Beautiful Brownies

I've gained a pound! Wonderful! I never thought I'd say that, but anyway. I put it down, in part, to the brownies I made at my brother's request.
I don't make brownies often, because they're so rich and slightly sinful, but they always get gulped down when I do. There's only one recipie I'll use though - Nigel Slater's Very good Brownie's recipie, which you can find here. They're lovely and crunchy on the outside and properly gooey and fudgy in the middle, and the chocolate chips can be replaced by nuts or anything else (I used a combination of dark and milk chocolate chips, as my brother's all much prefer milk chocolate).

Nigel Slater's Very Good Brownies

Nasty shock

Weight gain is not going well. It’s barely happening at all, in fact. I left home for a week of eating out and Easter with my family in Brittany, and I managed to gain – wait for it – half a pound. Yep, that’s right, a measly half pound. I can’t quite get my head around how hard this is turning out to be. You would have thought that putting on weight would be easy, but it’s not. I can feel like I’ve eaten loads, and yet obviously that’s not the case, and it’s really beginning to get me down.
The problem is at least partly psychological, of course. If I eat a relatively decent lunch, I feel full and bloated and vaguely nauseated for a good part of the afternoon, even if there’s no real reason to (it’s not due to any particular food type – it happens regardless). And snacking during the day – well, my mum’s convinced I can no longer accurately assess what a decent sized snack is. And she’s probably right.
I’m making a few changes from now on. There’s a dish on nuts in the kitchen, and I’ll eat a few every time I go in. I’m planning on a mug of warm milk with sugar and cinnamon before bed. And I’m going to have two biscuits with my tea instead of one. Fingers crossed it’ll work. I need it to, because I had a nasty shock today. I fainted whilst out shopping. I maintain that it was because of the heat in the shopping centre, and because I’d been standing still for so long, but I suspect mum’s got a point when she says low blood sugar due to not eating enough might have played a part.
Anyway, because I’ve been away, and because we have no scales or baking pans in Brittany, I haven’t actually baked anything in a while (unless you count mini-tarts with goats cheese and tomatoes on ready made puff pastry. Which I don’t). I’m planning on brownies and Simnel cake in the next few days, so I’ll post once I’ve made something new.

Weight gain

My mum bought a set of bathroom scales yesterday, so for the first time in ages I actually weighed myself. And got a nasty shock. I knew I'd lost weight over the last term at uni - what with mild depression, lack of exercise and repercussions on my eating habits. What I didn't realise it that I'm now clinically underweight. So the challenge is - gain half a stone over my five week Easter holiday. At least. So I'm going to record what I weight when on here. Today's weight; 7St 13

It feels odd to be trying to gain weight, and I'm worried that I'll find it significantly harder than I should do. I started off with a second bowl of cereal for breakfast today, and the guilt (And slightly-too-full stomach) feeling has set in already. But I'll stick too it. At least it gives me an excuse to bake a lot and to eat all my Easter chocolate.

So here's the first weight-gain recipie (well, not really. I was planning on making these anyway). I love banana, I love walnuts - indeed, my current favourite Ben & Jerry's flavour is Chunky Monkey. I contemplated putting chocolate icing on them, but to be honest I don't think it would have worked all that well, so I went for honey buttercream again. And they went down very well as dessert. Without the icing, they'd make a great breakfast/mid-morning snack too.
















Banana and Walnut Cupcakes with Honey Buttercream Icing
(makes 6)
Oven 190°C

1 banana
2oz flour
2oz butter
2oz brown sugar
1 egg
1tsp mixed spice
1/2 tsp baking powder
6 whole walnuts, cut into chunks


Honey
Butter
Icing sugar
cold water


1. cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy
2. beat in the egg
3. stir in the flour, mixed spice and baking powder
4. mash the banana in a seperate bowl
5. add the banana and walnut chunks to the mixture and mix until evenly distributed.
6. spoon into cupcake papers and bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown on top. They will still be quite moist.


For the icing:
1. put the honey, butter and icing sugar into a bowl and mix, adding water when needed. I never measure how much I use, so just keep adding until you have the right consistency. Generally, a little less honey than butter.

Bad leg = bad day(s)

These have not been a good few days. I'm overtired, overstressed and quickly reaching the end of my tether. Thank God it's only two days to the holidays, and five weeks of home food and home comfort (even if the revision will still be intense). Of course, my knee isn't making life any easier.

I had a steroid injection on Tuesday, to try and heal a chronic hamstring tendonitis. And whilst I'm glad I've had it done – provided it works – I'd forgotten how frustrating the recovery from any type of invasive procedure is. This might not be a patch on the surgery I had on my kidney a few years ago, but it's still frustrating. I can't walk properly. It doesn't hurt, as such, but it's stiff and it just won't move normally. Which means I inch from place to place, and I'm usually a fast walker. And my leg gets tired so easily it's untrue, and that combined with my base level exhaustion from not sleeping properly has turned me into a grump.

I spent Tuesday afternoon pre-injection decorating cupcakes for my hillwalking group (it was supposed to be a cake, but I was let of the hook in the end when someone else decided to make one too, so I returned to cupcakes). I was actually very pleased with them – soft, moist ginger and vanilla cake with dark ganache and cadbury's mini eggs to decorate (a must have at Easter – and the number of mini eggs at the lunch was quite spectacular!). The problem arose when, Wednesday morning, I tried to get them to Newnham College.

Usually it would take me twenty minutes from my front door. It took me nearly forty. And whilst lunch was yummy and the cakes went down well, I then had to walk back into town for lectures. And then I had to walk back to Newnham in the evening to attend a formal, by which point my leg was sore and I really wanted to just go back to bed instead. So after an evening that should have been a nice, relaxed meal with friends, but which turned into a slog, with me snapping at people and then feeling guilty for it, bed is where I went.

Thursday was a bit better walking wise, at least during the day. But I think I overdid it a bit, because when my boyfriend and I went out for dinner (to a yummy asian place, where he introduced me to red bean paste balloons – the major highlight of the day), it took me a while to get there, and then even longer to get home. To top it off, we were supposed to go to the lateshow at the local theatre, and I actually couldn't walk there. We got a third of the way in an excrutiatingly long time and then I just couldn't keep moving. I felt terrible, dragging him back home, as I know he really wanted to go, and although he kept saying he didn't mind, I still felt I was letting him down. But I didn't stop there. We tried watching a film instead, I fell asleep halfway through, and once it was finished I just wanted to go to bed and sleep. And he took a long time getting his shoes and coat to leave, and I actually kind of lost it, snapped at him to leave and….gah! Just not nice.

So I'm a little nervous about today. I want to go out with friends tonight, because so many people are leaving tomorrow, but I'm not sure how long I'll stay awake for. And an early night, I think, may well be essential if I'm to be at all pleasant tomorrow. In fact, I might come home and have a nap after my lectures this afternoon…

20th Birthday Biscuits

The weather is miserable. Roll-up-in-a-blanket, sit by the fire, cup of cocoa miserable. And due to some fairly impressive insomnia last night, I am not only cold but completely exhausted. And I'm supposed to be baking a cake tonight. It doesn't have to be done tonight, but it would have made life easier. Ah well. I'll squash it in tomorrow.

I have already baked something this week (well, yesterday, so technically last week, I suppose). For the second birthday in under a week I resorted to something easy and quick. Although I wasn't terribly pleased with the outcome tastewise. I just made sugar biscuits with sugar icing, and they were a little bland. They looked quite nice though, I suppose. And I have some dough left in my fridge, so I might foist that off on the hillwalkers on Wednesday too (that's who the cake's for).

I feel I should write more, but I can't quite think straight at the moment. This week seems ridiculously busy for a last week of term...

Cinnamon Apple Cupcakes

I was going to enter these in one of the online cupcake competitions...but I didn't get around to making them before the deadline, so it didn't happen. Instead, I made them for my hillwalking club for out weekly lunch. Transport requirements meant that I couldn't ice them before hand, so I took a tub of icing with me so that we could ice them there. It went down remarkably well!

I really like these cupcakes. Using the right apples, they are lovely and moist, with a very definite flavour of the spices. I'm pleased with the frosting too, which was a last minute experiment.

Apple cinamon cupcakes
Ingredients
4oz self raising flour
4oz brown sugar
4oz unsalted butter
2 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp cinnamon
2 medium eating apples (I used Russets)
1tsp baking powder
2 eggs

Oven: 190°C
makes ~15 cupcakes

1. beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
2. beat in the eggs one at a time
3. Fold in the flour, spices and baking powder.
4. Peel the apples and cut into small chunks, then fold into the mixture.
5. Seperate the mixture into the cupcake pan.
6. Bake for 15-20 minutes

Honey Buttercream Frosting
1 dsp honey
25g unsalted butter
icing sugar

Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix together until the desired consistency is reached.

Natacha's Birthday

My friend Natacha's birthday is on tuesday, but we had her birthday dinner on Sunday. Now I know she likes biscuits and cakes and so on, and she and her roommate have a jar devoted to them, but I don't actually know what flavours she prefers. So I decided that I would give her a selection.

Because I'm a little lazy, that involved making one batch of cake mix, splitting it into three and mixing in the flavourings. I went for chocolate, mixed spice (because that was what was in the cupboard...) and mocha. The last was spur of the moment, because I discovered that I had a mocha packet in my cupboard that I had no intention of drinking.

All in all, I'm quite pleased with the results. The mixed spice cakes turned out lovely and gooey, as usual. The chocolate ones weren't too dry this time. And the mocha ones I personally quite like. I have a packet left...might try them again sometime.

I made some simple buttercream and chocolate icing, with melted chocolate instead of cocoa powder, which made it a little softer and creamier than usual. And I added a jelly belly on top of each, on the information that they are Natacha's favourite sweets...