spoon

Italian Dinner Party

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Category : Bits & Bobs, Menu

I have more apologies to add to Shannon’s last week. I have been lax in my blogging. Mainly because I have been cooking so much. We held a dinner party for 8 at the weekend. This may sound very grown up but we combined it with a murder mystery in a box which led to some hilarity, drinks and some truly impressive costumes including a transvestite Vampire, a grey-haired-thanks-to-some-flour Professor and a fake humpback. And I haven’t even got into the frankenstein-esque couple. I haven’t plucked up the courage to put any photographic evidence on facebook yet, let alone on the wide open internet but I can and will tell you about the food we had. All many courses of it. My only disclaimer is that there aren’t pictures of every dish. I was a bit busy so it didn’t exactly come together that way!

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Easy Cheesey: Gougeres

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Category : Nibbles

First, a big apology: I was supposed to post last week, but I was both extremely busy and rather sick, so when I wasn’t bogged down with one I was bogged down by the other, and that wasn’t terribly conducive to posting. A lot of the busy was due to making desserts for a little local convention, so my oven was very busy. Sadly, I think the cold went straight to my brain, because a) I didn’t take many pictures and b) of the pictures I took, not a lot are useable. But they were such good desserts, they will come back around, and in the meantime, I give this peace offering. Continue Reading

And the winner is…

Category : Contests

*drumroll please*

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Don’t forget!

Category : Contests

Less than 48 hours to enter the drawing for the Pioneer Woman Cookbook!

Lemon Chicken

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Category : Main Course, Meat

After the huge amounts of sugar we threw at you during Cheesecake Week (the competition to win a cookbook is open until the 13th by the by) I thought it was time for something that was a wee bit healthier. So this is a quick, easy and almost effortless way to serve chicken (quite the reverse of the Coriander Chicken which takes a bit more effort).

I’m trying to work my way through some of the lesser used cookbooks in my collection so this recipe comes from Cheap as Chips, Better than Toast which was a present when I was about to set off for University. Needless to say I barely touched it during my student days but I’ve been surprised in recent years by how easy and tasty a lot of the recipes are. I was tempted to give my copy to my cousin when she started University but then realised I wanted to use it myself instead.

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Cheesecake Week: Competition!

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Category : Bits & Bobs

It’s the final day of Cheesecake Week, it’s the weekend, it’s Lucy’s friend Emma’s birthday (Happy Birthday Emma!) and we’re really enjoying the blog so today we’re going to start a competition to win a copy of the Pioneer Woman’s Cookbook!

This is the site that started both Shannon and Lucy reading food blogs and led to us deciding to start our own. The recipes range from the most amazing meatballs you’ve ever tasted to sour cream pancakes to ribeye steaks. We cannot emphasise enough how delicious Ree’s recipes are or how wonderful her food photography is. You will use stupid amounts of butter and sugar but it will be well worth it!

So how can you enter? Well we’re glad you’re asked – you can get a total of three different entries to this competition.

1. Comment on a post tagged Cheesecake Week. So for those of you who have done, that’s one entry already!

2. Follow us on Twitter (doublesugarblog) and tweet about Double the Sugar or this competition on your twitter feed and comment here with the link.

3. Link to Double the Sugar or this competition on your facebook page and comment here with the link.

We’ll then pick our winner randomly from all the valid entries.

Rules

  1. You can’t win if you are Doug or Paul (our partners) or either of our mothers.
  2. You can only win if you have a UK, United States or Republic of Ireland address that we can ship your prize to.
  3. Each entrant can have a maximum of three entries, one from each of the ways detailed above.
  4. This isn’t a rule, but so you know, we have no affiliation with or sponsorship from Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman), she doesn’t know us, we only know her through her writing, she doesn’t know we’re giving this away. We just think she’s awesome and inspirational.

The competition ends Sunday 13th June at 20.00 British Summer time, 4PM Eastern Standard time and noon Pacific time. So the comment with your entry needs to have been made by then.

Good luck folks!

Cheesecake Week: Cheesecake Truffles from The Confectional

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Category : Desserts, Reviews

I confess that I was kind of counting on continued rain to keep the tourists out of Pike Place Market. But nooooo, it just had to be gorgeously sunny today. So know: I braved tourists for you. To bring you a review of a delightful little treat that, even if you don’t live in Seattle and thus don’t have access to The Confectional, it seems like a concept easy enough to turn into reality wherever you are. And they ship their cheesecakes (not truffles though, sorry) anywhere in the States.

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Cheesecake Week: Toblerone and ginger base with vanilla cheesecake

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Category : Desserts

This week we’re having our first ever theme week – Cheesecake Week! We’ll be posting every day while our waistlines expand and our stomachs fill. Let us know how you think we’re getting on in the comments and on twitter and facebook.

Once we’d decided on cheesecake week I started thinking about what type of cheesecake I wanted to make. Using ginger biscuits for the base came to mind pretty quickly but then I wanted to combine that flavour with something else. After a bit of brainstorming at work (thanks Jackie!) I decided that chocolate would be the best bet and toblerone even better than plain chocolate. Of course you can’t use too much chocolate in a base or it will fall apart but a simple swirl of chocolate amongst the base means there’s a chocolate taste in each piece of cheesecake without being overpowering. Yes I know nobody will see the swirl. But I know it’s there and that makes the fussy overblown cook in me very happy.

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Cheesecake Week: Sour Cream Cheesecake

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Category : Cake, Desserts

This post is part of Cheesecake Week! Let us know what you think! Stay tuned for other wonderfulness related to the conjunction of two awesome things: cheese and cakes.

I know that a lot of food bloggers and other people who love to cook and bake think back on memories of their mother’s prowess in the kitchen and know where their passion came from. My mom…not so much a baker. Not that she was a bad cook, she was great, and putting up with three kids whose tastes were always mutually exclusive is no mean task. But definitely not the baker I’ve grown up to be. However, she has one recipe, written out on an index card with stains from what I hope is spilled vanilla, and with inexplicable long division on the back of it, that isn’t from a cookbook or a label. It’s for cheesecake. It’s a sour cream cheesecake, this particular version has the sour cream in a separate layer on top of the cream cheese, but it also works if you mix it all together. Not that I’ve ever had a problem with not actually reading the whole recipe and just barreling ahead with what I assume the recipe says. *cough*

This is a good one for entertaining, as it should be made in advance, so it takes some of the madness out of the day of. Clearly, I made it for a Memorial Day weekend barbeque, hence all the mess around it. Including my mom’s recipe for baked beans, but that’s a recipe for another day! Continue Reading

Cheesecake Week: Fru mango and passion fruit mini cheesecakes

Category : Reviews

It’s Cheesecake Week on the blog! We’re blogging every day about cheesecake in an almost obsessed way. Please let us know how we’re doing in the comments as we mix up reviews, recipes and more.

Disclaimer: Nobody has asked us to review any product in particular, we’re choosing what we review based solely on what we like the look of and what flavour of cheesecake we’re craving.

Cheesecake week is the best idea I’ve ever been part of. My head, and in particular my taste buds, are thrilled but the rest of me is worried about the potential for pigging out and I’m starting to plan extra running sessions. Which is why when I went to buy cheesecake to review (it’s a hard life) my eye was caught by a box of mini-cheesecakes.

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