Cheese & Onion Pie

Well we were due to travel home for the weekend but took a snow check (geddit?!) roads were closing along our route so it really wasn’t worth the bother!

So what do you do when you suddenly have a weekend free? Bake! (& cook & catch up on housework, yawn!)

We made the Hubster’s secret family recipe Meatball Soup. It is a real labour of love, it takes about 3.5hrs to make and needs lots of care & attention, but the final result is scrumptious and satisfying! It is basically a veg stock base with pork meatballs and a tomatoey twist.

We also made a cheese and onion pie. The Hubster’s mum has been asking for a cheese and onion pie for yonks, so I gave it a try. I looked for quite a traditional recipe to suit her taste and found a Simon Hopkinson recipie on the BBC ‘My mothers cheese & onion pie’ . The lard and self raising flour in the pastry made it really short and rich, the Lancashire cheese had the right amount of cheesiness and wasn’t greasy. Everyone said it was the best cheese and onion pie they had tasted, and my sister in law has insisted that I share the recipe and teach her how to bake it! I can’t wait to have the last slice for my lunch tomorrow!

Fairy Cupcakes

I’ve been watching James Martin’s new series ‘United Cakes of America’ where as the title suggests he is touring America on a journey of American cake discovery! He’s recreated some fab cakes, including an apple crumble cake which I really want to try! He also made some fairy cakes, which inspired this bake.

I’ve called them fairy cupcakes as I used a vanilla cupcake recipe, so they are slightly larger than a normal fairy cake. I put a little blob of lemon curd under the pink buttercream for a bit of zing, and a dusting of icing sugar to finish them off!

I used cupcake cases from my Crafty Creatives box 8, which is what inspired the very girly pink butter cream, yum yum!

Cake Pops

I was a very lucky Wifester earlier in the month and got lots of cake popping paraphernalia for my birthday from my lovely Hubster. So far I’ve had a couple of attempts at cake popping, and although they’re time consuming and a bit tricky, they are delish and have the wow factor!!

For my first batch I made some vanilla sponge pops for Mother’s Day.

And for Red Nose Day I made some chocolate and some lemon sponge pops to take into work for our bring & share lunch