We’ve had another busy weekend, but a weekend busy making
the most of the sunshine. On Saturday we spent most of the day at a local park
(Fairlands Valley Lakes in Stevenage) with friends. We had a delicious picnic
with fresh home-made salads, naughty treats from the delicatessen and iced tea.
We also played a game or two of Frisbee as well as bananagrams! To top it off I
had an ice-cream – absolute bliss!
Today we’ve been upcycling an old hat stand. It belongs to
Mr KG’s parents when they got married and moved in together (30+years ago?) As
you can imagine it was a bit dated (pine – eugh!) so we’ve sanded it down,
given it an undercoat of primer and managed to get a first coat of white paint
on too. Next week we hope it will be sunny again and we can finish off a second
white coat before I get to decorate it. That’s right...decorate. When we
finally move out our bedroom is going to be Japanese inspired mainly with plum,
purple and pink-y tones. We’ve got bedding and a few nik-naks already but for a
bit of extra interest in the room we’re having a decorated hat stand. I’ll be
painting purple, pink and blue cherry blossoms on it and I can’t wait to see
how it turns out! I promise I’ll share a picture...
I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting recently and this
recipe was the product of one. Fortunately I made such a large quantity of the
mix that I could improve my technique with each batch that I actually baked.
It all came about after a rather depressing day spent suit
shopping last weekend. To cheer myself up my Mum took me to Lakeland to treat
myself to something cooking-related and I found the most adorable purple
silicone mini-doughnut mould. I had to have it!
Much like with the design of my hat stand, I had in my head
what I wanted the finished result to look like but getting it to that stage was
a bit of a problem. I also knew what I wanted them to taste like and the kind
of texture I was after so I spent a lot of time adding a bit of this and then
adding a bit more to the batter, tasting as I went along.
I was really please with how they turned out! The texture of
the doughnut is firm and cakey but not crumbly. They have a good strong taste
of vanilla which makes them extremely moreish and let’s admit. They look
seriously cute!
