Shabby Blog

Wednesday 28 September 2011

Delicious Toffee Apple Muffins (Perfect for breakfast)

I have invented one of my first ever baking recipes, I normally don't trust myself to alter the wet and dry ingredients for fear of failure.  However I am pleased to report it's not as scary as first thought and these muffins are DELICIOUS!




For the cake mix:

  • 110g butter
  • 110g soft brown sugar
  • 110g self-raising flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 handful of chopped walnuts
  • 1 handful of oats
  • 2 x eggs, beaten
  • light sprinkling of cinnamon

For the apple:

  • 30g butter
  • 30g soft brown sugar
  • 0.5 x lemon, juice only
  • 2 x eating apples 1 x bramley apple, peeled, cored and sliced
  • Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.
I always make the apple first, I'm not really sure why!

  • Heat the butter in a medium non-stick, oven-proof frying pan, over a medium heat
  • When the butter begins to melt, add the sugar, and allow to begin to caramelise, then add the lemon juice
  • Add the quartered apple wedges to the pan, tossing well, to thoroughly coat them in the caramel, and continue heating through for 4-5 minutes then take off the heat and leave for later.
Putting together the cake mix -
  • Cream together the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl
  • Add the flour and baking powder, mixing well, as you do
  • Gradually add the beaten eggs and then stir in the walnuts and oats
  • Gently fold in the apple mixture
  • Half fill 12 muffin cases with mixture
  • Top with a sprinkling of brown sugar, cinnamon, oats and chopped walnuts
  • Bake in the oven for around 13minutes.

Sunday 11 September 2011

Boiler trouble and bathroom ideas.

The house clear out continues, although life has been made somewhat more difficult by the final death knell of the boiler.  It broke last Saturday morning, we were hoping that it was just something minor but the repair man we called said it amounted to £350 worth ish of damage.  After we got the quote we knew we'd need to get some other quotes and to think about where on earth we would get the money from to pay for it.  Since then we haven't had a chance to organise anything so we've been without hot water for over a week now! It has been surprisingly easy to cope.  The most annoying this has been the lack of a dishwasher and having to boil the kettle and do it all in the sink!  And whilst I do the washing up Neil has been on bath duty, filling all the pots in the pans with water, boiling it on the stove and then taking it upstairs.  We'll be interested to see if this has any effect on our gas bill over the next few weeks.  We will have to get it fixed soon as winter will be here before we know it but the silver lining is that this didn't happen when we had a new born baby to deal with.

Of course our new bathroom will be with us by Christmas, and when I say with us, I mean installed, as it's already here just currently scattered all over the house!  Neil's parents have asked us to have a proper think about what needs to be done so we can get everything prepared in advance.

I think we'll have to use the cash we had saved for the finishing touches in the bathroom on the boiler situation so the only thing that really *needs* to be bought is the flooring.  I want to check the measurements again but I think we will need just under 10m2 for the whole floor.  We were thinking either very simple tiles in black and white or vinyl of the same theme.  I've seen some bits and pieces on Ebay now that we could cover with the final vouchers we received as wedding presents.  I think the vinyl in total will work out cheapest as it needs less extras like grout, spacers and of course as far as I'm aware vinyl doesn't take hours to set!

In other news we did purchase our luxury toilet seat!


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