Friday 3 February 2012

Friday Friday



Second day of my no dairy products in my stomach for at least a week! Breakfast soya milk and granola, lunch soba noodle soup with an egg - so comforting! This morning saw a solo drawing trip to the National History Museum, I tried to get some sketches of the amazing animals (particularly the elephant for my current project) but was defeated by the masses of schoolchildren. Cheered myself up with Frankie magazine (although Brixton tube station kiosk only had the November/December issue) which I enjoyed with a chocolate Moomin and a soya latte (!) I did a bit of sewing and watched a lot of Gilmore Girls, sadly very little self directed work got done. Let's hope tomorrow looks better! Oh and I also took a picture of my bike (my dad's old Bianchi from 1973!), which I also need to work on this weekend before I throw myself out on those oh so scary London streets. The Times has launched a campaign to make London a safer place to cycle (after one of their journalists was hit by a lorry right outside their offices and has been left in critical state), good to see such a large newspaper put this on their front page - back them up!

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Schoko Moomins



What a sad and neglected blog. My head is filled with things to share but at the moment, through college, I am expected to share those thoughts through other means (not that successfully). I do wish to keep this my dear blog alive so perhaps I shall post my latest cooking and baking adventures.

First of all, today is the very first Wednesday, in what seem an age, that I have had off. Now I don't really have it off, I should be working on my college stuff non stop but I have been dying to use my Moomin biscuit cutters since accidentally coming across the new Moomin shop in Covent Garden (I originally only wanted to by Moomin but the lady at the till was having issues with the till so I had to spend at leat £5 so I happily grabbed Moomin Papa to keep Moomin company.). Being an avid admirer of Quaint Living's baking and craft skills I was delighted to see this recipe for brownie roll out cookies which she got through Smitten Kitchen. A chocolate brownie cum biscuit - oh yea. Sadly, our oven is very hard to predict and has a tendency to burn everything in some form. So Moomin father and son got a little bit crispy on the edges. Still they taste amazing!  I did have some issues with the incredibly thick dough, mixing it almost caused my electric hand mixer to smoke (I found kneading it a little with my hands helped in the end). Although I'm quite happy with the way they turned out I think I could have let them be a bit thicker but as I am positive I will be making these again I shall try that thicker ones next time.

So oven and mixer blimps aside - I very much recommend these chocolately beauts.