Finally finished!!

Next project please

Happy Burns Day!

For the daughter of a Glaswegian, you'd think I'd like haggis... I hate it. It's been shoveled into me my entire life and it's never got any nicer. However, when I was at my cousin's wedding a couple of years ago, I chose the vegetarian option (for a foodie, I don't like a lot of meat) and it was vegetarian haggis! I absolutely loved it, and although I've never made it myself, my mums made it a few times and it's gorgeous. She's not picking up the phone or answering my emails to get her recipe, but I've found this one online that I'm pretty sure is identical.


So cook yourself up some haggis, neeps and tatties and have yourself a whiskey or 9!


Happy Burns!


SX 

The past few days in Instagram photos...

Spinach and ricotta gnocchi...

Last night I decided to throw a ‘gnocchi party’ (a glorified dinner party). I usedthis BBC recipe but there’s a few things I would change if I were to make it again.

It takes around half an hour/40 minutes to prepare so it’s pretty time consuming, and to be honest, I don’t think it’s worth it. I didn’t find it very flavorsome and ended up getting this guy to whip up a quick cheese sauce for me (whilst I watched Coronation Street…)

So next time I’ll definitely try another gnocchi recipe, I’m dying to try this one by Hank Shaw. But if I’ve convinced you that it’s worth making- here’s the recipe!

Prep: 40 minutesCooking time: 10 minutes
Serves: 6 

Photograph from BBC Website

• 300g fresh spinach
• Small handful chopped parsley leaves
• (Optional) 1 clove of garlic
• 250g ricotta
• 125g plain flour
• 2 eggs
• 150g parmesan or Italian hard cheese

Pop all the spinach in a large bowl and cover completely in boiling water. Leave for a few minutes until wilted. 

In the mean time, finely chop your parsley. Crush your garlic if you’re using it. 

Drain your spinach and give it a good shake to get as much of the water out as possible. Leave it to cool for about 10 minutes. 

Place the spinach in the middle of a clean dry tea towel and wrap it up into a bundle. Squeeze the bundle until you can’t squeeze anymore. When you’ve got as much water out of the spinach as you possibly can, take it out of the bundle and finely chop. 

Put the spinach, parsley, ricotta, flour, beaten eggs and parmesan cheese and season with salt and pepper. 

Fork the mixture through, making sure everything is thoroughly combined. 

Mix into a dough with a wooden spoon. 

Use a teaspoon to take chunks of the dough and mould them into- what the recipe calls- ‘walnut size pieces’. Now, maybe I don’t know the size of a walnut, but I found they cooked better in smaller balls, about 2/3cm tall. 

When you’ve rolled all the balls, pop them on a sheet grease proof paper and put them in the fridge for at least half an hour. 

Put the oven on at a low heat.

When you want to cook your gnocchi, bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. I used a wok, purely because it meant I could cook more gnocchi at one time. When cooking gnocchi, make sure to only place enough in the pan to cook in one layer. 

Drop your gnocchi into the water and wait until they rise to the top. When they do, cook for a further couple of minutes. 

You might need to do a few batches, so when they’re done, pop them on a sheet of grease proof paper in the oven until the rest are done. 

It’s a bit long winded, but if you like gnocchi then I’m sure it’s worth it. 

As I mentioned before, it was a lot better with a cheese sauce, I’m sure it’d be great with tomato too.

I served it with a fresh spinach and watercress salad with black olives, feta cheese and balsamic vinegar. All together it was pretty good! 

Try it for yourself!

S X

Sweet satisfaction...

Finally finished! 

Gonna put it on a cushion when I get home this weekend!

Super mango smoothie...

God knows I need it. England has finally decided to have it’s Christmas weather, so it’s now all frosty and cold and I’m coming down with something. So yesterday I managed to get 5 mangos for a pound (A POUND!) from Lewisham Market and this morning I blended up a super smoothie.

WHAT WENT IN:

• 3 mangoes
• 50ml of OJ
• A dissolved Berocca (you, but on a really good day). Just pop it in a teeny bit of water
• Tsp of fresh root ginger
• A squeeze of lime

Blend. 

That’s it… 

Quite boring when it’s written down but it was tasty and I enjoyed it. Possibly too much vitamin C… 

Anyways, Happy Tuesday. Congrats for all getting through ‘blue Monday’ yesterday!

S X

Bake away your blues...

Today I found out about a new project called Flour-ish, created by the lovely people at Spark and Mettle. Their aim is to put the flour is flourish, and suggest that baking is the best way to beat the blues. I agree entirely.

There’s a few super cool chefs involved including Delia Smith, Prue Leith and my personal favourite Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and they’ve all volunteered recipes. Delia’s banana and walnut loaf looks divine, so I’ll definitely be trying that one out! There’s a few recipes from the Spark and Mettle team too, including some ‘sweet n sparky cupcakes’ with sherbet in them that look fabulous.

Tomorrow is the 3rd Monday in January and is supposedly the most depressing day of the year, so I suggest that ya’ll bake a little something something from the Flour-ish website and get happy!

Hope you’ve had a food-filled and fantastic Sunday!

Here’s a couple of the recipes off the website, but be sure to check it out! 

S X 

White chocolate and cranberry muffins...

Last night I made white chocolate and cranberry muffins for the girls in my journalism class (and my teacher). I didn’t get any photos but I’m sure you can find one floating around Twitter (@sophie__brown) if you’re that interested.

Anyways, here’s the recipe. Makes 12 muffins:

• 8oz marg
• 8oz sugar
• 4 eggs
• 8 oz self-raising flour
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 100g dried and sweetened cranberries (or ‘craisans’ as I like to call them…)
• 100g white chocolate chips

Cream the butter and sugar then add the eggs and beat in. 

Add the flour gradually and whisk in the vanilla essence. 

Pop in craisans and white chocolate chips and fold in to the batter. 

Put the mixture in 12 deep muffin cases and bakes for:
25 minutes on gas mark 5 
OR 20 minutes on 170c fan 
OR 25 minutes on 190c electric

And voila. They’re delicious. 

I’m currently watching One Born Every Minute and having a good old cry! 

Hope you’re all having a wonderful week. 

S X

...

My floral spray cross stitch is starting to look like a floral spray!

Student loan= crafting supplies...

HELLO!

I'm back in London now ready to start uni tomorrow but I like to have a million other projects going at the same time to keep busy.

Whereas most students went crazy and bought alcohol, clothes and crazy drugs (or whatever it is that young people do these days- haha- get it? I'm 20...) or whatever, I decided to treat myself to the Cath Kidston 'Patch!' book that I've wanted for about a million years. Patchwork is something that I've never really thought about doing, but I love her books 'Sew!' and 'Stitch!' so much that I thought I'd give it a go. They all have amazing patterns in so they're well worth the £15 (from Waterstones but I'm sure you could get them cheaper online, I'm just impatient.)

I also got Cross Stitcher magazine. £3.99 just seems excessive for a magazine so I never shell out, but decided to take a leaf out of Tom Haverford's book (TREAT YOSELF) and get it. It is AMAZING. Soo many good charts this month, there's even a couple from my favourite, Felicity Hall.

There's a free 'Vintage Style' charts book too with loads of easy and cute designs so I recommend not being tight like me and buying it :)

There's a pattern in there by Penelope Waits and it's a bear with 'you're so sweet, I can hardly bear it' written on it. I'm going to start it once the yarns arrived! If you're into needlepoint you should definitely check out her Etsy shop, because everything on there is super cute and amazing. I'm going to download the 'Nice Buns' chart once I've got through the million projects I've got lined up.

Finally, I'm almost finished the Cath Kidston striped scarf I got for Christmas. I've been doing it on off since Christmas day and it seems to be taking forever. It's on 4mm needles and it's got 180 stitches casted so it grows slowly and it just seems like the end is never close. It's from the Knitting Book by Cath Kidston and it's pretty good for beginners (unlike the crochet one...)
Anyway, that's enough of my needlepoint rambling.

I've left my piping bag at my parents house and I'm supposed to be baking cakes for Wednesday (wahhh), so I'm thinking of making cake pops instead- I'll be sure to let ya'll know how they go down.

For some bizarre reason I'm stupidly excited for 'Sharon Horgan: How to be a Good Mother' which starts on Wednesday @ 10 on Channel 4. It's about ladies who eat their own placentas and take photos of their babies poo. Says a lot about my taste in TV...

On the topic of babies- welcome to the world Blue Ivy Carter. You are already my idol and you are under a day old.

Happy Sunday, hope ya'll have a smashing week. S X