DIY Pumpkin Spiced Latte

Everyone is going nuts for the Pumpkin Spiced Latte at Starbucks at the moment. Something about it just screams "Fall" to me and it helps make the tranition from tha last days of summer into cooler weather a little more bearable. But as much as I love it, I almost never order one at Starbucks – a tall costs nearly 5 euros and while I couldn't find the actual ingredients listed online, I'm pretty sure that it's full of additives and corn syrup... Since we always have pumpkin in the house (thanks to in-laws with an amazing veggie garden + a pumpkin-loving baby) it seemed like the perfect opportunity to make my own. I loosely based my recipe on a version found over at A Beautiful Mess

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 1 teaspoon gingerbread spice (although if you have pumpkin pie spices, they would work here too)
• a couple cloves
• 2 tablespoons pumpkin puree

Combine all the ingredients in a small pot on the stove and whisk until the sugar has dissolved. Continue stirring over a low heat for around 5 minutes, not letting the syrup boil. Strain the syrup and store in an air-tight container in the fridge. To serve I add 1 tablespoon to my espresso before I add the steamed milk to my cappuccino. If you like your coffee on the sweeter side, add another tablespoon. (It's important not to let the mixture boil, I ignored this step in my first batch and the syrup was much too thick, making it difficult to strain afterwards...)

The hardest part has been not drinking three of these in a day, definitely much more tempting knowing that the syrup is sitting in my fridge! 

Cooking the Internet #2 | Grape Jelly

One of obvious perks about having a father-in-law that's a hobby wine-maker is the free wine... Another is the grapes. Grape season is in full force over here and we've been innundated with this year's crop. Faced with more grapes than we could ever possibly eat ourselves, it only seemed fitting that I use them for my first foray into jam-making.

This recipe is also one of those classic what-on-earth-did-we-do-before-the-internet moments. The process of looking at the grapes, thinking about jam, googling a recipe and starting the juice extraction process was about 5 mins... I can hardly even remember what I would have done before – gone to the library? Or more likely the grapes would have gone mouldy before we could eat them all and they would have ended up in the bin. So hooray for the internet!

It's a two-day process and the finally jam is a bit on the sweet side, but slathered on whole wheat bread with cold butter it's delicious. Jam-making was so much easier than I expected that I'll definitely be making it again (and I don't know why I was so nervous about making my own jam...) Paired with homemade almond butter it would also make a cute housewarming gift.

• 1kg red grapes, preferable with seeds (stripped from the stalks) I used mixture of white and red since that's what I had on hand
• 450g 2:1 jam sugar
• juice of 2 lemons

1. Tip the grapes into a large saucepan set over a low heat, then cover and leave to gently cook for 5 mins until the juices start to run. Take a potato masher and mash up the grapes. Leave to cook for about 10 mins more, mashing every now and again until the grapes are falling apart. Place a clean tea towel in a sieve set over a bowl, then pour the grape mixture into this. Let the mixture drip through overnight. 
2. Measure out the juice (you should have about 600ml) and pour it into a pan along with the sugar and lemon juice. Set the pan over a high heat and bring to the boil. Let the mixture bubble for around 7 minutes. Put a small plate in the freezer for 5 mins, then pour a little of the juice onto the cold saucer. After 1 min, run your finger through; if the jam wrinkles slightly, it’s ready. Pour the hot jam into a sterilised jar. Will keep unopened for up to 3 months.

 Adapted slightly from the recipe found here.
 

DECOR DIY / learning to love what you got

This TV stand has bothered me since I moved in with my then-boyfriend-now-husband over three (!) years ago. It was one of those things that I thought we'd replace eventually but it was never a top priority so here we are, years later and the TV stand is still taunting me. The problem is that there's nothing really wrong with it. It's IKEA, but its not broken and while I don't like it, there's also nothing so offensive about it to justify throwing it out and spending money on a new one.

So what's a girl to do in a situation like this? I initially thought that I'd replace the sliding glass doors with plywood ones, but a little research quickly made it clear that that kind of IKEA hack was going to end up being time consuming and expensive. The next thought was to paint the glass, but we already have so many colourful pieces in the living room, that adding more seemed like overkill...

The solution? Wood-effect contact paper. Less than 8 euros worth of the stuff to be exact. I had the idea and figured that I'd see what they had on offer at the local hardware store, sort of convinced that it would be awful and that I'd have to go back to the drawing board. Suprisingly, it wasn't half bad... (in fact, I was so excited about trying it out that I did one of the doors before realising that I needed a before picture if I wanted to show a before/after).

Obviously, up close no one would ever mistake it for wood, but when you sit on the sofa, it actually looks fairly decent, and more importantly it hides the mess of cables, playstations etc. that are hiding behind the sliding doors. The faux wood texture made it really easy to apply and hides the odd tiny air bubble (not like the metallic gold that I also bought for another project, that shows every. tiny. mistake and bubble...) I'd still like to replace it at some point, but it's been given a stay of execution for now.