Nestle tollouse- c'est francais oui?

So before I start I have a horrible dirty secret! These TECHNICALLY are not Nestle Toll House Cookies...

Mr F. is coming home from work today and bless him I thought he deserved a little treat and what better welcome home present then Pheobe Buffay's famed "grandmothers secret recipe" cookies. Sadly with these being American this poses a slight problem to us Brits.. The amazing chocolates of our American friends are few and far between here in England and cost an absolute fortune if you can get your mits on them. Recently I was so overcome with nostalgia that I simply had to buy a box of "Lucky Charms" cereal that cost me five whole English pounds!! Its enough to make you not want to eat them (don't worry I did, that would be just sinful to leave them!!) So not being able to get hold of a bag of their Toll House chocolate chips, I used their regular chocolate  chips....pheeew I'm glad we got that out of the way. I now have on order from the ever reliable Amazon a bag of these elusive morsels at the slightly un appetising price of £4.95 for just over 300 grams..but these are famous cookies....

The recipe is as follows:

• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups (12-oz. pkg.) NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels
• 1 cup chopped nuts

PREHEAT oven to 375° F......(thats about 190 degrees C to you...)

COMBINE flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels and nuts. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets. 

What this recipe gives you is a very thick cookie batter. I didn't, as would pretty much anyone wouldn't, have a baking tray that would deliver the apparent 60 cookies this batter is meant to produce. Well I don't know if I'm a bit of a fatty fat fat but I didn't get 60 cookies from my batter, I got exactly half of that using their advised tablespoon methods. Soooo if your looking to provide the bounty of cookies this recipe is meant to, I would perhaps swap to generous, heaped teaspoon measurements. The other slight issue that i stumbled across was that instead of those slightly gooey centred, crispy edged American style cookies that I was perhaps wrongly expecting, this batter makes your cookies balloon almost to dense cake like proportions. My answer to this was pretty simple, if not only slightly aggressive and was to give them a light spanking with the back of a silicone spatula. It seemed to do the trick if I'm honest but I doubt its something that Delia would do! 

So I must go and do a bit of last minute tidying, feed the cats etc. before I go and pick him up from the airport, so we shall talk later. Hope he likes his present!!! Fingers crossed and I shall report back later with general Toll House musings... I've had one so far but it was quite honestly hotter then the sun and a rogue still lava-esque chocolate chip burnt my tongue so I shan't be eating another one until it it is officially cooled and deemed safe for human consumption...... 

xoxo

Ps..your hair looks nice today! 

play with your food!

You know your mother said never play with your food..... she was wrong.... 

xoxo

Cod vs. Pecans?

So last week I was out shopping and being the truly excellent girlfriend that I am, decided to purchase the Man Friend the new COD game....no I don't get the fuss either... the only Cod i'm interested in comes in a crispy batter with minted mushy peas.... so anyway, anyway, anyway... Seen as I had been completely selfless and bought the Man Friend his highly coveted game, I felt that I deserved a little somethin' somethin'... So down the same aisle was the books section and shining out to me in all its chocolatey glory was the new Green & Blacks cookbook: Green & Black's Ultimate Chocolate Recipes, The New Collection. 

So I figured that whilst he's busying himself doing whatever it is these COD people do, I can busy myself creating some chocolate based wonders.... For my party last week it seemed only appropriate to try out one of my favourite ever deserts...If you are ever feeling gloomy, slightly downtrodden or world weary a Pecan Pie is surely one of the best mood elevators I can think of. With its heady southern aromas, and I'm talking the real American deep south here, not Essex... Its blend of sugar, maple syrup and pecans...were in heaven! Well that is how I normally make it, until I discovered Green&Blacks chocolate version! Maybe not traditional, maybe not even correct, there is something that is very right about this recipe! Mine were a complete hit! The only slight difference between my recipe and their's is that I couldn't get a large pie crust, so I split mine between smaller cases instead of one large one. I'm giving you their recipe, but if your going to go on the smaller route like me, reduce your cooking time down to between 20-25 minutes, depending on your oven. 

• Plain flour for dusting..
• 8 1/2oz Shortcrust pastry case
• 75g dark chocolate, finely chopped
• 75g unsalted butter
• 2 medium free range eggs
• 75g caster sugar
• 200g golden syrup
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 100g of pecans finely chopped, plus 100g pecan halves to decorate

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C/gas mark 4. Put the baking sheet in the oven to warm through.
• Melt the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water, making sure the bowl doesn't touch the water. Cool slightly.
• Put the eggs, golden syrup, vanilla and cooled chocolate mixture in a large bowl and fold together until smooth. Fold in the chopped pecans. Pour into the pastry case. Decorate the surface with the remaining pecan halves.
• Transfer the pie to the hot baking sheet and oven bake for 40-45 minutes until just set.

xoxox

I Heart Macaroons

My single most obsession at the moment seems to be my ever expanding selection of cookbooks. Most ladies of an evening like to sit and read a copy of VOGUE, Martini in hand. I, however like to sit with a cookbook and a mug of tea plotting my next dinner party or baking opportunity. So what could be a more perfect way to finish off any evening, then a mouthful of crunchy, meringuey, almondy macarons. So perfectly tempting were these little beauties that after purchasing the very cute "i 'heart' macarons" I immediately hopped to it! 

I had heard many a myth about how frustratingly hard macarons were to make. There seem to be a million rules with them. For example, each beautiful little baby is meant to have a small skirted frill for at the bottom. This little skirt is called a "pied" in its native French, or foot to us, but without it each little pastry cannot be called a macaron. I think its this type of rule that puts people off making them in the first place! DO NOT BE PUT OFF!! If my little batch were anything to go by, surely each of us could be a world famous patisserie chef in a couple of hours and a couple of cooking cocktails...

The layout of the book makes it so simple and gives some really helpful tips, like rotating your trays, rapping your baking sheet sheet on a work surface to help create the perfect pied and if god forbid something does go wrong with your macarons, why it may have happened and how to amend it. It is also laid out with a complete photo guide to help coax you along each little step. 

Later on in the book, once you've had a go at creating your first macarons, are sections on combining different colours and flavoured puffs and creams, what to do with your left over egg yolks and how to package them for gifts.All in all, I think this is a great little book. Okay, so its not revolutionary but what it is, is a simple step by step guide to making the PERFECT macaron and as a beginner who needs more then that? Its not particularly a lengthy book and is bulked out by a myriad of beautifully shot photographs, but I purchased my book on one of my Amazon splurges for just under five pounds and for that I couldn't be happier! I urge you if you have ever been tempted into making macarons and have been put off by the alleged difficulty of making them, or if you have never even heard of them and just stumbled across them today, make them, eat them, fall in love with them!! 

To Henna or not to Henna??

Well, here's my predicament... After so much bleaching of my hair it was starting to very closely resemble a Wurzel Gummage style fright-wig. After a bit of searching and asking about, a few friends recommended to me that I should try henna dye... So I took myself off down to the lovely LUSH, one of my favourite shops ever! I have a complete excited little girl breakdown every time i go in there and could happily re mortgage my house for an extra bar of the brilliant Honey-I-Washed-The-Kids Toffee/Fudge soap...

                   

And in Billy Connelly style I digress... 

So In the end I decided to purchase a bar of their Caca Rouge. It comes in a block and you have to grate it down and mix it with boiling hot water to create a thick sludge that you paste on your hair and leave for approximately 6 hours... Little tip!! If you want the hair brighter mix in a bit of lemon juice to your mix, for more of a deeper tone, mix in a little coffee powder.

                 

Well my hair turned out great and I was quite happy with it. BUT! 

Not being the brightest little chicken i didn't think about re-growth and with Henna, it is pretty much a law that you cannot put regular "dye at home" style hairdye on it. The salts and chemicals mix horribly and the end result is usually either pond green hair that has to be dyed over professionally with a dark colour which is going to cost you an absolute fortune!!!!! or your hair breaks off and you have to have the pixiest of pixie cuts  and its going to take you a veery long time to regrow! 

Well, I had already pre lightened my hair so the henna came out great but now i am stuck with a complete roots problem! Because my hair is growing through darker the henna will not cover my roots to match the rest of my hair, so im stuck in the middle of a sticky situation..... The plan that I have come up with is as follows:

I am using the brilliant La Riche Directions Hairdye

                  

It comes in a huge range of bright and exciting colours and is a vegetable dye so it is safe enough to use over the Henna as theres no chemicals for it to react with. But I am left with a case of very noticable roots see!

               

That's me in the middle out with the ladies. So im going to persist with this whole vegetable dye business for a few weeks.... I don't know how I will cope with these roots, there my biggest fear! Then hopefully after a few weeks my hair will be sufficiently coated in vegetable dye that I can go at it with a regular home dying kit. I will of course be doing a strand test to see how it reacts with my hair and then condition, condition, condition!! So, back to my original question, to Henna or not to Henna? I would definitely do it again if I hadn't bleached my hair and wasn't going to have the whole roots debacle, It left my hair in beautiful condition and was silky smooth for weeks! But on hair that has been lightened and the no mixing of bleaches and Henna   upkeep is just not possible! So i'll keep you all posted on how it goes, If im posting bald pictures, you know not so well!! Keep the hairdye faith!!

xoxo

heart things...

I woke up this morning to a completely grey day and needed a bit of cheering and affirmation that life is good! Here are a few things that make my day just that bit better so hopefully if yours is at all a little blue, these can perk you up like a big old espresso shot! 

xoxo

a girl who has everything..but..

Well, I have just bought a new cookbook that I am ridiculously excited about testing out some amazing treats from, But!! whilst browsing on Amazon, I received one of those "If you liked this, you will love" pop ups... Normally I hastily click off because one of two things occurs....
Number 1- I get into a complete manic buying mode, getting into almost ridiculous book debts, miss all the deliveries and then have more of a relationship with the fella at the post office then I do the man friend with all the pick ups I have to do....
Number 2- The list of books that it suggests I buy make me look like an actual 65 year old, since the books I tend to buy are based around the 40's, making your own clothes, old romantic poetry or baking, and it starts throwing out books with the words "menopause" in the title. This gives me a little mini breakdown and I have to spend the rest of the day convincing myself that these are the book topics of most 23 year olds....
BUT!!!! 
After watching an old re-run of a Nigella series, she mentioned a book that it had to be my life's mission to own! So giddily my little fingers danced off to Amazon to retrieve a copy of...... THE LIBERACE COOKBOOK!!! 

Yes Liberace had a cookbook "Joy of Liberace: Retro Recipes from America's Kitschiest Kitchen" Who doesn't need that in their lives? But this time when my little "pop up friend" appeared it set me on a mission.... 
Some women need the latest Gucci Handbag, some women need the flashiest new car. I am not one of these women. I am a woman who needs the following titles in her life, so with Christmas coming up I'm getting my fingers completely crossed that someone notices my non to subtle hints and purchases me the following:

So if anyone out there can here my cry's I am a girl pleading to own the "Moomins CookBook" and who wants to leave a damsel in distress??? 

xoxo