Weekend baking

*Disclaimer – none of these ideas are my own; they were taken from other blogs I follow as I'm far too amateur in the kitchen to ever come up with a recipe myself*

Ok so now I've got that out of the way, here's what I got up to in the kitchen this weekend;

Friday evening saw my first attempt at home-made pizza dough.

Till now I’ve always cheated and bought the bases then the stuff to go on top so having seen a recipe online recently for making it yourself, I thought I’d give it a go. What I failed to do was read down to the bit in the recipe where it says ‘now leave the dough somewhere warm for an hour’. An hour? It was 8pm on Friday and Mark & I were both starving so, with the dough expanding in the airing cupboard, we set about making the tomato topping and homemade pesto. In fairness, both super quick and easy to do.

We made far too much pesto so whilst we were waiting, we popped some halloumi under the grill and drizzled over with pesto as a little snack. Delish!

Then after much kneading and some sore knuckles, I finally got the pizzas together, albeit not as thin a base as I was hoping for plus mine being a fairly odd shape, but not too shabby for a first attempt and voila - homemade pizza with buffalo mozzarella and pesto.

 

Saturday I moved on to baking some mini Victoria sponges. Again – just to stress this wasn’t my own idea so I can take no credit for it but seriously, how cute are these?! 

Using empty small cans to cook them in (Sainsbury’s garden peas in this case), you simply remove both ends of the can, wrap the bottom in tinfoil then pour your sponge mixture in.

Once cooked and left to cool, I popped them out of the can, cut them into three layers and, with help from my willing assistant Rosie, spread each layer with some whipped double cream and oodles of Bonne Maman jam. Too easy!

I’d woken up on Saturday morning deciding no carbs before Spain (no, not Marbs, that's later in the year) so I didn't have one myself but judging by the speed at which both Rosie and my husband devoured them, I reckon they tasted ok.
 
So there you have it; pizzas & pesto on Friday and mini Victoria sponges on Saturday.
With some tunes on in the background and a glass of wine or a beer to hand, I do enjoy a bit of weekend cooking & baking if I don’t have a hangover. There's something so satisfying about it even if, on this occasion, I exercised enormous will power and didn't get to enjoy the fruits of my labour.

xxx