a  tip I have found out since is to use coca and then the colouring). The white icing was icing sugar and egg-whites with marshmallows stuck on it, as plain butter icing was too yellow. My dad is spoilt isn’t he!

xo Rachael

Tags: , ,
Posted in Cooking, Craft, Decorating | No Comments »

I can’t believe I haven’t shown you Elmo yet!

January 7th, 2011

My sister is lucky I don’t have kids of my own, so instead of making special birthday cakes for them I make them for my nephew. He turned 2 in November and at the moment he is obsessed with Elmo. So I made him an Elmo cake.

Do you like him?? I got inspiration from a couple of cakes I found on the interwebs, crazy cakes on flickr, and this one from Zero Gravity. Mine didn’t come out nearly as good as either of these two, but I think i did pretty well for a first attempt at cake decorating.

I think my favorite part of making it was that it looked like i had a monster in my fridge.

The base was the actual cake and I made Elmo out of Ricebubbles and marshmellows, mostly becasue i wanted him to have arms up in the air but  unfortunately physics isn’t my strong point and i had to ditch them last minute.  I also had a little problem with the food colouring, the stuff you get from the supermarket just didn’t make the icing red enough, after figuring that out (on the day of the party!) I had to make a manic dash to a cake shop to get some extra special gel stuff.

I’m pretty sure my nephew loved him, I know I was quite proud of myself!

xo Rachael

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Cooking, Craft | No Comments »

All I want for Christmas… is Bacon Jam?!

December 14th, 2010

14 days of December have passed and I have given you 9 gift ideas so far , they are gifts that I want, but I’m pretty sure that anyone will be happy with them.

Idea number 10 I came across on one of my fave blogs Oh Joy, she had a blog about bacon jam! How lovely does that sound, on a bit of toast with a blob of cream cheese. I’ve never tasted it but really want to try! If you take a look at her blog about it she really sells it to you, and even has a link to a recipe, if you like making a home made present :) .

Come on. Let me be adventurous!

xo Rachael

Posted in Cooking | No Comments »

« Older Entries