Hail and Easy-as-hell Porridge

Couldn't make it into the studio today - poorly girl!

So instead, I have been working on opera house plans in my room, serenaded by hail, and with some very yummy porridge!

Master planning with porridge. Life's pretty sweet.

Little recipe for the best porridge in the world! Totally work friendly. I often take this into the studio, because porridge is bloody great and this version only needs a kettle. I started doing this after looking at the Quaker instant porridges in sainsbury's. Not only is this version cheaper, it also is not wasting packaging either. Throwing one of those pots away each time is crazy lazy. Jars? ECO POINTS.

What you need to do:

1. Find yourself a jar - mine is an old peanut butter one.
2. Into the jar goes: half a cup of rolled oats, handful of dried fruit (raisins, craisins, dried pinapple - go crazy!!!), seeds, nuts, whatever you want really. I then put in 1 tsp of peanut butter and a sprinkle of cinnamon. Today's was raisins and peanut butter.
3. Put the lid on
4. Take it to work (don't forget a spoon), and wait for the distracting hunger pangs
5. When you need a little foodie break, whack on the kettle, and pour boiling water into the jar.
6. Pour enough in so that the water line is about 1 cm above the oatline. 
7. Wait about 5 minutes until it looks like porridge. 
8. Dig in, and witness your colleagues' envy.

Films, Rugby and Coffee cake

The last  couple of weeks have frightened me in how fast they go. It's crazy. 

On the 28th January, I filmed a music video of my talented friend Mary Jane. We visited different locations and filmed the same song over and over. I then edited it into a very raw-feeling video, where you can hear the changes in sound in each cut:

Please also see the write up on my architecture blog!

I also made a coffee cake on Friday. I used a hummingbird bakery recipe as the baseline. But I halved the quantities, added more coffee and a dozen toffees.  My idea with shape was to make a house... Not a great success.
Nevermind, it was great and we ate it with cups of tea whilst watching the rugby yesterday.

Housemate envy: 10/10 (it got rave reviews from all of them, plus guests we had back to watch the rugby.)
Presentation Points: 5/10 (very questionable, and not how I envisioned)
Yummy Points: 9/10 (I know this is my best coffee cake yet, but I felt the sponge could have been less dense. Buttercream was a dream -no recipe.)

Peanut butter balls

The americans always go on about these in blogs, so I decided to make some today to see what the hype was about.

I made it up as I went and the recipe was:

1. Plop 3 tablespoons of smooth peanut butter in a bowl, then microwave until more pliable. 
2. Mix with 1 tsp honey, and 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder.
3. Add enough rice crispies until it seems about reasonable. 
4. Roll into balls about 2cm in diameter. (there were about 12 for me)
5. Put in the fridge to set.

Points:

Housemate envy: 9/10 (Their size and childhood-appeal definitely saw these disappear. I think it would be 10/10 but we don't have a full house today to judge by)

Presentation: 6/10 (They're cute, but I really need to start making pretty things!)

Yummy Points: 10/10 (These are DANGEROUS. Small, great textures, fab taste. They are all gone!)

Gluten free fruit cake and SNOW

We didn't get any snow in plymouth, so we went to dartmoor to find some....

And I made that gluten free cake. It was a bit dense, and sour (since I did a lemon drizzle topping)

Recipe:

1. Soak 500g of dried fruit (mix of whatever you like - I had apricots, sultanas, peel, dried raspberries, currents) in a big bowl with 600ml of boiling water and 3 tea bags. I used 2 PG tips and 1 oolong tea bag.
2. Leave overnight. Go to the pub, don't worry about baking hungover; it's easy as hell, go have some fun.
3. In the morning, remove the tea bags, and mix in 200g of sugar. I used granulated because I am poor.
4. Crack an egg in, and mix.
5. Spice it up with whatever you have in the kitchen. My weapons of choice were cinnamon and lemon rind.
6. Mix in 250g of gluten free flour. I didn't see the need to sift.
7. Bake at 170 C for about an hour. Test its 'done-ness' by inserting a metal skewer/knife and see if it comes out clean.
8. Give it 5 in the tin, but while it is warm, stab it a fair amount of times, then drizzle on the icing - juice of one lemon mixed with about 100g of granulated sugar. Using granulated gives it a great crunch. 

Points:
Housemate envy: 6/10 (There isn't any left, but that might have been because there was a lot of us, and the snow makes you want to eat lots of cake. People thought it was an interesting thing - lots of questions)
Presentation points: 8/10 (Forgot to take a bloody pic of it whole. It was a bunt cake, which makes cake easier for picnics as there's no wispy bit in the middle to crumble.)
Yummy points: 7/10 (It's hard to judge as it was a bloody weird cake. But I had a fair bit as it was good enough for me.)


I also went to Exeter last night to see my friend Mary play, which was fab.

Thar be snow!

Had a play with photoshop to collage this great jump...

...and this one.

find out more on http://wordsbymaryjane.wordpress.com/

No Snow for Plymouth

I am really excited about my architecture project, which you can read about on my blog here. 

Meanwhile, it is snowing in about every place EXCEPT Plymouth. Which totally sucks! However, I'm going to the moors tomorrow with an architecture buddy, and so I am making a cake. Of Course.

It'll be a gluten free fruit cake, and it's the first time I'll be working with alternative flour. I'm a bit nervous! 

Fruit before soaking in tea - sultanas, raisins,
peel, apricots and dried raspberries.

I had a great dinner tonight - goats cheese and veg on toast.

Procrastination Collages

Instead of doing floor area schemes of an opera house (uni project, which can be read about here), I did my first collage-type-thing since college. How strange.

Also, this blog has got an astounding 79 views so far today.  

Cheers chaps

Etsy Roses

Just a quick post about my etsy restart! Made some duct tape roses, in preparation for valentines day.

There will probably be a lot more items going up soon! It's all very exciting, and not at all uni related... oops!