Summer by the sea

Wow!  It's been a long time and so much has happened since I last blogged but I've still been snapping away, and I felt it was time I shared a few shots from my summer... especially as the nights are drawing in and the cold is starting to bite, we all need a reminder of what the Great British Summer looked like.

It was the beautiful South Devon coast that drew me back again this August.  Whilst I have plenty of shots of Dartmouth harbour, the boats and the fun of the regatta from over the years, I thought I'd try to get a few more traditional seaside shots this time around, so I headed out on the steam railway to Paignton to capture the bright colours of the beach huts and all the traditional seaside sights.

So, below are a few highlights from the summer.  I hope they brighten up a cold Autumn evening!

I also picked up these delicious macarons from the food fair in Dartmouth.  Couldn't resist the pretty pastel colours, and although they're not traditional seaside food, I thought they toned in rather nicely with the summer seaside pastels.

Happy Easter

It's the Easter holidays, so as I have a bit of time on my hands, I can get into the kitchen and do some baking. So, in keeping with the time of year, I thought I'd have a go at some hot cross buns, which I've never done before. I followed this BBC Food recipe, which was fairly straightforward, although there is a lot of time faffing around waiting for the dough to prove and kneading, but I guess that's to be expected when making bread.

The buns here before wrapping them up to prove:



It was a little tricky piping the crosses on, but once you get the right consistency, it's not too bad:



And, the finished product:



They didn't taste too bad either!

Glut!

I have so many courgettes at the moment, I'm struggling to keep up. It's my first season of growing them, so I've been pretty impressed so far. The only thing is, I'm running out of things to make with them. I've done courgette fritters, courgette soup, and am eating courgettes with everything else. I'm not sick of them yet, though.

I had also almost given up on my willy chillis ever doing anything. I had to move them outside as they were too big for my windowsill and I don't have a greenhouse. Once outside, they just sat there looking a bit sorry for themselves, but today I finally noticed the first flower on one of the plants, so hopefully I might actually have at least one willy chilli this year!

Cherry pop!

My cherry tree has suddenly gone crazy! I don't particularly like cherries but they are so pretty and I hate the thought of the birds stealing them all or just leaving them to rot, so I've been up the ladder picking away.

A couple of photos from today:

Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb

Totally worth the wait, I picked my first crop of rhubarb this evening.

The three crowns I bought a couple of years ago had been doing really badly in the border I originally put them in, so last autumn I moved them up to the veg patch and they've really thrived now.

I was very patient and didn't pick them for the first season, but now they're really going strong, I pulled my first stalks and the results were just mouth-watering.

So now, the decision is left... crumble, fool or simply sprinkled with sugar? Delicious!

LeMMMmmon drizzle cake

I'm taking part in a monthly baking challenge for an online community, and this month one of the recipes is Jamie's Lemon Drizzle Cake. I really fancied this this afternoon, so I decided I'd get cracking on the challenge sooner rather than later.

I was really impressed with this recipe. I love anything with lemon in it anyway, so I was probably always going to be on to a winner with this cake, but still, it was so easy and made a really light, fluffy cake. I'm not the best baker in the world, and considering this was my first attempt at making it and I didn't balls-up, it's got to be an easy recipe.

I couldn't find poppy seeds anywhere round here, so missed those out, and just upped the quantities of ground almonds slightly to compensate. The icing didn't turn out quite like the pictures of Jamie's cake, but I did think the quantity of icing sugar seemed quite excessive for just a drizzle over the top. Besides, I prefer mine with a nice, thick dollop of icing over it!

It didn't stay like this for long!