Great British Bake Off

Great British Bake Off - Semi Finals

I'm a few days behind again, but I'm not 100% sure who left, I've an inkling.

Contestants - Brendan, Danny, James and John are left. Brendan is still a little creepy, but I suspect he may be this years win. It will be well deserved, i just can't warm to him.

Since when did John want his life to be a pastry based, isn't he studying law? Although I gather things like this are life changing.

Signature - petit fours - small, exquisite, perfect, 3 baking elements I'm rubbish at. I don't even really like eating petit fours, I always get slightly bored with macaroons. No one makes 'proper' coconut macaroons any more do they?

Gosh, Danny's look pretty though, but there does appears to be lots of hiding things under icing sugar.

Technical Challenge - Frasier Cake - I don't think I've ever seen one, or eaten one. That all looks a nightmare to make. Oh poor Danny, that doesn't look good. Even I held my breath when Brendan was moving his onto the plate. I'm not sure how they manage not to give away anything during the judging, but I'm guessing that's clever camera work.

Showstoppers - choux pastry - ever since my brother did a catering GCSE, and we had to eat a lot of profiteroles because they were part of his exam and I've never really wanted one since. All of this patisserie nonsense is leaving me cold, Fancy cake just don't appeal to me at all.

Glad James got Star Baker. So sorry to see Danny go. Not sure on an all male final, but I'm a little bit desperate for James to win. More annoyingly I'm not back in the uk until Thursday....

The Fish Graveyard

I suppose I should update you on the fish - we've currently got 3 Isambard*, Nietzsche , Vince - they seem fine. The extreme cold did a few in and they probably need some proper TLC. Anyway - Pete and I were trying to recall other fish we'd had over the years so I started scanning the blog for fish related posts and I came across the fish graveyard from an old bit of my website that still floating around the tubes of the internet... So here it is - in memory of of the valiant pets of old. And for the ones that don't have little grave markers (or dates) Darnell Bertrand Pushkin Heisenburg I should possibly make a marker for the tomb of the unknown goldfish because I'm sure we've forgotten one... .. time for some more fish? Any ideas for names?? *We were slightly uncertain for a while if it was Heisenburg or Isambard that had survived

Tofu Recipe Round Up

More for my own benefit then anything else I'm going to round up my favourite go-to weeknight tofu recipes. This is different from my pinterest board which is full of things I haven't necessarily tried yet but look yummy. Vegan Tofu Taco Crumbles Vietnamese Fried Tofu w/ Tomato Sauce – Dau Sot Ca Chua (I airfry the tofu for this one) I also like to slather it in BBQ sauce and bake it for about 40 mins with peppers and onions before adding it to wraps with some salad. I've also found it's a great substitute for paneer in things - it's not quite there but it's close oh, and if I do need to press it, and I haven't got time (which is almost always) I used the microwave method from this chirpy little video

The Pretty, The Easy and the things on Sticks #2

I've spoken before about Pinterest, and how pretty everything is on there, but there's another side, a very definite, and I can only guess american trend - the easy fix. Easy cheats, how to make things without the effort, how to cheat, how to make restaurant specials at home, so you end up with a massive jug of frappachino mix or a dressing not too dissimilar from the amazing blue cheese dressing at Pizza Hut (this is our holy grail - we've gone to PH just to eat the Blue Cheese dressing) and it shows an interesting side of people, and if you look at the ingredients they use, and most of these tips and tricks would be impossible to remake outside of the states. Source: therebelchick.com via Rebecca E. on Pinterest This isn't a new thing - Top Secret Recipes was one of the first websites I remember checking back and linking too - even if I was looking at recipes I had no idea what the original tasted like, but it's impressive so much effort is given over to ma...

Worm's World

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