Friday 27 January 2012

Friday favourites!

Each Friday I am going to share a food related favourite something, be that a  recipe, ingredient, cookbook, food, bit of cooking kit,  food purchase.  And so, let us begin...

Friday favourites...and I'm in love!

Please join me this week by appreciating Vanilla Extract in all it's glory.  Until very recently, I've always been a vanilla essence girl.  My passion for vanilla extract began when I was watching a re-run of Lorraine Pascale's "Baking made easy".  Lorraine, looking all glamorous and gorgeous, - ok then, and a little bit smug truth be told, or at least that's what I thought at the time - told us that she 'would always prefer to use either vanilla pods or vanilla extract but NEVER, vanilla essence".  Lorraine left it at that.  No further explanation, just the suggestion that vanilla essence really wouldn't do.

"Well", I thought to myself feeling like a second-rate-cooking-baking-type-of-person, "I'm not sure I see what the vanilla-fuss is about".  To be completely honest I thought Lorraine was being more than a little bit sniffy about this whole vanilla issue.  Until, that is, I saw this bottle looking down at me from the supermarket shelf.


"Oh my."  I had to have it.  And now, there is simply no going back.  Oh, the smell, Oh, the flavour.  Oh, just having that bottle gazing down at me from my kitchen shelf.

So Lorraine, I salute you! 

Just one thing though.  When I tried making the 'red velvet celebration cake' from your recipe on the BBC website, I noticed that there, listed in the ingredients was 'vanilla essence'.  And as we both now know Lorraine, that, would never do.

My attempt at the 'red velvet celebration cake' for my friend, Sara's birthday.

2 comments:

  1. Ooh very pretty cake! I am teaching myself to bake - Nigellas Gingerbread was a hit, Mary Berry's Cherr

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    1. Thank you! Baking is great fun. I'm new to this whole cake decoration malarky but am really enjoying it so far. Nigella has some great recipes, the gingerbread sounds lovely. I made her baked chocolate cheesecake this week...yum! I got a Mary Berry book for christmas and am looking forward to working my way through that. Jx

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