Tuesday 3 July 2012

Nougat, bees, strawberries and a dog show

Apart from drawing, baking is one of the things I love the very best... and one of the things I love the very best about baking is orange blossom water. I toiled over a batch of extremely tasty orange blossom and pistachio nougat for my niece's wedding last month. Sadly because of refrigeration issues it didn't actually make it to her wedding, but it did make it into our mouths. I'm quite sad it's gone.

orange blossom water, nougat, pistachio

These were the last two pieces. The recipe came from one of Betty's favourite recipe books, The Home-Made Sweet Shop by Claire Ptak. I love her shop Violet, her website and her blog too.

In my search for reasons to crack open the orange blossom bottle again I came across this recipe for orange blossom cake with cream cheese frosting on London Bakes. It turned out perfectly, and was such a hit in our house that I immediately signed up to her blog. Kathryn tempts me whenever she posts a recipe and the ones I've tried have all been utterly delicious, but I also love her honesty when things go a little awry, and her photography is beautiful too.


Her latest post is a collection of photos from June for the Photo a Day challenge by Fat Mum Slim. Being a bit scatty, I'd just decided last week that I wanted to take at least one photo a day as a kind of picture diary to remember the things I'd done (memory like a sieve almost definitely the consequence of having had three children and always having too much to do). I also discovered last Thursday that all my Instagram pics can be seen and shared across the globe... I feel a bit stupid for not knowing this earlier. No more embarrassing silly faces or blank black screens for me. So all these new bits of information have inspired me to try my very best to take a Photo A Day and share them here and there. I'm a couple of days late into July, but I've printed off the list and today I'm waiting for the best part of my day to reveal itself so I can capture it on camera.

Until then, here's my last week in pictures.


Tuesday: crazy storm // Tuesday: sheltering bee // Wednesday: sunshine and strawberries


Sunday: dog show dalmation // Sunday: best dressed // Sunday: third prize


 Friday: Mr Quaver  // Sunday: Monsal Trail // Monday: Pia and a bit of Phelgm

5 comments:

  1. Oh thank you, you're so sweet! I'm delighted that you liked the cake - it's one of my favourites!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I can't recommend your cake or blog highly enough. Yummy x

      Delete
  2. I'll miss Violet when I move. Thankfully I'll still be close enough for an emergency cake cycle.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Maybe Violet could ship you emergency supplies?

    ReplyDelete
  4. You there, this is really good post here. Thanks for taking the time to post such valuable information. Quality content is what always gets the visitors coming. King Long Haired German Shepherd

    ReplyDelete