pear chocolate almond scones
Posted: June 13, 2013 Filed under: breakfast, fruit, pears, scones | Tags: afternoon tea, breakfast, chocolate, decadent, delicious, easy, family, morning tea, pear, quick, scones, versatile Leave a comment »
I really love scones. They’re quick, they’re easy, they’re versatile and they’re absolutely delicious.
Stephanie Alexander’s sister once told her that when she heard the sound of a visitor at the gate, she should be able to get a batch of scones in the oven by the time they were at the front door. I’m fairly sure I’ve mentioned that before, but I love it so much, I’m saying it again. I don’t think I’m at that stage yet, but I can definitely make you scones for breakfast when I get back from my morning run.
Scones take next to no effort, especially if you’re using a food processor. I don’t tend to these days, as I’m living at a house that doesn’t have a dishwasher. When you’re faced with three extra dishes or one to clean, always choose one.
raspberry coconut cupcakes
Posted: June 12, 2013 Filed under: cake, cupcakes, fruit, lemons, raspberries | Tags: babies, cake, coconut, cupcakes, lemon, pregnant, raspberries 1 Comment »
I feel like everyone is pregnant these days.
I’m not saying that this is a bad thing. I’m just saying that there seem to be a lot of little babies and baby bumps around the place. Facebook, Instagram, twitter – social media is going nuts with the baby photos and pregnancy updates.
Maybe it’s just that I had one friend who was pregnant, and then I started noticing every other pregnant person in my stratosphere. Maybe it’s that I’m at an age where all my friends are pregnant. (Not really. Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that I’m only twenty-one, and that while this age is fine for some people to be getting married and having babies, it is far from the norm and also, I’m fine the way I am.) Or, maybe it’s that with the social media saturation the culture we live in, everything is everywhere and I am just noticing pregnant people and babies. Read the rest of this entry »
my jar of cookies is half full
Posted: June 10, 2013 Filed under: cookies | Tags: caramel, cookies, holidays, music, oatmeal, public holiday, routine Leave a comment »
You guys know how much I love cookies. I devoted an entire month to them last year and while you might have thought that I had then had enough, you would be wrong.
chocolate fudge cupcakes with salted caramel buttercream
Posted: June 8, 2013 Filed under: cake, cupcakes | Tags: birthday, cake, celebration, chocolate, cupcakes, new recipes, parties, roses Leave a comment »
Clearly, I have a problem.
No, I’m not talking about my addiction to Doctor Who t-shirts or my extreme nitpickiness when it comes to the care of books. I’m not even talking about my complete inability to ignore the inappropriate possessive apostrophe in “it’s”. People, get it right: if it is a contraction of “it is”, then it needs an apostrophe. If it is not a contraction of “it is” then it does not need an apostrophe. Read the rest of this entry »
routine
Posted: June 3, 2013 Filed under: breakfast | Tags: blueberries, breakfast, healthy, just be better, muesli, routine, running 1 Comment »
I’ve been working on my fitness lately. After I ran a 14 km fun run in November last year, I let my running slip and over the holidays, even though I signed up for another race, my training got worse and worse. After this happened a couple of months ago, I took a few weeks to debrief and then began the long, slow process of running a little longer each week until I’m pushing myself, but not so much I feel like a limp noodle after a run. Well. A little like a limp noodle, maybe.
A big part of fitness is the fact that it’s a slow and sometimes painful process. In part because you get blisters and your muscles are working hard and maybe you get injured, and in part because it takes so long to feel like anything is happening at all. When I was first getting back into things, I felt like I could never run ten kilometres, let alone train for a half marathon – I couldn’t remember the person I was back in November. However, little by little, things have been getting easier and I am finally finding that sweet spot, somewhere in the middle of a comfortable distance when my mind goes blissfully blank and the kilometres seem to fly by. It’s a kind of peace, a stillness in the midst of movement. It doesn’t happen for long, but I’m working on it happening more often. Read the rest of this entry »
funfetti cake
Posted: June 1, 2013 Filed under: cake, cupcakes | Tags: birthday, cake, funfetti, professional cake tester, sprinkles, study, vanilla Leave a comment »
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a professional cake taster. Apart from the obvious deficiencies in this plan – cake isn’t nutritionally complete, you may get large and unhealthy – I think it would be a pretty decent way of life. Read the rest of this entry »
sneak peek + news
Posted: May 26, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: address, busy, cake, coffee, domain, happy, home, news, sneak peek, sunday 2 Comments »
Hey guys! It’s been a while, I know, and I have a LOT of stuff to tell you about. I’m working on revamping the site, there have been a bunch of recipes I’ve been trying out and I can’t wait to tell you all about them.
For now, though, the big news is that I have a new domain name! This site, I don’t know if you’d noticed, is now happily at home at cutthecookie.com. We have a .com domain! This is very exciting news. I feel like it’s a proper website now, and I hope to be able to treat it like one. I’ll be updating more regularly and expanding a little on the content side of things.
Happy Sunday! Have a cup of coffee for me.
Much love, friends.
-e xx
potato pumpkin soup with irish soda bread
Posted: April 27, 2013 Filed under: musings, soup 2 Comments »
hey.
If you’ve had a bad day
a bad week
a bad month…
If you’re too tired to go on, too frustrated to cope, too stressed out to sleep…
If you’re sad, lonely, heartbroken or heartsick -
soup and bread
soup and bread. Read the rest of this entry »
coconut bread
Posted: April 22, 2013 Filed under: bread, breakfast, cake | Tags: 42, bread, brown butter, coconut, douglas adams, hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, neck, pyjamas, ridiculous, sweet, tea, towels Leave a comment »
You’ve got to know where your towel is.
Towels are important, in life.
“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”
From The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
The most ridiculous thing happened to me last week, which is why I now need a towel around my neck at all times. My alarm went off at 6.30 am (yes, it’s a ridiculous hour of the morning. I’m experimenting with running. It was going well, until) I went to turn it off and somehow injured my neck. Read the rest of this entry »
sometimes the shit things happen
Posted: April 18, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »
I don’t really want to talk about what actually happened.
That would mean admitting that it’s real.
Sometimes the shit things happen in life.
I wish I could have done more, been more, seen more. I wish I could have helped. I wish things were different.
They are not. This is real. This is life.
(or not.)
My corner of the internet is small and lightly populated but it’s here and I do appreciate it. I am planning to fill it more soon but we’ll see how we go with dealing with the shit things happening.
Hold on to your families and your friends. Hold them tight and hold them close. Take care of each other. It’s important.
Much love, friends.
–e, xx
