Luscious Lemon Curd

When I was a child my grandmother used to give me lemon curd on toast.

The flavour of it is one of the key flavours of my childhood.  Summer days in the garden with Nan, drinking ice cream sodas (lemonade filled with strawberries and vanilla ice cream) and eating lemon curd sandwiches.  I am actually salivating just thinking about it!

So I am passing on the tradition and bringing up my children with luscious lemon curd. YUMMY!!!

It doesn't last as long as my jam does (possibly in a jar forever), instead it only keeps in the fridge for 7-10 days. But I think the fragility of it makes it that bit more special.

I think that maybe also why my husband is seemingly on a mission to eat it on everything! He even tops my cakes in it, like some sort of custard sauce!

Anyway, here is the recipe.

I have tried many and have had success with Mrs Beaton too but if in doubt stick to Delia!

It has never failed me yet!

Ingredients 
Grated zest and juice of 4 large lemons
4 large eggs
12oz caster sugar ( I use granulated as it's cheaper and it works just as well)
8oz unsalted butter at room temp, cut into chunks (I used salted, it worked fine)

Method
Begin by lightly whisking the eggs in a medium-sized saucepan, then add the rest of the ingredients and place the saucepan over a medium heat. Now whisk continuously using a balloon whisk until the mixture thickens – about 7-8 minutes. Next, lower the heat to its minimum setting and let the curd gently simmer for a further minute, continuing to whisk. After that, remove it from the heat. Now pour the lemon curd into the hot, sterilised jars, filling them as full as possible, cover straightaway with waxed discs, seal while it is still hot and label when it is cold. It will keep for several weeks, but it must be stored in a cool place.

Delia actually recommends adding corn flour, though I have never used cornflour in my curd.
A delicious alternative is also to use limes, though you need to use almost twice the quantity to gain the same amount of juice. It also took me a good 20 mins of whisking, but I have an electric hob, which to quote my good friend Katy Star works like this, 'It's not on...it's not on...it's not on...it's not on...Oh, it's burnt'

Happy lemoning!

Homemade tipi

For Devon's birthday I wanted to make her a tipi. Somewhere she could play in her bedroom in winter, but somewhere that we could move outside in Spring.

I scoured the internet looking for a free pattern but ended up making my own. Essentially I cut out four triangles of fabric, added half an inch seam to every edge, made channels in a corresponding fabric and sewed the panels to the channels. I then bought some cheap garden canes and Bob's your uncle. Oh and the door needed to be made from two triangles, overlapping.

Today was the tipi's first garden outing, and it went down very well.
One very happy infant.

The Most beautiful Place in Britain

Last year my darling family and I went camping to a great campsite, www.cerenetycampsite.co.uk

It was as close as you could get to rural camping, with no amenities in North Devon.

The campsite had chickens, whose eggs you could buy and an organic veg patch that you could help yourself to.  You could also buy bags of wood for campfires.

It was truly glorious, The toilets were compost loos and the showers were solar paneled, which turned out to be surprisingly clean and comfortable and not scary as I would have thought.

The campsite also rescued unwanted farm animals and reared them to health and this acted like a real life petting zoo for the kids.

The best part about the trip was a visit to Welcombe.

Welcombe is an incredibly beautiful mouth of a small river/stream which tumbles down over the cliff tops towards the sea. The rolling luscious hills which edge the beach here are so wild and untouched by man, it feels like you are in the scenery of Jurassic park.  I was so in awed by the incredible surrounding here that I was left speechless.  And really the photos don't do it any justice.

You can walk across the flowing stream, by way of large man made stone stepping platforms, that look ancient.

Our little girl loved it.

The geology here is unbelievable to and everything seems so giant.  It is so rare to see such untouched landscape in the UK.  Huge strata of rock jutted out into the sea and the beach was littered with ginormous boulders.

Grandad's 90th orange and rosemary cake

In the summer, my lovely grandfather-in-law turned 90.

He loves his garden, and still, at the ripe old age of 90 he climbs to the top of a high ladder to trim the top of his bushes, builds ponds and replaces rooves!
He is a wonder.
So why not a garden cake for his birthday family gathering?  This is my first attempt at anything with proper icing or more than one tier.

The recipe is a normal victoria sponge mix with finely diced rosemary from our garden and grated orange zest. I then made a cream cheese icing with orange juice in. It was very scrummy.
I then covered it in flowers and insects and piped grass behind a white picket fence.
Enjoyed by all.

3rd Birthday Circus Party

We did the Hungry Caterpillar for her first Charlie and Lola for her second, so wanted to stay away from any character theme's this year.  Also she is really into Peppa Pig, and I didn't fancy that as a theme, so just wanted it colourful and bright.

I threw in a loose circus theme, insofar as a vintage circus animal motif on the hats, cupcake toppers, party bags and bunting, and popcorn boxes, but other from that it was just as colourful as I could make it.

The party invitation, was a simple circus ticket idea, and I also painted this on a giant board to sit behind the food table.

I wanted as much colour as possible on the long party table, so I got orange and yellow paper cups with stripey fete-style paper straws, yellow napkins and blue paper plates.

I filled nice glass bottles with bright coloured juices and filled sandcastle bukets with crips and tied helium balloons to them.

I also put either foam animal masks or clown noses on the children's plates as favours, and they looked great wearing them!

I wanted to keep the kids busy, so after lunch we all decorated biscuits to take home.  I made a bunch of extra biscuits and then made up icing in different colours. The kids then chose from different sweets and hundreds and thousands and decorate them.

I wanted a plain white cake and made Devon toppers to go in it, using a Circus font that I downloaded. I covered it in hundreds and thousand and when you cut it open...

It was a rainbow! I used a victoria sponge cake and baked four separate cakes, each with different food colouring added, then made a yummy cream cheese frosting for the top.

I strung up last years' Charlie and Lola biscuit bunting and made lots of giant Mexican paper pompoms as decoration.

I also bought lots of coloured paper streamers. 

I made popcorn boxes by editing a net I found online and filled them with popcorn.

I made Nigella Lawson's marshmallow crispie squares and added edible stars to them and topped them in cupcake toppers that I made.

Me, my Dad and my little sister.

I iced a load of brightly coloured biscuits, just a plain vanilla recipe, but they looked great, not many people ate them though! - Perhaps they were too blue, which was annoying as it took like two hours to ice them!

Homemade bunting, made with the party invitation and the circus theme.

Ladybird open sandwiches

My favourite of all the food, the rainbow cupcakes, I can't take credit for these, I found them on a blog somewhere, whoever invented them was a genius. They tasted amazing too, creamcheese frosting on vanilla sponge, iced by my best friend Sorrel.

Overall it was an amazing success.  All the children loved it, and with all the help that I was lucky enough to have, it didn't take too long to set up or pack away.

Devon's 2nd Charlie and Lola Party

For my daughter's second birthday party we chose a loose Charlie and Lola theme as she is absolutely obsessed with the books and the television show.

We only had it at home and our house is tiny so it was rammed, with just 8 kids and their parents.  We had to be mean and have a no grandparent rule, as they would have had to have sat in the bathroom for lack of any more space!

We kept it simple. I bought the plates and cups etc, with all the Charlie and Lola motif on and then made a few bits to go with it.

I made her party invitation by adapting the front cover of a Charlie and Lola book.  I made extras to put together into bunting along side jammy dodgers and party rings.

We made a giant table to sit the kids around and I made felt crowns for each child to wear.

Felt crowns

I'm not a fan of junk food, so I tried to keep it all as healthy and tasty as possible.

I made Lola's favourite drink, pink milk using milk wizzed up strawberries and a tiny bit of sugar to taste. 

The kids and grownups lapped it up, much better than any fizzy drinks or squash, that my daughter doesn't like anyway.

I made a load of pizzas and cut them out with a star cutter, got pom bear crisps and crudites, I made biscuits using whizzed strawberries and icing sugar frosting, which tasted amazing. 

The party food

Strawberry biscuits with Charlie and Lola rice paper pictures stuck ontop.

Home made jelly.

I don't like all of the e numbers that goes into packet jelly and making your own is so easy.  Here I used  a new, sand free sandcastle bucket and made jelly with fruit juice and gelatin   Surprisingly the adults ate way more of this than the kids! I should have added more gelatin as one of the turrets fell off just after taking this shot!

The birthday girl munching away.

Cool, party-going dude in his cowboy shirt!

Rice crispie squares, simple and scrummy, with edible stars thrown on top!

Party bags made out of brown paper with a home made colouring book attached.

Inside was a celophane-covered home made strawberry biscuit, a felt wand, pencil crayons, bubbles and balloons.

The party table.