My baking obsession continues…

Since I discovered how easy it was to make bread I got the confidence to try other recipes – particularly sweet ones….! I have made chocolate muffins, spicy cocoa cookies with maple syrup, chewy molasses ginger cookies (to die for), oatcakes with cumin seeds and chilli, focaccia bread with olives, and pizza dough (plain and wholemeal)!

My brother-in-law keeps jokingly referring to ‘nest-building’ and ‘hormones’ by way of explanation (I will get my own back, don’t worry), but seriously, I am not sure why I am feeling this urge to bake. I wondered if it was partly a creative outlet or if it’s more about relaxation since when I am following a recipe I have to focus on what I am doing so I tend not to dwell on other things like work!

Speedy chocolate muffins

Veggie pizza with wholemeal dough

Spicy cocoa cookies - suitable for vegans!

The problem is, I am making so much yummy stuff that we are eating rather a lot! Particularly the cookies are more-ish. I got the recipe from a US blogger http://honestfare.com so I’ve had to adapt them, e.g. because they use ‘cups’ as a measure, or look up some of the ingredients that are hard to get or unheard of over here (turbinado sugar, for example, was new to me - the closet UK equivalent is Demerara sugar, if you’re interested). I had trouble finding blackstrap molasses in Stirling and discovered that black treacle is more or less the same thing – I hadn’t realised! I like the fact that if you don’t fancy one of the ingredients you can just leave it out or substitute it (like the cloves I left out of the chewy cookies, and the cumin seeds I added to the oatcakes rather than fennel seeds).

Oatcakes with cumin and chilli



Focaccia with olives and sea salt

Chewy molasses ginger cookies- they are a bit flat and rectangular because they spread more than anticipated in the oven and I had to cut them into cookies! Next time they'll be round - I still have half the dough in the freezer!

I’ve found some good recipes on the BBC website and now am sticking to that, the blog and known names like Delia having picked up a nasty computer virus from one of the amateur recipe sites I had visited. I am going to start looking for some more savoury recipes to try to avoid the ‘muffin top’ look from too many cakes!

Spring is here

It suddenly occurred to me the other day that it’s 3 years since we moved to Stirling – it seems to have gone by so quickly. It’s about as long as we lived in Bishop’s Stortford which was our longest-lived address as a couple.

I’ve been keeping myself busy and finally went on my first hill walk of 2010. I gave myself a gentle reintroduction and chose a fairly short walk up a hill I know quite well – Ben Ledi near Callander. Even so, my thigh muscles hurt for 2 to 3 days afterwards particularly going up or down stairs! I went with a friend from the university - Staffan who is originally from Sweden and who works for the British Trust for Ornithology (birds!) - who offered to drive.

The weather was good till half an hour before we finished the walk and when we arrived back at the car we were met by 2 very wet and drunken Glaswegians who asked for directions to the nearest pub! Somehow Staffan didn’t notice their drunkenness until after he’d offered them a lift into Callander! They claimed to be on a charity walk – carrying a black bin bag full of Budweiser - and said they had spent hours going round in circles looking for Callander but that every signpost they saw said it was 7 miles away! Anyway, they were well-behaved and even insisted on giving us a tenner for us to get a drink! Having deposited said drunken Scots in the town, we ended our day in the Laid Inn pub where I had my usual tea and shortbread!

A few pics of what we've been up to recently and of some local landmarks.

Our street

View from Mine Woods towards Dunblane and Highlands

Spring daffodils just coming out mid-April, Kings Park, Stirling


Brave, hungry duck, Stirling Uni campus

On Easter Sunday we had a wee Easter party with friends and family – everyone brought something to eat or drink and we had some really lovely cakes. I used the opportunity to bake some bread- a wholemeal loaf and a soda bread loaf. I wasn’t expecting my nephews to eat it as they tend to like what they know but one of them loved it so I’ve given my sister the recipe! Sonia baked her Catalan cake- the ‘Mona,’ Antoine from Brittany baked a lovely orange cake, jenny (part Scottish, part Argentinean, raised in Venezuela!) make empanadas – like pasties.

Easter party, our place


View of Stirling castle & distant mountains

Michael and I have been out for a few bike rides and walks around the local area – we can walk to nearby Bridge of Allan in about 30 minutes so we’ve done that a few times and we cycled a different route through the Mine Woods between there and Dunblane – we saw 2 of the red kites hunting over the fields and a male pheasant foraging in the bushes. We had a lovely sunny day last weekend and we walked to Kings Park where the daffodils have finally come out after the cold spell and snow we had recently. Spring has come late in Scotland!

Our new local - the Birds & the Bees pub