you capture: spring

This week we took the Little One to the Japanese Spring Festival at the local botanic gardens. I thought it was a perfect opportunity to take some photos for the You Capture challenge this week. I meant to include some photos of the Little One herself but the internet that I mooch from my sister in law (thank you April!) is being super slow.

As you can tell I've been playing around with my little photography logo and name. I figure that I can do that since I'm not a professional and have no clue what I'm doing anyway. Just don't tell anyone that.




Be sure to check out everyone else's Spring pictures out by visiting I Should Be Folding Laundry 

Traditional British Pudding

The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet. I did not use suet as it is an animal product. I used a steamed chocolate pudding recipe from www.puddingclub.com. I made four baby puddings instead of one larger one. They weren't great plain but they were pretty great topped with some french vanilla ice cream and some chocolate sauce. The strawberries didn't hurt either. here is the converted recipe:

Steamed Chocolate Pudding

1/2 C Butter

1/2 C Castor (Powdered)Sugar

1/2 Self Rising Flour

2 Tbs Cocoa

2 Eggs

1/4 C Chocolate Chips

Cream the butter & sugar together until light and fluffy. Sift the flour and sugar together and add a little at a time along with the egg. Stir in half the chocolate chips. Place the remaining chocolate chips on the base of your greased (1.1 litre) pudding bowl. Add the dough. Steam for 1 1/2 hours. Turn out and serve with chocolate sauce, custard, or extra thick (whatever that is!).

See steaming method below...

Here are my ramekins wrapped in aluminum foil and secured with rubber bands. I steamed them in a large pot with a steamer basket but you could easily use a crock pot. I used tongs to remove them when they were done as they were very hot. I cooked them for the full hour and a half even though they were smaller.

you capture: comfort

This week's challenge was ...well challenging. My daughter is my favorite subject (as you can probably tell) so I decided to go with something (other than myself) that she finds comfort in. Her kitty.

Hope that you all are having a great week!

you capture: feet

 I don't know if you have noticed, but as much as I love baking...I actually have come to love photography more. I came across this "group" I suppose you could say. It's called You Capture and they give out photography assignments every week. I don't know if there is such thing as a "cooking & photography blog" but there is now. Like the Nester says... this is my blog and I can mess it up anyway I want to. So without further ado i present to you my first assignment...feet

For a long time there were only your footprints and laughter in our dreams and even from such small things, we knew we could not wait to love you forever.

–Brian Andreas