Pie Pops - A Crazy Idea?

I have been a proud and slightly obsessive member of Newcastle's Clandestine Cake Club for nearly a year now, and just adore the concept of meeting likeminded baking-addicts in my local area, as well as eating copious amounts of cake.

Following the success of the CCC a few other baking related clubs have sprung up all over Newcastle (and the north-east). I have thouroughly enjoyed attending each and every one. My two particular favourites have been Private Pie Club and the Singing Hinnies & Fat Rascals Bake Club. I have met so many lovely people, had company to a plethora of local foodie events and feel like we are building quite a foodie network in the notorious NE.

For the most recent Singing Hinnies meeting I was stumped on what to bake! The theme was comfort food and all I could think about was pie. However, I knew a lot of the other Hinnies would be baking pastry wonders and wanted to try something completely new and different...

London in November - A Foodie Adventure.

Earlier this month I jetted off (Well, train-ed off) to our capital city for 3 days of fun! Even though I booked the tickets well in advance I wasn't particularly organised. My packing was done hurriedly in the morning and I had no actual firm plans of what I was going to do over the three days.
In hindsight I would probably have planned a few more things but it felt great to be flying by the seat of my pants and being spontaneous.

The main reason for my visit was to attend an AWOT event, for those who may not be aware AWOT stands of Awesome Women of Twitter. I have been following them on twitter for a while and really wanted to go down and meet everyone. The lovely Amy, who I have been chatting to on twitter forever offered me a bed for the two nights I was down there, which I will be forever grateful for!

I arrived in London at around 3pm, so met the gorgeous Roswen for a quick coffee and catch up, it is so funny meeting people who you have been online friends with for so long, it was like meeting an old friend and we just chatted and put the world to rights! So great to finally meet one of my favourite bloggers.

The only picture I took all night, must of been having too much fun!

After a quick and very delicious dinner at Amy's flat, we headed to The Liberty Lounge in Shoreditch....

Bread Baking & Me.

I love baking, this is no secret. I find the act of making something by hand, from scratch quite therapeutic and dare I say relaxing. One particular branch of the baking family however I struggle with; Bread.

I find my break baking so hit and miss that the idea of making bread tends to fill me with dread and anxiety. Mainly as the recipe tends to use a lot of flour I feel like it is such a waste if I end up with some brick-like loaf not fit to feed the ducks with!

So I don't often make bread, pizza dough and the occasional white loaf is as far as I go. After watching The Great British Bake Off I felt inspired to try and plaited loaf, it seemed like a fairly easy way to create quite a fancy looking finish. I wasn't quite up for the full 8 strand challenge but a 3 strand-er seemed the best place to start...