Happy Easter

There's no sense of scale, but these are actually the little miniature daffodils about 6" high, and the ground was too damp for me to kneel down to eye-level. I spotted them yesterday on my way to collect a package.

Slightly thankful for the cold weather this weekend, as it meant I was able to leave these Hot Cross Buns (sans crosses, too much trouble, and anyway we were eating them today) rising overnight in the back porch and they were just perfectly ready to go in the oven this morning. 

I've been making this recipe for many, many years - over 35 anyway. It comes from a National Trust book "Christmas and Festive Day Recipes" which my father brought back from one his school trips to London, and I distinctly remember cooking from it when my parents were still living in Greystones.

Hot Cross Buns:

1/2 pt (250ml) milk and water mixed, blood temperature with a teaspoon of sugar mixed in

3/4 oz (22g) fresh yeast, under 1/2 oz, 11 gr active dried, probably one sachet of instant

1/2 tsp each ground cinnamon, mixed spice, grated nutmeg and salt

1 lb (450g) strong white flour

2 oz (50g) castor sugar

2 oz (50g) soft butter

2 eggs beaten together

6 oz (175g) currants or raisins

1 0z (25g) candied peel finely chopped. Optional - and I often use cherries instead.

For the glaze - 2 oz (50g) sugar, 2 tblsp water.

If you want crosses - 2 oz (125g) shortcrust pastry.

Depending on your type of yeast, activate it in the milk and water or add the instant to the flour and spices mixed together.

Beat the butter and sugar together till really creamy, then carefully add the egg. I find this easier than the way the recipe adds them. Add this to the flour in a large bowl, along with the yeast. Knead till smooth and elastic, adding more flour if required. Allow to rise till doubled. Knock it back and allow to rise again for another half hour.

Cut into 12 pieces and shape into balls. If you're adding crosses, leave the buns for about 20 minutes, then roll out the pastry, cut thin strips and add crosses to your buns, sticking them on with water.

In another half hour or so they should have risen again and be ready to bake in a hot oven for approx 20 minutes, till golden brown. 

Put sugar and water in a ban, bring to the boil slowly and then when the sugar has dissolved, boil rapidly to the syrup stage and glaze the buns. 

Happy birthday yesterday, Lorraine, I hope you had a lovely day.  I had such fun making this snowbird - except maybe the miniature pompoms. I have enough trouble with big ones! It always seems that whatever I use to tie the wool together always seems to break when I try to pull it that little bit tighter. I ended up using fine nylon for these. 

Taken from the top of the bus, hence the many odd reflections - but we have a beautiful sea of daffodils on the road to the park gate just now. The tulips should be showing up next.

This month's header is a photo from St. Catherine's Park last April. Interestingly I see that the header I used last April was also from St. Catherine's Park (the Highland cattle), so it appears to be a popular time for us to visit.

March Favourites...

Lots of cards I liked this month!

The first one was with a stamp I received as a gift, and the tulip has three layers adding lovely dimension.

Owl Through The Year

Somewhat late, this was always intended to go with the Christmas gift of a snowman sampler as something more suitable for year-round display. Finally taking down my own Winter sampler and replacing it with the Spring one over the weekend (more snow) was the motivation I needed to finally finish it off - and make a card to send with it.

Progression

Guiness are building a micro-distillery in the old power plant...I should have taken a few photos late last year when they temporarily had the new name up over the front door, and a lovely vintage van outside for some publicity shots.  Then the hoardings went up over the railings, and for the last couple of months, they depicted  the architect's impression of what it will look like when finished. Then last week those hoardings were all covered up with plain white painted wood. And I noticed that someone had been painting on the end of the wall. For as long as I can remember it's had a slight trompe l'oeil effect of a shadowed arch, which you can just about still see in the first photo. If I had ever found the time to add meta-tags to all my photos I would be able to find one, but in current circumstances that's not likely. I think I need about two months off work to really organise all my photos...

Anyway, the two days I passed it last week, it was being worked on. Yesterday I passed again, and it must have been completed in time for the St. Patrick's Day festivities.

As you can see, there was a marked improvement in the weather after the holiday weekend was over and done with!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

And a couple of rural snaps from last weekend, when we attended a funeral in a town along the Shannon.

Our snow days meant that this year instead of my usual one or two cards, I actually made and mailed four, all variation on this theme. This is one of the ones done with watercolour pencils.

I had a few more pictures of a painted hoarding in town, but they'll have to wait till I have time to edit them.

The last of the snow...

The thrush photos were taken last Sunday. We don't often see them in the garden, and with no sense of scale, and so puffed up against the cold, this one is remarkable robin-like.

The following picture was taken on Wednesday as I walked past the local school after returning some books to the library - not much left, but the boys were having fun pulling off chunks and having a snow-fight.

And then the last photo was on my way to work on Thursday morning, as I walked out to the bus stop. This was the first frosty morning for a while... The snow was still drifted quite deeply along the side of our house and in the back yard. C dug enough to open the back gate on Wednesday evening, and on Thursday cleared a path along the side of the house so he could get the motorbike it. Warmer temperatures and rain means that most of it is now gone, and I think most people are grateful to be getting back to normal. 

Snow Day

I was glad I made the trek to collect the bird food yesterday, it's been in great demand today. There was enough of a drift outside the back door that I had to climb out a window to give the birds their first feed, and to shovel the snow away from the door enough to open it. Not great photos because in the end the snow was just starting to cling to the window. We've had a lot of blackbirds and chaffinches, plus the usual blue, great and coal tits and goldfinches.

This month's blog header is a photo from Farmleigh last March.

February Favourites

Anecdotally, because it's St. Brigid's Day, the 1st of February is the start of Spring in Ireland. I've never bought into that - but even allowing that this is the 1st of March it's far from a spring-like day.

I'll be back later with a few bird photos, but C is working from home today and using my desk, so I won't get time to upload them till this evening. Not that they're great anyway, taken through the window.  We have a small flock of blackbirds in the back garden right now - I should have bought a bag of apples for them but they're pecking away at what I have, along with some breadcrumbs and sunflower seeds sprinkled on the snow.

Recipe time - and a mixed medley

February has been a testing month here - but I thought I ought to get one quick post in before it's time to pick out and share my favourite cards later in the week.

With snow on the way this week, I'm starting with a snowman on our green beside the bus stop. We had a brief evening on snow one Monday night, C was coming home from Swords and said it was beautiful out that way. There was still enough here for someone to either stay up very late or get up very early and create a life-size snowman.

We have also had  a few lovely sunsets. I suspect these actually date back to January. Come next February I'm going to have trouble finding a suitable photo from this month to use for my blog header.

We were in town this afternoon and I spotted this lovely utility box. We were on the other side of the road and the sunshine was quite strong - but we'll be in the area again and hopefully then I can make time to get the bunny and the fox on the two ends of it.

And a recipe: as we needed to be in town by 1.30, we just had a good breakfast. In January I had been making Posy's Russian Black Bread from The Bread Book, A Baker's Almanac (a lovely rye, but time-consuming as it requires making polenta and mashed potatoes before even starting on the rest of it) and C was looking through the book. He made a list of several recipes he wanted to try, and the following is one of them.  We also thought the French Bread with Beer sounded interesting. I was asking a work colleague if he thought that the beer would simply give a sourdough taste with the lightness of a regular bread. At first he said he thought it would also add some extra leavening...and then he asked how old the book was. Well, I knew I'd had it for at least twenty years, so he reckoned that any widely available beer in America back then would have had no leavening effect and be purely for the flavour. We'll try that one another day. This morning we had these, and they're on the "make again" list.

Maple Buttermilk Muffins

1 3/4 cup white flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
1/3 cup buttermilk or sour milk
1/4 cup melted butter or light oil
1/2 cup maple syrup
3/4 cup chopped pecans or walnuts

Preheat oven to 400 F, about 180 C.
Sift all the dry ingredients together.
In a large bowl, beat the eggs till light and slightly thick.
Add the buttermilk, maple syrup and melted butter, whisk to mix.
Add the sifted dry ingredients: blend with a spatula or wooden spoon, stopping before the flour is fully absorbed. The mixture will be rough and lumpy.
Spoon into buttered muffin tins (I just used paper cases), filling about two-thirds full.
Bake for 15 - 20 minutes.
Yield: 12-14 medium muffins.