I realised this afternoon that it is Sunday, the end of the week, and NO baked goods had graced my kitchen counters. None. Okay, there were some baked wholemeal bread rolls, but those hardly count, do they? Well, it was only right that I bake the most amazing, mouth-watering and epic cupcakes to make up for it.

My kitchen is a safe-haven. A lovely place to escape to. A happy place. And there is nothing that my kitchen likes more than new kitchen gadgets.






















Enter: brand new kitchen scale! It's beautiful and neat with a glass top and a digital blue output. Mm. And it weighs perfectly. This is wholemeal flour being weighed for a batch of burger bun rolls. That's because, for the first time ever, I'm going to show you that when I'm not baking in my kitchen, I cook. It happens from time to time. Ah, food blog, we're one step closer to you.

Yesterday, a very charming and involved Nice Recruiter Man (here) was telling me about his The-Apprentice-and-Burgers night and recommended a delicious Spicy Burger recipe, from the BBC. In my enthusiasm I went and picked up some lean mince and chillies from Sainsbury's and promptly left behind the burger buns. That's how it all began: burger buns made from my favourite bread recipe and topped with flaked almonds. For interest's sake, if you click through the recipe, I replaced the white flour with wholemeal flour, and replaced half the water with milk. I also halved the recipe so that we didn't have unnecessary leftovers.

















Easy peasy. I particularly like that they come out beautifully browned and glazed (thanks to an egg yolk and water wash) and the almonds are a really nice touch (really works with the wholemeal flour).

The burgers were also easy to make. Like our meat rissoles, these combine mince, egg, chopped onions, garlic, spices and herbs, and a chilli. There's even some mustard.

















Chillies here are deceptive. The English like their food mild - bland, even - so, thinking that these spicy little treats wouldn't be that popularly sold in Sainsbury's unless they were particularly mild -  I popped an entire scotch bonnet chilli in to the mix. Uh. Not a great idea.






















Here's a picture of my veggie bowl in the kitchen. Can you see the chillies? HOoooooOOOOge. Anyway, I chopped up a nice sweet looking yellow chilli and added it to the mix. When I was done, I washed my hands, cleaned up a bit, and tottered off to do some work while I waited for the bread dough to rise.

And then my hands started burning. And so did my nose (because, of course, I had blown my nose when I sat down). So I washed my hands again and again and again, and had a bath instead of working. Sigh. Needless to say, I was hysterically laughing about the potency of the chillies which continued to burn until well after we had eaten dinner.

















Anyway. The burgers turned out particularly nicely. I love the added mustard to the mince mixture: I'll definitely make them again.

















I couldn't resist photographing the salad as well: look at all of those beautiful colours and textures! I think that's my favourite aspect of food: the textures. Especially when something subverts your expectations of those textures (Heston would have a field day with that!) and you end up with super-crunchy croutons on your salad when you thought they were going to be a bit crumbly. Yum.






















I leave you with one last image of the oh-so-spicy burgers. Yum! Nice Recruiter Man said that he grilled some blue cheese to add to the top which would have made the perfect topping, or perhaps some crumbed Camembert with a sweet chilli sauce? I topped ours with basil pesto - yum.

This week has been an interesting sort of week. A lot of webby stuff, a lot of designing, a lot of charity work (as soon as the new website is up, I'll post a link so you can look-see). I've been waiting oh-so-patiently to try out Dale's Lemon Squares. They came highly recommended in a little link earlier this week, and the printed-out recipe has been sitting on my desk, taking priority position on the pile marked 'things I'd rather be doing today'.

The recipe ('Annemarie's Lemon Bars' from allrecipes.com) gives you about 16 large lemon bars that consist of two layers: a sort of thick lemony custard on top of a crumbly shortcake base. I took some progress photos to show you what they look like when you make them up but they're not that flattering. The end result is far more convincing! So let's start with one of those:






















The layers aren't very distinct: I'd definitely make a double quantity of lemon 'topping' to give it the extra height, and possibly also use a much smaller baking tin. But don't they look deeeeelicious?

Ingredients

This is my favourite bit of the project: the beee-yoo-tiful Hickory Tree buttons that have arrived all the way from Michigan, USA, to be a part of this project. I'm such a slow knitter but I get much delight from watching it unfold exactly as I thought it would. Yay.

Long weekends are lovely things. They're late-sleepy, catch-uppy and friendly. I like them very much.

I've been scouring the shops around here in London looking for a pork-free gelatine. It's much more difficult than it sounds: pork is the preferred medium of the English, it seems. Luckily, the cheaper range of Dr Oetker delivers a beef-based gelatine which, while sounding particularly revolting, works just as well.

And so it was that I found myself stirring away at boiled sugar this weekend, with Delicious Magazine's marshmallow recipe and a flurry of internet searches to investigate measuring melted sugar without a sugar thermometer.






















With a cover as beautiful as this, how can you resist? This is one of the few magazines I buy and hold on to - their photographs are spectacular in every issue, and they always have something that I want to try. Perfect for building a good recipe collection, and perfect for lie-ins on a Saturday morning when you want something nice to page through in bed. With coffee.

















So here we are - back to this weekend - melting golden (maple) syrup with castor sugar, panicking about measuring the temperature accurately without a sugar thermometer (which I have now ordered! Turns out Nigella's sugar-thermometer-less-test is to drop some mixture into ice water and see if it turns into a malleable, soft ball of goo. If it does, you're ready. If it dissolves, let it boil for longer, and if it is immediately solid and immovable, you've gone too long) ... and wondering how this could possibly be the recipe for 'plain' white marshmallows with all that brown syrup ...

















It turns out that the longer it whizzes around in the mixer, the cloudier it becomes. It's like magic -- or science.

















This is a giant slab of marshmallow. I flavoured it with Innocent Smoothie (strawberry and banana) which makes it a rather peachy shade of orange. According to the recipe, you whizz the marshmallow mixture until it becomes perfectly bubblegummy, and then you pour it carefully into a clingfilm-lined baking tray to set. When you take it out of the tray, you have one enormous marshmallow that you slice into smaller blocks.


Once you've sliced it, you dust it with corn flour to get it smooth and dusty or roll it in dessicated coconut if you prefer a coconut coating. I tried both. I think that the buildings of Oompa Loompa Land must be made of marshmallow bricks -- they have a lovely sense of rigidity about them, whilst retaining that sweet, squishy marshmallow goodness that you expect.

















They turned out rather well! Although, I must admit, strawberry and banana Innocent Smoothie is definitely not the best choice: I'd rather make them again using plain water for the liquid, or something a little less sweet like Baileys. 


That, in the background, is a plate piled high with delicious Blueberry Muffins straight out of Nigella's book How to be a Domestic Goddess. It's a simple recipe (recipe here on Nigella's website) but it's fairly quick to put together and the resulting muffins are delicious.






















I added in some orange zest to give it a bit of zing - I suspect that vanilla extract would be equally delicious though. Robyn, thank you again for my grater - I hardly ever bake without it!

















... and stir in the blueberries. I'd definitely, definitely use smaller blueberries if you have the option. When you bake them, the blueberries burst and make the surrounding muffin dough a bit gooey. It is rather delicious, but not so much if your blueberries are enormous and take up half the muffin!


I love my muffin tin, but I'd definitely like to get a nice, extra deep tin that gives you tall, narrow muffins and cupcakes. I think that's the secret to the perfect baked cupcake (or in this case, muffin).

















They cook in about 20 minutes, so that gives you enough time to make a cup of coffee and get out the butter for a 'hot muffin tea'. Gosh, I'm English.





















I'm very happy with the way these turned out. The recipe gives you just enough batter to make 12 tall-ish muffins that are bursting with blueberries and are very easy to look at with a great sense of baking success. Ideal for tea, perfect for showing off a bit.