Of course you can also jest at the irony of having a cocktail called a Life Without Lemons Sparkle that is all about lemon- the joy of a little sarcasm......

Chocolate Pizza from Elyse Chatterton on Vimeo.

Making the video was so much fun but not quite as much fun as eating the pizza!

• 100 g Sugar
• 100 g Soft Brown Sugar
• 100 g butter, softened
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 egg
• 210 g All purpose flour
• 1/2 bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 salt
• 150 g chocolate chips
• Sweets for the toppings- we used Smarties, shredded coconut, chocolate chips and Skor pieces

METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 375 F/190 C and grease a 10" pizza pan (I used a slightly smaller, disposable tin foil tray in the video and placed some of the cookie dough in the freezer for another time)
2. Put both sugars in a large bowl and cream together with the butter till light and fluffy.  
3. Add the vanilla and egg and mix together.  Sift in the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda (or cheat like me and simply use a balloon whisk to aerate the flour, salt and bicarbonate in another bowl- life is too short to sift flour!)  Mix everything together to form a stiff, smooth dough.
4. Press the dough evenly into the pizza pan and bake for 12-15 minutes.  Leave in the pan to cool then place the cookie base on a plate ready for its toppings.
5. Melt the 150 g chocolate chips on medium in the microwave or in a bowl over simmering water.  Leave to cool a little then pour over the surface of the pizza.  Make sure you leave a gap around the edge, just like pizza sauce.
6. Get creative and top your pizza with a little or a lot of toppings!  

With my mismatched glasses I tested out the Blackberry Cinnamon Mojito and was very impressed.  The recipes all feature real, fresh ingredients.  They are laid out simply with ingredients clearly listed on the side of each page, making finding a recipe with certain ingredients easy.  The book has a great list and description of equipment and some very tasty syrup recipes that are used in many of the cocktails.


I love that this book is organised by season rather than alcohol choice, as many other cocktail books I have delved into are.  All the focus is on fresh and new, rather than tradition and that feels rather cool.  I am keen to try the Blackberry Lavender Mojito too.

If the idea of sipping a cocktail is your thing check out this book and especially look out for the toasts for each season;
"May we be happy and our enemies know it"

Happy cocktail making.










I was given this book complimentary to review but all opinions and images are my own.  

Market-Fresh Mixology: Cocktails for Every Season 
Bridget Albert (Author), Mary Barranco (Contributor)

 Testing out an imPRESS Press on Manicure.  

Although I am not a fan of stick on nails and also patterns on nails (I am a solid colour kinda gal), I was super impressed with them.  Quick, easy to apply and really sturdy!  They claim to stay on for a week and I don't doubt it.  I chose to take mine off after a few days but I carried on life as normal with them on and they held well.  They survived some pretty heavy garden work, looking after my chickens, cooking, cleaning, making two gates out of old pallets and hanging them and they still looked great!  If I was in a hurry and needed some flash nails I would certainly use them again.

That boy...

 ...and this fantastic boy and that amazing blue sky.

Playing dominoes at midnight, outside, after a little red wine!

 Batman Marshmallows

 Don't even ask how much yellow food colour it took to get that colour! 

 Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, Batman!

 Birthday brother cuddles.

 Launchpad Trampoline Park.

 Marble Slab Snickerdoodle Ice Cream Cake

 Happy Big Five Alfie- you really are a superstar! 

I grate hard cheese into sauces, sprinkle it on pasta, mix it into salad dressings and grate large slices with a vegetable peeler to be tossed with lettuce and even just eaten as a pre dinner nibble broken into shards of varying sizes.  So that leaves me with quite a lot of leftover cheese rind and good, because they are perfect for adding flavour to stews, soups and my favourite, into stock for risotto.  

Simply throw the rind into the pot of bubbling sauce or stock and scoop it out before serving.  It will impart amazing flavour to any dish, so please don't throw them away!  If you have a backlog of them simply place them in the freezer and they are ready to boost the flavour when you need them.  Just be careful when seasoning a dish as the rind can add quite a bit of salt so taste before you throw any more salt in. 

My latest Parmesan rind flavoured the chicken stock used to make this; Baked Portabello Mushroom with Thyme and Olive Oil topped with a Parmesan Risotto, Home cured Brown Sugar Bacon and a Fried Egg (.......from our very own chickens- more on this soon!)

A few cheese rind facts;

Cheese in Europe is made with many old traditions which are still carried on today. The rind develops during the ripening process and protects the cheese from drying out and unwanted mold. It also gives each cheese its particular taste and smell.

Cheese rind develops when the pressed cheese forms are laid in a salt brine and/or sprinkled with salt. Soft cheeses are only in the brine a half hour or so, while hard cheeses may be brined for up to three days. The salt enters the surface of the cheese and pulls out water, which makes the outer surface of the cheese hard.

After the salt water bath, cheese is usually ripened in a cheese cellar under conditions specific to each type of cheese. The cheese surface dries out more and becomes even harder. Also during this time, the cheese is treated; it is turned regularly, brushed and washed. Salt brine is rubbed over the surface and sometimes other mixtures containing herbs and spices. Natural molds and bacteria grow on the surface, too, which helps protect the cheese from decay and gives the cheese even more taste. The hard rind formed through this procedure with no other treatment is edible. One caveat is that pregnant women, the elderly and people with weak immune systems should not eat the rind due to the small chance that Listeria, a harmful bacterium, can also be present.

Click here for printable version of Orange Flapjack