THANK YOU VERY MUCH

So i tried to do this with my last post but for some reason it just wouldn't work. i am just going to do it in a post all by itself.
I would like to say a big thank you to:

TheWitchWriter

@TheWitchWriter Crawford ville Florida

Butcher, Baker, and Candlestick maker. Slayer of things that go bump in the night. Witch. Mom. Wife. Writer.

http://bellafoxglove.blogspot.com/

I have been wanting to blog for ages and i have made several attempts at it before finding something that i am comfortable with and i would stick too. never i have i gotten such a warm welcome and support from a stranger across the ocean, like miss Bella Foxglove have given me. thanks to her i now have 6 followers on my blog and even though to some it does not seem like much, to me that's encouragement. so Bella my dear thank you very much.

 

I would also like to say thank you to those following me on twitter:

Cornelia's Kitchen

@corneliakitchen Bali

All good food starts from scratch !!

http://www.corneliaskitchen.com

Stephanie Manley

@copykatrecipes Houston, TX

Cookbook author, and blogger of http://www.copykat.com,

I recreate restaurant recipes at home. Studying to be a science teacher, wish me luck!

http://www.copykat.com

 

Very Good Recipes

@VeryGoodRecipes Paris

Creator of VeryGoodRecipes, a site for people who publish and read food & cooking blogs. Check out the food blogs map: http://verygoodrecipes.com/food-blogs-map

http://verygoodrecipes.com

 

DUKES BAR

@DUKESBARLONDON St James' London

Visit DUKES BAR, in the distinguished Dukes Hotel, for the finest cocktails in London, served by the legendary Alessandro Palazzi and his team.

http://www.dukeshotel.com/foodanddrink-dukesbar.php

I am still hopping that i could get an interview and a video demonstration for my blog from this guy. i am gonna keep begging.

 

Luna Raven

@lunaraven13 Oakland Ca

Whimsy with class, Kitchen Witch, Siren, self taught artist, food lover, crocheter, crafty girl, writer, rockstar ;)

http://lasirenenoir.blogspot.com/

my lovely luna, just so you know all you witches are dear to my heart. this world would have been gone if not for you guys. keep up the good fight.

 

There are so many others, if i did not mention you that doesn't mean i have forgotten you. thank you all for your support. it is very helpful.

Please, please don't forget to comment on my blog, tell me what you think of my work. one of the main reasons i started this is to share with people communicate, exchange of ideas, so please do not hesitate.

 

 

Having my cake and eating it

I have been in a mood latterly. Asking myself those existential questions and so on, But I have come to the conclusion that in order to move on one must let go. And I mean let go of everything, just let go. You know what people, easier said than done, letting go is hard. I wish I was one of those people who just don’t care and don’t give a frack.

Well I am not and right now things are bringing me down I feel stuck and its driving me insane. That being said there are a few things that cheers me up, music and cooking are two of those things. Where I am going with this?

I listen to an old song I heard when I was younger, from lord of the dance which brought me into this Irish mood. Sometimes the Irish just don’t care they move on with their life they can be passionate  about things, so I got myself into the Irish mood and I wanted to cook something Irish inspired.

Hey when I hear Irish I think Guinness, whiskey, baileys, and a few other things. But for today we are going to stay on those. I decided despite my diet, despite all the crap that’s going on I am going to give myself a little bit of pleasure in the form of a few cup cakes. Do you guys see where I am going with this?

Chocolate Guinness cup cake, with a baileys and whiskey filling, topped with whipped cream lightly dusted with chocolate powder. Can you say yummmm and hell yes!

Now some people find the name Irish car bomb offensive, I think it’s a cute name for a cup came so I am calling my cup cakes

Irish Car Bomb Cup Cakes:

Here’s what you will need for the cakes:

125g of unsalted butter

125ml Guinness

75g of dark chocolate (I use 90% cacao)

140g of self raising flour

2tbsp baking soda

200g of sugar



What you need for filling



2 eggs

75g of sour cream

For the filling you will need:

100g of chocolate (again dark chocolate 90%)

60ml of bailey’s Irish cream

60ml of double cream

25ml of whiskey

Method:

Mix butter, chocolate and Guinness in a sauce pan on a slow heat till everything is melted together. Set aside and let cool down.

Mix flour, baking soda, sugar into a mixing bowl then add the Guinness mixture

Then add the egg and sour cream. Fill up your cup cake tins and cook for 15m in an oven at 180 degrees Celsius.  Stick a tooth pick into the cup cake if it comes out clean then it is ready. Put aside to cool and get ready to make your  filling.

Filling: in a sauce pan add chocolate, double cream, bailey’s Irish cream, and whiskey and stir on a small heat till the whole thing is melted together. It’s like making a basic garnish.

Once that is done, set aside to cool down. If you can’t wait that long I suggest you cool it down in a cold `Bain Marie`.

For the decoration:

Decorating is very simple, first you make a hole in the cup cake by using a cupcake corer, if you don’t have one, by all means be imaginative. I used a very small cookie cutter. Once that is done fill the cupcakes with the chocolate baileys and whiskey filling replace the top.

Top the cupcakes with some fresh whipped cream, dust lightly with chocolate powder and finally place a cherry a mint leave on top of the cream, and voila.

For me the best part about this is sharing the cup cakes with others, seeing their reactions, reminds me why I am a person who cares, why it’s so hard for me to let go of things.

I still believe there are certain things that I am going to need to let go of in order to move on and enjoy my life, but until then I will always have cupcakes and smiles.

“It is easy to be pleasant when life flows by like a song, but the man worthwhile is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong. For the test of the heart is trouble, and it always comes with years, and the smile that is worth the praises of earth is the smile that shines through the tears.”

 Irish saying

Cocktails with Richard Kovacs at B@1

I remember as a kid I saw the movie cocktail with Tom Cruise, Bryan Brown and Elisabeth Shue. I don`t think I got the full impact of that movie till years later when I grew up, but I do remember having a crush on tom cruise and loving all the party atmosphere that this film showed. Until a year ago I was enjoying the immense pleasure of working behind a bar making cocktails.

In my opinion there are two different categories of cocktail making, mixology and flair bartending.

The first is the pure art of mixing drinks, where as the later is more for show. The art of entertaining. Both categories have their merits, but in the end I remain a purist. To me mixology is where the chef meets the barman, add to that hundreds of people in front of you begging you to make them drinks after drinks, the music pumping, the occasional flirt from a sexy young lady, and you’re a rock star. Life for a barman can be good, and before you know it you’re feeling like tom cruise in cocktail.

Yesterday I went to London and visited my favourite cocktail bar, The B@1 Soho. B@1 is a chain of cocktail bars that open their doors for the first time in may 1998 in Battersea Rise London. 13 years and 9 more bars later, B@1 is a brand name well known in London and still growing. I remember the first time I set foot in the b@1 Soho, what a welcome I got it was fantastic, so much so that next weekend I brought a few friends with me, and boy did we have a blast, but that’s a whole different story.

Let me introduce you to young Richard Kovacs. Richard does both classic mixology and flair bartending. He was studying to become a computer engineer and started bartending only as a means of earning extra cash to enter BMX competition (if you don’t know what BMX is follow link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMX)

What Richard likes about his job at the B@1 is the chance of creating new drinks, meeting new people and like anyone in the bartending industry making people happy.

Today Richard is showing us how to make a planter’s punch.

Planter’s Punch:

1.25oz of black seal gosling’s rum

0.25oz grenadine syrup

0.5oz lime juice

3oz orange juice

Fill your serving glass with ice and set aside. In a cocktail shaker add rum, lime juice, grenadine and orange juice. Shake then pour over ice. Decorate with a slice of orange. Enjoy.

(Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_cocktails)

We will be visiting B@1 regularly to see what young Richard Kovacs and his other team mates have in store for us.

 Enjoy the video and don`t forget to comment.

Sweet memories

When I was a child I always saw my grandmother as a witch. Not a crocked nose wicked Hansel and Gretel witch, more like good Samantha in bewitched. I believed that for several reasons.

One I was a child with a huge imagination.

Two the Caribbean culture is filled with stories of witches and if there are bad ones there must be good ones.

Finally three because of the things she was capable of. My grandmother had her own garden with herbs, mangos and cacao growing.  When I could not sleep at night she would make me a wild basil infusion that would knock me out like a log or if I was sick with a cold she would give me some herb remedy that would put me back into shape the next day.

Rest her soul she passed away at the ripe age of 98 and it really hit me hard. I think of her quite often and when I do I think of the dishes she made me as a child. One of my favourites was her bread pudding dessert. Now every culture has their own variation of this desert but my grandmother’s will always be the best one for me, to the point where I can’t enjoy any other.

This is a very easy desert to make and the recipe I am giving you can easily serve up to ten people.

Maggie’s Caribbean Bread pudding

Ingredients:

1kg stale white bread without the crust

75cl milk

200g brown caster sugar

2tbsp cinnamon

Pinch of nutmeg

1tsp vanilla extract

100g soft unsalted butter

50g raisins

50ml dark rum

6 whole eggs

Preparation

Mix milk, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Bring to a boil, or microwave so the milk is hot. Make sure the sugar has melted into the milk.

Pour liquid mixture over bread and let soak for 5 minutes. Crush the bread into the milk make sure there are very few chunks.

Add butter, vanilla extract to the mixture and mix till well incorporated.

Add eggs, mixing them in one at a time.

Finally mix rum soaked raisins in.

Pour your mixture into a greased pan, put into a pre heated oven at 180 ̊c and cook for 35 to 45 minutes.

Plunge a knife into the centre if the knife comes out clean then it is ready. Let it rest for an hour, and voila!

Bonne appetite.

Tips: sprinkle some caster or icing sugar over the pudding as soon as it comes out of the oven. This should give your pudding a nice shine

If you don`t have time to soak your raisins over night, you can bring them to a boil in some water stain the water out and then add them to the rum while still warm and let them settle for 10 to 15 minutes in the rum before using.

This is just the basic recipe but can be transformed into a very fancy dessert for your dinner parties. For example I once served this with caramelised pineapple rings and a ball of rum raisin ice cream.

As you can see in the photo, I dusted it with icing sugar added a ball of raspberry sorbet and drizzled with summer fruit dressing.

This pudding can be eaten cold or warm. I personally prefer having it warm.

Enjoy and don’t forget to comment.