pie, cake, and fabric too

The latest attempt at a new recipe; sausage pie. I'm trying to create nice party food with the main criteria being that it can be eaten with your hands, and isn't messy. I don't own a dining room table, and my guests have to eat their dinner on the sofa.

This has a layer of red onion, a layer of butternut squash (cubed and steamed first), a layer of grilled, sliced sausages, and some basil leaves and slices of goats cheese on top. The filling is a basic egg and milk quiche filling. I realised too late that I shouldn't have lined the tin with baking paper (duh!). It tasted ok, but kind of fell apart a little when sliced and plated.

And a new pudding; lemon gateau. I discovered this great website called www.joyofbaking.com which is jammed with desserts to die for. To make the lemon gateau I made the frosted lemon cake but baked it in two tins, then sliced each cake in half lengthwise. I then layered it with homemade lemon curd (very easy to do) and topped with lemon frosting. This cake actually tastes much better after a night in the cake tin, as the flavours intensify.

I took a trip to Country Threads in Bath today, it's an amazing little fabric shop, absolutely packed with gorgeous quilting fabrics, notions, fat quarters, ribbons, etc. I spent an hour choosing, eventually picking out the five fabrics below for my rose quilt. My next quilt will very probably be blue, it was difficult to walk away from some of those bolts.

I also got some fabric dye from the Stitch Shop in the podium, and some salt (apparently this is required when dying in your washing machine). I'm going to dye some old grey trousers black, before and after pictures will be posted tomorrow.