And the Winner Is!

 

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The winner of the beautiful Shabby Apple dress is AmyShe made comment number 5 as drawn by the cold heartless random number generator.  Have fun wearing your dress in San Francisco.

If you weren’t lucky enough to win, then remember that Shabby Apple has offered mirrormirror readers a 10% coupon code. Just enter mirrormirror10off at checkout.

Congratulations again to Amy. I have sent you an email telling you how to claim your prize.

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Recipe of the Week – Scones and Clotted Cream

 

I think we’ve talked about his before, but American dairy products are different.  Butter is less rich, and the creams have less fat content and, to my great chagrin, thick spoonable, dollop-able creams (I adore the word ‘dollop’) just don’t exist. And nor does clotted cream.

 

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This thick spreadable 55% fat cream is even quite difficult to find in London – it’s a speciality of England’s West Country, and should ideally be consumed in a little teashop somewhere in either Devon or Cornwall at a table heaving with flimsy bits of chintzy china and mismatching embroidered napkins.

I haven’t been able to track it down at all in the US, but last month on our trip to Vancouver, I was thrilled to see it offered as part of the afternoon tea at the Shangri-La, and even more thrilled to be given some as a gift by Stéphane, the world’s loveliest concierge. This month, the wonderful Viv made a return trip to the Shangri-La and came back bearing more clotted cream from Stéphane. Truly I am lucky in my friends.

 

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Clotted cream should be eaten with freshly made, billowy soft, barely sweet scones. It’s taken me a long time to track down a decent scone recipe but this one from the BBC website is really good. It uses buttermilk, which is slightly unusual,  but gives the scones a delightful airiness and slight bite.

Ingredients

225g (1 2/3 cups) self-raising flour (if you can’t get self raising make your own by adding 1tsp of baking powder to 1 cup of flour).

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda/baking soda

1 pinch of salt

50g (3.5 tbsp) chilled butter

25g (1tbsp) caster or baker’s sugar

2 handfuls sultanas (golden raisins) optional

125ml (1/2 cup) buttermilk

4 tbsps milk

A little extra flour for rolling and dusting

Preheat the oven to 220C/450F/Gas Mark 7. Butter a baking sheet.

Take a big mixing bowl and add the flour, baking soda, salt and butter. Chop at the butter roughly with kitchen scissors or a knife, and then rub it into the flour. Aim for a reasonably fine crumb but don’t rub it in too much or the scones will be dry.  Remember to lift your hands high in the air while you’re doing this to aerate the mixture.

Stir in the sugar.  I added two handfuls of golden raisins (sultanas) at this stage. They’re entirely optional or else you could also use normal raisins or currants.  Don’t use too many or you’ll weigh the mixture down.

Make a well in the centre of the flour mix and pour in nearly all of the buttermilk and milk. Stir the mix with a spatula until the milk is absorbed and then bring it all together with your hands. The dough should be very soft, almost sticky. Use the last remaining buttermilk and milk to bring together all the flaky bits at the bottom of the bowl if necessary.  Use a light touch at this stage.

Dump the dough on a lightly floured work service. Knead just enough to get rid of any cracks and then pat it down gently until it’s a least an inch (2.5cm) thick.  Take a round cutter – the size is up to you, I tend to make mini ones, and cut out your scones. The cutter makes a delightful sighing sound as it pushes through the dough. Gather up the trimmings,  pat together again and cut again until all your dough is used up. You should have enough for around 5-6 large scones or 10 mini ones.

Here are my little honey bunches excitedly waiting to go into the oven.

 

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Dust with flour and bake in the oven for around 10-12 minutes until risen and golden.  Cool on a wire rack.

Serve as soon after baking as possible with jam and a generous dollop of clotted cream.  Strawberry jam is traditional but I used the very last of last year’s cherry jam from our tree and they were incredibly delicious

I always serve mine the Cornish way with the cream on top. Apparently Devonians put the cream first and then the jam. This is supposedly the subject of much fierce debate in the West Country.

My awesome red spotty teapot is from Rosanna Inc (which I didn’t know was a Seattle-based company) via discount site RueLala. If you still haven’t signed up for lots of lovely bargains, here’s an invitation.

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Things I Am Loving – Alessi Tigrito Cat Bowl

 

I promise that I’ve completely stopped buying expensive cat accessories, though I’ve been horribly tempted by the Tigrito Cat Bowl by Alessi, mostly because, with its grey fur and white paws,  it looks so much like Flora.

 

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It does however cost $90. so let’s just admire it from afar, shall we? (Though it appears to be on sale via Amazon in the UK).

Instead, here is a picture of the real thing, looking rather nonplussed by the fake Tootsie Roll cat poop we made to play an April Fool trick on the Minx. It worked like a dream, particularly when the Husband ‘cleaned it up’ and started licking it. Never have you seen such a grossed out six year old.

 

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Truly if you ever need to make fake poop, Tootsie Rolls are your friends (sorry, I don’t think there’s an equivalent in the UK). Just a few seconds in the microwave and a bit of sculpting required.

   
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KK Outlet Wedding Plates

 

There’s twenty four days to go until the Royal Wedding, so I’m continuing our round up of rather brilliant souvenirs. In fact you’ve all been sending through such fabulous links I’ll put together a proper round up post in the next day or two.

In the meantime, these plates are extremely special and deserve a post of their own. London-based communications and creative agency/gallery KK Outlet commissioned up and coming designers to create a collection of unofficial commemorative china for the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.  They’re available online here and they’ll ship all over the world.

 

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They Draw And Cook

 

As you know, I aspire – with varying degrees of success – to do a little food photography. To my mind recipes just aren’t complete without pictures.

On They Draw And Cook  Nate Padavick and Salli Swindell. a brother and sister team, together with sundry other wonderfully talented artists, have put together the web’s biggest collection of illustrated recipes. Aren’t these exquisite? Looks like there are some great recipes too.

Photography suddenly seems very passé.

 

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{via Helen at Countryside Wedding}

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Giveaway! Beautiful Shabby Apple Dress

 

It’s Spring and this not-so-young woman’s fancies are lightly turning to getting the heck out of rainy, cold and miserable Seattle and going somewhere warm and sunny in Europe instead.

 

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Fortunately for all of us dreaming of summer, the lovely peeps at Shabby Apple have very generously offered to give away one of their delightful summer dresses to mirrormirror blog readers.  After much humming and haaahing (sp?) I have chosen this cute ‘Trevi Fountain’ dress worth $78 a) because the pics make me want to go back and live in Rome and b) because I think the cut and colour will be flattering on lots of people.

 

Capture Cffsapture

 

There are four different ways to enter the competition and everyone can enter up to four times.  Just make sure you tell me how you’ve entered in a comment below. The competition closes at midnight Pacific Standard Time and I’ll use a random number generator to draw the winning entry as soon as I wake up on Thursday 7th April.

If you win you’ll be able to choose your size and the dress will be shipped directly to you from Shabby Apple if you live in the US. If you live elsewhere, I’ll have it delivered here and then ship it out for FREE, so everyone in the UK and beyond can enter too. And if you aren’t lucky enough to win, Shabby Apple has provided the coupon code mirrormirror10off, so we can all get 10% off at the store.

Below are the different ways to enter. Remember you can enter all four ways as long as you leave a comment telling me how you’ve entered below.

1) Leave a comment below saying if and where you’re thinking of heading on vacation/holiday this summer

2) ’Like’ mirrormirror on Facebook  (leave a comment below saying you’ve done this)

3) ‘Like’ Shabby Apple on Facebook (leave a comment below saying you’ve done this)

4) Tweet the following:  I’ve just entered to win a beautiful Shabby Apple summer dress. You can too!http://is.gd/lkSbhM  (And leave a comment below saying you’ve Tweeted).

Buona fortuna!

Update: If you’ve already ‘liked’ mirrormirror or Shabby Apple on Facebook just let me know in the comments and that can count as an entry too. Oh and make sure you mention each entry in a separate comment.

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