Rotterdam

Rotterdam - Wow, what a wonderful city. Before I headed off for the weekend with my Dad on the North Sea Ferries from Hull to Europort I was a little clueless as to why my Dad had picked Rotterdam as our trip destination. Experiencing Rotterdam was a whole different matter - art galleries, beautiful sculptures, great food, friendly people and great open spaces. Here are some photos of our trip and a few places you should definitely trip in Rotterdam if you're heading over. At £45 each on the ferry each it is well worth a visit! 

1. Rotterdam houses- I found this beautiful door whilst walking through a back street. 
2. Chuck Close at the Kunsthal Gallery - part of the Avant-Gardes exhibition.
    3. De Calypso building, Rotterdam. 
    4. Amazing display in the Netherlands Architecture Institute cafe. 
    5. Artwork by Jan van der Ploeg at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. 
    6. Delfshaven - the older part of Rotterdam to contrast buildings like De Calypso.
    7. Delicious apple cake from Nieuw Rotterdams Cafe on Witte de Withstraat - great cafe   
    with nice surroundings and even better apple cake and tea. Well worth a visit. 
    8. A Picasso inspired sculpture outside the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. 

Museumpark is well worth a visit if you're into art or not - it's a great space to walk through and if you like galleries it's surrounded on all sides by some of the best galleries in Rotterdam - The Kunsthal Gallery and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen were great. The pic above is of a small corner were the Kunsthal Gallery lives. 

M & M Cookies

These M & M cookies are so easy to make and so quick - perfect for when you want something warm and chocolately for this cold time of year. I originally got the recipe from Bakerella's blog and decided I'd give these quick cookies a go - I've translated the recipe from cups to grams below to make things a little easier. 

This recipe makes around 12 cookies:

75g Chocolate chips
100g M & Ms (Smarties would work well too!)
110g plain flour
2/3rds tsp baking powder
2/3rds tsp bicarbonate soda
1/4 tsp salt
65g porridge oats 
75g brown sugar
60g white sugar
1 small egg
75g butter
1 tsp vanilla essence

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees. Mix all of the dry ingredients together above in a bowl with a wooden spoon. Then add the egg, butter (melted slightly in the microwave) and vanilla essence. 

Roll little balls (around walnut sized) in your hands and but them on a well oiled baking tray - it doesn't matter too much if they're not very neat!

Bake these in the oven for up to 10 minutes (I gave half the batch 7 minutes for a gooey centre and half the full 10 minutes for a crispier finish - we thought the gooey ones were the best!). So simple and they don't take up much time at all!

These could also work really well with any broken up chocolate bars - a Lion bar would be yummy to try! 

Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

Whilst browsing Pinterest I found this amazing recipe for peanut butter cups on The Blue Eyed Bakers blog. They're yummy and so easy to make - no oven required! 

Whilst this recipe is great it's all done in 'cups' - so, using this conversion table, I've converted the recipe to make things a little easier. 

• 57g Butter
• 170g Peanut Butter - I used crunchy which was delicious but I think you could use smooth too. 
• 100g digestive biscuits
• 50g sugar
• 150g milk chocolate chips (I used Lakeland's 'Simply Melts' which I've mentioned in a previous post and can be bought here) but normal chocolate bars/ chips work well too.
• 20ml milk - The original recipe asks for 60ml but I tweaked it a little as I was worried the chocolate wouldn't set.
• Sea salt

Line a bun tin with papers - I don't have a bun tin and this meant my papers sagged a bit with the heavy ingredients.

Whizz the digestive biscuits in a mixer until you have a fine crumb. 

In a microwavable bowl, melt the butter and peanut butter together for 45 seconds and stir until smooth (apart from the crunchy peanut butter pieces!). 

Once melted all together, add the crushed digestive biscuit and sugar to the melted mix and mix together with a mixing spoon. 

Share this mixture out across 8-10 bun cases and put in the fridge for 15 minutes to set the peanut butter layer. This would also work really nicely with tiny bun cases to make smaller bites. 

Once this layer has cooled you can add the chocolate layer. Melt the chocolate and spread evenly across the top of the peanut butter layer. Give a generous helping of chocolate and sprinkle some sea salt on top. Chill this layer until firm and then serve. 

Not the prettiest of food as my bun cases sagged with no support but delicious all the same! The sea salt gives them a really nice edge and these could work really well in a tray. They went down well in the office and were all gone in no time (I made 20!) - it's best to keep them in the fridge and serve them from the fridge. 

Patatas Bravas

Recently I've been eating and making the same food day in day out and I want to shake things up a bit so last week I set myself the challenge to make at least one new recipe a week. I started with Hugh's Patatas Bravas from the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall River Cottage Veg Everyday cookbook . 

This recipe took a lot longer than I expected - just under and hour and a half but admittedly it was pretty relaxed cooking. The recipe is here (with some pictures along the way):

(Serves 4-6)
1kg potatoes - cut into 3cm cubes
5 tablespoons olive or rapeseed oil
Flaky sea salt
A handful of parsley

For the sauce:
2 tablespoons olive or rapeseed oil
1 onion - finely chopped
A handful of thyme sprigs - leaves only, chopped
3 garlic cloves - finely chopped
1 small red chilli - finely chopped 
400g tin plum tomatoes - chopped
2 teaspoons sweet paprika
A pinch of sugar

First - make the sauce. Heat the oil over a medium/low heat and add the onion and thyme. Sweat the onions down until softened (about 10 mins). Add the garlic and chilli and cook whilst stirring for a minute. 

Add the tomatoes with their juice, paprika, sugar and some salt and pepper. Leave this to simmer for 10 minutes, stirring and breaking up the tomatoes to make a lovely, rich, tomatoey sauce. 

Boil the potatoes for 5 - 8 minutes until firm (make sure they're not too tender). Leave to steam in a colander for few minutes and tip onto a tea towel and pat dry.

Warm 5 tablespoons in a frying pan over a medium/high heat and saute the potatoes for 10-15 minutes, until crisp and golden. Drain on some kitchen paper and tip into a dish. Check the consistency of the tomato sauce (thin with some hot water if necessary). 

Pour the sauce over the potatoes, scatter with chopped parsley and enjoy warm. 

We served it up with pan-fried chilli sardines, rocket and a nice glass of wine - perfect! 

Photo a day

A friend recently put me on to Instagram and now I can't stop taking photos of the most mundane things and turning them into beautifully edited (at the click of a button!) photos. Here are some photos from my week. I'm going to aim to take a photo a day for the whole of 2013 - here's a bit of practice! 

Fri 16th - A morning walk through Horsforth.

Sat 17th - A tasty lunch with a friend at The Library in Beeston, Nottingham- Cannelloni, paprika fries and olive tapenade. 

Sun 18th - A nice Sunday breakfast - the only way to end the week is breakfast with an egg.

Mon 19th - Free standing comic strip at The Co-Operative Street Gallery Launch outside Leeds City Art Gallery - these birds caught my eye. 

Tues 20th - Photo from my ceramics night class - my first pot after it had been in the kiln - now I need to put some colour on it!

Wed 21st - Photo of a nice mosaic I found of a map of the world.

Thurs 22nd - A photo of the wall above my desk. I only remembered my 'photo a day' challenge right before going to bed - If I do try to keep this up for 2013 I'm sure there will be lots of photos of my house through forgetfulness! 

Fri 23rd - The Olly Moss Exhibition at White Cloth Gallery in Leeds (more on this later).

Magma - Leeds International Film Festival

This evening I went to see the Magma short films festival showing at Leeds International Film Festival - what a great way to spend an evening with a glass of wine and some nice (free!) films.

Exercise was my favourite (the Film Festival website has some handy links for trailers). At only 8 minutes long this short film tells the story of a young boy who collects marbles - the story continues to show one marble for one day of his life as he grows old with his house overrun with thousands and thousands of marbles. It's beautifully filmed with lots of different colours but quite sad in the end. 

Also worth a mention is Rite, a British film selected for Magma in 2011. This film made me feel uneasy all the way through - a gritty British short film worth a watch. 

Nobody is to Blame (Nadie tiene la culpa) was funny and a good break from the more serious films of Rite, Last Train and After either side. A story of a man who wants to leave his wife and how everything turns on him in the end. 

Overall a good first film for me of Leeds International Film Festival - roll on Thursday for the next one! 

Of Monsters and Men

I've just discovered Of Monsters and Men and am hooked - their music is beautiful. I especially love Little Talks and Love Love Love. The video for Little Talks is well worth a look as it's animated beautifully. Got any bands to you'd like to recommend? I'm looking for new music to listen to. 

Photo from http://www.clashmusic.com/feature/little-talks-of-monsters-men

Society 6

I've recently been introduced to an amazing website called Society 6 where artists can share their work and others can buy it very reasonably and wanted to share this. Here are some of the prints I've been most impressed with.

Photos from Society 6- click on the photos for the links. 

Cake Pops

Today I decided I'd get back to blogging and tell you about my recent adventures with Cake Pops. My friend Sarah (right) and I have recently become slightly obsessed with the idea of Cake Pops (think travelling 20 miles + just to buy more supplies and texting each other with ideas!). 

We started off making Lorraine Pascale inspired Cake Pops by mixing Oreo cookies and chocolate spread (I found the recipe on another lovely blog here). These tasted lovely and were VERY sweet when coated in milk chocolate - as I don't have a freezer I left them in the fridge over night and this worked a treat. 

The crushed cookies were nice but very dense so we wanted to try out a new idea... We went to Lakeland to get a Cake Pop Maker (highly recommended) and the results can be seen below. 

Firstly we made some cake balls in our new machine - these only took 4 minutes to make 6 and the come out perfectly (almost) every time.  Next once they were cool we stuck our sticks in with a little bit of melted chocolate to keep them in place. We left these in the fridge for 30 minutes...

Then dipped them in melted chocolate. We used Simply Melt chocolate from Lakeland - not only was it easy to melt but it was delicious and tasted of strawberries too!

 Sarah made her first Cake Pop by topping with some cut out  icing shapes and was very happy with the result...

...and so was I!

 

We topped the Cake Pops with lots of different toppings to match the pink chocolate and stuck them in some polystyrene to dry (this could look prettier to match the Cake Pops).

In the end we added named flags and bags and gave them to our family and friends. Some ideas for next time include Hungry Caterpillar Cake Pops, a solar system, stars, clouds... watch this space.