Cakey -Bakey

I had some leftover strawberries, so decided to make them into a summer cake..not that we are having much of a summer, but cake makes everything better!

First I made 2 Victoria sponges. 

and some Lemon and Lavender shortbread. I also chopped up the strawberries, keeping just a few whole. 

I whipped up some cream and added the chopped strawberries and spread these over one of the cakes. 

then added the other cake on top.. 

more cream on top.. 

I scattered the rest of the chopped strawberries onto the cream. 

I dipped the whole strawberries into melted white chocolate and put these in the fridge to set. 

Finally I arranged some of the Lavender shortbread and the choc-dipped strawberries on the top.. all ready to eat. 

Have to say it was flippin delish.. 

Darcy 

Flower Cake

We recently had a family day, so of course we needed a large cake. I started by making 2 chocolate and beetroot cakes. The mixture does look very red but once baked this isn't noticeable, nor can you taste the beetroot. It does keep the cake lovely and moist though. 

Once baked and cooled I sandwiched the two cakes together using whipped double cream and raspberries. 

Then I popped on the top cake. 

In the meantime I poured melted chocolate onto a length of bubblewrap and left this to set. I made a chocolate ganache and added that to the top of the cake and around the sides, this will act like a glue. 

I wrapped the bubblewrap around the cake and carefully peeled away the plastic away leaving the bubbled chocolate collar stuck to the cake. This is an idea that I saw on Pinterest. 

I wasn't sure whether to trim the top edge level with the cake, but in the end I left it stood up, I quite like the jaggedy edge. 

Then I looked to Pinterest again and found a cake decorated with flowers made from sweets, my cake is much smaller, but I still managed to get a few flowers on there. 

It turned out pretty good and more importantly it tasted good.. it was demolished really quickly lol 

Darcy x

The Week That Was...

a nightmare...

It started on the 8th.. We had just returned from having afternoon tea.. a prebirthday treat. ( actually a leftover gift voucher that I had lost then re found, only for it to be out of date. However the wonderful people at Betty's tearooms still let me use it) 

So that was all very lovely. I got home and popped into my art room to print off a photo for a project. the piece of card I picked up was wet.. I thought perhaps I had spilled water on it somehow.. then the next piece was wet, then something splashed near me and I looked up. 

Water was dripping down from my ceiling. All hell broke loose as we flew up into the attic, to find the boiler had broken and leaked all over. 

I had been in the attic 3 days before this.. so we knew it had possibly been leaking for up to 3 days. 

Water was turned off, boiler turned off.. no heating and no hot water at the coldest time of the year.. Marvellous!

For almost a week we had no heating or hot water, and I spent 2 days clearing out stuff from the attic Not too many 'precious' items were effected, but a few of sentimental value.Lots of paper based items, boxes, files, college notes, magazines etc and a couple of framed prints.. all very wet indeed. 

These are the back of 2 framed prints, they are A1 size and you can see they were stood in a few inches of water. 

After a few days the boards started to dry out. Enough for us to get a plumber to look at the situation and give us a quote. 

The ceiling in my art room is effected quite a lot. 

With the amount of water that had leaked we just knew under the attic boards was going to be worse than what we could see on the surface. So we had to start lifting those and pull out all the soaking insulation. 

This area is absolutely soaked through. The hope is that it will dry out and not go mouldy. We are watching it each day. If it does not dry out enough or starts to give way then my art room will need a new ceiling. 

All this happened over his birthday and mine, 9th and 10th. We had a night out planned which we had to cancel. 

Then there were lots more cuts announced where he works, all very scary indeed. 

The house has been so cold  have spent whatever time I could under a blanket with multiple layers of socks and gloves on. Arthritis in my finger has been playing up. 

A full, and I do mean FULL car load has gone to landfill. Another FULL carload has gone to charity. 

There is at least ( if not more) another carload to come out of the attic. 

We finally got hot water and heating back on Saturday morning, then i had to catch up on washing all the wet towels that we had mopped up with. I also had a last minute experimental blog project to make. 

As I had been really ill at Christmas, we had missed out on a family get together, well we missed out on Christmas all together lol and now we had missed out on our birthdays too...

Sunday just gone, we arranged to go to my parents to celebrate xmas, birthdays and valentines. 

So of course Ibaked a cake. I shouldn't have really it just wasn't the week for it. Everything that could go wrong last week, did. 

But despite it fighting me every step of the way i was determined to have a cake lol

I dipped strawberries in chocolate, the first lot of chocolate would not melt enough. 

The 2 sponges took ages and did not rise like I wanted them too. I do believe our oven is at the end of its days. 

The plain one is vanilla with a cream and lemon curd filling. 

The choc one is beetroot and chocolate with  a cream and fresh raspberries filling. 

The chocolate ganache failed, actually failed twice. Plan B involved a lemon butter icing on the bottom square cake and then a late night dash to Tesco to find ready roll icing for the top cake. 

I had no brown food colouring. Tesco had no brown food colouring. 

Had to mix green and red, all that was available was the liquid stuff that only stains your hands and doesn't actually colour food at all. The ready roll icing looked more grey than anything. At this point I  was stomping around, so very annoyed. 

So I went for a shower. Dyed my hair. Forgot to put gloves on, dyed my hands. Thank goodness for a Ranger scrubbie. 

Found a new paintbrush still in its packet. 

Made more of the red/green mix and painted it on.  

So this is what we ended up with. it is my version of one I had seen on pinterest, no where near as good as that one, but not bad considering the week I had just had. 

I really wanted to add Thorntons choc hearts with everyone's initials iced on them, but witht he attic fiasco i just didn't have time to go into town for the hearts. luckily Asda had some Guylian hearts.(4 for £1)

Now to pop it into a box to transport it... yeah didn't think this one through. None of my cake boxes were big enough. I had to empty a 12 x 12 RUB of all its scrapbook paper and put the cake in that. 

This was on my knee the whole journey, wafting chocolatey strawberries up at me. I was so hungry I am amazed it made it there in one piece. Well one grape did fall off and rolled around the box at every corner. 

As we stepped out of the door to go to my parents the heavens opened and we had a hailstorm. I cannot imagine whet I looked like carrying the cake under an umbrella to reach the car. 

The traffic was sooo slow, the hail turned into a snowstorm and we arrived an hour late. 

But we had sparklers. 

4 of  us had birthdays this week, this is my sister in law Jacki, it was her birthday on the day we were together, so she got to cut the cake. 

with a willing helper.. 

On the way home we hit more snow which turned to ice and we skidded around every bend, corner and roundabaout. I was so, so glad to get out of the car and into the house. 

I finished the day under a blankie, with a hot cuppa in one of these new cups. This was my xmas gift from my Mum, that has been waiting for me to go pick up all this time. not only are the cups lovely the tin will make a great cake tin. 

So onto a new week,it started pretty well with a meal out with friends and this Belgian waffle. 

Fingers crossed nothing else goes wrong. Please send good drying vibes to my ceiling lol 

Darcy x

Leftover Lime Cupcakes

Last week I needed a greek yoghurt for a chicken dish I was making, the only pot I could get was huge, so there was plenty leftover. On another day we had strawberries and double cream, and again there was cream leftover..... so today I made cupcakes.... though my cupcakes are the larger muffin size.

So...

1 cup greek yoghurt, plain

2 cups SR flour

1 cup sugar

1tsp baking powder

 one third cup of desiccated coconut

zest of 2 limes

mix all that together. 

then in a jug, whisk together

three quarters cup oil

2 eggs

juice of 2 limes

Add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture. 

Divide into paper cases. I ended up with 15. 

Bake at Gas Mark 5, 190C, 375F for around 12-15 mins until golden. turn onto a rack and allow to cool. 

next make a ganache using 

5oz dark chocolate

6fl oz double cream

Once it has firmed up you can spread or pipe the ganache onto the cupcakes. Finally dust with more coconut. 

They are very lovely, the first bite is all creamy/chocolatey, then you get a hit of lime, and finally you are left chewing the bits of coconut. 

Enjoy..

Darcy x

Leftover Apple Wrap

So I had this little bit of bought puff pastry, I never make it, tis too much trouble. I buy a ready made block, and only ever when I am about to make Jamie O's Turkey Pie.. The dish I use doesn't not require the use of the whole block of pastry, and I am always left with a 1/4 to a 1/3 of it...i always have good intentions of using it up, but it goes in the fridge and gets forgotten about.

Until today. I was determined to not throw it out, and set about searching for a recipe that only needed a little bit of pastry and not much filling..

I had downloaded a free recipe book on my ipod, and found a plum wrap recipe....now I didn't have any of the ingredients, but i figured I could make it work with what I had.

so this is what I did.

I rolled my pastry out and cut it into 4 squares. In a bowl I mixed a couple spoons of brown sugar, half a teaspoon of cinnamon,and some chopped walnuts.....( the nuts were also leftovers from xmas baking)

I sprinkled some of the mix in a diagonal line on each pastry square..I then added a few sultanas, (again leftover from xmas baking)

next I took an eating apple, that was starting to wrinkle, and needing using up. I peeled it and sliced it up.

I added the apple slices to the squares.

Next I sprinkled on the remaining sugar/cinnamon.

I then folded over one of the corners and then folded over the opposite corner, sealing them with milk. then I brushed milk over the whole thing.

I baked on gas mark 6/400F/205C  for approx 30mins, until they were golden brown. i then dusted them with icing sugar.

Finally I served with vanilla icecream....and they were delish... clearly you could substitute all kinds of fillings.

Scones..

It's been ages and ages since I gave you a recipe...so today I made scones. I had some strawberries left over and planned on making the passion fruit scones from this post... but I couldn't get any passion fruit so  I got to thinking what other flavours would go with strawberries..

Ginger and lemon..

So here goes..

10 oz SR flour
2 oz sugar + 1 oz for topping
1tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 oz butter
1 egg large
1 lemon
1 oz glace ginger
100ml buttermilk

To start with measure out your sugar, and grate the zest of the lemon into the sugar, mix and cover then leave for about an hour to infuse.

To a large bowl ad the flour,baking powder,salt,soda and the butter, rub together with your fingertips until the butter is worked in and it all resembles breadcrumbs.

Measure out your  ginger..this is how it looks.. The tub I bought was called 'Glace Ginger'  

the pieces, even though small, were too big for me as I am not a great lover of strong ginger. So I measured out the 1 ounce and then chopped it finer.. If you love ginger then leave it as it is, or add more to your own taste.

add the lemony sugar and the ginger to the flour etc and mix really well so that the lemon zest and ginger are evenly distributed. 

Put the egg into a jug and add the juice from half of the lemon and beat well. Add this to the bowl and mix. Finally add the buttermilk and mix.

Turn out onto a floured surface and knead gently, you do not need to roll scone mix out with a rolling pin, simply flatten slightly with your hands. cut into rounds and place on a tray. Brush on a little milk.

Bake at 400F/200C/Gas 5 for approx 20minutes or until golden .

When they are ready, remove from oven and put onto a cooling tray...

 add the juice from the other half of the lemon  and 1 ounce of sugar into a bowl and microwave for 30 seconds. Stir well and then put back in for another 30seconds..

Drizzle the sugar/lemon mix over the hot scones and leave to cool.

when they are fully cooled, slice them in half and top with clotted cream and strawberry halves..

Make a pot of tea and enjoy!