My new press

For ages now I have needed more storage in my Kitchen...with all this baking I'm taking up so much of the presses with my ingredients! So I didn't know what to do or what to buy as my kitchen isn't huge. I have this tiny space beside the kitchen door that would be perfect but it is quite tiny so I reckoned it would be impossible to find the size press I needed.

Anyway I looked in a few places and was beginning to think all hope was lost when we had a thought...IKEA. Now this defo wasn't the best of ideas in that the day we went ( a Monday at 12 which I thought would be safe!) the world and its mother also decided to pop along for what seemed to be nothing but a look at each and everything in the shop!!! We had actually gone along for something else but happened to come across the ideal press...now I admit it was going to need a little bit of pretty - ing up for sure.......

OK so here we are...not the most Nula looking press in the world....kind of white and plain but in fairness a great fit and it had tons of storage space so, I also choose to have one frosted door and one plain and you will see why.................i had some fab fabric I bought a while ago, I bought it with nothing in particular in mind, it was just gorgeous. How cute is this little cow?!!

I also had a serious amount of pretty storage tins ( which I have a serious weakness for ) which had been hidden away in presses for waaaay too long.

So I put the tins on display in the top part with the frosted glass and got sewing . I wanted to put the fabric behind the boring glass pane on the bottom half of the press. The pattern on the fabric was running the wrong way so I had to do a bit of cutting and sewing.

Then I wanted to find some cute ribbon to add to it .....

Eventually it all came together with a bit of help from my right hand man!!!!!! So what do ya think???? I am soo lovin it :)

Malteeser biscuits

My friend Melody sent me a new recipe last week and it just looked too yum not to try out....its kind of a version of Rockey Road with malteesers. One of the ingredients was golden syrup...now usually I love golden syrup but I think it made the chocolate mixture a bit gooey!! The next time I'm gonna leave it out and I reckon it will defo be even nicer.

Well golden syrup or no golden syrup Gareth had no problem polishing them all off!! I cant wait till I'm better so I can taste them too! :(

Brekkie!

Well most of you know about my berries and rice diet Ive been put on by the Chinese medicine man to cure my morning sickness.....so I got seriously bored of it and decided to stray...big time :) Anyway It wasn't working.......so whats a girl to do? Well bake a batch of fresh croissants of course!







I did cheat...I admit it.......I bought pre made croissant mixture but then added a bit of this and a bit of that .......I wanted some variation so I made three different types......almond(which I reckon has been my pregnancy craving!), chocolate and cinnamon...yum. All very easy peasy.....for the chocolate I just put a few squares of chocolate into the croissant before I rolled it up and then drizzled melted chocolate over it. For the almond I brushed the pastry inside with melted butter then sprinkled it with ground almond and sugar , rolled it up put a sugar glaze on it and sprinkled some chopped almonds and icing sugar. on top. Then finally for the cinnamon one I brushed the inside with butter, added Cinnamon sugar, rolled up the pastry and sprinkled more cinnamon sugar on top.

Then for the tasting test ha ha :) I loved them all, Gareths favourite was the chocolate one.....no surprise there then! I think I loved them all but I really loved the cinnamon, then I reckon you cant beat cinnamon with anything. I don't think this will be an every day brekkie or else someone will have to do some serious walking around Lara!!

Preparing for a Shower :)

Today i got a 'Save the date' email for my friend Melody's baby shower in September, she is having a little baby boy in October. I cant wait as I just love baby showers. I knew her shower was coming up so Ive been thinking of what to bake for it. Obviously a collection of seriously cute cupcakes will be on the cards but I was also thinking of making mini meringues too. I made something similar a few years back when my cousin Saoirse got married, we had a get together the night before, just the girls...fun, fun, fun! So I decided to try them out again. I'm thinking of some variations ........

Raspberry ???


Glitter??

Crystallised sugar??

Or a selection?? Well I think I'm going to let the 'yummy mummy to be' decide .....