easy like sunday...monday...tuesday... morning

....or whatever day it is??!

Hoorah for bank holiday weekend confusion....!

There hasn’t been much of the ‘easy' about anything recently.

But, long, tiring story short - we are home! Finally.

With the painters, the builders, the tweakers, the fixers, the decking guy, the endless delivery men....and so on, you get the drift....

Anyhoo. Some friends visited at the weekend and one of them asked if we had actually relaxed and enjoyed the new {old} house yet. And it dawned on me that the answer was disappointingly, ‘No, not really’.

There are still boxes to unpack, rooms to titivate, pictures to put up...and not to mention the looooong list of soft furnishings and upholstery bits I want to have a go at. But anyway, we’ll get there.

Moan over, being back home is bliss. 

The amount of extra space we have is totally fab and the new kitchen is better than I could have ever imagined and my new workroom ??... {squeals with delight!!!} definitely more on that later ....umm...when I have put everything away and done the most mega of sorty sorts that ever there was {am slightly alarmed with the amount of fabric and haberdashery bits I have eccrued over the years}. 

I can’t wait to finally have everything put in its place then I can flounce around in a very Martha way, cooking up lovely things and daintily stitching and making pretty pretties ......because obviously, with two small children, I have so much free time.....{ sigh.....}

And so, whenever there is chance of a few minutes of bakey goodness wafting about the spankily new kitchen, well, then it makes me do a little happy dance and all feels right with the world 

{my world }. 

Pear Pastries {original recipe, Nigel Slater}

1. Using a sheet of ready made puff pastry 2. roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface until fairly thin { a few mm } 3. Using a pastry cutter or small bowl or glass, cut out discs of pastry { I used 98mm cutter }Place onto a lined baking tray and 4. using a smaller cutter make a circle indent onto the top of the disc. 5. prick the centre circle with a fork { this stops it rising }. Thinly slice pear/apple or any fruit really, and place on top of the centre circle. You could perhaps do this in a decorative or pretty way, if perhaps you don’t have a hungry cat winding round your ankles or a baby grizzling with teething pains....Any how, it all tastes the same really....

6. Melt a large knob of butter and stir in 1 tsp vanilla bean paste or a large pinch of ground cinnamon { optional } and using a pastry brush, 7. brush the melted butter mixture over the edges of pastry and across the top of the fruit. Sprinkle a spoonful of caster sugar over the top. 8. Bake in a preheated oven at 220º C for about 10- 15 minutes or until golden brown and puffed up. Allow to cool slightly then dust excitedly with icing sugar.

With the left over bits of pastry - roll them into long sausage shapes then twist, brush with melted butter and cinnamon, dust with a sprinkling of sugar and bake with the other pastries to make really yummy cinnamon twists. Miss Ella ate the lot!

Just a bit yum, really.

I haven’t made these for ages and had quite forgotten how super easy they are to conjure up!

Note to self - always keep a pack of ready made puff pastry in the freezer ready for any morning where a moment of Supermama illusion making is needed.