Lemon cheesecake

I absolutely adore cheesecake and this is my favourite recipe for it. You can find the recipe here on the Good Food Channel.

The only change I have made is that I only used 150 ml of sour cream for the topping instead of the specified 250 ml. I also used light cream cheese and I realized only when I was assimilating the ingredients for the topping that I had no stem ginger in the cupboard! Duh! So it ended up being just a lemon cheesecake instead!

If you've never made cheesecake, this is a good one to start with as it is a foolproof recipe! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did :)

DIY Notice Board

My friend Ro, who blogs over at Jellyhead's Finished Projects wanted to make our friend, Claire at work a birthday present.  We are both into crafting and wanted to create something from scratch.  Claire is well liked by her clients and receives loads of thank you cards, so we decided to give her a board she could pin them all up on!

Ro's hubby kindly got us a piece of plywood from his workplace.  I then used some lovely material that my brother had bought me from Thailand ages ago (it was just sat in my stash  - I guess this was its purpose!!) and used Fabri - Tac to glue it down to the back of the board.

Ro then added some pegs she found in the craft section.  She also used normal clothes pegs, but these seemed too big so she ended up with more of these little ones. 

And ta da - this is what we came up with.  We were really happy with the result.

Bite size caprese salad

I saw this while browsing Pinterest and just had to make my own!  There is something heavenly about the combined juiciness of a cherry tomato, the density of a chunk of mozarella and the freshness of a basil leaf, brought together with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and olive oil! Pure bliss and oh so simple! 

Blueberry pancakes

What better way to enjoy a lazy morning brunch than dishing up pancakes with Little Miss J.  So that's exactly what we did today! And this was the result! 

Ingredients

250 g flour
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp sugar
300 ml semi skimmed milk
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
2 eggs beaten
40 g butter melted
1/2 lemon juiced
125 g blueberries
Maple syrup to serve

1. Sift together flour, salt, sugar and baking powder.

2. Mix together milk, eggs, vanilla essence, melted butter and juice of half a lemon.  The lemon juice will split the milk, but don't worry about this as it will lend it the tang that buttermilk gives - alternatively, you can substitute buttermilk for the lemon juice & milk. 

3.  Using a whisk, bring batter together trying to reduce the lumps. 

4.  Spoon a ladle of batter into a hot pan and cook on both sides.  Keep the pancakes in a warm oven (switched off) until ready to serve. 

5. Drizzle with maple syrup and serve.  Enjoy!