Where have I been?????

Ok so I'm rubbish and it's been forever since I updated the blog. No excuses, it's not as if I've been ill and not able to lift my head off the pillow, or in a foreign land with no access to the internet. I've just been lazy and not baking much as I'm on a diet!

Well I am back with a vengeance and have photo's of the most decadant pudding I've ever made. It is all thanks to my lovely trifle bowl (from Pampered Chef of course!) I ended up with 2 of them as I won one at a PC meeting so I decided to have a Pimms and Puddings show at my own house. It was great, I had 1 trifle bowl full of Pimms and the other filled with an amazing Banana and Chocolate trifle. The funny thing is I never even tried the trifle myself, firstly because I'm on a diet, and secondly because it has Angel Delight in it and if there is one thing I can't stand then it's Angel Delight. Yuk!!!!!

It did look great though if I do say so myself and the empty bowls showed there were no complaints.

Making trifles is not the only thing that's been going on recently. I have finalloy found a man! Well, one to come in and do the garden anyway. So prepare yourself for a few shots of before and during. I don;t have an after yet as we are still waiting for the slate to be delivered so it's not a finished article yet.

Wise words of warning!!!!

Please can you all make sure that you do not turn into a blonde!!! I say this only because it can be my only excuse for what happened at my cooking show this week.

For the first time ever I tried to make 2 recipes at a show as I wanted to show off my new yorkshire puddings baked in the pampered chef stoneware. Well the show started well with lots of people joining in and chatting about the products. I whisked up the batter ingredients, only slightly confused when I had to ask for more milk as the pudding batter was quite thick, but no worries I carrried on. I did my neat trick with just spraying the cold stoneware with a little oil before I put in the batter and put them in the oven. That was it, I could forget them for the minute while I carried on with making the Banana & Toffee Bottom (It's a gorgeous cakey pudding, I'll take photo's next time and put the recipe on here.)

So we slice the banana's and make the tofffee then I start to add the ingredients for the sponge to the mixing bowl but I can't find the flour, where is the flour. I'm sure I measured it out into one of my square white bowls. I know I did. I remember quite clearly that I put the pudding batter ingredients in the small prep bowls and the cake ingredients in my square bowls. Then it hits me and I pick up the small prep bowl that still has some flour in it. Oh no, Instead of the 3 oz of plain flour I had prepped for the puddings, I actually added the 6 oz of self raising flour I prepped for the cake. No wonder I needed more milk!!!!!

All this is going through my head as I am facing a room of 10 people eagerly watching what I am about to do next. I step back, take a sideways glance at the oven and my spirits then become as flat as the yorkshire puddings baking in the oven. What to do? All I can do is face the audience laugh and explain everything. Fortunately they were a good bunch and soon we were all in hysterics together. I soon redeemed myself as I weighed out more flour for the cake, mixed it up and put it in the oven. Fortunately the cake was a triumph and the crowd loved it, they even loved the yorkshire's after the hostess, Jayne, made some gravy and they all tried them. The fact that I was trying to illustrate that the stoneware was non stick got a little lost even though that part did work.

Amazingly I still had good sales for the night, who knows I may now be one of those silly little water cooler stories people tell at work, "You'll never guess what happened at my pampered chef show last night......"