Birthday haul #1 - gifts I can gaze at!

I turned 30 a few weeks ago and I've already blogged about my lovely birthday weekend. I've been completely overwhelmed by all the thoughtful gifts, cards and surprises I've received from various friends and family members so I thought I'd write a few blog posts to share these gems with my readers.

Although this birthday seems to have gone on for weeks as I've had lots of presents, cards and meals at different times, here's the haul I opened on my actual birthday morning...

Having to arrange your presents neatly before you tear into them is such a #bloggerproblem, isn't it? Not to mention photographing everything after you've opened them... I just tell myself that it'll be worth it when I've published all my posts! 

I'm going to start this mini series by blogging about the birthday gifts I received which I could happily gaze at all day long. It won't surprise you to discover that this post is almost entirely Disney themed...

Chip and Dale Disney Traditions figurine from Neil,

and a Bambi figurine from my nephews. Very cute, I think you'll agree.

A Belle figurine from Nicola. How beautiful is this?! 

Jungle Book canvas from Chris. I can't wait to hang this up!

In addition to these beautiful gifts, I certainly had something to gaze at when I went out for a belated birthday meal with Nicola and Sarah (my best friends from school) last week. I was spoilt rotten with a giant balloon, birthday badge, more presents and a surprise cake - my eyes were like saucers! 

I need to tear myself away from gazing at these gifts to write my next blog post at some point... check back soon to read my post on birthday gifts I can wear! 

My 30th birthday weekend

It was my birthday last weekend... I turned 30! Don't you just love it when your birthday falls on a Saturday? I enjoyed a whole weekend of lovely activities so I thought I'd blog about what I got up to.

My Friday evening started well when I got home from the gym and found Neil baking a summer fruits cake. An excellent start to every weekend! It was a total surprise so I found the whole thing very exciting.

We continued our weekend of indulgence later that evening with a couple of glasses of wine in the sunshine while we waited for dinner to cook (hence the R2D2 kitchen timer). I love sitting out in the garden on a quiet evening... it makes me feel relaxed, which is often a difficult feeling for me to achieve.

We tried Tesco Finest's 'two dine for £10' deal for the first time on Friday night and decided on potato wedges, beef and pulled pork pizza with salsa verde, and mango and passionfruit torte. All three options were amazing! 

I woke up early on Saturday morning to squeal excitedly and to open all my presents and cards. 30 or not, I'm like a child when it comes to my birthday. I'm planning to write a separate post on my fantastic presents so I'll save all those photos and descriptions for a later date. Taking the perfect photos of all my gifts before finding a home for them is definitely a #bloggerproblem and took me a good half an hour!

When I went downstairs later that morning after getting ready, Neil had a surprise waiting for me in the kitchen... our very own afternoon tea! He'd gone to loads of effort and made cheese & tomato and ham & mustard sandwiches, as well as the star feature of the homemade summer fruits cake. 

After eating the delicious sandwiches, scones and cake and drinking our fruity green tea, we hopped on a bus to Cardiff Bay for the afternoon. Cardiff Bay is one of my favourite local places to visit, particularly on a sunny day. We wandered around for a couple of hours to take in the sights, and I had a very decadent hot chocolate in Cadwaladers! 

We sat in the garden for half an hour after getting back from the bay, then I went to get ready for my surprise birthday evening meal. I decided to wear my Christmas sale dress from New Look for the first time, along with a couple of my new jewellery pieces (more on those in my upcoming 'birthday haul' post). 

I was very pleased when Neil drove me to Miller and Carter as it's one of my favourite restaurants and always feels like a special treat. We ordered the bread sharer to start then I had a tasty fillet steak with all the trimmings, washed down with a glass of Prosecco. Top marks! 

Neil had yet another surprise planned for me on Sunday afternoon... Llanerch Vineyard for Sunday lunch! The weather was beautiful so we were able to walk around the vineyard and soak up some sun after our massive meal. I had the butternut squash and ginger soup to start, roast sirloin for my main, and lemon posset for dessert. It's fair to say that the whole lot was spectacular and I can't wait until our next visit. We sat in the conservatory section of the restaurant, right next to the window, so we enjoyed a nice view with our lunch!

After we got back from Llanerch Vineyard, my in-laws came around for an hour to sit in the garden as it was such a sunny evening. It was lovely to relax in the sun and chat for a while about what we'd all been up to over the weekend. After they'd left, we finished off our day with a stunning evening walk to Penarth Pier. The beautiful views and the tranquil experience encouraged us to go for evening walks more often! 

I feel so fortunate to have had such a great birthday weekend (good planning, Neil), and I'm looking forward to going to visit my parents and friends in West Wales next week for part two of my 30th birthday celebrations. You definitely haven't seen the end of my birthday blog posts... watch this space! 

Apple, cinnamon and walnut cake... birthday surprise!

It was Neil's birthday last weekend so I thought I'd bake him a surprise birthday cake. I've baked quite a lot of different things in the last year or so (shortbread, brownies, cupcakes, muffins etc), but I've never baked an actual cake so I was keen to set myself a new challenge. I dug out my trusty Mary Berry book and decided on the apple, cinnamon and walnut cake. Seriously, how good does that combination sound?

It turned out like this... I think this is actually the tastiest thing I've ever baked, and Neil agreed!

So here's how I made it...

Ingredients 

225g unsalted butter, softened

225g light muscovado sugar

3 large eggs

100g chopped walnuts

100g sultanas

225g self raising flour

2 level tsp baking powder

400g cooking apples (peeled, cored and grated)

1 level tsp ground cinnamon

Extra light muscovado sugar, for sprinkling

Extra chopped walnuts, for sprinking

Icing sugar, for dusting

You will also need a deep, round 23cm cake tin. I used a springform tin which worked with no problems, apart from the minor ones listed below!

Method 

1. Preheat the oven to 180C / Fan 160C / gas 4. Grease the tin and line the base with non-stick baking paper. 

2. Measure the sugar, chopped walnuts, sultanas, flour, baking powder, eggs and butter into a large bowl and beat for about 2 minutes until the mixture is thoroughly blended. 

3. I added the dry ingredients first, then added the butter and the eggs. I needed to beat for a lot longer than 2 minutes... the mixture was very thick! What is it with me and thick mixture?

4. Spoon half the mixture into the prepared tin. As you can see, I didn't quite soften my butter enough! Good lesson for next time, as this is probably why my mixture was extra thick. 

5. Spread the grated apple and ground cinnamon in an even layer on top. Spoon the remaining cake mixture on top, level the surface then sprinkle generously with light muscovado sugar and walnuts. This step was fairly difficult as the cake mixture was so thick, but there was thankfully enough left to spread an even layer over the grated apples. 

6. Bake for 75 minutes to 90 minutes, or until the cake is well risen and golden brown. Shortly after I put the cake into the oven, I noticed that there were tiny droplets coming from the bottom of the springform tin. I just put a layer of foil underneath it to catch the drips, and next time I'll wrap the bottom of the tin in foil just in case. 

7. After taking the cake out of the oven, leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes then turn out, peel off the parchment and finish cooling on a wire rack.

8. Dust with a generous sprinkling of icing sugar to serve. I know it doesn't taste of anything, but it makes the cake look pretty! I'm so proud of this cake and the way it looked when it was cut up... my biggest fear about baking a cake was that it would be too crumbly to even cut into decent slices. 

9. If it's a surprise birthday cake, add some candles!

Has anyone else tried Mary Berry's apple, cinnamon and walnut cake? What did you think? 

Valentine's surprise... salted caramel brownies

Regular readers of my blog will remember from last year's Valentine's post that I'm not a big fan of Valentine's Day. I don't believe in going all out and spending loads of money on one day every year... shouldn't we do little things every day (which don't necessarily cost lots of money) to show people that we love them?

Anyway, even though I never make a big fuss on Valentine's Day, I decided to bake a chocolatey surprise for Neil. I love baking and I hadn't had a chance to bake anything since before Christmas, so this also gave me a good excuse to use my new baking goodies!

My new apron!

As soon as I read Kaz's blog post on her salted caramel brownies, I knew I just had to try this recipe and that it was the perfect baking adventure for my surprise Valentine's Day treat. I made chocolate brownies last June which were rather amazing, so I thought it would be interesting to make a different kind of brownie this time.


Ingredients

180g plain flour
3tbsp cocoa powder
300g dark chocolate
150g unsalted butter
150g caster sugar
220g soft brown sugar
4 eggs
1tsp vanilla extract

50g chocolate chips (optional - I had some left over from a previous baking adventure!)
1 tin of Caramel
1 tsp salt

Can you tell that I shop in Tesco?

Method 

1. Preheat the oven to 160C and line your baking tin with baking paper. 

2. Place the chocolate and butter into a bowl over a pan of water and stir on a medium heat until it's all melted. I had to use a cereal bowl and a milk pan because I didn't have a large heatproof bowl... this is not recommended! Let's just say that the bowl was very full. 

3. Add the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract to a bowl, then add the chocolate/butter mixture and mix until smooth. I forgot that I was supposed to use two types of sugar so only put the caster sugar in... I then added the brown sugar a bit later on when I realised that I'd left it out. I don't think it made much difference, but just bear in mind that there are two types of sugar to add. I used my electric mixer... works like a dream!

4. Sieve in the flour and cocoa powder and beat the mixture until it's all combined. I also had to add the brown sugar here as I forgot to do this in step 3, and I also added the chocolate chips at this stage. My mixture was extremely thick at this point... possibly this was because I added the brown sugar at the wrong point. I used the electric mixer for a minute or two but then had to switch to a wooden spoon. As you can see from the photo below, my mixer was a bit clogged up!

5. Put half the mixture into the baking tin, making sure it's spread evenly. This step was very tricky as my mixture was so thick, so mine wasn't spread particularly evenly.

6. Add the salt to the tin of caramel, making sure you mix thoroughly. Add a layer of caramel on top of the brownie mix, making sure that you leave a small gap around the edge. 

7. Layer the remaining brownie mixture on top of the caramel. Again, this was very difficult as a result of my super thick mixture and I didn't quite have enough mixture left to cover all the caramel, as you can see below. 

8. Bake the brownies in the oven for approximately 30 minutes, then leave to cool before cutting up and serving. Mine were extremely moist and gloopy when they came out of the oven so I couldn't even cut them into squares, but the mixture solidified as it got cooler. As you can see, it didn't matter that I hadn't covered all the caramel with the brownie mixture as the top layer of chocolate seemed to be magically spread evenly after it came out of the oven. 

I was very worried when the brownies first came out of the oven as I couldn't cut them into chunks due to the moistness of the mixture, but they turned out fine in the end. I cut half the mixture into chunks (after I'd left it to cool for a while) and put the chunks into my new baking tin. I then put them on my little table with chocolates, a lit Yankee Candle and Valentine's card ready for Neil's arrival. I know, I know... I needn't have bought the chocolates, but the hazelnut praline in these Cadbury chocolates is so good!

Neil had also ignored the 'no presents' rule and arrived with a beautiful bunch of pink and red flowers and a little chocolate rose. We're a sneaky pair!

What did you get up to on Valentine's Day? Did you bake anything? Send me your links!

Valentine's surprise

I don't really do Valentine's Day. I'm of the opinion that you should do little things for people every day to show them that you love them, rather than splash out on one day every year. Myself and my boyfriend said we'd exchange cards, but wouldn't buy presents as we're going to New York next week. However, I wanted to do something nice and surprise him. Not because it was Valentine's Day, just because I wanted to make him smile. Cheesy, I know. Only problem was, I didn't have any spare money left before pay day. So what could I do?

When I won Rebecca's giveaway, I thought of the perfect surprise.
Heart shaped shortbread!

I made chocolate chip shortbread last month, so I already had all the 

ingredients and utensils I needed. 

So, last Friday evening, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work! In case you're wondering, my boyfriend lives in Shrewsbury so I didn't see him on Valentine's Day, I didn't just get the date wrong. I followed exactly the same process as last time, but rolled the dough out after chilling it in the fridge, rather than cutting into rounds as I did last time. I could then cut out the heart shapes with the cutter and put them on the baking trays.

The cutter in action!

The biscuits weren't quite as thick as I'd have liked because I rolled the dough too thinly as it was difficult to judge, but they still turned out really well and tasted delicious. We're supposed to be trying to be healthy at the moment so I kind of put a spoke in that wheel by making the shortbread, but you have to treat yourself sometimes!

The finished products

My boyfriend really appreciated the gesture, which shows that the little things are just as important as the big extravagant gestures. Now... what shall I bake next?