I had another birthday this week. I'm long past being excited about birthdays, but this years was extra dull because I wasn't feeling particularly healthy thanks to the boyfriend sharing his cold germs with me a few days earlier. We basically spent the evening coughing and sneezing in front of the TV.
However I did manage to make a cake - raspberry, blueberry and lime (without the drizzle).
I've done this one as a birthday cake before, but I wasn't really feel like trying anything new and I remembered it being very yummy. It didn't get iced, and I forgot to take... continue reading »
Time to add another number to my age - but I'm back to a prime number again so maybe it's not completely awful.
This year's cake was cherries, berries and apple (and muesli, and yoghurt). Yum yum yum.
As for actual birthday celebrations... we headed down to Bristol for the day to visit ss Great Britain and do their 'Go Aloft' experience - climbing up the rigging, then shuffling out along the main yard. Predictably, the views were quite good from the top!
Then we had a BBQ and went into town for a few drinks. Not a bad day really!
1st March, it's St David's Day. And, depending who you listen to, the beginning of spring.
There's one daffodil half in bloom in my garden, but that's not quite worth a photo yet (but plenty more with buds forming, so it won't be long)
Instead... have some welshcakes:
I used this recipe, more or less. A few points to note:
proper griddle is always going to work better than rubbish old cheap frying pan (sadly all I own!)
3 minutes a side is LIES - unless you like 'em very burnt
should have cut mine thicker
and maybe lower heat
I actually bought a Christmas tree. Clearly getting soft in my old age - though I still have very little excitement for anything xmas related, other than overeating.
It's black (bah humbug etc), skinny and 'pop up' - ie it's just a spiral of fake tree. Came pre-decorated and pre-lit - but I've removed several hideous baubles, and swapped the harsh blue LEDs for some nicer warm white ones.
And I've added a few of my own decorations, though there wasn't really much space! Some holographic stars and mirror music notes from Ikea, a silver bead chain (instead of manky tinsel), and... continue reading »
Met up with friends for a bit of a cakefest last weekend. This was my offering:
Looks tasty enough, right? But this cake has a bit of an added surprise up its sleeve... spots! Inspired by this recipe, but it's easy enough to do:
bake mini cupcakes with a lot of food colouring
attack with a melon baller to produce coloured cake balls
eat remaining cake scraps
make yet more cake batter
pour into cake tin, add balls, cook.
cover in icing and decorate with matching colours of M&Ms
Et voila! You'll have to excuse the crappy cameraphone photo, but it got devoured rather quickly...
This year's effort was a raspberry and blueberry lime drizzle cake, with a few blackberries mushed into the buttercream icing (I was going to use more blueberries, until I remembered that the colour comes from the skin rather than anything that would mix nicely and colour the icing)
Evenings this week have been filled with the surprisingly time consuming process of making these:
Cakepops! Pumpkins and ghosts. 15 of each, ready for a trip to Wales this weekend. If they survive the journey without the other occupants of the car eating them all, that is...
What better excuse for baking myself a deliciously yummy cake?
It's a raspberry, almond and white chocolate cake, iced with raspberry buttercream (ie normal buttercream with raspberries mushed in) and white chocolate stars
Yes, I do rather like raspberries.
I threw chocolate chips in rather than bothering to melt the chocolate like the recipe said, but obviously it still worked. The raspberries sank more than I thought they would (picture of the actual cake here), leaving the bottom very sticky, so I ended up flipping it over to ice.
And oh wow was it tasty! My work colleagues demolished most... continue reading »
ahh, the one day of the year where I can be arsed to eat pancakes*...
Yesterday's worked surprisingly well. I used a slightly different recipe from normal (well, I always use a different one as I never remember/write it down) - bit more adventurous, using buttermilk rather than normal milk. Anyway, the batter looked thicker and more gloopy, and it did look like the pancakes might come out fat and rubbery (I like 'em thin and crêpey). But they were actually very good - and tossed brilliantly!
So for future reference:
half a pot (140ml ish) buttermilk
150g flour
2 eggs
and a little bit of... continue reading »
Last week, I came across this book. Half an hour later it was in my amazon shopping basket, and two days later it landed on my desk. And Halloween at the end of this month (which will be spent on a muddy field/river in Wales) gives me the perfect excuse to make lots of 'goth cakes'.
Pretty much everything in there looks amazing. I don't pretend to be any good at fancy cake decorating, so I suspect my attempts at recreating some of the cakes will be a bit crap, but there we go.
Off to visit friends tomorrow, which gives me an excuse to bake cakes
Not that one should ever need an excuse, but a dozen or so cupcakes all to myself doesn't fit so well with the current healthy eating efforts, ahem...
Anyway, Sainsbury's had new sprinkles (to add to my already excessive collection):
Elephants! Or possibly mammoths, I suppose. And going by the packaging, very much aimed at small children. But growing up is overrated, so I don't care
Over the last few months, I've developed a bit of a thing for mini cupcakes.
Now, I like baking cakes anyway, but for some reason they seem to be even more tempting when bitesize. This hasn't been helped by discovering websites like Bakerella...
Tonight I've been experimenting a little... and have created some rather yummy apple and cinnamon cakes
Here they are fresh out of the oven. I'd also like to point out that silicone cake cases are awesome.
