Mmm! Saturday Recipe Photo How To | Cooking up a storm! How to make… Nan & Grandad’s Homemade Profiteroles

As weekends go in our family, there is always a LOT of cooking and baking to be done. Ever since I was born, and for a gazillion years before that, my Nan and Grandad have cooked up a treat for our large family.

On any given Saturday you will find my Nan & Grand, Betty and Eric to you, pottering away in the kitchen mixing and stirring, slicing and dicing, and dishing up yummy treats for anyone of the family who happens to pop by.

Saturday is Lentil Soup day. Homemade Lentil Soup day. This is often accompanied with those warm part-baked fresh bread rolls and lashings of butter, slathered on with the cream old-fashioned butter knives that my mum picked up on a trip to the Lake District. Either those rolls or ‘Baby Bread’ aka Warburtons Milk Roll. Mmm! My Nan and Grandad are also AMAZING pudding makers! Over the years, we’ve all been spoilt rotten every Sunday with a selection of around 3 or 4 puddings to choose from following our BIG FAT Sunday Roast! The usual homemade suspects include: Steamed Syrup Sponge Pudding and Birds Custard, Steamed Chocolate Sponge Pudding and Dairy Milk Chocolate Creamy Custard, Apple Crumble, Strawberry Flan and cream, Scones, Coconut cake and of course… Profiteroles!

There are usually 10-14 of us squeezed around their trusty Ercol circular dining table, with a few spare IKEA JEFF chairs being brought out for good measure. Some of us often end up sitting in the front room with dinner on our laps. We don’t care where we eat it, it still tastes great! Dinner is a raucous affair but one that we all cherish dearly.

Oh how I miss it now that I don’t live up north anymore!

Profiteroles… Mmm! Choux Pastry.

Makes over 20!

Ingredients:

• 75g Plain Flour
• Pinch of Salt
• 150ml of water
• 50g butter
• 2 standard eggs, well beaten

1. Sift flour and salt, twice.
2. Put butter and water into a saucepan, heat slowly until butter melts and then bring to brisk boil.
3. Turn down the heat slightly and tip in the flour.
4. Stir briskly until the mixture forms a stiff ball and leaves the sides of the pan clean.
5. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly for around 10-15 mins.
6. Add eggs gradually and beat firmly until mixture looks shiny, smooth and firm enough to stand up in soft peaks.
7. Use immediately, or keep in saucepan and cover with a lid to stop the pastry from drying out.
8. Use spoons to dollop profiterole-shaped balls (ping pong ball size) of the glossy mixture onto a greased baking tray.
9. *BBC FOOD suggests: “Before closing the oven door, pour half a cup of water into the roasting tin at the bottom of the oven, then quickly shut the door. This helps to create more steam in the oven and make the pastry rise better.” But my Grandad doesn’t do this any they are still delish!
10. Bake for 25-30mins or until golden brown.
11. Remove from oven and pierce the base of each profiterole to let out the steam. CAREFUL NOW!
12. Return to oven for 5 mins to dry out centres.
13. Remove from oven for final time and whip up some cream for the centre. Some people suggest adding flavours to your cream - for example, a hint of coffee or orange zest!
14. Once profiteroles have cooled - fill then with cream - you can use a piping bag if you have one, however, my Gan and Grandad are more hands-on and make a cut in the side and fill it with cream that way. Taste’s just as good!
15. My Nan and Grandad melt Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Chocolate in a glass bowl over a pan of hot water. They then top the cooled profiteroles with lashings of melted chocolate.
16. Serve piled high and be prepared to fight off family members for the last one!

03.07.12 :: How to get #DIY Wavy Beach Hair at home with a £24.99 @tresemmeuk Curling Wand from @Argos_Online in 10 steps!

1. Blast your freshly washed hair dry with a hair dryer. I use a Tangle Teezer, from £9.95 at Urban Retreat, to get the ‘lugs’ out of my ever-so-knotty hair. I’m wearing my Caro Turquoise Blue & Pink Beautiful Floral Print Kimono Dressing Gown, £43.99, a gift from JMG, from the Maya Rose Boutique.

2. Tools of the trade. I use the Phillips CareControl Ionic Hairdryer to quickly blast my hair dry roughly using my fingers, my sister’s trusty hand-me-down GHD’s, and a Tresemme Curling Wand, £24.99 from Argos. I first experienced the joys of a Curling Wand when having my hair done at Rachel Hammond at Highcross, in Leicester. Having mastered the art of curling my hair with straighteners some years back, I was amazed at just how quick the Curling Wand was compared to using *GHD’s or a similar straightening device. *I still use the GHD’s to straighten my fringe mind you!

3. Section hair into a ‘long-hair-and-a-pony’ or half-up/half-down type ‘do. I usually divide the bottom section into 4 separate pieces to get the wave that I like best.

4. The Curling Wand is more forgiving than using Straighteners when curling you hair as they are much much hotter (so hot, in fact, that it comes with a safety glove to protect your bare hand from the heat!) and, therefore, can handle slightly chunkier sections of hair.

5. Lay the curling wand on top of the section of hair you wish to curl and then wrap the hair, from underneath, up and over the wand. Hold hair onto wand for around 25-30 seconds depending on how easy your hair is to curl. Unravel the hair and whilst holding the bottom of the section of hair, shake it out loosely. 

6. Once you have done the bottom section of your hair, slowly work your way up, taking down small sections of hair and adding them to your finished waves. Leave an inch or two uncurled at the end of your hair to keep waves from looking too uniform. The more natural and organic looking the curl… the less of a ‘Chav-with-a wet-look-perm’ you will look!

7. When you have reached the top of your hair and have curled all sections, take smaller random sections of hair and curl them separately to add movement to the look.

8. I have a very straight full fringe and so to soften the look slightly, I grabbed the longer pieces of side fringe and wound them gently around the Curling Wand.

9. Because I’d blasted the hair roughly, it was still a little bit damp, even after using the Curling Wand, and so I decided to twist the hair a and pin it up to set the curls further.

10. Spritz with a liberal dose of Tresemme Freeze Hold Hairspray, £4.99 for a large 500ml can from Boots.  and your Beachy Hair is finished!

The finished look… Tousled and wild! Just how I like it! Now find a field and roll in it.

Photograph by Heather Tait - more to come from this shoot… messing around in farmer’s fields and such lark!

01.06.12 :: #DIY Fringe Benefits | How to bring your wardrobe upto Season with a little help from eBay and a spot of stitching.

I bought this Oriental Paisley Print Kimono, £50, from Topshop about a year ago I think… Judging by these photos…  as I’m still a brunette.

I bought it using some gift vouchers I’d received off a family member and so didn’t feel too guilty splurging a rather indulgent fifty quid on one little, yet very beautiful, kimono.

However, a year has passed and what do I see popping up in the shops again? Kimono’s.

Rather than buy another one, as tempting as that may be, I opted to search eBay for some black fringing, or trimming as it is also known, which I could cut to size and stitch quite easily around the edges of the sleeves and the bottom of the Kimono to bring it bang unto date. 

Here is the fringing that I bought.

I needed 3 metres of the stuff to do both sleeves and the bottom edge. It costs £3.99 per metre length, and so for under £15 I was able to re-vamp my trusty kimono into something that I could wear again this summer, and autumn and winter.

The fringed tassels are around 8” (20cm) in length and are perfect for adding a little extra length to the bottom of your existing kimono, top, dress, skirt, shorts, belt, etc.

I used dress-maker pins to make-do-and-mend my very own fringing to my kimono. I decided to handstitch the trim from the inside, and try and not stitch through both layers of fabric so that the stitches looked invisible, neater and did not pucker the lovely fabric.

It took quite a while, a couple of hours I’d say, to pin and handstitch, it’d obviously be much quicker to use a sewing machine… but I enjoyed the challenge.

I wore mine over a simple taupe racerback jersey dress, a tan plaited waist belt, light blue denim leggings and studded Vectra black pumps from Topshop.

Photography: © Lucie Kerley

13.05.12 :: My DIY Tie-Dye Maxi Dress & @YBDfashion @LamaPeach Paige Boots

After seeing the SS12 Tie-Dye trend EVERYWHERE I decided to give it a go myself, after a bit of YouTube research, and see what crazy things I could whip up! Therefore, reversioning your existing wardrobe without paying a penny, except for the bleach which you should already have in the house! It’s a great technique for breathing new life into clothes that you’re a little bit bored with.

Et Voila!

Read on for how I did it…

It looks great with my Lama Peach Paige Summer Ankle Boots from Young British Designers. 

Here’s how I made me #DIY Tie-Dye Maxi Dress:

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