Brownies

Squidgy brownies recipe :-)

2 cups self raising flour
1 cup molasses sugar
1/2 to 1 cup chocolate spread (to taste, not less than 1/2 cup!)
1/3 cup veg. oil

Mix together

1/2 -3/4 cup good *big* chocolate drops (suggest Willies, Montezumas, or similar)
1 hot fresh dbl espresso (about 1/3 cup)
1/3 cup milk/cream/water/whatever

Mix into above, until all is properly gloopy.

up to 1 cup hazelnuts or whatever. - whole or half nuts *not* bits.

Mix through to taste.

Pour into lined tin and bake at 180 degrees Celcius for about 25 minutes (ovens vary etc usual disclaimer)

Eat warm if possible, but also good cold but not quite as squidgy. 
Although you can also bake another 5-10 mins for stability and then store for a couple of days, dosing with dark rum syrup before rewarming and eating...

Bringing it back :-) Reading

Hello people, long time no see!

I'm working on bringing this blog back to life, making it prettier, archiving off the old and... There will be a newsletter! Lots and lots of plans (and lots of entries already written and ready to go, but not until the pretty comes!).

But in the meantime, I'm having a play with the old budget and going back to some wonderful blogs I used to read for ideas. Which led me to theppk pot'o' beans because I'm also so much thinner than I used to be thanks to a book (more of which over on another new blog, because I have a challenge I'm putting the nearly 40 year old me through) and, well, Beans :-)

But hey people. Please watch this space. There will be cookies...

Recipe

Today I took part in a blogcast/podcast on Sidepodcast (see various earlier 'reading' entries, or just go to www.sidepodcast.com and find out what its all about :-) When I say 'took part' I actually prerecorded my bit (taking no chances on interuption here!).

The quantities are smaller than usual here as I had a 30 minute limit on the broadcast :-) So this afternoons effort was baked as muffins, and works nice and swiftly like that. If you want a cutting cake use a 6" sandwich or 4" square tin - or you can double the recipe up and use a more 'conventional' size. This will lead to a more brownie like cake and take a lot longer to bake though :-)

Angel Cake

You need:

1/2 cup self raising flour
2 Tbsp cornflour
2Tbsp cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3 Tbsp sunflower or vegetable oil
1/4 cup plus 1 Tbsp sugar
20g chocolate, roughly chopped or use chocolate chips

Mix all of these well together. You'll get a pretty dry finish.

Then you need:

1/2 cup red bull

Mix this into the other ingredients. It will start to bubble and fizz a bit. Transfer to your muffin tin or cake tin and bake it at 180 degrees Celcius for 12-15 mins for muffins/cupcakes and a little longer for the quantity baked together. Usual testing methods (skewer comes out clean etc) apply.

New books

I have a large pile of books to read - courtesy of my birthday last week, and of today's trip to the library. Eek!

DP gave me Terry Pratchett's Nation, which I have yet to broach the cover of (vrf) as I was reading the other book he gave me - Secrets, by Freya North. Just the same as ever there (predictable etc etc 'chick' lit, whilst actually being well written and featuring characters who actually talk to each other, know things and work hard :-) ). She has a website - www.freyanorth.co.uk - where the books each have a synopsis, and some have a 'what happened next' section as well.

The other thing that has happened is that the bookshelves are up! well, on the half landing wall anyway. So several boxes of books have finally been unpacked, and I'm finding myself catching up and rereading a whole lot of stuff that I've not seen in a couple of years. As are the children :-) DP didn't entirely believe that I could have read all of them, and indeed I haven't as around 2 meters of shelf is taken up with his books many of which aren't to my taste... although I may *have* to read them now just to, um, make a liar of him. But 2ish metres out of over 20m unread by me isn't bad going really.

Only the rest of the house to bookcase now and, oh, maybe another 10ish boxes of books to find homes for on those shelves.....

Reading

Just to let you all know - that useful site now-formerly-known-as 'it's not easy being green' has moved to http://www.newhousefarm.tv/forum/

Please go and have a read. There is loads of really useful and interesting stuff there :-)

You could have a look at http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/ (the attached charity :-) ) at the same time if you felt like it :-)

Reading

Lots of reading - The Idler(www.idler.co.uk ) being part of it, North American magazines another; and for websites please have a look at www.buynothingday.co.uk with regard to the upcoming weekend :-)

Reading

Opps, I managed to go another month...

Anyway - I've done a *lot* of reading. Apart from the annual 'read all the magazine articles about 'doing' christmas and picking the recipes etc to pieces to veganise those worth doing (suprisingly few, but I have come up with a couple of new ideas for cake and pudding that work better than the ideas of previous years, yay! - of which more will be revealed later :-) )' I've also worked my way through a large pile of 'green/climatechange' books (and not all are 'we're going to hell in a handcart' thankfully) and been reading some new websites (the content of some is, well, not very green at all, but darn good reading) and finding some lovely podcasts. So many that to talk about them all would mean I needed to do a name change - 'listening, reading and recipes' anyone?

Anyway... I don't digress, but I'll get to the point. First book worth a mention is Sold Out! How I survived a year of not shopping, by Robert Llewellyn. If you don't know the name, then maybe you'll know him as Kryten, late of Naylor/Grant production 'Red Drawf'? Host of recycling show 'Scrap Heap Challenge' he spent a year writing about 'not buying' in a column for The Ecologist magazine, and this book is also a result (and *not* a direct lift of the columns, which is pretty unusual in this sort of book - yay to him for not taking the easy option :-). I even went out and bought it (and annoyingly found the following week, that if I hadn't been so keen I could have waited until this Wednesday coming and bought it *and* met the man himself! Waterstones in Milton Keynes if anyone out there wants to know about it).

Second reading item of note, is the new issue of Craft: you can buy it in the UK for a scary price... or subscribe to the online version for lots and lots less (so if anyone wants to buy me a present ;-). This issue has lots about Weaving, plus the usual run of recycle-based projects. Months of things to do for all :-)

Third reading item... well, this one is definately 'online'. www.sidepodcast.com is all about Formula one. It has various attached podcasts and things, but I got drawn in because DP found it one day when looking for how to 'catch up' on the races he missed due to working weekends. Anyway - they've started doing a 'gameshow' on live feed one evening a week; and that makes for anarchic listening/viewing 'live' or you can poddle along later and listen to the edited version.

And that is it for today. I may or not be back with a recipe later....