Pumpkin spiced waffles

Hi. I hope you are all feeling more sprightly today than I do. Apparently, now I am 29, drinking 3/4 of a bottle of wine and 1 cocktail when out for dinner is enough alcohol to make the next day feel like there is a goblin in my head scratching his nails on a blackboard before taking a break to bulldoze into my grey matter.

Yesterday morning, when I was living my best life hangover free making pumpkin pie waffles in my pjs whilst listening to my favourite spotify playlist (which is a wonderful mix of Frank Sinatra and Justin Bieber), feels like a far away dream. But it did happen. These waffles did happen, as these blog friendly photos of me pouring maple syrup over bacon and them prove. Hmm bacon. Do you know what goes well with bacon. Pumpkin. Whether that pumpkin is stuffed with bacon and cheese and roasted (YUM) or pureed and popped in waffles, pumpkin and bacon is a dream team, so you should make these waffles y'all.

Copper pipe leaning ladder DIY

It will never cease to amaze and excite me, and disappoint and concern Will, the homewares you can diy with simple plumbing copper pipes.

You feel all practical and fancy because you are working with metal and drop terms like "copper pipe cutter" but really working with copper pipes is probably most akin to working with lego, so it suits me fine, and I have been gradually filling mine and Will's home with little copper pipe accessories. But Will does actually like this one! Or so he says.

I've been hankering after a decorative leaning ladder for a little while ago, as that is the kind of relatively useless but pinterest friendly home pieces I am into, being the basic bitch I am. Every visit to one of the antiques and junk shops round the corner I've kept an eye out, I've looked on ebay a dozen times, but how do you post a leaning ladder? The alternative, driving home in our two seater car with a ladder sticking out the window seems a little risky. But then exactly like an apple falling on the head of Isaac Newton it hit me - copper freakin pipes. Rose gold coloured, easily cut-able, easy to stick together copper pipes. One of my proudest creations is copper pipe based (I made this table from the tutorial on A Beautiful Mess) and this project is easier still.

Tuscan style bangers and mash

So a disclaimer: when I say "tuscan style" this isn't actually a recipe passed to me by a homely Italian woman, or something I enjoyed in a little trattoria in the countryside outside Pisa and have tried to replicate.

When I say Tuscan style what I mean is I cooked something I envisage a homely Italian woman might, if she too had left over sausages from her Sunday fry up, bags of tomatoes left over from her birthday pizza party, limited cooking skills and only enough energy after a Monday at work to do about 3 mins and 42 seconds worth of food prep.

Padella inspired spicy sausage, mascarpone and parsley pasta

Lols that the week following my PS where I promised I was back on the "I'll start posting every Sunday again" wagon, I only went and didn't post on a Sunday. My excuse was going to be that I am horrifically jet lagged following my trip to New Orleans, Miami and central America and I am still on Eastern standard time, but if I am on Eastern standard time it would just mean I am posting this only 43 hours late, rather than 48 so, yeah...

Anyhoo here is a "recipe" (I use that word loosely, as this thing is so damn easy to make you can do it even when you have just basically stumbled off a plane and into your kitchen, and are mainly only looking for a vehicle to transport parmesan cheese into your mouth). It was inspired by a bangin' (yes I said that) meal I devoured in Padella in Borough. The queues are long, but the fettucine is all the a-ok hand emoticons. Top tip, go on a rainy Monday at 5 to get a table and it will be the only time you don't have to wait in line.

Peppermint and white hot chocolate

Taking some time to read and write blogs has made my life a little better in countless ways: it has given me the courage to make outlandish homeware decisions like buying a teal velvet upholstered bed. It has reintroduced me to the relaxing world of Lush bath bombs. It has given me a reflective, creative outlet, and introduced me to a community of thoughtful, intelligent and artistic people. And, possibly most importantly, it has led me to be the type of person who makes their own hot chocolate. Come this time of year, the supermarket aisle with the tea and coffee is stacked with all the brands and all the flavours of easy peasy just add boiling water or milk hot chocolate. So who (but maybe chefs, and chocolatiers) would forgo those aisles full of easy peasy hot chocolate to grate, and heat and simmer? Lifestyle bloggers that is who.

The best hot chocolate I've ever had was in Angelina's in Paris, where I think they just basically melt bars of chocolate and serve it in a tea cup. They give you a jug of double whipped cream to help you take away the richness. Now that is the type of hot chocolate I am talking about, one so sweet and rich that double cream waters it down. None of this add boiling water supermarket stuff.

Not being a Parisian patisserie chef I don't have the Angelina recipe (though I would suggest melting a bar of dairy milk would get you quite close) but I love this recipe from Smitten Kitchen which is still rich and intense and delicious, but is maybe a little more drinkable day to day. Every year I make Smitten Kitchen's mix to include (along side some of my own blood and sweat and tears) in Christmas hampers for my friends and family, but this year I am getting in early with a little bit of experimenting. Christmas 2017 will be a real hot chocolate treat. I've swapped a little bit of the dark rich chocolate with some sweet white chocolate, but counteracted that with some peppermint to freshen it up. The result is deliciousness, in my opinion.

Christmas morning waffles

(or Boxing Day morning, or New Year's day morning, or one of those weird mornings between Christmas and New Year, as it is sort of ok to be late for work because you were having waffles for breakfast when it is the twenty something-th of December)

These waffles are a twist on one of my go to waffle recipes - A Beautiful Mess' Sour cream and caramelized banana waffles.

But I've added a teeny bit of booze to the sour cream, the left over cranberries you didn't need for your sauces and some Christmassy spices and huzzah. Christmas Waffles, perfect with a glass of bucks fizz to start off your big day.

5 ways to pimp your rice pudding in less than 5 minutes

Clockwise from top right: pumpkin spice rice pudding, chilli chocolate rice pudding, peanut caramel rice pudding, rocky road rice pudding.

Happy Sunday y'all! This week I started following Reese Witherspoon on instagram, and I think I am just gonna start addressing people as y'all now too. I find it very becoming with my Buckinghamshire accent. This week it was also World Kick Butt Day (on Thursday  according to my ban-do planner who is the authority on these sorts of things...you'll be glad to know the 29th is National Cat Day). In an attempt to kick my own butt, since Thursday I've been doing all sorts of fabulous things like meditating, exercising, dusting and experimenting with different additions to shop bought tinned rice pudding.

Quick! 2 barbecues to squeeze in before summer ends (and a recipe for a chilli tequila cocktail)

Those bacon skewer things have scallops in the middle of them.

So a large part of the reason I have fallen off the blogging band wagon again is because this summer with the help, blood and sweat of my generous and long suffering parents my boyfriend and I have replaced the deck in our garden. We had one before, but it was rotten with nails sticking out of it and bits you couldn't stand on for fear of falling through and the NHS advised you have an extra tetanus shot before walking on it, so it was not the place to host barbecues and citronella candle lit al fresco soires. But now, 45,640 metres (not the real figure) of decking and 1000 screws (genuinely the real figure) later, boom chacka lacka lacka boom, I have a new deck. And I am the first person to write boom chacka lacka lacka boom in text, probably.

Peach melba salted caramel ice cream sliders

Catchy name ey?

Hope you are all having lovely weekends (and this is posted on the weekend as I don't know how much I trust my old computer's ability to schedule posts). I am off at Glastonbury festival daaaaarling, so I hope for all our sakes it is ice cream sandwich weather in the UK.

Cos yes, despite the lengthy title and pretentious use of the word "slider" this is less of a recipe and more of instructions about how to assemble a good ice cream sandwich. A really good one.

Rhubarb and strawberry granita

British summertime is up to its usual tricks and toying with us at the moment - sweaty sunshine days on a Monday, and then slightly nippy rain all weekend. Thanks a bunch June, I am hoping you pull your act together pre- Glastonbury.

Anyway, on those days when the sun does finally show its face, I have been munching on this. And to be honest even on the days it doesn't, under a blanket whilst watching Once upon a Time on Netflix (my most recent Netflix addiction, don't judge me).

4 great birthday cake recipes, to make for people who don't like birthday cakes

The Easiest Ever Ice Cream cake by A Beautiful Mess

Happy Sunday-but-really-like-a-Saturday-morning! I hope you are enjoying the long weekend. Mine is being a little laborious at present, as we are attempting to paint our white lounge white, but we're making it up to ourselves with plenty of homemade aperol spritzes in the sun, and takeaways in front of the telly once we've finished for the day.

So anyway, birthday cakes. Most of my friends birthdays seem to congregate around summer, don't ask me, must have been something in the water in the winter months of the late 1980s. Despite my humungous addiction to sugar, I am not the biggest fan of birthday cake. All the butter cream icing and the dense rich cake, it is just too much.

3 ways to brunch with baked ricotta

Raspberry meringue baked ricotta (recipe 3 below) with wholemeal seeded waffles and maple syrup

Happy Sunday!

I hope you've had a lovely weekend so far, and are in for a lovely lazy day today. I am gearing up for a day of pottering, after having spent some of yesterday at Quaglino's near Green Park enjoying a bottomless prosecco brunch with some of my old school friends. I am really into the bottomless prosecco brunch thing (I have one next weekend too!) and am sort of tempted to put together a post on my favourites, but it would just be all the ones I've ever been to, as I don't think anywhere has given me limitless prosecco and I've decided I don't like it!