Recipes that Inspire #3

Firstly, I must apologise for lack of blog posts this week. I am one of those people who firmly believes that family always comes first, and this week family has needed to take the front seat. However, I wanted to bring you some of the inspiring ideas that I have found this week.

I love Heston Blumenthal. A fact that my boyfriend appreciates is only the love built from admiration of pure genius. Heston is one amazing, wonderful person. Everytime of watch one of his programs or read his recipes in Heston's Feasts I feel immensely humbled. His ideas, the way his mind processes the concepts of flavour, appearance and presentation really inspire me to think about food in a different way. Lately I have watching "How to Cook like Heston". I really appreciate that he is taking the time to show people fantastic ways to prepare and cook everyday food. In fact, I have started to cook my steak how he suggests. It is simply superb. This week I watched his episode on Chicken and I cannot wait to try some if it. The idea of setting the chicken in a brine in order to help it maintain the moisture content is something I would never have known to explore without him.

Over the last few years my mother and I have made my nieces birthday cakes. These cakes have been anything from a fairy garden to Space to nature inspired. I am always on the lookout for a new idea for baking and cakes in particular. Just today I found a new blog, Eat Cake for Dinner, and only because of the following cupcakes. I love the idea of creating these wonderful bright and fun cupcakes. Just take a look. I also really like the look of her Crockpot Hot Fudge Cake and English Toffee.

As everyone who reads my blog can tell I have a massive sweet tooth. And while this can be what initially attracts me to a blog or cookbook. Recently I have been craving caramel and toffee. I have been experiencing terrible difficulties with toffee. I cannot get it to colour, and it granulates upon setting. I can remember my mothers toffees as a child and this never happened. She would make these wonderful toffees and coconut ices for our school fetes. They were always a huge favourite (along with her piklets). I don't know what I am doing wrong yet but I am determined to find a recipe that I can do. So as I am contemplating the wonderful world of sweets, toffees and caramel I found Eat, Live, Run. I am quickly falling in love with this blog. From the the recipes to the design of her site and her cooking. This site is pure joy. At the moment I am particularly looking forward to try the Salted Caramel Chocolate Mousse. It looks and sounds amazing.

As an Aussie, we do not always have access to all the different cooking programs on television all over the world. This being said I am particularly glad to have stumbled across The Pioneer Woman. Ree Drummond cooks hearty wonderful food with a lot of love. I am really enjoying the way she tells a story with food. I am really interested in trying her Stuffed Mushrooms recipe. This looks and sounds delicious.