Wednesday 8 October 2008

Round II of the Tidyits

Margam Abbey.



As I sit typing this, the light is falling after a lovely sunny Autumn day, and a Robin is singing from the Bramley apple tree. K and I have had a very busy day clearing out more of the rubbish from the Morning Room. He has even (after many, many years!) sorted out ALL the old paperwork from the writing bureau and it can now have the lid shut once more. We had a huge bonfire of old magazines and rubbish, including two ancient fleeces I had washed but never got around to spinning (story of my life) and there are now about 19 boxes of books ready to go to auction, and a big box of china and bricabrac, plus the frames. I even hardened my heart and got rid of lots of old needlework magazines, though I kept most of the old American quilting magazines. I may have to have a rethink about those when we do upsticks, but for the moment I have found them a corner. I found several half-finished x-stitch projects, two of which I am going to resurrect now and hope to finish for Christmas gifts. One is 3/4 done and is a Lilliput Lane design in x-stitch, for a friend who has a vast collection of Lilliput Lane cottages and buildings. So the hallway in particular looks an absolute tip, but we are slowly getting there. We can't take our boxes to auction until next Monday as there's another sale on this weekend.

Sian asked for the recipe for the Chocolate Chip Muffins I made the other day, so before I forget about it, here it is:

CHOCOLATE BROWNIE MUFFINS (the official name)

2 cups (300g) Self Raising Flour
1/3 cup (35g) cocoa powder
1/3 cup (75g) caster sugar
60g butter, melted
1/3 cup (95g) Choc Bits (I just roughly chop up the requisite weight of a good brand of choc)
1/2 cup (75g) chopped Pistachios (I omit these)
1/2 cup (125ml) Nutella
1 egg, lightly beaten
3/4 cup (180ml) milk
1/2 cup (125ml) sour cream

Grease a 12 hole muffin tin (or line with muffin cases, as I do).

Sift dry ingredients into a bowl and mix. Stir in remaining ingredients.

Spoon mixture into prepared tin/cases. Bake in a moderate oven (180 deg. C) for about 20 mins. Makes 12.

1 comment:

Sian said...

Thanks for that recipe. I will give that a go :o)

The flax spinning went very well, I bought prepared lengths so did not have to dress a distaff or wet the thread as I spun it. In fact, it was exactly the same method as spinning from a wool roving. Very easy!