Recipe: Apple Brownies

Last week Arjan and I were feeling pretty guilty about the amount of junk food we've been eating recently (an unfortunate side affect of having plenty of gigs!) and I had a horrible cold over the weekend, so we decided to do something about it.
My juicer was dug out along with the Keeping It Simple Recipe Book and we went and bought the ingredients for a three day juice cleanse. The less said about that, the better..... but we did it with some success and feel better for it, but now we have a surplus of apples.
This is the reason that yesterday evening I found myself perusing the internet for apple dessert recipes. During my search I stumbled upon this recipe for apple brownies and was instantly intrigued.

image from http://www.cannellavita.com/2012/09/apple-brownies.html 

Obviously everybody knows and probably loves the standard, gooey, chocolate brownie and many have at least heard of (if not tried) a blondie, there are also a million variations on the chocolate brownie with various nuts and/or fruits thrown in, but I had never come across a completely non-chocolatey, fruit-based brownie recipe.

Unfortunately the only suitably sized pan around was a little bit large, which meant that the brownies were a little thin and very cakey (not gooey enough for my liking) but they were incredibly more-ish nonetheless and the pan was practically scraped clean by the end of the evening (note: it was not just the two of us eating them!)
They were so popular that I had to make a second round this evening, that and there are still a lot of apples left.
This time I used the same pan but doubled the recipe to fill it better. These brownies are very cakey, but delicious once again and I highly suggest that you try them out!

Southern Sunrise Photoshoot

A couple of weeks ago when we were in Utrecht for gigs, we stayed with our lovely friends Pablo and Nikki.
Nikki is a fashion designer and has created some amazing pieces of clothing and jewellery, some of which I've had the pleasure of wearing/owning. She also dabbles in photography and was keen to shoot some pictures for us on her analogue Praktica.

It was beautiful weather and we had a great time walking around Utrecht finding pretty spots for pictures, which there were plenty of! It's such a nice city.

Sadly, shortly after this weekend our drummer told us he was leaving the band so there are a few pictures we couldn't use, but I wanted to share some of the best ones with you all.

Big thank you to Nikki for the lovely pictures! 

Scottish Cup Final

Once again, Arjan and I were in York last week. It just so happened that whilst we were there it was the Scottish Cup Final and the team my cousin plays for, St Johnstone, was in it! So my mum got us all tickets and on Saturday May 17th (my cousins name is May and his shirt number is 17, what what?!) we had a three and a half hour drive up to Glasgow to watch the match.
The weather was a little grim, but we got some tea and hot scotch pies to warm us up. It was a great match and the crowd was amazing!
At the end of it all St Johnstone won 2-0! We celebrated with the team later that night and then the next day went to see the start of the procession of the open-top bus.
It was a once in a lifetime weekend and it was great to see family as well. COME ON YOU SAINTS!

Arjan and my brother, Calum. Pre-match excitement!

Stevie May, my wee cousin

Winners!

Here's Arjan, Stevie and Calum with the cup!

Catching Up

Wow! What a week this has been. I feel like I've not had a seconds rest (which is a not true, but that's how it feels) and now I'm very much looking forward to a quiet couple of days before heading to York on Monday.

It all started last Thursday when we went to Utrecht to see our good friends Dewolff playing their Album release show at Tivoli Oudegracht. The show was stunning and then we had a great time at the afterparty, with plenty of dancing, catching up and drinking (maybe a little too much of that for some!). Finally, we trundled back in the wee hours of the morning and engaged in some drunken kebab eating.
Early Friday afternoon we all were in some state of consciousness and spent a few hours just relaxing at Pablo and Nikki's (our hosts). They have an amazing little house that is actually on the canal in a wharf cellar! It's so nice sitting outside in the sunshine watching little boats go by.

On Friday evening my band, Southern Sunrise, was booked to play Cafe Stathe in Utrecht, so we hauled all our gear through town, got set up and having revived ourselves a little, played a really fun show! The audience was great and we were really pleased with how it went. Remco, our keys player, also lives in Utrecht so his girlfriend Anna came to see the show and took a couple of pictures.

Remco's famous dancing during 'Elspeth'

We had an earlier night on Friday as we had to have a relatively early start the next morning for a photoshoot with Nikki.
To give ourselves a good start to the day, Pablo lead us to a cafe with promises of breakfast for only €1.50. I was dubious, how good could a breakfast really be if it only costs that little?! I had images of grotty little places serving watery coffee and stale bread. However, upon arrival at our destination we were pleasantly surprised! It was actually a La Place, a Dutch restaurant chain with locations up and down the country that has a a wonderful selection of 100% fresh, sustainably produced foods. I'd never actually eaten there before, but I'd stared longingly at their fresh juices more than once in passing.
The breakfast offer was incredibly good, for just €1.50 you could choose 5 items from a small selection amongst their regular meals. This included an assortment of mini bread rolls and croissants, ham, boiled eggs, freshly-made herby cream cheese, hazelnut spread (with actual bits of hazelnut!), cheese, fruit etc and with that you also got a large glass of freshly squeezed juice and a cup of coffee.

Breakfast! (excuse the picture quality, Arjan's in need of a new phone) 

After eating up and resisting the urge to go back for seconds, we headed back to the apartment and got ourselves ready for the shoot. Utrecht is a beautiful city, so we weren't short of locations to use for pictures. Nikki was shooting with an old analogue Praktica so we haven't seen the results yet, but judging by this iphone picture she took we're in for a treat!

Later that day we bid farewell to Pablo, Nikki and the lovely Utrecht and headed North for Haarlem, where we had our second gig of the weekend at Bar Wolkers. The event was put on by Musicspotter and again we had a lovely gig with a really nice audience and it was a very pleasant Saturday evening in the sun.

On sunday we slept, got up for some food, said hello to Oma and then slept some more.

Monday came and it was back to business! The 4th and 5th of May are holidays in the Netherlands, the 4th is a day of remembrance for the casualties of WWII and the 5th is a day of celebration of the liberation of the Netherlands from Nazi Germany. On the 5th there are 'Bevridingsfestivals' (freedom festivals) up and down the country and we were asked to play the one in Heerlen. The weather was perfect and the setting was very cool. The stage was in the main square in Heerlen and was set at one side so that the audience could enjoy the music from one of the many bars surrounding it. It was incredibly chilled and we had a really great time.

Sadly, that was the end of our mini-tour, but we've been keeping busy since then! Yesterday we spent the whole day helping a friend with their garden, "oh some light relaxing work" you might think, but we were digging up tree stumps and redistributing a huge mound of earth. I am currently in a world of deep muscular burn but it was good, satisfying work and it always feels nice to help out friends.

Today has been assigned a pyjama day and it's already starting to help a little...