"Oh the weather is outside is frightful......" and it's Spring!

Happy Bank Holiday Weekend! What a weekend indeed with St. Patrick's Day, Ireland smashing it in The Six Nations Championship and of course the snow.... in March... in Spring....again. This weekend we're experiencing the Beast from The East 2.0, However luckily for us this one won't be around as long. Here's hoping anyways!

Now with this snow, comes an awful lot of boredom which leads to an awful lot of cooking and baking. This weather is not doing anything for my waistline I can tell you. I'm an awful devil for keeping myself entertained with my Kitchen Aid mixer. Thankfully I've very good neighbours who happily take the goodies I've made or else I'd be turning myself diabetic in no time. Especially if this weather continues!

Shoreline snow

Gus snow 1

You're never too old for snow

Snow Angel 1

snow angel 2

snow angel 3

When the original Beast from The East arrived a couple of weeks ago it was all fun and games for a few hours but being cold got old quickly. The dogs loved it so it was great to see them messing around in the fields covered in snow.

Anyways, on to the cooking! I'm having a bit of an obsession cooking with yeast at the moment. I've always been really nervous baking with it because I presume everything I cook will collapse or just come out horrendously chewy. So far so good though

​​. I've been following recipes online religiously (which if you know me is out of character with me and baking, I always break the golden rule) I have admired videos and clips of cinnamon or Nutella buns just being pulled apart. They just looked so appealing and all I thought every time I watched them was "I have to make these". So I decided to go for it and I went through the press to see what I had. I didn't wanna make cinnamon buns and I didn't have any scrumptious Nutella so I went for Strawberry Jam Buns! I found a good recipe online and tweaked it every so slightly and I will admit, they were delish. A cup of tea and a strawberry jam bun...heaven! I only let them cool slightly before putting on the cream cheese glaze and then I had to dig in ASAP. These were so good served warm. Such a comfort food. Dangerous during snow days.

Now it wasn't all baked goods during the snow days. To try and compensate for all the stodgey food I was making, I returned to reliable soups to ensure some goodness was going into me. I had an abundance of broccoli for some reason in the house so I thought I'll give broccoli soup a bash. I love broccoli soup when I'm out having lunch but I think this is because it's filled with heavenly cream. I needed to make a healthier option so I kept it simple using broccoli, spinach, celery, onions, garlic, vegetable stock. I added a small scoop of cream cheese at the end to give that slight creamy texture after blending and that did the job perfectly. I was really impressed with how it turned out. I've already made it again twice since I made it the first time it was that good. Served with bruschetta, I had myself the perfect lunch.

Broccoli & Spinach Soup

broc soup cheese

broc soup 2

Keeping with the green theme, let's talk about Paddy's Day! Great day for Ireland this year with our boys winning the Grand Slam & The Triple Crown in the Six Nations Rugby Championship. The icing on the cake was that we bet England on their home turf so great day all round. It's a mental day every year down in the pubs celebrating our national day so I could only imagine what it was like with the match on too. I'd say we have very happy pub owners this morning around the country. We decided to watch the match in a friend's house so I had to bake a cake! I can't go to anyone's house empty handed, my mother has bet it in to me since I was a wee one. For the day that was in it I made Chocolate Guinness Cake! This is such a decadent moist cake. I love making it every Paddy's Day now. It's my way of having a Guinness instead of drinking the actual pint itself. The delicious white topping in a combination of cream cheese, icing sugar, corn flour & double cream. The cream cheese I'm using is from Haye's Farm of Tipperary. I find it so luxuriously smooth and creamy that it mixes in incredibly well into any recipe (this is the cheese I used in the broccoli soup too).

My pizza dough looks puffed up and ready to roll (see what I mean about my yeast obsession lately). So I'm going to crack on with them! Enjoy the rest of the weekend everyone. The bank holiday isn't over yet so there is still plenty of time for stuffing our faces with a drink or two. Happy Eating! Xx