Gooey Chocolate and Walnut Brownies

Ingredients I used:

200g dark chocolate

180g butter

200g caster sugar

110g plain flour

3 eggs

50g walnuts

LOTS of chocolate chips

I melted the chocolate and butter together (the original recipe said to do this in a bowl over hot water, but who has time for that? I chucked it in a saucepan and made sure to keep stirring - less washing up too!). I then whisked up the sugar and eggs, stirred in the melted chocolate mixture (after it had cooled a bit) and chucked in my walnuts and chocolate chips - but I guess you could use any extras, white chocolate chunks would work well. It all went in the oven on 160 for about an hour - it took a long time to cook as the mixture made quite chunky brownies in my small square cake tin. They were still lovely and soft and fudgey in the middle, so that was good! Flowery flags optional, of course...

The best brownie dessert is a melty warm brownie with a big spoon of ice cream, YUM. 

I want to try melt in the middle chocolate puddings next, I'm not sure how hard it would be. Any recipes? What have you been baking recently?

Sunday Favourites

I didn't get a chance to post my Sunday Favourites last week as I was on my holidays in Barcelona with a group of friends. So this weeks favourites, of course, feature a lot of sun!

My favourite Topshop boat dress / Fun on the beach / Cute red sundress I picked up before my holiday / Rocking my Lucky Dip Club Tutti Frutti patch on my denim shorts

After doing a bit of pre-holiday shopping for some summer dresses I had plenty of cute things to wear on the trip - I love both of the above dresses, even more after discovering they both have pockets! The others on the trip didn't get why this was awesome - I can't be the only one who loves a dress with pockets, right? Somewhere to put your sunglasses? 

Art gallery and fountains / Most terrifying cable car ride ever up to the castle / Gaudi's Sagrada Familia / Reading on the beach 

We did a huge amount of walking, climbing in the hills and visiting all the tourist attractions, but we did fit in a day at the beach (where I wore my awesome bikini from my last post and actually didn't feel that self-concious in it at all!)

Celebrating our anniversary

My boyfriend and I also celebrated our 6-year anniversary - the time has just flown by. We went out for a nice dinner and a stroll around the city, and he pretended not to be bored while I dragged him to some of the cities vintage shops - there is a whole street which reminded me a lot of the Northern Quarter we have here in Manchester. 

While the holiday was great, coming home was good too, as it meant we were back with little Pancake kitty. He'd been on his holidays too, in the countryside, but seemed very happy to see us - until he fell asleep from all the excitement, at least...

So there was my week! Do let me know your own Sunday favourites too :) 

A Sequinned Beach Bag DIY

This DIY was inspired by a recent post over at The Things She Makes, turning a plain old canvas shopper into something much more golden and sparkly. I liked it so much, I dug out a canvas shopper I had already and my glue, and headed to the sewing shop for a sequin-themed shopping spree. The result was pretty similar to the original, but also inspired by the speech bubble noticeboard tutorial on the same blog - find it here! This was my version:

As I had also picked up plenty of blue strung sequins as well, I decided to make another bag to use them on. I had bought a dress in the Primark sale last year for a bargain £3, because I loved the cute boat print on it. It was clearly never going to be worn (I am certainly not a size 6, unfortunately!), so it has been in my pile of 'scrap fabrics' to use for ages. I dug it out to see what could be done with it...

Now, I could have just drawn around the above canvas bag on the fabric and had a nice rectangle. But being lazy, I looked at the elasticated waist and thought, hey, that's the top of a bag ready made right there!

So I chopped it off just above where the elastic was sewn in, turned the excess down on the inside and made a hem. This also meant that the sides of the bag were already done for me, being, as they were, the sides of the dress. All I had to do then was chop off the bottom to vaguely resemble a square and sew it up. Hurrah for laziness! Of course, it couldn't all go so perfectly - I wanted to recycle the straps of the dress as handles, but they were too short, so I made some handles out of the bit of fabric cut off the bottom... (even THAT had one side already sewn from the dress hem, so only seconds work!) I did manage to recycle the buttons and used them for where the handles were sewn to the bag.

Taking a grand total of 20 minutes, with precisely zero measuring, pinning or effort, I had a pretty decent gathered beach bag. OK, it isn't perfect - yes, it does feature 2 different colour threads because I didn't stop to check  - but it proves quick crafting is certainly possible, and sometimes lazy ideas even work! And who cares on the beach anyway?!

Then came the fun bit - I glued on my sparkly blue sequins in an anchor shape on the front, and.. ta-da!

Loving my 2 new bags... Now, what can I use the large amount of leftover sequins for?!

Baking: Strawberry Swiss Roll

I decided to make this after seeing a recipe for a raspberry swiss roll on the BBC Food website, but increased the quantities and changed a couple of things to work with what I had - besides, you can't go wrong with strawberries and cream!

Ingredients:

5 Free-range Eggs
125g Caster Sugar
125g Self-raising Flour
Strawberry Jam - enough to spread over the sponge
300g Double Cream
4-5 Strawberries - and a couple more to decorate
Icing Sugar - a sprinkling to decorate

I whisked the eggs and the sugar, then folded in the flour. I poured the mixture into a large flat tin (although I forgot to grease it, as I discovered later - whoops!) I then baked it in the oven for 10 minutes.

Work in progress... surely this isn't going to work?!

For the filling, I whipped up some double cream - I'd forgotten how long this takes to do by hand, but if you do a tiny bit, then keep adding a tiny bit more cream each time it gets thicker, it is a much easier task! I spread on the strawberry jam first, then added the cream on top, and then tiny pieces of strawberries for some extra sweetness. In hindsight, I think it would have been easier to spread the jam on the cream instead of the other way around - putting the cream on top of the jam was messy and it didn't spread neatly, and I ended up with jammy cream as oppsed to two separate layers, as can be seen in the messy finished article! Another thing I learnt - don't be too generous with the filling, as otherwise it squidges out as the sponge is rolled... less is more! As long as it is rolled when still a bit warm and very carefully, the sponge shouldn't crack.

The finished product!

 Having just cut into it for a slice, it looks a bit neater on the inside, and I can confirm it's pretty tasty too ;)