Soldier, Painting
Thomas Wilkinson
How to Paint: The Dead of Dunharrow

In which I finally start delivering on the promised painting guides...

I have been sat on a fully constructed Battle of Pelennor Fields box for just about a year after purchasing it as a Christmas present to myself at the tail end of 2021. Having signed up to a few "slay the grey" style challenges in the New Year I thought it was time to start with a nice easy paint job.

How to Paint: The Dead of Dunharrow
Puddings, Sponge
Thomas Wilkinson
Vegan Christmas Puddings

In which I modify an old family recipe to be vegan friendly...

After successfully turning my hand to vegan Christmas cake I thought it was high time I adapted my old Christmas pudding recipe to be vegan too.

Vegan Christmas Puddings
Tinker, Web, Python
Thomas Wilkinson
Dominant Colour Extraction in Python (for a ...

In which I discuss getting the dominant colour from an image quickly...

I have recently made a Discord bot that searches for online versions of board games to help people find games to play remotely. This link will add it to your server.

Discord embeds have a colour bar down the side that can be manually set. I thought it would be cool to have this display the 'average' (i.e. dominant) colour of the board game box and decided to investigate the best way to do it.

Dominant Colour Extraction in Python (for a Discord Bot)
Tinker, Productivity
Thomas Wilkinson
The Holiday Do List

In which I plan my holiday tasks…

So it may just be because it is 2020 or perhaps I'm just a bit lazy but I’ve found that I often start holiday breaks with a list of things I’d like to do and by the end of the trip* I’ve not achieved most of them. Whether it’s odd jobs or relaxing activities I wanted to get through I just accidental sit around and don’t do them. This holiday season I decided I needed a to do list and though I’d try out the new Todoist Boards feature.

*Or, let’s be real this year: sitting on the sofa at home.

The Holiday Do List
Tinker, Podcasting
Thomas Wilkinson
How to Record a Podcast Remotely And Get It ...

Remote interviews are a fact of life for every podcaster, and in today’s era of social distancing, more so than ever. Since you rarely get the chance at an interview do-over, nailing down your remote recording workflow is essential. We’ll show you how to prepare for and record a remote interview, so you get it right the first time — with some additional tips along the way to make sure all your bases are covered.

How to Record a Podcast Remotely And Get It Right The First Time

Sponge

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Flapjack Treacle Tart

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In which I bake a traditional recipe with a twist that makes it faster…

Prep time: 35 minutes (only 5 minutes with pre-bought pastry) Cook Time: 30 minutes.

Much as I adore a traditional treacle tart I often find it takes a little longer to make than I’d like. I decided to speed it up a bit with some inspiration from my mother’s quick treacle tart recipe and one of my other favourite desserts: flapjacks.

Ingredients

Sweet Shortcrust Pastry

  • 90 g butter (softened)

  • 65 g caster sugar

  • 3 egg yolks

  • 200 g plain flour

Filling

  • 200 g porridge oats

  • 115 g butter

  • 115 g soft brown sugar

  • 2 tbsp & 2 tsp golden syrup

Recipe

  1. Preheat the oven to 190°C (170°C for a fan oven).

  2. To make the pastry: cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.

  3. Add the egg yolks one at a time while beating into the creamed sugar.

  4. Mix in the flour to make a ball of dough and then knead until it sticks together.

  5. Chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before using.

  6. Once the pastry is ready, roll it out and make sure it will fit into a tart dish.

  7. Grease the dish then place the pastry into it.

  8. Blind bake the pastry for 10-15 minutes. While you are waiting for that you can move on to the filling.

  9. To make the filling: heat the golden syrup, sugar and butter in a saucepan until they melt together.

  10. Remove from the heat and stir in the oats.

  11. Combining: pour the oat mixture into the pastry case.

  12. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the filling is bubbling.

  13. Remove from the oven and leave to cool a little before serving.

  14. Enjoy hot and ideally with a scoop of ice cream or clotted cream.

Variations

To make this recipe vegan just switch the pastry for vegan pastry (you’ll find most pastry in your supermarket is vegan these days). Then, for the filling, just make my Vegan Flapjack recipe instead (you’ll need about 2/3rds of the recipe).

Tom Out!

References

[1] BBC Food: Pâte sucrée (sweet shortcrust pastry)

[2] TTSS: Vegan Flapjacks

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2017: In Review

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In which I review the year that was...

It's been a pretty exciting year for me. I've started two podcasts, changed jobs and started reviewing food and drink for Luxury London. Less travel in my new job means that I've been able to spend more of my spare time on my side projects. All in all that's lead to:

 25 podcast episodes, 11 food/drink reviews, 9 blog posts

And I'm hoping there will be many more in 2018.

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Site Move in Progress

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I've had a lot of headaches recently with WordPress failing on my blog and was already in the process of moving everything into one place on SquareSpace. With the recent complete failure of my WordPress theme (and several back-end issues) I have decided to initiate the transfer immediately. 

As the WordPress import is not perfect some posts will have issues I will be manually fixing in the next few weeks. If there is an issue a quick comment using the new Disqus system will bring it to my attention. Thank you for your patience!

Tom Out!

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20,000 views!

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In which I discuss some blog stats...

Firstly thank you everyone who has come to my little corner of the internet to get me to this point. When I started off a little blog about tea 3 years ago I never expected it to be seen by anyone outside my group of friends. Secondly I actually ticked over 20,000 views about a week back but haven't had the time to write this post until now.

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Quick & Easy: Thai Green Curry

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In which I make a quick & easy Thai Green Curry...

So after a weekend where I made a nice traditional Thai green curry I was stuck with some leftover ingredients and not much time to make food before going out to a party. I almost made a quick mushroom soup chicken with rice meal but since I had some spare ingredients around I had a go at making a quick curry. It ended up being very tasty!

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2013 in review

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here's an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,700 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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MRI Scanner Cake 2013

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MRI Scanner Cake 2013

In which I bake another, more ambitious, MRI scanner cake...

The ISBE annual BBQ was on Friday so I had to once again attempt to bake an MRI scanner cake. I decided to go for a more realistic one than previously.

The basic cake is made using Delia's All-in-one Sponge recipe and then things get a little crazy as I make 4 of them.

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Cherbluple Cake

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Cherbluple Cake

In which I make my own take on the Turducken of desserts...

So for those of you that aren't aware a Turducken is a duck-inside-a-chicken-inside-a-turkey. Otherwise known as meatception! Following along this line of crazy ridiculous food Charles Phoenix invented the Cherpumple cake which is three different pies (cherry, pumpkin and apple) baked inside three different cakes (yellow, white, spiced). I decided to make my take on this crazy dessert as my final CAOS cake before stepping down as Social Sec. I didn't have access to pumpkin so I decided to make a Cherbluple - cherry, blueberry and apple pies baked into a chocolate sponge, a plain sponge and a spiced sponge.