Wow, that's a big ball of yarn...

Now if only I could decide what to knit with it....

Outside the kitchen window

Shade in the Summer, light in the Winter and blossoms in the Spring (almost)!

Chocolate cake recipes

I tried a new recipe today. The texture is great, but it doesn't really taste chocolatey. Why is it that a good chocolate cake recipe is so hard to find? Do you have a good one? I'd love to try it!

Darkest of the Dark

Chocolate ice cream, that is!

Another recipe from my Murphy's Sweet Treats book, made with Whittaker's Dark Ghana - my favourite chocolate at the moment.

An Ad!

You may have noticed the tiny little Nuffnang symbol at the top of my page. It's been there for some time now - I signed up to get ads through Nuffnang ages ago to get a little extra money, but Sew, Cook, Laugh has never been chosen for advertising before. I've just received notification that Campbells Real Stock will be advertised on my blog! I'm really pleased both that it's a product I actually use, and that the website looks really good. If you click on the link now at the top of the page, they have a whole collection of recipes to browse!

A Trio of Winter Skirts

The biggest hazard of wearing skirts all the time is the Winter cold.  I am luck enough to have quite the Stash, and was able to use some fabrics from it to make myself some lovely cosy skirts.

 This one was made with the same pattern as the bridesmaids skirts, believe it or not, with corduroy a friend of the family gave me. The fabric was not quite wide enough, so I had to divide the front panel into 3 pieces (well 2 would have been okay, but I didn't want a centre front seam)

This one was also made with fabric I was given, from a pattern I've been wanting to make for a long time. I didn't have quite enough, so I made it shorter than the design, but I like it this length.

This was made from the same pattern as above, but full length. The fabric was left over from a skirt Mum made for herself, but never wore.

Brownies

The Herald Sun (newspaper) had a brownie recipe this weekend that looked amazing.

So I had to try it.

Unfortunately, it looks better than it is.

It's perfectly edible, but it's not as chocolatey as it looks, and the texture isn't as dense and chewy as I'd like.

Must keep looking.

Lemon curd ice cream

When we were in Ireland, we went to the most gorgeous little ice cream shop, Murphy's.

While there, I noticed that they had a recipe book.

Although I didn't buy it at the time, I kept it in mind, and eventually bought it off Amazon.

I don't make ice cream often though, and while I drooled over the book, I didn't make anything out of it. Until I found myself once again with left over egg yolks, along with a pile of lemons.

And I just had to make Lemon Curd Ice Cream.

I love the subtle colouring and the divine taste.