Create your own cookery book with Blurb

This is a Guest Post. I haven't been paid to feature this on my blog - but I think it's a pretty cool idea - after all, who wouldn't love to have their own cookbook. Move over Nigella...

Gift Idea: Create Your Own Cookbook, and Fill It With Recipes You Love!

If you love to cook, or know someone who does (lucky you – yum!) creating your own personalised cookbook is a great idea!

From homemade hearty meals to keep you warm and rosy cheeked in the winter months, to gooey chocolate desserts accompanied by sweet cocktails and quick fix meals – whatever tickles your taste buds can be compiled into one bookshop-quality cookbook for you to keep pride of place in your kitchen, or give to that certain person as a lovely, thoughtful gift. And it couldn’t be any easier! 

Blurb has created their free BookSmartsoftware, where you can craft your own gorgeous and tailor-made cookbook in minutes, and they do everything for you! All you have to do is choose which culinary delights you want to feature – and away you go. 

We love them because they are:

v  So easy to put together– Just create your free login, then download BookSmart - the free book making software, and start making your book.

v  All your own design – Simply just drag and drop your recipes into one of the cookbook layouts or even get creative and make your own layout – play around with different colours and backgrounds

v  High quality books – The books are comprised of professional bindings and your choice of paper and cover options – or you could even  create a beautiful eBook and place it on your blog

v  Quick, efficient and inexpensive – when you have placed your order you’ll have your cookbook in about a week and even receive a discount on volume orders

v  Easily sharable  – Showcase your own book on Twitter and Facebook with a link to a digital preview of the cookbook you’ve designed

v  Easy to sell too – Finally you can even earn a profit with your cookbook! You can set your own price in the online bookstore, sell your book, and keep 100% of the money you make.

Ready to give it a go?
 

This guide will show you exactly how easy it is to put your own stunning cookbook together.

Enjoy!

Getting started

After you have created your free login, you are ready to start making your book! They have a guide to show you how to do everything in the most simplistic way, so firstly all you have to do is click ‘Start a new book’.

Choosing what kind of book you want

You decide what your book will look like from all aspects, so the next step is to choose the size and shape of the book you want. Choose whichever you feel will suit your preferences the best, and you can always change your mind later on! You can also add your name into the Author section, to make it that extra bit professional.

Choosing your layout

You don’t just have to make a cookbook! There are so many other books you can create, such as wedding photo books, portfolios, and simple photo books - so choose the layout that suits your needs the best. In this case, we’re choosing the cookbook layout! This gives you space to add pictures and text, and you can move it around as you like.

Choose the pictures of your recipes you want to add

It is so simple to add the pictures to accompany your recipes, simply choose which ones you want from a file on your computer, and they will be added into the side bar for you to drag and drop at your leisure!

Choose what you do

Adding your photos in can be so easy, they do it for you! You can decide whether you drag and drop your pictures to the place of your choosing, or Blurb can even organise your photos into the book depending on date etc. How easy is that?

Choose your theme

Now you can decide what theme you want your book to have, again once you have decided you can swap it around and see what styles you like the best!

Start adding in your recipes and pictures into your book

Now you have decided on the look and the layout, you can start adding in all your lovely recipes! You can choose how you view your book so you can start to imagine what it will look like when it is finished, and you can easily flip between the pages to add in all the content you want to include.

You can also choose what you want your layout to look like, from the menu on the side bar.

Drag and drop your pictures

To add in the pictures for your book, simply choose which one you want to add from the side menu and drag it to an available box. Image boxes are marked with ‘drag image here’ so you’ll always have a rough guide to make the process extra quick and easy.

 Preview your book

Once you have set everything out as you want and you are happy with how your book looks, you can then proceed by clicking the ‘Preview book’ button so see how it will look when it is published. 

The final checklist

Just to make sure you haven’t missed anything out, they show you a final checklist making sure you’ve spelled everything correctly, kept all your content within the margin, and made sure your beautiful book is perfect!

Sign in and finalise your book

Then all you have to do is sign in and upload your book!

Final steps – Customise your book

Finally, you can choose the materials for your book! Decide on the cover, the type of paper, the end sheets and even the cover linen to make it unique to you.

P.s PDF

You can also get an instant PDF version of your book!

There you go! So get choosing your favourite recipes, and start making your very own professional, published cookbook - or the perfect gift for a foodie you love! You can also make unconventional food books, so get your thinking cap on and be creative! Also, why not share your book with the world and sell it via the Blurb sell your book page.

Disclosure: This is a guest post written by Lauren Tate Content & Online PR Executive on behalf of Blurb.

Ceredigion Calling: Welsh beaches in Winter - and a distinct lack of chips at The Ship Inn, Tresaith

We don't eat out very often, and it's usually somewhere local so the issue of who's driving doesn't arise. We're very lucky where we live to have a couple of decent curry houses and a reasonable 'gastropub'. There's also a new restaurant just opened which is proving popular and the Husband and I had a very nice lunch there a few weeks' ago. This is all very convenient for a village, but occasionally the opportunity arises to eat out elsewhere.

The last couple of weeks have seen us in a whirlwind of travelling, firstly up to the area of Wales we are due to move to after Christmas. This was a familiarisation visit, chiefly designed to get the kids, Blue in particular, engaged and on board. While Pink, recognising that she is going to miss her friends, is approaching it all as a huge adventure, and has already started picking up Welsh from her friend's mother, who is a Welsh speaker, Blue has taken it all rather hard. So a couple of Fridays ago, we arrived in the small village of Llangrannog, in the dark, in a howling gale to spend the weekend. After a directions fail, we found the cottage we had booked, which was everything a seaside holiday cottage should be, and settled in. 



The storm blew out over night and Saturday dawned clear and bright - a great day for exploring the coast between Llangrannog and Aberaeron. We did pay a visit to the estate agents, but mainly it was about running on the beach, looking for dolphins, and having fun with the kids.

 

Sunday was less hopeful weather-wise, but a dead porpoise on the beach lifted the mood (we were sad it was dead, but you don't often get to see such interesting stuff on your average Sunday morning) and after a short walk along the coastal path round to the next beach with the dog - who is in total heaven - and then back on the shore, we headed off to the village of Tresaith, which is further south. The kids and I spent a bonus holiday day here in the summer: the move was not on the cards at that point, but the Husband's work took him to the site so we tagged a day on to our North Wales trip earlier this year, and came along for the ride.

It's a beautiful little village huddled into the hill that rises steeply up from the shore. When we came in September, it was already pretty quiet, and when we visited in early December, it was empty of holiday makers. A local Scout group was making merry in the village hall, and a group of fishermen were laying nets - herring? - on the beach.

I know I'm not the only person to go somewhere on holiday, fall in love and spend the week gazing wistfully in estate agent windows. And whenever you express that desire to move there, there is always the voice of common sense that suggests how different a place will be in the winter - the connotation being that it will be different in a bad way. The thing is, though, that I love the sea. Being on a beach in winter time is one of my absolute all time favourite things to do. The sense of being on the edge, and looking out to sea is something that stirs my soul in a way that I cannot adequately do justice to in words. And this is true whether it's a beautiful crisp clear day, when a storm is raging (the awesome power of the waves!) or when it's just a bit murky. I appreciate that the recent storms have done a huge amount of damage, and hope I'm not being entirely insensitive when I say these things, but the thought that we're going to be living with easy access to this beautiful coastline makes me unbelievably excited.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Tresaith. One of the reasons we came to Tresaith was to go for lunch at The Ship. It's quite a well known pub, with a busy restaurant, and because we hadn't booked, we missed out on a table with a sea view, but we could live with that. I'm not going to do a full blown review because that's not really my thing, but it was cosy and comfortable, and exactly the sort of place you want to go for lunch on a wintery seaside day.

There was a small but good choice of meals available for Sunday lunch - nothing particularly exciting, or unusual, and 3 of us had haddock & chips, one had roast beef. Haddock and chips - delicious. Creamy fish, crisp batter which wasn't too greasy. Tartare sauce that was, well, tart (in a good way), lovely mushy peas. But look closely at the picture. Is there anything that strikes you as slightly odd?

Now I don't normally count the number of chips on my plate, believe me, I am not that kind of person. But 8 chips? Does that strike anyone as decent? Yes they were good and chunky, but 8??  The Husband faired slightly better with 11. Surprisingly, it wasn't an issue for the child's portion that Pink chose.

We were so gobsmacked that we mentioned it to the waitress. Perhaps our meals had been plated up at a moment of extreme stress or distraction and a second scoopful was missing? Or perhaps the pub dog had snuck them off the plates? No. Apparently not. She disappeared off and returned with more chips. Chip portions are fixed by Head Office, you see, but the chef had made us some more.

We had puddings - a lovely pear and almond tart for me, some ice cream for Pink, I can't remember what Blue had, and the Husband had an apple pie which was a bit too sweet, but all in all a decent meal (once the extra chips came along). The Husband enjoyed his pint of ale, and I had some tomato juice with all the proper spices in it.

We paid the bill and gathered our things. As we were leaving I couldn't help overhearing a conversation that was going on on the next table "Er, excuse me, I'm not complaining or anything, but do you think we could have a few more chips?" "Ah, yes, Sir, Head Office tells us how many chips to put on the plates, but I'll go and see if I can get some more"...

Chocolate cake

I wasn't going to blog this - on the one hand, it's just another chocolate cake, and I did no more than increase the quantities from Nigella's Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake which features in the chocolate section of Feast, but it worked wonderfully. And there's always room in your life for another chocolate cake, especially easy and lush ones like this.

Hot on the heels of Blue's birthday, the Husband actually turned 40 (as opposed to officially turning 40 in September when we had his party) at the weekend. I made this mindful (as was when I made the Victoria Sponge for Blue) that sometimes, sponge cakes can seem a little on the thin side (may be it's just me) so I increased all the ingredients for the cake (but not the icing) by half, and I was not disappointed. It made a fabulous, generous chocolate cake, which even Pink, who isn't a lover of chocolate cakes, went mad for.

And it went down very well with a glass of champagne before we went out on Saturday night...

For the cake, you will need

2 20cm loose bottomed cake tins, greased and lined
300g plain flour
300g caster sugar
11/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
60g cocoa
260g unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
225 ml sour cream

For the icing
75g unsalted butter
175g dark chocolate broken into small pieces
300g sifted icing sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
125ml sour cream 

Pre-heat the oven to 180C

Put all the cake ingredients into a food processor and process to a thick, smooth batter.

Divide between the tins and bake for 25-35 minutes till a skewer comes out clean. if you remember, swap the tins round in the oven half way through.

Cool the cakes in their tins for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack.

When the cakes are cold, make the icing. Melt together the butter & chocolate in quite a large bowl (large enough to take the rest of the ingredients and mix the icing up) and set aside to cool a little, then stir in the golden syrup, followed by the sour cream, then stir in the seived icing sugar. to make a reasonably thick spreadable icing. If you need to thin it out, use a tiny bit of boiling water.

Smear the icing over one of the halves of cake, then sandwich the second half on top, then slap and smear the rest of the icing over the outside of the cake.

Random Recipes #35 - Dare to Bare

Random Recipes - how I've missed you. Life has been manic, and although I've chosen my recipe for the last few challenges, I have never quite got round to making them.

But this month, a challenge that suits my current situation: to photograph the contents of my food cupboards and reveal all.

I'm trying to clear out, to reduce the amount of stuff we will shortly need to move from rural north Hampshire to even more rural West Wales. The food cupboards are not exempt. So let's examine them more closely - after all, Dom at Belleau Kitchen just wants to have a good old nosy...

You may remember that I did have a good old clear out of one of my cupboards almost exactly a year ago. Let's see if it's still ordered and tidy. Hmm, Thought not. Bread flour on both shelves, baking powder and bicarb of soda where they shouldn't be, an almost empty bag of pasta shoved in at the back. It's not looking good - but at least there's a couple of boxes of marzipan ready for the Christmas cake that I finally got round to baking tonight...



Where to next? Well, directly above what I notionally think of as 'the baking shelves' is the jam and chutney cupboard. Quite full at the moment, as they should be at this time of year - it'll be a different story come March, when the jars will mostly be empty. And look! I spy some of the Husband's chilli pickled gherkins in there. Oh yes indeed. Remind me to make some bagels some time, you know, when I have a spare 5 minutes, and get in the pastrami...

1 - take a photo of your ingredients cupboard or larder
2 - pop it up on your blog or twitter or facebook and tell us a little bit about what you have in stock
3 - email a link to me at dominic at belleaukitchen dot com
4 - tweet me @belleaukitchen using the #belleaukitchen hashtag and i'll retweet all I see
5 - include a link back to my blog and the random recipes logo in your post
6 - deadline in the 28th December - See more at: http://www.belleaukitchen.com/#sthash.F83pAd3G.dpuf

1 - take a photo of your ingredients cupboard or larder
2 - pop it up on your blog or twitter or facebook and tell us a little bit about what you have in stock
3 - email a link to me at dominic at belleaukitchen dot com
4 - tweet me @belleaukitchen using the #belleaukitchen hashtag and i'll retweet all I see
5 - include a link back to my blog and the random recipes logo in your post
6 - deadline in the 28th December - See more at: http://www.belleaukitchen.com/#sthash.F83pAd3G.dpuf

Moving on, to the spice cupboard (but which you'll notice has the 'current' jars of jam, marmite and peanut butter too), and it's no tidier than the others. The smoked paprika is at the front of course: La Chinata '3 chilli' hot, and a supermarket's own brand bog standard smoked, plus my old friends, ground cumin, coriander, ginger and cinammon. Jostling at the back, all manner of ground this and seeds of that. There's a box of Maldon sea salt in there, the mustard (English, powder), and some cardamom pods. I used them recently in a stove top rice pudding that I made. It was utterly divine.

Finally, dare I enter the corner cupboard of doom? An ingenious pull out contraption which makes the most of what would otherwise be a dead corner in the kitchen (thank you Howdens, for that). 

This, this my friends, is the cupboard that will see me through a nuclear winter. All the guilty secrets are here too - the pack of ready made custard and a tin of steamed sticky toffee pudding that we didn't eat while we were away house hunting at the weekend; some corned beef and some tinned potatoes (mmmm hash); baked beans, tinned tomatoes, chestnut puree, cake icing accoutrements, tinned caramel, some lentils and a bag of porridge oats, along with a number of packets of what the Husband likes to refer to as 'comedy tea'. 



And what on earth did I buy pomegranate molasses (see, in the photo below, the tipped over bottle next to the barrel of Birds custard powder) for? Ottolenghi has got a lot to answer for...

May be I'll do a follow up post, just before we move in a couple of months, to see how much of it all I've managed to use up. What do you think?

More soup - this time spicy spinach & coconut - suitable for 5:2, too!

As well as the parsnips, we also said goodbye to the last of our over-wintered spinach at the weekend. This meant that I had 250g (leaf & stalks) to turn into something delicious.

Now, I absolutely LOVE spinach - it is one of my most favourite things. I love it steamed, on toast, topped with a poached egg, may be some bacon. I also love it creamed, or in a gratin with anchovies, or just steamed with a grating of nutmeg. It's super healthy too. Unfortunately, the kids are not so keen, though, so rather than either concealing it in something else, or subjecting myself to the grimaces and whinging that tends to accompany a brazen appearance of the stuff, unadulterated on their plates (somethimes, you just have to take the path of least resistance) I thought I'd see if I could enhance my 5:2 fast days by creating this batch into some tasty soup.

Turns out that I could. I have worked out as accurately as I can that 400ml of this will work out at a smidge over 119 calories. 400ml might actually fill me up, which is a huge bonus. I was going to have a  fast day today, but then I remembered that I was going out to night, so it will have to be tomorrow. I had some of the soup for lunch today anyway, and it's very tasty. The chilli and ginger give it a little something extra which makes me feel like I've eaten more than I actually have - always a bonus, even when it's not a fast day, if it will stop me reaching for the bread...

250g spinach - leaves and stalks (doesn't need to be baby spinach or anything), thoroughly washed
2 shallots, roughly chopped
1 clove of garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon grated ginger
1 Kallo organic chicken stock cube made up with 500ml boiling water
1 can light coconut milk
1 dried chilli

Put the shallot, garlic and ginger into a pan that will eventually take all the liquid, and which has a lid, and just cover with water. Bring to the boil and simmer till softened and the water is all but gone - it won't take too long and if everything looks softened before the water has all evaporated don't worry too much, but do keep an eye on it to avoid it boiliong dry. Sprinkle in the dried chilli, pour in the stock and coconut milk and bring back to a simmer. Add in the spinach and cook for 5 mins or so till the spinach is wilted, then blitz.

Contact lenses for kids - a great idea.

I wrote this review while participating in an influencer campaign by Mumsnet on behalf of Johnson & Johnson Vision Care and received a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.

I don't remember exactly when I got contact lenses, but the impact they had on my life, at around 14/15 was huge. I wore glasses from the age of, I think, 7 (possibly younger, no one can quite remember), and as my sight was deteriorating, it was the delightful NHS range all the way. You know the ones. I had the nasty white/clear plastic 'crystal' ones. The range expanded to include ones with some nasty brown frames, which seemd like a better option - well, they say a change is as good as a rest - but really, they were terrible. I looked terrible and basically, I felt terrible. Not in any conscious way, I don't think, but I didn't want to be wearing glasses. As I hit my teenage years, I remember walking around in a blur with my specs stuffed up my sleeve, so much did I not want to wear them. For someone with a -4.5 prescription that was pretty bad.

Contact lenses revolutionised everything for me. A Mumsnet survey arried out earlier this year on behalf of Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, part of Johnson & Johnson Medical Ltd., and manufacturer of ACUVUE® Brand Contact Lenses, covered the matter very thoroughly - it found that children who wear contact lenses feel better about their physical appearance, athletic ability and social acceptance compared with children who wear glasses. These children also report greater comfort with peer perception and higher satisfaction when engaging in social activities.Although there was the faff of caring for lenses (this is 26 years ago, we're talking, where the disposable lens wasn't as prevalent, and certainly wasn't offered to me as an option), life felt so much easier. I played a lot of hockey - that was easier without a pair of specs sliding down my nose all the time, and although appearance shouldn't matter, 26 years ago, specs for kids were not cool, so contact lenses did make me far more confident. In fact, I gained so much confidence over my appearance, that when I couldn't wear them for a time, I felt pretty comfortable going back to specs (although obviously not the NHS ones).

These days I wear monthly disposable lenses most of the time. They are easy, convenient, and improve my life in many ways - no misting up when I get something out of the oven or if it's raining, no sliding down my nose while I'm running, no tears when I chop up onions... I still feel a little less confident and outgoing in my specs, especially out of the house - mainly because I just don't see as well. The prescriptions are the same, but it's something about the all round vision that makes a difference.

As a long term glasses/lenses wearer, I will admit to being more than a little upset to find out that my boy was very shortsighted. His myopia was diagnosed before he was 1 during a check up for what turned out not to be a squint. Don't tell me how they managed to work it out, but there it was. And not just a little shortsighted - at the age of 1, he was sitting at -8 - twice as shortsighted as I am - and it has only got worse.

As he approached his 8th birthday, the wonderful consultant suggested trying contact lenses. The boy was reasonably ambivalent about it, but the Husband and I were keen to give it a go - crucially, while nothing has been proven, there was anecdotal evidence that wearing a particular type of lens could help slow his particular type of 'galloping myopia'.

2 years on, and Blue wears a type of gas permeable lens that we get on the NHS. I'll be the first to admit that it hasn't been easy. Gas permeable lenses are not as comfortable or as easy to get used to as soft, disposable lenses, and interestingly, despite initial enthusiasm, Blue was loathe to give up his glasses in case people didn't know who he was. Having worn specs since he was 1, I suspect he felt they were an integral part of him, rather than some annoying appendage. The Mumsnet survey indicates that about half (48%) of parents agree that their child likes wearing glasses, 39 percent say their child does not like wearing them, and 13 percent are unsure how their child feels about wearing glasses. Almost half of vision corrected parents (49%) agree that their child likes wearing glasses compared to 43 percent of non-vision corrected parents. I think the range of glasses available for children has improved significantly, and my boy definitely likes wearing his specs.

So how do contact lenses fit in, given that he likes wearing his glasses? Well, parental support is definitely key. The survey suggests that parents believe that the ‘right’ age for children to start wearing contact lenses is 14 years old. One fifth (21%) think it should be at age 16, while 13 percent believe a child can start wearing contact lenses at age 12. Only one in five parents (17%) are aware that children as young as 8-years old are capable of contact lens wear. I have to say I was surprised when it was suggested to us as an option, but as someone who has worn lenses, could see the obvious benefits. My own experience is also born out in the survey, which suggests that 70% of parents who themselves don’t need vision correction are significantly more likely to agree that that their child is not ready for contact lenses. I wear lenses - and was more open to the idea for my child.

Blue still, at the age of 10, can't put the lenses in for himself, but he has been able to take them out and clean them for himself for about a year. This means he can go to school with them in and deal with it if there is a problem (as long as he remembers his stuff). It's not been an easy relationship for him - the lenses do hurt if he's had a break from them, and it takes a bit of time to get used to them again, but the difference in him when he's wearing them is noticeable. For a start, he has peripheral vision, which is lost when he wears glasses. This means less tripping over. He can also see 'better'. How this works, I do  not understand, but the lenses and specs are the same prescription (he's now around -11), yet he can see further and more clearly with the lenses. This is great for him in school, and when he's playing his trombone in orchestra - the brass section is at the back, and with his specs on he can't always see the conductor...

Of course, the right age for introducing contact lenses to your child (or vice versa) depends on the child - this is something the consultant made clear to us when we first discussed it with him. The child does need to be relatively mature, and to be able to understand what's going on, and what to do if there is a problem, for example. But I think we give children less credit than they are due about how they might cope with something like contact lenses - it can be a great option.

Classic Victoria Sandwich - the egg weighing way

I've always thought that one of the worst bits of being a parent is the birthday parties. Not the birthdays themselves - I love celebrating another year, the excitement, the presents (well may be not the coming in at 5, then 5.10, then 5.12 to open the presents - you see where I'm going) - but the parties give me a headache, and I am prone to cake-stress.

It's become something of a competitive sport, the birthday cake of today. I myself am not proud to admit to participating in this. When Blue was 4, I spent 15 - yes, 15 - hours, along with a few more hours that a patient and wonderful friend put in, creating a Thomas and the Troublesome Trucks cake. It was, if I do say so myself, completely awesome, but the stress of it all was almost too much to bear.

Of course, the look on his face when he saw it almost made it all worth it, but I vowed secretly that it would never be that elaborate again. That same day, the afternoon of his 4th birthday party, once the guests had left and it was just us again, he asked, in his scrummy, little boy way "Mummy, next year can I have Gordon and the Express?". I laughed (not nastily, you understand) and said "we'll see". And we all know what "We'll see" means, don't we now...

Anyway, every cake since has been a retreat a little further away from the Thomas cake.

Blue had a fire engine for his 5th birthday (if you didn't know what "we'll see" means, you do now), and a series of ever simpler cakes, and while Pink had a rather impressive dragon cake one year, she too has had to make do with pretty straightforward offerings ever since.

Blue was 10 recently. He's obviously got the hint, because he asked if he could have a Victoria Sandwich Cake with jam and cream.

Well of course, I was happy to oblige.

I have 2 sandwich tins, 20cm diameter, and when I've made sponge cakes before, I've followed a recipe and ended up with rather flat cakes. Clearly not enough mixture. This year, I decided that I needed to use 4 large eggs, and use the weighing eggs method.

You weigh your eggs in the shell, then use that same weight of butter, sugar and self raising flour. 

Pre-heat the oven to 180C

Beat the butter till it's pale and soft, then beat in the sugar.

Once the sugar is beaten in, add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, and adding a desseetspoon or so of the sifted flour if the mixture looks like it's curdled (mine ALWAYS does).

Beat in a teaspoon of vanilla essence, then carefully fold in the flour.

Divide between 2 20cm sandwich tins and bake for 25 mins or so.

Leave to cool then sandwich together.

My 4 large eggs (all 280g of them) worked a treat. We ended up with deep sponge (but not too much) which I slathered with Bonne Maman strawberry jam and 300ml whipped double cream. I would have chosen raspberry jam for preference, but it was Blue's birthday, after all...