rose & marshmallow tarts | recipe

One of the things I love to make the most are tarts, which I suppose is quite odd considering they're never my first choice of pudding (give me cake any day), but I really love how versatile a tart can be. There's so many different flavour combinations and colour coordination's that you can get out of one recipe and they never fail to look exceptionally pretty. When I give out tarts at work once I've made them too, they always seem to go down better than when I pass over a cake. I'm not sure why that is, but perhaps because they're slightly more presentable? 

Well, unfortunately, these tarts never managed to be that presentable. As I've become a bit of a bag lady recently and always seem to be carting my handbag, a backpack and another bag, fitting in cakes and sweet treats has become easier said than done. And on the morning I took these into work, the Tupperware fell out of my bag, and they went splat inside the box. When I got to work, you couldn't see inside the box for bright pink. 

Fair play to my colleagues, who still ate them in their messy states, and luckily they said they tasted very nice, even if we did have to scrape some of the filling out of the box with a spoon. So there we have it, my recipe for rose and marshmallow tarts! If you make them, try not to drop them!

Ingredients

For the pastry

350g  plain flour

pinch salt

125g unsalted butter

125g caster sugar

2 whole eggs

2 egg yolks

For the crème pâtissière

500ml full fat milk

6 egg yolks

120g caster sugar

50g plain flour

2 tbsp rose flavouring 

2 tbsp marshmallow fluff

Pink food colouring 

For the topping

Rose petals

Edible glitter

Method

Preheat the oven to 190C
Lightly grease and flour 12 x 8cm tart tins
Stir the flour and salt together in a large mixing bowl
Add the butter from the fridge into the flour and rub in
Add the sugar
Mix together the eggs and egg yolk,
Add to the mixture
Gently mix until the dough comes together in a ball
Knead until you have a smooth soft dough.
Place the dough the fridge to chill for at least two hours
Remove the pastry from the fridge and lightly flour a work surface
Roll out the pastry and line the 12 tins, leaving an overhang of pastry.
Place some greaseproof paper over the top and fill with baking beans
Rest in the fridge for 30 minutes, then bake for 15 minutes
Lift out the paper and beans and brush with beaten egg yolk
Place back in the oven for 8 minutes
Remove from the oven and cool for 15 minutes
Then trim the edges and cool

For the crème patissière, warm the milk through with the rose flavouring
Place the eggs, sugar and flour in a bowl and whisk until the colour becomes pale
Gradually add the warm milk to the egg mixture
Whisk together, then return the mixture to the pan
Cook on a low heat until it the mixture thickens, then pour into a clean bowl
Once cold, add drops of food colouring to your preffered colouring and fold in the marshmallow fluff gently
Cool in the fridge, adding rose petals and edible glitter to serve

a little visit to maltby street market | london

I've always thought it was a great shame that Borough Market isn't open on a Sunday. Personally, I think Sundays are better days to head off in search of hangover cure street food at a market. In search of doing exactly that, last Sunday I wandered on down to Maltby Street Market in Bermondsey, not far from Tower Bridge. It took me slightly longer than I thought it would do to get there - which is entirely my own fault - as unfortunately Maltby Street market isn't as close to the tube as Borough Market is. To be fair though, as there's some serious food on offer, a little walk won't have done me much harm! 

Apart from both being markets and both serving a pretty impressive selection of food, that seems to be where the comparisons between Borough Market and Maltby Street Market end. Maltby Street Market opened in 2010, is much smaller and also happens to have quite a few less tourists and be less crowded than Borough Market, which is quite a plus point in its favour for those of us nursing sore heads. The market itself is hidden away in a railway viaduct, which also houses a reclamation yard, which can help to explain the unusual timber products, prison cell doors and signs that you'll find dotted around the market as you walk along. 

Unbelievably, I didn't actually eat much when I was here. I can't eat bread at the moment, which was almost painful because I don't think there's anything better than eating home baked bread, especially when it's of the sourdough variety. I could have bought nearly every single loaf photographed above, but sadly it wasn't to be. However, next time I go back I'll be all over the halloumi fries from Oli Baba's which were  Also highly recommended is Little Bird Gin. 

I'll definitely be back to Maltby Street, if you haven't checked it out I really recommend that you do so! It's pretty much foodie heaven hidden away, and perfect for those hungover Sunday walks 

a little visit underground | clapham south.

I have a slight confession to make, a sort of guilty pleasure if you will, and that is that I'm a massive transport geek. Now you won't find me on a train platform taking photos with a little notebook recording S-stock London Midland trains coming in and out of Birmingham New Street, but I doubt you'll be able to tell me a little fact about the tube network I haven't heard before. I know which stations were abandoned, I know about the various disasters and mysterious, which stations are supposedly haunted and which areas of London have dummy houses hiding the lines. I've read books about tube lines and am secretly jealous of people who've walked all the tube lines.

And then the news reported that they'd be opening up Clapham South station for tours and I knew I had to join in. Partly because of the whole transport geek thing and partly because I live in Clapham. I don't know where the line is below my house, but it must be pretty close because I can pick up the tube's wifi from my bedroom, and sometimes hear the tubes rumbling below me at night. It took me ages to get a ticket - it turns out there are quite a few people in London who want to go underground and we did have to wait quite a long time to get on our tour. 

Clapham South tube has one of the only purpose built air raid shelters which the public can still access. Before this, Londoners had been using tube stations on the platforms, until a bomb hit the Balham station killing 66 people and then Bank station killing 111 people. The government realised they had to do something and started building underground shelters - without telling anyone what they were doing. Mounds of earth appeared on Clapham Common, and because it was during the Second World War, no one questioned where all the earth had come from or why it had been dumped on the Common. 

We headed down hundreds of circled steps to the sound of the air raid sirens - a little cheesy but it did make me think about all of the people who'd had to run down those steps before me genuinely fearing for their lives and homes. When we finally reached the bottom, we were greeted by our guide and a mass of tunnels which seemed to stretch on forever. It was impossible to work out where you were in relation to the ground above - every time we tried to work out which direction Balham or Clapham Common was, we got it wrong. 

The shelters had room for 8,000 people, all of whom had a bunk. There were kitchens, a medical room, toilets and a game room. You had to bring your own stuff up and down with you each night - and believe me, after hauling my fat bum up the stairs at the end of the tour, I wouldn't have been wanting to do that holding clothes and a duvet. Having said that, the only time you got to keep your belongings down there during the day was if your house got bombed. So maybe I'd have picked the slightly exhausting option...

I learnt that the shelters were later used to house soldiers, as a cheap hostel during the Festival of Britain in 1951 and also as a stop for those who came to England on the Empire Windrush - and is partly why Brixton is so multi-cultural to this day, as the nearest job centre to the tube station was in Brixton. 

Similar tunnels in Clapham Common are being used for storage, tunnels in Clapham North are being used to grow vegetables and herbs in controlled conditions which I think is pretty awesome. Even though the tunnels aren't often open to the public these days, if you do get a chance to do and see them, take it! The guides were so enthusiastic and even though the tour wasn't cheap, I feel like I got value for every penny. I'm already looking into taking another trip down to other stations, like Down Street. If you're a bit of a tube geek like me, or into your London history, you'll find it hard to join a more interesting tour. 

limoncello macaons | the macaron disaster diary

It hasn't been all that long since I last featured my macaron failures, but the bloody things are frustrating me so much that I have essentially been trying to make them every weekend. The amount of egg whites and ground almonds I've been through in the past month is almost criminal. Only a few things are keeping me sane in the process of making macarons and that's that sometimes the people who do this for a living find it as hard as me to make them (I'm looking at you Juniper Cakery...) and secondly, is that even macaron failures taste pretty edible good even if they do look a little bit pants. 

Unlike last time, my issue wasn't the browning of the colour on the top of the macaron. I've recently invested in some pretty awesome food colouring, and they've withstood the oven a little better than previously. Not to mention I pretty much sat on the floor of the kitchen staring into the oven à la Bake Off so that they wouldn't brown. We'll just ignore the previous batch that I accidentally grilled, yep? They're still not smooth and I really am going to have to take my own advice and start to blitz the crap out of my dry ingredients before they go into the wet ingredients. But you know, progress is being made. Maybe? And at least I'm getting the fillings right each time. 

I wanted to document each failure until I got it wrong. Honestly, when I first started making macarons a few years ago I had no idea they were this difficult, and that was just from me reading blogs and being naive. I don't think it harms anyone to see that everything isn't always perfect. 

Lemon is one of my favourite flavours to use in cakes, but I never really use limoncello. I don't know why this is, but I do think it might have something to do with one of my earliest memories of going on holiday to Sorrento in Italy and being dragged on a limoncello tasting tour. I was nowhere near old enough to drink and found the whole thing to be incredibly dull. I vividly remember being given an almond to eat on the tour too and hating it, and my brain brings up the almond hatred each time I think of limoncello. It's funny how the brain works. I think I'd quite like a limoncello tasting tour these days...

I don't know about you though, but everyone seems to have a bottle of limoncello hiding away in a cupboard somewhere, whether it's because of someone else's trip to Italy or because they once needed a drop for a cocktail, and I've found that rather than drinking it, I'd rather be whacking it into a bake. 

So here's a quick and easy recipe for limoncello buttercream, which can easily be used on cakes, and not just rubbish macarons 

Ingredients:

90g butter softened
300g soft cheese
100g icing sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons limoncello 

Method:

Beat the butter until it's really soft
Add in the icing sugar and cream cheese
Beat until it becomes smooth and glossy
Add in the limoncello
You can add in a little more limoncello if you think the icing can handle it!

As always, tips are welcome!