My Halloween Weekend...

... Looked like this!

Friday evening was spent at a Celebrity face mask themed birthday pub crawl!

I was Nigella Lawson :)

I was up until 2am Friday night, then up at 6am Saturday morning caring, baking and sewing for our Halloween Party Saturday night (I made my costume and parts of OH's) I finally finished my patchwork dress in my lunch break at work on Saturday :)

Happy Halloween :)

Some more Autumn firsts

This week has seen some more Autumn firsts for me.

On Tuesday I had my first Hot Cider of the year, I was so excited. All of last winter I drank Hot Cider in my local and I've been waiting all year for it to make a come back!

Yesterday I made my first Pumpkin Pie of the year. However, it didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped.

I used this slightly adjusted vegan recipe...

Pumpkin Pie Filling

Ingredients:

• 750g of roasted pumpkin blended into puree
• 150g cup muscovado sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 1 1/2 soy milk with a teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 4 Tablespoons cornflour
• 4 Tablespoons water

1. Mix the pumpkin, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, and allspice together in a large bowl.
2. Heat the vanilla soy milk in a small saucepan over low heat.
3. Dissolve the cornstarch or arrowroot powder in a small amount of cold water.
4. Add the dissolved cornstarch to the heated soy milk. Bring to a boil for one minute, then remove from heat. The soy milk should resemble vanilla pudding.
5. Stir the thickened vanilla soy milk into the pumpkin mixture.
6. Set the vegan pumpkin pie filling aside and make the crust, or use a prepared crust and skip to the “Baking the Pumpkin Pie” instructions below.

Pumpkin Pie Crust

Ingredients:

• 125g flour
• 75g non-dairy margarine (I used Pure)
• 3 Tablespoons water

1. Pour the flour into a medium bowl.
2. Cut the margarine into the flour using two dinner knives or forks, until all the margarine is small, flour-coated chunks.
3. Add the water to the flour and mix thoroughly, forming a ball of dough.
4. Spray a pie pan with non-stick cooking spray, or coat it lightly with margarine.
5. Roll out the dough into a circle and place it in the pie pan, or simply press the dough into the pie pan. Make sure the crust is an even thickness throughout, and covers the entire pan.

Bake the Pumpkin Pie

1. Preheat the oven 220 degrees.
2. Pour the pumpkin pie filling into the crust. Bake the pie at 220 degrees for 15 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 180 degrees. Bake the pie for 40-50 minutes, or until the pumpkin is firm.
3. Let the pie cool for about two hours before serving.

This wasn't the best Pumpkin Pie I've ever made, so I'm on the hunt for a better one, let me know if you have a good one, I'd love to try it out.

For the original recipe I adapted slightly please see here

In 6 Weeks...

My goodness, I can't believe 6 weeks has past since I last blogged, and as always I have to look back through my photos to remember what on earth I have been up to...

1) I've made lots of risottos...

2.) Dog came back from being missing for 2 Weeks :)

3.) I did lots of baking...

4.) I saw a life size remote control Dalek!

5.) My fruit bowl has seen many a squash...

6.) Minni has just been Minni...

7.) I've made some scrummy food...

8.) We've seen a lot of this guy (a cat, who's name we don't know, but I call Fwiend. He lives on OH's street and has no tail)

9.) I drank Tequila...

10.) We saw some chickens...

The first crumble of the year and my first Herman!

Today, we had 2 of our dearest friends over to drink lots of wine and eat lots of food!

I rustled up a vegetable pie and some roast potatoes after a series of disasters.

I had original planned to make a lentil roast (much like a nut roast minus the nuts) but I realised I had no loaf tin to bake it in :( then I discovered the lentils needed to boil for 45 minutes before I could use them.

Lastly something horrible happened to the first batch of pastry that Mike made, luckily I whizzed up another batch was all fine!

Also today was the day I made my first crumble of the year, a blackberry (from the blackberries I picked the other day) and raspberry.

I hoping the fact that it was all gobbled up before I could take any photos means they all enjoyed it.

Sarah brought me a Herman Cake to look after, I had never heard of a Herman cake before, but it sounded like such a lovely thing to do, it comes with daily instructions, I have to feed him, stir him and even talk to him :)

I'm off to eat the cheeky scraps left of the crumble, have any of you ever had a Herman cake?

It's officially Autumn!

The 1st of September is here and some may say I'm crazy, but in my eyes, that makes it officially Autumn and what a dent we made in the first day of Autumn.

I made these gluten free and vegan cupcakes...

Mum made soup and we went blackberry picking ready for my first crumble of the year on Sunday. I also gained a fruit bowl (thanks Mum).

She gave me some of her homemade jam too :)

I also had my whole knitting technique re-written, we discovered my Great Nannie had taught me to knit by looping anti-clockwise instead of clockwise, leaving me with a twisted stitch. I was taught to hold my tension in such a way that once I've grasped it I should be able to knit like fury. I was like learning to knit all over again.

I almost forgot the squashes I have gotten this week, ready for my favorite time of year (yes, how did you guess, Autumn.) Anyone that knows me well, knows I have an absolute obsession for squashes of all shapes and sizes, I love finding new ones, my net challenge is to grow some.

Paquito and Gem Squash!

My 1st of September was finished off with this scrumptious vegan dinner...

Dan Dan Noodles with Spicy Tofu

Perfect End to a Holiday

I've had such a lovely week off and I really don't want it to end.

So today I've made the most of the rainy weather and stayed in baking, cooking, knitting and watching 3 discs of Gilmore Girls.

This week has been autumnal...

Its been full of these two ladies...

and to finish off the lovely week off I made a huge breakfast...

Savoury Muffins

Sweetcorn and Chilli Muffins

Curry with Pea Muffins

Pizza Style Muffins.

Home-made Rosti

I also made a huge roast this evening complete with apple crumble, but sadly we gobbled it all up before I could even think about taking photos.

CHEESE

Today was a rather cheesy day for me...

...I started off by making cheese muffins

I then made a breadcrummy Macaroni (but Penne) Cheese bake for lunch...

...and had no cheese left for dinner time!

I am a bit of a cheese fiend so please do send me any good cheesy recipes you have :D

Midnight Bake Up

So last night at midnight I put down my knitting and decided to do some some baking.

Some baking turned into a bit more baking.

A bit more baking turned into loads of baking.

There is a mountain of chocolate chip cookies too but I couldn't get a good photo of them :(

I'm off to cook Italian now, more later!