The arrival of my beautiful new Raspberry Ice Kitchenaid and a recipe for easy mashed potato KA style!

The arrival of my beautiful new Raspberry Ice Kitchenaid and a recipe for easy mashed potato KA style!

After drooling over Kitchenaids on all of the cookery shows I seem to watch I have finally ordered and received mine! Im so glad I waited because a few months ago I thought that I would get the Cranberry colour which didn't look as pink as I'd like it to and when I checked last week I saw that the relatively new Raspberry Ice colour was available in the UK and I just had to have it! Ive got so many ideas of what to make in it but I christened my new KA by doing a yummy mashed potato in it as I didn't have much time to be baking last night I found a recipe which enables me to use my new favourite toy whilst doing what I was already doing. The mash turned out beautifully creamy and soft with no lumps - perfect!! Now hopefully at the weekend I can finally bake a loaf of bread or make a lovely batch of cupcakes! yummy!!

Here is my beautiful Pinky all settled in and sitting proudly in our tiny kitchen!

Recipe for the mashed potato using the Kitchenaid or other stand mixer.

Ingredients
5 large potatoes (about 2 1/2 pounds), peeled, quartered and boiled
1/2 cup low-fat milk, heated
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper


Preparation
1. Warm mixer bowl and flat beater with hot water; dry. Place hot potatoes in bowl. Attach bowl and flat beater to the KitchenAid Stand Mixer. Gradually turn to Speed 2 and mix until smooth, about 1 minute.

2. Add all remaining ingredients. Turn to Speed 4 and beat until milk is absorbed, about 30 seconds. Gradually turn to Speed 6 and beat until fluffy, about 1 minute. Stop and scrape bowl. Exchange flat beater for wire whip. Turn to Speed 10 and whip 2 to 3 minutes.

Mine did splash a bit so that might be because it was my first time using the mixer but be sure to put your splash guard on! :)

Please leave a comment and tell me your favourite mixer recipes...I need ideas! :)

Birthday Burrito in Red Peppers Birmingham!

Birthday Burrito in Red Peppers Birmingham!

Just a quick pick of my yummy birthday burrito which I ordered in Red Peppers Birmingham....

This was our first time at Red Peppers in the Mailbox and we had a lovely meal here the menu was big and had a lot of choice with lots of different flavours and the yummy flavours of the Burrito reminded me of being in Mexico on my summer holidays last year and now ive just seen the picture I feel like popping over to Red Peppers and ordering one for dinner hehe :)

An afternoon of Pottery Painting with the girls

An afternoon of Pottery Painting with the girls at All Fired Arts, Kings Heath

It was my friends birthday in July and we wanted to do something fun and girly and a little different and Jo the Birthday girl had recently been pottery painting and had really enjoyed it so we all booked in to go and have an afternoon of painting pottery whilst gossiping and nomming our way through some delicious cupcakes from Selfridges :) it was a lovely afternoon and I enjoyed the relaxing painting session a lot!


The place is called All Fired Arts and its in Kings Heath, Birmingham, if you're local to Birmingham and you're the creative type this is the place for you! You can take food and drink and if nobody was driving we may have even taken a bottle of wine. The lovely ladies in the shop do offer you tea/coffee/cordial so refreshments are all sorted. We took a box of cupcakes to nibble on whilst we were creating our masterpieces and we all had a great afternoon without the boys hehe

They have a huge selection of blank pottery which you can choose from, I spotted lots of things I liked from plates & mugs to teapots and gnomes there was everything! I then saw a triangle plate and thought that I could paint it to look like a slice of pizza and use it as a pizza plate forever more so I decided to go for that. So off we went to paint the pizza plate, lizard, plate & teapot.

I stared at my blank pizza plate for a while before deciding that I would try and make it look like my favourite pizza - ham & pineapple! I started drawing little hams and pinapples onto the blank canvas totally scared of messing it up haha

I drew them on with one of the pens and then coloured them with the chosen colours and it started coming together quite nicely although it didn't look great at this point I was told that the finished product would be shiny and gorgeous when it comes out of the kiln so I had my fingers crossed for good results! I finally mixed a few colours together to make a nice pizza crust and more cheese for inbetween the ham and pineapple.



Lastly I added some tomato dots and I even added herbs - I was very impressed with the last minute creative touches! Haha. We all left feeling pretty good about our pottery painting experience and left our pieces at the shop to go into the kiln and be finished off. We got a call to say our pottery was ready after just a couple of days so we were all very excited to go and pick them up and heres my finished glossy pizza plate which was done just in time for its first use at my birthday party :D

We paid full price and really enjoyed the experience but this week All Fired Arts have a discount voucher listed on KGB Deals under Birmingham which makes booking up even more tempting! Click here for the current KGB Deal Please bear in mind that this link is only valid until roughly the 10th Sept 2011 but can be used until the 11/12/11 so be quick and enjoy the experience and if you miss the voucher go anyway because its a really great afternoon or day out!