Fairy lights and chocolate

Hi lovelies!

Sorry it's been a while, how are you? We're good, little baby S is getting more and more adorable by the day, smiling away at the most random things (coats and walls seem to amuse him highly!) and I've been getting extremely excited about the coming of Christmas.

Last year, Christmas took a back seat as M and I were planning and making and getting all excited about getting married. This year, we'll have our gorgeous 12 week old baba, so once again, there won't be as much time as I'd like for making and cooking all manner of Christmassy treats.

However, I have managed to make one of my favourite Christmas treats, and seeing as we're only 4 days into December, I think that's pretty good! So, out came my Nigella Christmas book, and Rocky Road was born. It's everything Christmas should be - sweet, chocolately and very, very indulgent!

Christmas Rocky Road by Nigella

Ingredients
250g/9oz dark chocolate, chopped
150g/5oz milk chocolate, chopped
175g/6oz butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
4 tbsp golden syrup
200g/7oz amaretti biscuits
150g/5oz red glacé cherries
125g/4oz mini marshmallows
1 tbsp icing sugar to decorate (optional)

Method
1. Place the dark and milk chocolate pieces into a heavy-based pan. Add the butter and golden syrup and cook over a low heat to melt and combine.
2. Place the amaretti biscuits into a freezer bag and bash with a rolling pin to make crumbs of various sizes.
4. Take the pan of melted chocolate mixture off the heat and add the crushed biscuits.
5. Add the glacé cherries and mini marshmallows. Fold the mixture carefully to coat all of the solid ingredients with the syrupy chocolate mixture.
6. Pour the mixture into a 25cm/10in x 30cm/12in greased and lined baking tray and smooth the surface as much as possible (although it will look bumpy).
7. Refrigerate for two hours, or until firm enough to cut. Dust with icing sugar, then sprinkle with edible glitter if you wish.
8. Remove the block of rocky road from the tray and cut into 24 rectangles.



There are also lots of other things on my Christmas cooking to do list, here are a few:
Lots of mulled alcohol - Wine and Cider
Christmas cookie decorations
Christmas Muffins


What's everyone else cooking up?

X

This past week...

I am listening to this beautiful song


Eating this


Photographing him



Getting excited about these types of things


Wanting this


Walking here



Loving them


What have you been up to?

This is London

I can't wait to start Sachin's book collection. When we were little, both M and I loved books, and still do. I have so many memories of days spent in the library, poring over beautiful words and pictures. And I think that having a baby, part of the fn is reliving your childhood again, reading your favourite books and discovering new ones.

The 'This is' range of books by Miroslav Sasek are utterly wonderful. I'd never seen them before last week, when I stumbled upon them in the childrens section of our local bookshop. I did a bit of research and found that they were first published in 1959, although they look so timeles you'd never know! As we live in London we obviously need this (!) but the rest of the range are just as brilliant. Maybe we'll make a pact to take little one and then buy the books?!

A balancing act...

I'm very aware that all my posts have been about bumps, babies, birth, motherhood ect for quite sometime, and I'm not sure that's going to change any time soon! I hope it's not too boring, but with a 5 week old thoughts are all consumed by this tiny bundle. Hours of blogging and looking at pretty things have been replaced by hours looking at a pretty baby and one or two snatched minutes to check email or google something baby related.

However I did stumble across this great article (via a girl's world) which I wanted to share. As soon as I got pregnant, the question of returning to work came up almost immediately. Now, I love my job. I've worked at the BBC for almost 5 years, have worked hard and got to a position that I'm very happy with. But I always suspected that being a mum was possibly a job I'd love more. And now he's here, I know it is. M and I decided that 6 months maternity leave was realistically what we could afford. We agreed, although I secretly hoped I could extend this to 7 or 8 months. Now, I just can't imagine dropping little one off with a stranger every day, whilst I go to work and miss out on all those moments, all that him. But like I said, work would be hard to give up. Partly because I like my job, and partly because I'm used to it. Before baby, work consumed me as much as he does now. Although if money had nothing to do with it, I'm not sure it wouldn't be quite so hard..

There's so much to say about this, and I'm sure it's something that most women struggle with. Would love to hear everyone's comments..

You can also check out the blog linked with the article here.

Photo from Flickr