The Sewing Dilettante

At the risk of confirming a cliche about American tastes, I admit that I LOVE peanut butter. I eat it almost every day and think just about anything can be improved with a dollop of it - toast, baked goods, smoothies, fruit slices. Ants on a log anybody? Or how about a fluffernutter sandwich ? Nom, nom, nom! Not sharing my fondness for peanut butter, hubby naturally thinks my obsession with the stuff a bit odd. He certainly wouldn't be too impressed by the suggestion of PB&Js for lunch. He did manage, however, to choke down one or two of these cupcakes the other day.  Chocolate sponge with peanut butter frosting and peanut butter chips! I followed  this recipe from Bakerella , though I simplified things a bit. They were only gorgeous!  In hindsight, I wished I'd made a little bit of chocolate frosting to swirl in with the peanut butter frosting, as in Bakerella's original recipe. It would've cut through the intense peanut butter-iness of the frosti...

Not just to bed, but forever it seems, replaced by our more usual summer weather: rain. Oh well. I'm not going to complain. We've had more beautiful weather in the past few weeks than I've experienced in the whole ten years I've been living in Ireland and Northern Ireland! And, knowing how fleeting the sun might prove, we managed to pack a lot of summer fun into those weeks, including BBQs, picnics, beach outings, cycles, walks, trips to the zoo, and about a million pieces of this: Pavlova! I ate my first piece of pavlova on a holiday to Zimbabwe in 2007, and it entered ever after into the annals of epic desserts: deliciously light and airy, it manages to be both decadent and virtuous at the same time. It's the perfect summer sweet - not dense enough to tip you over the edges of excess after plates of burgers, hot dogs, and potato salad, but just sweet enough to finish things off nicely. I love mixing a little bit of lemon curd in with the whipped cream to give...

These days it often feels like a minor victory if I manage to eat lunch before it's time for dinner, let alone do anything 'extra', like bake or patchwork. Last week, however, I carved out a bit of time to make cookies for a gathering of friends, and, oh, was I happy I did! These were good... very, very good! A basic, buttery biscuit dough chock full of white chocolate chips, dried cranberries, and chopped pistachios. They disappeared within minutes to appreciative oohs and ahs. An obvious hit! And, the best part was, they fit perfectly around the various demands of a four and a half month old baby. In fact, I mixed up the dough while Baby G played happily in her Bumbo seat; rolled the dough into a cylinder and refrigerated it for a few hours when it became clear that Baby G was done with baking for the day; and finished everything off in the evening once I got the kiddo to sleep. Perfect! Although the original recipe on which these biscuits were based (the same one ...

And his name is Herman. He's German, and he's making my house smell like a doughnut shop. Never a bad thing in my mind, but still, kind of odd. Unless, of course, you're a sweet sourdough starter like Herman, who's pictured here in all his bubbly glory. This starter is used as the base for  'Herman the German Friendship Cake' , a lovely, dense apple cake, which sounds really delicious but which takes ten days to make! Actually, you have to stir or 'feed' Herman for nine days in order to to keep the sourdough culture alive, and then, on the tenth day, you can bake. Delayed gratification and all that. The best part though? When you do finally bake, you reserve enough of the sourdough culture to spread the love to three of your friends, who then get to do the same. Hence the name, I guess!  I've always been fascinated by the idea of sourdough, so I can't wait to see what this is like! Any (local) bloggers want to meet my friend Herman, too?!

Dare I say it? Quickly and quietly, perhaps... Christmas.  I know, I know. It's a little bit early to be thinking about such things, right? Normally, I'm a fan of waiting until the end of November before diving into the Christmas rush, but this year presents a slight deviation from the norm, primarily because Baby H is due on 30 December. Hubby and I have thus wisely decided to forego visiting our families for the holidays, thereby avoiding (I sincerely hope so anyway!) all of the potential nightmare scenarios I've been envisioning - giving birth in the car halfway between Wicklow and Dublin in the middle of a freak Irish snow storm being the main one. Instead, we're going to make a few traditions of our own! We're not quite sure what these traditions will be yet (see above), but I figured now was as good a time as any to try my hand at Christmas cake for a traditional conclusion to our not-so-traditional Christmas dinner (assuming we get to sit down to eat it, that...