Her Little Place in Where London

I'm thrilled to have Her Little Place included in this month's Where London, a magazine which scouts out what's hot in the city each month. Her Little Place is highlighted on the shopping pages below...

The text reads: "Call us pernickety if you like, but we expect more from our greetings cards than soppy teddy bears and tired verses. That's why we're loving the bold bright designs at Her Little Place, a new online boutique founded by blogger, journalist and homestyle guru extraordinaire Huma Qureshi. More concerned with quality than quantity, the selection of products on offer is 100% gorgeous - herlittleplace.com."

Loving the praise, and thank you to everyone for keeping HLP going! And don't forget - Mother's Day is this coming weekend, so get your orders for a 100% gorgeous shortbread gift box in now!

Gorgeous chocolate cake

At the risk of sounding like a freak, I don't like chocolate cake that's too, too dark chocolatey, so last week, when making a cake for a friend's birthday, I tweaked a Rachel Allen version to get it just the right choccy amount and then added my own frosting which I then covered entirely with sprinkled Flake. I deliberately went with her basic recipe to adapt myself because the amount of sugar she uses is relatively low and these days I'm off super-sweet stuff. I've never been a fan of dark chocolate, so used really good quality Green & Blacks milk chocolate in the batter - you melt the chocolate in milk, so I imagine if you were using dark chocolate, this would make it ever so slightly lighter in taste, while milk-chocolate-melted-in-milk adds a really lovely creaminess. Instead of using Rachel's suggestion of chocolate butter icing, I went for a just as rich, but less sugary, cream cheese chocolate frosting instead. I'll definitely be making this cake again... and again.... and again... enjoy!

For the cake
125g milk chocolate (or dark, if that's your preference)
3 tbsp milk
150g butter
150g caster sugar
3 eggs
200g plain flour
1 tbsp cocoa powder (I used hot chocolate powder and it worked fabulously)
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

For the cream cheese frosting
I don't really have a set recipe of measurements, because it all just depends on how creamy and thick you want it.. I tend to use around 125g cream cheese (low fat if you want to balance out the guilt) with 90g butter to begin with, whip together, and then add icing sugar slowly as you go until you get the consistency you want. I then threw in a few teaspoons of hot chocolate powder and mixed really well.

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C and butter and line two large sandwich tins with greaseproof paper.
Break the chocolate into chunks and place in a heatproof bowl with the milk over a saucepan of gently simmering water until the chocolate has melted - don't let it over melt, as that's when it starts to get dryish in texture.
Beat the butter until soft, add the caster sugar and beat until light and fluffy.
Add the eggs, one at a time, and then fold in the melted chocolate.
Sift in the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and the bicarbonate of soda and fold in gently to mix. Divide the mix between the two tins and bake in the oven for about 25 minutes.
Then take the cakes out, let them cool for a few minutes in their tins and then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Whip up the cream cheese frosting (you could add vanilla essence to it and keep it as vanilla frosting if you wanted a chocolate-vanilla cake) and then spread a gorgeous thick layer on the bottom of one cake (it's easier to sandwich the cakes bottom-to-bottom), then another lovely thick layer all over the top.
Sprinkle all over with chocolate powder or a crumbled up Flake bar (brilliant for embellishments). Serve on up - big slices all round!

I had frosting left over - so did a quick batch of chocolate cupcakes with lovely frosting on top too... yum.

Also, please don't forget, that if you want to order some deliciously exquisite Lavender or Rose shortbread gift boxes for Mother's Day, place your orders by the end of Tuesday.

Have a lovely weekend
H xx

Chalkboard kitchen makeover

Well, what a productive weekend! After buying my Heal's chalkboard, I got greedy and decided I wanted more chalkboard space - I absolutely love how cool they look and bit the bullet and went ahead with my floor-to-ceiling one this weekend. I'm thrilled at how this turned out, as I was a little scared about how a pokey kitchen with no natural light would cope with an expanse of black.

I was getting very fed up of having the fridge with various electrical appliances balanced on top on show (I have next to no worktop space, so the gap on top of the fridge is where things like the food processor or iron end up), and this chalkboard does a brilliant job of hiding it! I'm already looking forward to scribbling all over it. Now, I'm planning on reinventing the original chalkboard, which is in an ornate frame, and replacing the board to make a mirror - waste now, want not! Take a look at the before and after pics below - what do you think?

From this...

to this...

and finally this!

New products and plans for the weekend

The new range of floral flavoured biscuits and Easter cookies is now available at the Her Little Place boutique! Choose from zesty lemon Easter bunnies, sandwiched together with a delicious citrus frosting, or treat lovely mums to something a little different to a bunch of flowers, with my lavender and rose shortbread.

(All pictures by Sarah A)

The cookies come beautifully presented in natural Kraft boxes, tied with Swiss ribbon - prices for Easter and Mother's Day cookies start from £11.99, while the classic range of either chocolate "chunk" or plain vanilla iced cookies start at £9.99.

Meanwhile, this weekend I'm busy baking a Rachel Allen chocolate cake for a friend's birthday (which will appear on What's Cooking soon!) followed by a chalkboard makeover project in the kitchen - which I'm nervous about, but am confident it will look very cool! So watch this space for now, and have a good weekend
H xx

Florals for spring

There's a scene in the Devil Wears Prada (which I've seen a zillion times) where editorial are sitting in a features meeting and one of the team pitches "florals" for the spring issue. Miranda Priestly holds their gaze, pauses and then cuts back with: "Florals. For Spring. How very original."

So it mightn't be original, but it's definitely that time of year when we're all aching for the first flower head to peep through the frost (it's still frosty). Flowers in fashion for springtime is a year-on-year trend (see Elle, Net a Porter's floral range, and Erdem's ladylike floral fancies that have been a big hit at London Fashion Week and that everyone was talking about at Vogue) and it's only natural they trickle into homestyle too - DesignSponge's latest weekly wrap up was all about flower power. After all, who wouldn't have fresh flowers piled high all around their home to signal the start of a new season?

Well, while it's still a little early to say it's spring (ok, quite early), there's time and scope to be inspired yet - and floral doesn't have to mean chintzy or old fashioned. Take a look at this luxe lounge where the flower power is minimal (see the mural on the wall) and the overall style is more Roche-Bobois-boho-chic than girly-girl...

(pic via Living Etc)

This DesignSponge sneak peek of an Upper West side NYC apartment has wild flowers everywhere, uncontrived in empty vintage bottles and jam jars...

...a look that's so casual and pretty that you don't even need a trip to the florist for it - try daisies in a vintage French bottle (as seen at Re). A simple few flowers on the windowsill look so much prettier than a fancy bouquet...

And single big fat blooms in glass bowls look angelic (as seen at Black Pearl Press)

...while you can keep it simple and low key, and very unfussily ungirly, by combining floral prints with smokey greys and muted shades as seen at the gorgeous This Is Glamorous

I've waxed lyrical about using blooms in baking a few weeks ago and am now pleased to announce that the new range of floral shortbread cookie gift boxes are now available at the Her Little Place boutique - lavender and rose shortbread for Mother's Day start at £9.99.

Fingers crossed for Springtime x

Happy pancake day

As if you really need an excuse to eat sugary, syrupy pancakes: but today is Shrove Tuesday, the night for those who practice Lent to indulge one last time, while the rest of us simply get to play with nice fillings.

Inspired by family brunch on Sunday, I've written a piece all about pancakes for the Guardian today. The piece includes my dad's recipe for perfect pancakes which we still adhere to on weekend brunch - and for those of you who have an obsession with kitchenware, I've picked out some fun products you didn't think you'd need but possibly will now that you've seen them too. Flick through the photos and enjoy, and feel free to add your favourite pancake anecdotes/recipes on the bottom of my Guardian piece.

Happy flipping pancake day x

Baking with roses

Although it feels far from it, soon (hopefully) spring time will be here, bringing with it bright poppets of colour - cherry blossom, dahlia, peonies...pretty petals everywhere. I love the idea of baking with flowers; it seems such a delicate addition. But sadly I have no blooms on my balcony to experiment with, so I've decided to give it a try with rosewater instead. A few nights ago, I came up with a buttery rose biscuit recipe, which was my own variation of a traditional shortbread recipe with a bit of a twist. It's simple and sweet, and smells delicious when baking - rose water is really so very pretty and gives such velvety lightness.

For those of you who have a garden waiting to bloom, you can plan ahead with the Goddess of Cake's succinct guide to edible flowers; she confirms that rose petals can be added to cake doughs and batters, but take the white bit of the coloured petal off first as that can be bitter. It goes without saying that you'd best avoid pulling the petals off shop-bought roses in bouquets that may have (or probably have) been treated with pesticides. If they're fresh out the garden, you should still wash them and let them dry naturally before chopping and cooking. Of course, you can always add dried or fresh rose buds too as the finishing touch.

(Above: rose scented Lamingtons at Delicious Delicious Delicious)

There are some lovely recipes with roses around - rose petal and coconut fudge over on GelsKitchen, rosewater cookies at 5orangepotatoes, rose and candied ginger cake at Martha Stewart, and an absolutely exquisite sounding raspberry and rose petal millefeuille made with puff pasty and double cream on BBC Food. Sadly my photography skills are not up to scratch and the pictures I took of my rose scented shortbread biccies came out blurry - so you're just going to have to trust me on how pretty they were (I cut them in a mix of rounds and hearts).

I'm working on a "floral" range of biscuits for Her Little Place - perfect for Mother's Day - so look out for those too. Have a rose-filled Valentine's weekend x