A Pengelly Belly Christmas!

Hello everyone! I hope that you all had a lovely Christmas! Sorry I haven't posted for a while, but the festive season got in the way! Plus we haven't been home and I haven't been near a computer for a day or two!

Anyway, Mr P and I had a lovely start to the Christmas Holidays. On the Thursday before Christmas I went down to Penzance to have brunch with some girlfriends at the Mackerel Sky Cafe which is a lovely little place tucked away down a side street. Great food and great coffee to defrost with! I trotted over to see Kim and John at the Polgoon Vineyard as it was en route to my parents house. Luckily for me I was walking so I could try some samples! I picked up a bottle of their Aval for Mr P and I to enjoy on Christmas day. Kim kindly gave me a bottle of their new Cornish Pink Cider which has an extra squeeze of raspberries added to it. I've had to hide it so that Mr P and I can enjoy it on New Year's Eve!

I was lucky to enjoy lunch on Christmas Eve at the Porthgwidden Cafe in St.Ives with Mr P and some friends. St.Ives was quiet, no doubt getting ready for New Year's Eve, so we had a pre-lunch bimble around the town. Lunch was very good as always. I did enjoy a nice aperitif of Polgoon Raspberry Aval to get me in the festive mood! It went down a treat with the paella. Finished the dinner with Moomaid Ice cream which is made in Zennor and a double espresso!

Christmas Day was a quite affair for us this year. We had a lie in and cat came and joined us in bed. Bless. We always have local eggs for breakfast on Christmas morning - boiled with toast on the side. As it was such a beautiful clear day, we popped on the walking boots... the only present that Mr P would let me open on the morning was a new pair of walking boots... and stanked up to the top of Carn Brea! Breathtaking!

On top of Carn Brea, looking down over Camborne, Portreath and over to St.Ives

There was no wind, no rain, no snow... just clear blue skies and an amazing view!

The monument on top of Carn Brea, looking towards Redruth, Truro and St. Austell

We were out walking for 2.5 hours so we had built up and appetite by the time we got home. After a spot of lunch (homemade Christmas Gammon and Pengelly Piccalilli) Mr P finally let me open my presents!

Christmas Ham from Nigella's Christmas Cookbook

Hoorah! As you can imagine, lots of food orientated goodies, several new cookbooks including The Great British Bake Off, Sophie Dahl and Antonio Carluccio, a lovely green leather bag with cupcakes on it (I'll take a picture for you one day!), but one of our favourite presents was a lovely food hamper from our good friends Mr and Mrs H... Mrs H made the lovely rosewater shortbreads and the little felt gingerbread man that is now hanging on our tree! Look how beautiful it was.... shame to take it apart and eat / drink all the goodies!

Lovely hamper full of goodies... edible of course!

We didn't sit down for dinner until 6pm where I served up a mushroom wellington (from the Cranks Vegetarian cookbook) which I made the day before. We had all the trimmings, including sprouts and chestnuts! Dinner was finished off with a light Christmas Pudding made by the lovely people at Trevaskis Farm which we brought at their Christmas Market, and a lovely cheeseboard an hour later. Stuffed!

All in all, a lovely Christmas Day!

Watch this space for my next blog about the food hampers that I made and what went in them! They went down a real treat!

Wishing you all a Happy New Year! See you in 2011! A big thank you for supporting and following my blog!

Love and best wishes,

Nic xoxox

Nigella's Guinness Gingerbread

This recipe was one that really tickled my taste buds after reading it in Nigella's new cookbook, "Kitchen". The picture in the book looked moist and scrummy. So I had to give it a go as I love ginger... and quite partial to a little bit of Guinness.

The actual cake mixture is more like a batter. It is quite runny so I decided to use a tinfoil tray instead of a spring-loaded cake tin as I didn't want any leaks.

As my oven in a fan oven, I reduced the temperature to 160 degrees C instead of 180 degrees C, and cooked it for 5 minutes longer. You really need to watch the cake after 40minutes as it can catch on top because of the amount of syrup and sugar in the cake. I had to cover mine with tinfoil.

Result - well, the top of the cake cracked a little and I need to play around with the temperature and cooking time for my oven for the next cake as the centre was still a little moist. It wasn't gingery enough for me, so I made a ginger and lemon fudge icing for the top and sprinkled over some chopped stem ginger.

Needs another attempt and a bit of tweaking, but it is very easy to do.

Cook book addict

I have to share a secret with you... I have an addiction... to cook books. Some women are addicted to shoes, clothes, jewellery (ok, I do have a keen eye for jewellery thanks to my mum!)... but my addiction is cook books.

I must have over 100 of them, easily. Some are real reliable favourites like Leith's Vegetarian Bible, Rachel Allen Bake, Nigella Lawson Christmas, whilst some are so beautiful that you want to display them as table books and drool over the photography. I read cook books like you read fiction. I have recently had to be ruthless and sort through my collection resulting in selling some on Ebay and at the carboot.

However, I have brought two new cook books this month; first of we have Nigella Lawson's Kitchen which is a delight to read and I can't wait to try out some recipes... guinness gingerbread and beer-braised pork knuckles are first on the menu! I will be making the gingerbread this weekend for hubby to take to rugby to feed the crowd.

And secondly, the Giraffe Cook book which is on its way in the post as we speak. This has been published by one of my favourite eateries, Giraffe. Unfortunately for me the nearest one to us is over 100 miles away in Devon so we always make an effort to find one when we go over the boarder from Cornwall. I'll let you know what the book is like when it arrives!

I'm sure I'm not the only one out there with a cook book addiction! What's your favourite?

Nic xoxo