Crossin Rolls

My secret santa at Christmas turned out to be my friend Eva, who lives in Rhode Island and I don't get to see very often :( (much like many of my other friends who live in the US). She clearly knows me and I got a  beautiful handmade sewing box, with some goodies inside like bobbins, tape measure and a seam ripper. As well as this she made me a whole batch of Crossin Rolls. These delicious pastry treats and Eva and I go way back to eleventh grade, when our English teacher brought them in for us; Ms Crossin! We were instantly hooked and got the recipe immeadiately, and made them numerous times throughout the next couple of years. I had shockingly forgotten about them and so Eva's present, wrapped up beautifully as seen below, was a blast from the past as well as EXTREMELY DELICIOUS.
 

I emailed Ms Crossin asking if I could share her recipe and she has kindly agreed! It is such a simple recipe but has great results.

Crossin Rolls

Puff pastry - I use store bought and it's great.

Ham

Grated cheese (gruyere works well)

Mustard

Mayonnaise

S&P

It is such a simple recipe but has great results. 

- Take a sheet of pre-rolled puff pastry, and roll it out a little more. Brush the pastry with mustard, then with mayonnaise, covering the whole pastry, apart from a small strip on the shorter end (about 1cm wide).
- Lay slices of ham, covering the whole of the pastry, aside from the small strip on the shorter end. Sprinkle grated cheese over the top.
- Beginning from the opposite end to the strip you left clear, roll the pastry into a log. When you reach the end, smooth the small clear strip into the pastry under it to hold the log together. Place this join face down on the table and slice the log into rounds (approx. 2cm thick).
- Cook on trays in the oven at 180 degress for 10 mins, or until pastry is cooked.

Toad in the Hole

Toad in the Hole is a classic British dish. I only had it for the first time this year however when my housemate made it and it was delicious. 

Since then I have made it twice and kind of want to have it again tonight now I am thinking about it..

Toad in the Hole
Serves 4
300ml milk
225g plain flour
4 eggs
8 sausages
Oil
S&P

- Set the oven to about 180 degrees (fan).
- Blend the milk, eggs and S&P together until frothy. Leave for at least twenty minutes.
- Heat the oil until hot in a roasting tray. Add the sausages and cook until they are how you like them - around 15 mins for me.
- Add the flour slowly to the egg/milk mixture and blend until totally combined.
- Pour the mixture over the sausages in the tray (get rid of excess fat if there is a lot of it first) and put in the oven until risen and golden brown. This should take about half an hour.

I think it's best served drowned in gravy but it's also popular with peas and/or mashed potato.
Pictured is half this recipe for two people.

Enjoy! :)

Travel Jewelry Pouch

This year for Secret Santa I had baileyb. This was a very good thing as she was my secret santa last year and made me literally my most treasured thing I own in life, this quilt:

It's so beautiful!

You can't top a quilt. But I wanted to do her something good. Initally decided to make her 3 different cases - one for her laptop, one for her kindle and one for her phone, but then my mum mentioned that she had made her mum a really nice laptop case and so probably had one already. So I continued with the kindle and iphone pouches but then for the third thing made her this travel jewelry pouch. It was the most complicated thing I have made yet and took the longest but I am very pleased with the result.
It was the first time I had to make a button hole. I used this video which was extremely helpful.


Kindle case (how to - see laptop case post)

Travel Jewelry pouch

I actually changed the ribbon when I acquired one that suited the pouch better - shown below.

She messaged me saying she loved it! Success!

Canon 550D

Last year I worked all summer and with my earnings in the Autumn bought a Canon 50D with an awesome zoom lens. I LOVED IT. I mostly used it for Ultimate frisbee tournaments (awesome sport close-ups) until I took it away for the first time to Prague in February and was very pleased with the pictures of the family weekend trip and the beautiful European city. On the way back I made the monumental mistake of putting it in my checked bag and my suitcase arrived at London Gatwick minus one camera. After ten months of constantly emailing, threatening and bombarding the airline at fault I recieved the best thing in the mail I have ever recieved: a large check for total compensation of my beloved camera, only 5 months old. I have just bought a new camera, after reseach, the Canon 550D which I am very excited about! I have downloaded numerous "how to use slr cameras" manuals so I can get the very most out of it. Until I take some awesome pictures and put them up, here is a little rememberance of my old camera. This is my favourite picture out of all I took with my old camera. It has been published in the Lonely Planet magazine and is for sale in my Etsy store (of all of two items - watch this space!) is you want it for your very own.  

I am looking forward to taking some proud-worthy pictures with my new Canon 550D. It also means my blog photos can be better, yay!

Homemade Sausage Rolls

My nan recently showed me how to make sausage rolls and I am never going back to store bought! They are a lot nicer.

Crack an egg and gently beat it.

I need to try this with homemade sausage meat.. I bet that would be amazing. But, store bought is fine!

Roll out store bought or home made shortcrust OR puff pastry dough. These pictures are with shortcrust pastry.

Roll some sausage meat in flour and line it up on the pastry until one side is covered, like below.

Brush on some egg next to the sausage meat.

Roll the pastry around the sausage meat.

Cut of the excess pastry (make more if there is enough!)

Cut the roll in diagonal pieces however big you want them.

Make a slit in the pastry of each roll.

Place on a baking try and brush on some egg on each of the rolls.

Bake for 25 minutes at 180 or until golden brown and crispy on the outside.

Above are the short crust pastry sausage rolls.

There are the puff pastry rolls. There was very little difference. I probably preferred the shortcrust sausage rolls however I think my puff pastry ones probably needed a bit longer in the oven.

Butter Beer

For Sarah's dinner I also made butter beer to have after [Harry Potter reference for those who don't know]. I trawled through a load of different recipes and eventually decided to just go my own way with it and take the four most common ingredients: cream soda, vanilla ice cream, butterscotch syrup/flavouring and salted butter. No one knows truly how it's meant to taste!

I melted the butter in the pan then added the ice cream until melted, then the butterscotch and eventually the cream soda and served immediately. However, if you are going to try this DON'T do it this way! Because I added cold ice cream to the hot melted butter it re-solidified and so took a while to melt again. I would put the ice cream in the pan until melted and then heat the butter in the microwave until runny before adding it to the mixture. This way it won't take ages. The froth came naturally, I did give it a bit of a whisk with a milk frother but it didn't do too much - adding the fizzy cream soda really makes the froth grow.

It was very nice but sickly sweet so no one could manage more than one!