Greetings from New Zealand!

Hello lovely readers! Sadly I was running round frantically trying to sort my unorganised self out for my travels so I ran out of time to say a temporary farewell before I left. But here I am now to say Kia Ora (hello in Maori) and to let you know a little more about what I am doing at the moment :)

I stayed for a week, with Pete, at a friend-of-a-friends just North of Auckland. The couple we stayed with are absolutely lovely and incredibly helpful, having moved from the UK 50 or so years back and been here ever since, so they had a lot of really useful information for us naive folk.

The people here so far seem wonderful! Very friendly indeed. Money wise we are a little short at the moment as my funds haven't transferred from my account in the UK, it seems it has got lost in the electronic world somewhere which is worrying us rather a lot! But Petes money came through so I am a kept woman at the moment!

No-Bake Vanilla Cheesecake with Passionfruit

For the last night at our house in Nottingham I thought it would be nice to make a large meal we could all share and eat together. A couple of weeks before hand Pete and I made a lamb hotpot and it was love at first taste...rich, slightly sweet, melt in the mouth and just packed with flavour. One of the other housemates tried a forkful and was rather envious to say the least, the noises that he made were..to be honest..slightly disturbing! He was absolutely adamant we had to make it again as our goodbye meal, along with the homemade garlic bread that went with it perfectly. So we did! And the pudding for this meal is the recipe I am dying to share with you today :)

The same housemate has been bugging me all year for me to make a passionfruit cheesecake. He is not a big sweet eater but said he tried a version of this dessert in a restaurant long ago and the memory of it had remained with him ever since..I had promised him I would give it a good go, no pressure on recreating a favourite hey! My instructions were that it must have a plain cheesecake base, a no-bake basic filling and a passionfruit topping. So off I set trying to find something that would live up to his expectations..

Rum, Baileys and Kahlua Truffles...boozy balls!

Somehow I am now entering my last week at the house we made home in Nottingham, time goes stupidly fast! In fact I actually have 3 days left until I have to move out, prepared? Not in the slightest.

To say farewell to the house we had a little end of year party with a select few nearest and dearest. It was decided that we were going to host a cocktail party with a black tie dress code, any excuse to dress up a bit snazzy! I thought it might be nice to make a few sweet treats for people to snack on during the night, would feel like a bit of a let down if I didn't make anything! In the end I opted for the quick, easy and ever popular Oreo Cheesecake along with something new that I have always wanted to make, boozy truffles! 

Recipe Catch-Up

Recently I have been living in Nottingham with my better half and his housemates but came back home in South Wales this week to help my mum with some much needed sorting out of my dad's belongings before I go off on my adventures at the end of September. Sorting out a relatives life into boxes, things to keep, things to give away, things to throw away, can be rather draining to say the least...definitely a job I have been putting off! I tend to live in a bit of a denial world, floating my way through issues by pretending they don't exist..not terribly effective and much to the dismay of my ma! But as she and my dad separated when I was young this job had to be done by me in the end...sigh. Denial world is so much easier!

Due to the above Im afraid I have not had the chance to bake so I do not have a recipe post for you this time round, but I missed blogging so thought I would use this opportunity to update you on some recipes I have made and loved but never blogged about :) Any photos in this post will not be my own, goodness me I wish I had photography skills like these...

Sweet Recipes

1. Lemon Posset by The Stone Soup

I haven't made this one for a long time now, but when I first discovered this gem of a recipe I couldn't stop making it! 3 simple ingredients (cream, lemon juice and sugar) and a stupidly simple recipe creates the smoothest, creamiest, most moorishly citrusy dessert...people will think you are a kitchen genius. I need to make this one again soon

Snickerdoodle Cookies

Hello all :) Lets get to the point and talk about one of my favourite topics, cookies. Cookies are just plain ace, I love them all...maybe not those with dried cranberries or cherries in..but thats just me, and they arn't very common, and lets be fair I would probably devour them anyway, so I stand by my original statement. Anyway, I baked these pillowy soft lovelies on a friday to take with me camping that weekend. I have always loved the look of snickerdoodles, cinnamon definitely being a favourite spice of mine, and planned on making the more 'classic' version using cream of tartar. However I found myself craving them the other day and sadly no cream of tartar on hand...so I wandered over to the ace site Joy of Baking (if you have not checked it out before you really should, its simply full of reliable, gorgeous and rated recipes) who had just the snickerdoodles I was looking for! They also point out that baking powder is equivalent to baking soda + cream of tartar, so it made me feel a little less bad for making the newer version!

Nyan Cat Cake

Hello lovely people! This is a bit of a random post without a new recipe as such, but my first proper solo cake decorating adventure so I thought I would share it with you :) I also have a fair bit of exciting news at the end too!

It was my better half's 25th birthday last friday, prompting many 'quarter of a century old' jokes, and it was our first birthday shared together so I wanted to try and make it a good'un! I got him a few prezzies, including an engraved pewter tankard so he can act like the lord of the manor, and I also made him a little toy hamster which you can see above (with slightly bent ears there for some reason!), as that is one of his nicknames for me..10 points if you guessed chubby cheeks!

Gooey Chocolate Coconut Bars

These are the rich delicious treats I hinted about in my chocolate chip cookie dough truffles post, and I promise you they were definitely worth the wait! Even though my photos are atrociously bad at the moment it doesn't really matter here as no photo would adequately show you how gooey, moist and how much depth of flavour these little bars had. I have made them twice already and will certainly be making them again :)

These went down a total storm, more so than I expected, and even a friend that admitted to being less than fond of coconut said they thought they were absolutely gorgeous. I recently applied to a waitressing job in a patisserie and, out of the 7 people that were at our house sampling these lovely treats, every one said I should take them along if I managed to get an interview to try and bribe the owners to hire me!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Truffles

  Hello all :) Sorry I am not posting quite as regularly as I would like, I have had lots of little bits n bobs going on now I have moved house (as well as a little bit of celebrating/chilling time too!) so it seems to take forever to just complete one post. Had a busyish couple of weeks, my graduation ball being one event which, despite the fact it was mainly a fairground outside in rather windy-rainy weather, was lovely! 

 I have made a couple of things since the rather gorgeous Oreo Cheesecake, but due to the camera dropping incident and the fact my phone camera struggles in the low-light conditions of late I didn't have anything decent I could show you. One of these bakes was a divine chocolate-coconut concoction which I can't wait to make again to show you, it was amazing!

Oreo Cheesecake-Pie

 Firstly, just to clear up the kind of funny name, this lovely dessert was originally called (Creamy) Oreo Pie. Apart from being made in a pie dish this was, in my opinion, in no way a pie..it was a cheesecake! A delicious refreshing no-bake cheesecake..in a pie dish. I got too many people asking/cheekily mocking about this being a 'pie' to not make a little change of name :)

Now thats over! On to the important stuff. This by FAR exceeded my expectations. I like Oreos as much as the next person but, as you might do, wondered how such a simple recipe with so few ingredients could make anything particularly noteworthy, nice maybe..but not very memorable. How wrong I was! This was definitely noteworthy, and so so easy that I will not hesitate to make it again in the future if I need a last minute impressive dessert that looks like it took hours to make :)

Rolo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

 Oh do I have a treat for you today! :) I have to say, I have always steered pretty clear of making my own chocolate chip cookies. Im not entirely sure why, but I would say its down to the fact that my first few attempts (a long longgggg time ago) produced overly sweet poor imitations of bakery cookies which just didn't float my boat. These however, putting my Gran's ginger biscuits to one side, I am pretty darn sure are my favourite cookie discovery to date. I am rather proud of them I have to say!

Baileys Chocolate Cake

 Hello all! It has been rather a long time hasn't it, but I am incredibly happy to be back blogging again :) Sorry I did not manage to post at all during my last year at uni, a bit more hectic than I imagined it would be! But I have a fair few bits and bobs to share with you, including my first recipe post as a free lady out of academia! 

Where to start, so final year was much tougher going than I anticipated but I thoroughly enjoyed it (I did Biology for those that don't know, specifying in Zoology). I completed my exams a few weeks back so now its just a waiting game for the results! Fingers crossed :)