Saturday, March 27, 2010

almost.... there...

This quilt has been a bit of a saga hasn't it? But it is bound and washed (with beautiful crinkles - thankyou all for the tips!), and I am just about to sew on the label I finished embroidering this morning...

Full pictures soon - I promise!

Saturday, March 20, 2010

got binding?


The quilting is all done, now it's just the binding to go on - and the baby arrived yesterday!

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Here is the recipe - brownies with peanut butter chips!

Let me start with a warning - this has to be one of the most unhealthy treats I have EVER made! Although, my husband declared "there is no doubt that these are the best brownies in the world. You are a total baking legend".... I guess that speaks for itself!

I dare you not to make them! The recipe is a little more involved than a normal brownie recipe, but it is so worth it.

1 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp fleur de sel (normal salt is fine too)
225g butter, chopped
230g dark chocolate, chopped or broken into pieces
2 cups white sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

4 large eggs
1 cup peanut butter chips (or I would use white chocolate chips - or none at all and stick by the original recipe, Aussies - you can purchase peanut butter chips here)

preheat the oven to 180º C (160º C fan forced). Put a 9 inch square baking pan on a baking sheet and spray lightly. Line with baking paper if you wish.

Whisk flour and salt together in a bowl.

Set a heat proof bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water, put the butter and chocolate in. Stir frequently until the ingredients are just melted-you don’t want them to get so hot that the butter separates. Add 1 cup of the sugar and whisk gently just to incorporate it, then remove the bowl from the pan of water. Stir in the vanilla and transfer to a large bowl.

Lightly whisk together the remaining cup of sugar and the 4 eggs. Then add half of this sugar-egg mixture to the warm chocolate, stirring very gently, but without stopping so that you don't end up with scrambled eggs in your chocolate!

Beat the reaming sugar and egg mixture on medium-high for about 3 minutes, or until it doubles in volume and is nice and fluffy. Using a spatula, gently fold the whipped eggs into the chocolate, stopping just short of blending them in completely.

Sprinkle the flour/salt mix and the peanut butter or chocolate chips over the batter and delicately fold them in, working only until they disappear. Scrape the batter into your prepared pan.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until the top looks dry (warning - I cooked mine for 40 mins and the centre pieces were still gooey and quite uncooked - similar to this, which I am assured is actually ok, but you might want to cook it a little longer)

Allow the brownies to cool in the pan and refrigerate before cutting.

Makes 16-20

Recipe from Baking from my home to yours, Dorie Greenspan (Rick Katz's brownies for Julia)



Enjoy (and don't blame me when you can't stop eating them - I warned you!)

apologies for the not so great photos - we couldn't wait to tuck in!

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

couch potato

hi all, still not too much sewing here - just finishing off the quilting on the baby quilt (so much for being almost done 3 weeks before the baby was due, she's now 5 days overdue and it's still not done!). I have been doing lots of studying though - I have 2 essays due in 2 weeks time which are keeping me very busy. I think once my assignments are off, the sewing will come more easily.


I have enjoyed being a couch potato of late though and have seen some good movies and read some more books. This movie in particular was fantastic, I loved every minute of it (and I adored the clothes in this too - they were very cute). I also saw Julie and Julia - a great movie about food and blogging, which made me want to do lots of cooking.

Right now I am thinking about brownies with peanut butter chips.... stay tuned!

Monday, March 1, 2010

have you seen my sewing mojo?

It is missing. Gone. Hence the lack of posts around here.

So I did a little baking yesterday instead. This is one of my favourite biscuit recipes which I make quite often. I haven't gotten used to the new oven yet, so they came out a little dark - but still great nonetheless.


But this time they had a little something extra in them along with the chocolate chips. My sister-in-law brought me these during her recent trip trip to the US. I not only have peanut butter chips, but butterscotch chips and cinnamon chips as well as toffee pieces. Seriously yummy!

Right now all I want to do is read. I've read two wonderful books in the past few weeks - The Book Thief, By Markus Zusak and The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. Great great stories.

However today is officially my first day back at Uni - so this is how I spent last night. I found my first readings really interesting, but my first assignment is due in four weeks! Eek! It's full steam ahead now.