Other blogger's dishes

Blogging's a funny thing really. Obviously I've been doing this for long enough to see a few changes. It used to be that if you read a blogpost, you'd probably leave a comment, and the blogger would almost certainly reciprocate. It was how blogging relationships were formed. The interactions now are quite different. I can see that people are pinning my posts on Pinterest, but few of those people have commented on the recipes they have pinned. I don't pay an enormous amount of attention to the statistics but as far as I can tell the number of views each post gets is pretty consistent, but I get fewer comments than I ever had before. Even if I've entered a post for a blog event, it's unusual for the other participants to leave comments - except for the I Heart Cooking Clubs crew - they are excellent at commenting. Or people will comment on twitter or facebook but not actually on the blog. Which can make it feel a bit like shouting into the wind sometimes.

Mince pie flapjacks

Of course, I am guilty of it myself. I don't leave nearly as many comments as I used to. But I still like to acknowledge the blogs I read and the bloggers whose recipes I follow. I've been meaning to do this post for ages - some of the dishes go back to last November - but I couldn't find most of the pictures. I knew I'd taken them, but turns out the pictures were all on Paul's computer. I found them last week, so finally here we are.

Leaning tower of mince pie flapjacks

Firstly and most tardily, mince pie flapjacks from Dom at Belleau Kitchen. I used homemade cherry mincemeat, and some desiccated coconut instead of ground almonds. Because I had a fresh and extremely aromatic bag of ground cinnamon I halved the quantity, but I have to say it was still a bit too cinnamony for me. Not the recipe's fault; that bag of cinnamon was lethal.

Nutty sour cherry flapjacks from Mainly Baking's recipe

Looking almost identical but honestly quite different were these flapjacks from Sue at Mainly Baking. It's her basic but very adaptable flapjack recipe and it's extremely good. I used a mix of 100g dark muscovado and 50g caster sugar and added 110g mixed hazelnuts, pistachios and sour cherries. I thought there were more sour cherries in the bag but somebody had apparently been snacking. If you like your flapjacks chewy and a bit sticky rather than crisp and crunchy, and I most certainly do, this is a very good recipe.

I only made the baked bean component of Helen Graves' pulled pork, boston baked beans and pickled fennel, although all the bits looked delicious. We just had them with sausages. Really fabulous - definitely one to make again.

Boston baked beans and sausages

I'm still not 100% happy with my chapati making, although some friends have reassured me that it's totally normal to play "what country does this look like?" with wonky chapati. And Paul seems to like them. Which is good, because I still have about 4kg of chapati flour left from the 5kgs I bought by mistake. I'd been planning to make plain chapati to accompany a keema mattar, and then I saw Brian tweet his recipe for chapati with cumin seeds so I made them instead. They were very good! And almost round.