I thought I would start up the holiblog series again, for this summer.
Here is how I have spent the later part of July, since the summer holidays began.
It’s been a fun start.
H a pp y • H o li da ys •
Saturday 17th July 2021
Out for a sunny walk, near our flat. We discovered a new part of the park.
Sunday 18th July 2021
Big Kids
💙
Moooooo
Fun at Alton Water enjoying the sunshine, mini golf, walking and ice cream.
Monday 19th July 2021
Breakfast with my friend Gemma & her boys.
Tues 20th July 2021
💙
Snacks!
The cinema really started to fill up
The boys first visit to our flat in over a year and a half 😍
Wed 21st July 2021
Summer Reading Challenge
Sharing stories
Reading
💙
The start of my Summer Reading Challenge Volunteering. Signing up these guys and meeting for lunch at the bakery.
Hot Dog Party 🎉🌭
Sat 25th July 2021
Coffee and a book
Sushi 😍
A chilled out Saturday. A bit of me time.
Mon 26th July 2021
Walking on the Heath
Lunch 🍽
Meeting up with Dan, a long walk followed by lunch.
Tues 27th July 2021
Wolves Wood
Walkinga
I made a friend 🐸
A walk in the woods together, followed by Arts & Crafts with Evie and lunch at Sainsburys with Charlotte.Painting at Pennikity Pots with my friend Steph and her boys.
Wed 28th July 2021
Summer Reading challenge week 2
The Waterfront
Dinner at the Bistro with Louise, Kerry & Rach.
Sat 31st July 2021
The boys first sleepover in over a year and a half . Dinner and lots of games.
I love an excuse to bake and Easter is the perfect one.
Also, I can now eat chocolate again as I gave it up on the 8th of Jan until Good Friday! Horray.
So, here are two Easter bakes that I have made this Easter weekend.
They are super easy, relatively quick and even child friendly.
Let’s take a look!
Chocolate Easter Nests
Chocolate Easter Nests
I surely don’t even need to include a recipe for this Easter classic!?!
This Easter season special is great to do with kids and one of my favourite ‘cakes’ whenever I seem them on sale.
I had to use shredded wheat this time as we already had it in the cupboard but my preference is cornflakes, and of course I used Cadbury chocolate and mini eggs.
Cadbury Creme Egg Brownies
Cadbury Creme Egg BrowniesGooey goodness!
These brownies came out super gooey and were so delicious, especially warm!
I had this ‘Brownie in a jar’ mix from Christmas, that I hadn’t used yet and all you needed to do was add 125g of butter and 2 eggs (whisked together first). Super easy!
I then cut the creme eggs in half and pushed them into the batter, fondant side up.
A brownie recipe that I use alot is a BBC Good Good one, I’ll leave a link here .
I used to share snap shots of my life on her, things we had done to celebrate different occasions, fun days out, holidays, however, obviously this last year has been quite an unpresidented one.
I feel like I haven’t really shared much of what I have been doing because really we’ve all been doing the same haven’t we! Staying home, Locked down, on and off since Summer, working and just trying to stay safe.
But I thought to myself, why not share the celebrations we are still having, as wierd as they may seem in comparison to how it used to be, because it’s all we’ve got at the moment and we should still be grateful for what we can do during such a mad time.
Today is Mothers day and I have shared on here, for several years, our tradition of our Mothers Day, homemade afternoon tea.
This year was a very 2020/21 affair, via Skype, but it still involved Afternoon Tea so no complaints here.
We ordered the individual Afternoon Teas from a small local business (All Covid safe) and enjoyed them at our own homes via Skype.
They were delicious and it was nice to be able to continue the tradition, even if it was a little different to usual.
Most of our ‘Usuals’ seem a distant memory right now don’t they 😣 but, it’s also so important to embrace what we can do, communicate and spend time together however we can, whilst staying safe, because we can still stay in touch and stay connected, and we will all be back together properly one day.
It gets to everybody at some point, this wierd time we are a part of, but I’m so very conscious that there are people in such a worse situation than me, who have experienced some of the worst times during this pandemic.
If the worst part of this whole situation, for me is that I can only speak to people through a computer then I’ll be forever grateful. I know some people have it much worse.
It’s still ok to find it hard though and I hope you’ve had a little bit of light and joy come your way today!
Thick, fluffy, American style pancakes. Draped in Bananas and Biscoff spread.I’ve never been able to make these thicker, fluffy pancakes before so I was so happy with this delicious stack!!Savoury Ham & Cheese filled pancake toastie.This was so delicious and I was pleasantly suprised with this one.Traditional, thin crepe style pancakes. I always have these ones every year.Lemon, sugar & golden syrup.
For the final day of Blogmas I thought I would share some of the Christmas fun we’ve been up to on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day!
Christmas Eve
Me and my sister continued our tradition of meeting up for a burger with our friend.
Obviously being 2020 we had to get it takeaway and outside 😷
So we incorporated a walk around the park and it was really nice (except the rain shower!!)
I had the Caffe Nero Mint Hot Choc finally, and it was so delicious and festive too
We also have a tradition of going around our local town to look at the christmad lights.
We keep an eye out in the weeks leading up to Christmas eve and there are a few that are always good too.
There were some brilliant lights on display this year.
Keepin’ it COVID secure by going in our separate cars and we just chatted over a voice call, worked pretty well 🤣
Left my Stocking out for Santa, obv!
Christmas Day
Me and Tim started the day with a delicious and festive nutella pastry Christmas tree & a cuppa!
Followed by present opening 🎁
My father in law provided a lovely Christmas lunch for us, we had my brother in law on Zoom, at the dinner table with us… very 2020!
We enjoyed a bit of a relax and a TV break before another family Zoom with a game of birds names.
We had the standard Christmas day buffet in the eve with the other half of our bubble, my twin sister, brother in law and nephews.
We had fun opening presents, had a bit of a dance and enjoyed some yummy food.
It’s been a strange one in the sense that we are all (hopefully) being more cautious than usual this year, but it has been fun to be able to keep some traditions alive and to get together, where possible, to celebrate
I really hope that you’ve all enjoyed your day 🎅🏻
Tier Four tomorrow! But we still have Boxing day Skype fun planned with a Christmas themed family quiz.
Stay safe and thankyou so much for joining me again for another fun, festive and unforgettable Blogmas.
As I said a few days ago, I have one more recipe for you! And it’s perfect for a special Christmas day occasion.
It’s a delicious, and relatively easy and quick, Salted caramel (do I need to say any more?) and chocolate tart.
It doesn’t require a lot of ingredients which is great! And apart from time for it to set it doesn’t take too long either. It only took me an hour or so one evening so its great as a fancy, last minute showstopper.
Don’t let the making caramel stage scare you… it’s not as horrendous as you’d think and, if you have a food thermometer this will really come in handy.
I will link both of the recipes that I used below.
I used pre made shortcrust. Remember to bake it blind for 15 mins before removing the baking parchment and beans (or whatever you have, I used dried pasta) pop it back in until it starts to turn golden.
I had some nice flakey salt that I added during the caramel recipe process (as stated but I doubled it) and I sprinkled more salt on, generously, once I had poured the caramel into my cooled tart.
Leave the caramel to set and then add your silky smooth ganache on top. Good quality Dark chocolate is the best.
As someone who likes baking, I enjoyed this recipe because it uses lots of different techniques that perhaps I wouldn’t bother to try usually.
And it looks impressive too!
This is going to be our Christmas day dessert, served with some thick double cream, YUM!
Especially because I feel like I haven’t done enough of these this Blogmas!
I do have another recipe up my sleeve, that I am hoping to make for our Christmas day dessert, so keep your eyes peeled for that one too 👀
Chocolate Orange is one of my absolute favourite flavours ever, but I also think its quite festive too.
I used a ‘Tasty’ recipe this time which I will leave a link for here
I obviously adapted it to make them Chocolate Orange flavoured.
I added some cocoa powder to make the cookie batter chocolatey, a little orange extract instead of vanilla and I used chopped up Chocolate Orange segments, instead of choc chips.
These don’t take long to make, honestly the longest part is refrigerating the mixture for a minimum of 30 mins before baking. They only take 15 mins in the oven.
This is how they turned out. The chocolate orange pieces were all gooey 😍
During December, me and my friend at work have been trying out different mince pies. We work together two days so on a Monday I would bring one in and on a Thursday she would bring one in.
We got to try six different mince pies during this time, and we rated them to see which ones we preferred.
We tried the following Mince Pies:
Aldi Specially Selected
Gregg’s Bakery
Sainsburys Shortcrust Bakery
M&S Puff Pastry
Waitrose Extra Special
Co op Locally Sourced
• The Rankings •
We went for a few categories to score each mince pie on, these were:
Appearance
Overall Taste
Pastry
Fillage
And then we gave them an overall taste each.
• The Results •
Aldi Specially Selected
Appearence: 9/10 & 8/10
Overall taste: 7/10 & 7/10
Pastry: 7/10 & 7/10
Fillage: 8/10 & 7/10
Overall Rating: 7/10 & 7/10
Gregg’s
Appearance: 8/10 & 8/10
Overall taste: 5/10 & 7/10
Pastry: 6/10 & 7/10
Fillage: 8/10 & 7/10
Overall rating: 5/10 & 6/10
Sainsburys Bakery
Appearence: 8/10 & 8/10
Overall taste: 8/10 & 8/10
Pastry: 9/10 & 9/10
Fillage: 5/10 & 5/10
Overall rating: 8.5/10 & 9/10
M&S Puff Pastry
Appearence: 6/10 & 6/10
Overall taste: 6.5/10 & 8/10
Pastry: 5/10 & 3/10
Fillage: 3/10 & 3/10
Overall rating: 6/10 & 7/10
Waitrose
Appearence: 8/10 & 8/10
Overall taste: 9/10 & 6/10
Pastry: 8.5/10 & 8/10
Fillage: 8/10 & 8/10
Overall rating: 8/10 & 8/10
Co-op Locally Sourced
Appearence: 6/10 & 6/10
Overall taste: 10/10 & 10/10
Pastry: 8/10 & 9/10
Fillage: 10/10 & 9/10
Overall rating: 9.5/10 & 9/10
So, the winner of our taste testing was… (drum roll please)
The Co-op Locally Sourced !
These are my favourite and even with trying others that hasn’t changed, and my friend agreed too.
Roseanne Byford 