Mike's Mushrooms & A Cake

Last Thursday I *finally* got started on the new daunting project. Having seen other people mark the grid on the fabric I decided to give it a go too and see if it helped me as my biggest fear was loosing count and getting things in the wrong place. As it turns out that was a great idea and I have made great progress since then.

I drew a 4 x 4 grid of 10 stitches per square on the fabric, first with blue chalk but that line was too thick so I changed to a pencil instead.

Ironically the first few colours I used were my most hated colour: pink and i started to get really worried that it would be too pink as a result but as I worked and used darker and more orangey colours it stopped looking too pink and now that the rust has been added it looks exactly like it ought to.

Today it  looks like this:

I'm working on the background behind the two mushrooms you can see in the picture (the pink/orange things), starting with black so that all the little bits I have in the pattern will be easier to do.

About this project:
This is a "large" and complicated cross stitch project based on a photograph by a really talented Alaskan photographer who was incredibly kind and said I could make a cross stitch of it. The photographer is Mike Gates, go check out his site - his work is amazing!

The pattern was made for me as a prize for winning a competition on dA. It's 10 inches wide  x 14 1/2 inches high = 180 x 261 stitches on 18 ct coffee dyed Aida and it uses 147 colours. I am truly intimidated but I did ask for the pattern to be as close to the photo as possible and didn't limit size or colours and I certainly got what I asked for

To celebrate I baked a cake - vanilla raspberry marble cake with royal icing topping and some marzipan raspberries on top. I didn't make as many as I wanted - my hands were complaining after only starting these few and they aren't all the same size but then raspberries normally aren't .

I used my favourite cake mix for this - half vanilla flavoured and half raspberry, and more or less got the marbling right - I tried using a chopstick to stir with this time - not as effective as a spoon but it did work.

IHSW, Christmas baking and more

I hope you all had a great Christmas and are now enjoying that quieter time of year between Christmas and the new year - at least it always is for me. Now on to the updates:
I didn't get as much embroidery done as planned during the weekend as I was still recovering from being ill - needed lots of sleep so it was good the ids were at ex's for the weekend. All I managed was a small start on the air side of the next biscornu that goes with the fire and water one. No photo's of that right now as it's too dark to take photo's and ecru on white really doesn't show up well.

As every year I did some Christmas baking - this year I started with cookies on Monday using Sugarbelle's recipe and put them away till I had more time to ice them, which I did on Sunday. The plan was to ice them using royal icing as per her recipe but the amounts were too large so I stuck with the recipe on the Wilton's meringue powder packet. The cookies are delicious and having seen that Sugarbelle used flavouring in her icing I decided to do that too and made the icing lemon flavoured using lemon zest. One thing I found out is that my hands really, really don't like piping for any length of time (outlining more than 3 cookies actually lol) so i decided to go with the quick and dirty method of no outlining and either spreading it on or using shaped tips to pipe allover patterns.  Not the best looking but they taste good so who cares - my kids certainly don't... they loved them!

In between making the cookies and icing them I did a lot more - first of course was to get the tree up and decorated and get my Lego Christmas Village out. This year I used the bauble boxes and a white sheet set up under the tree to put the village on and it really does look good at night when the lights are off but the tree is still lit. The kids always have a lot of fun playing with this and used the angled slopes between the different levels of the boxes as ski slopes for the Lego skiers.

On the Thursday before Christmas it was time for the bi-annual Christmas fair at the kids school so it was time for me to bake something for them to sell there - this year they wanted 48 mini cupcakes so that's what I made for them a couple of hours before the fair so they were at their freshest.  Half were chocolate and the other half vanilla topped with a same flavoured butter cream icing. (I'd used a different recipe than I usually do - a local sweetshop was selling this packet of powder to make the butter cream with but I didn't really like the end result so threw the rest of the packet away.)

However my baking wasn't done for the day as I also wanted to send the kids to school with cupcakes for their classmates and also some for the teachers lounge as I do every year. I needed 30 for youngest's class and 27 for oldest's class and at least 50 for the teachers lounge to make sure there was enough for all the teachers AND the admin team. In the end I baked 114 large cupcakes in 5 flavours: Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, caramel and apple/cinnamon. I had some batter leftover from baking 2 full trays of each flavour (except chocolate which I only had enough better to make 1 1/2 trays)so I put the leftovers into the mini cupcake tins and ended up with an additional 36 mini cupcakes. I iced each flavour with the same flavour icing, except the apple/cinnamon ones which I iced with lemon butter cream (which as you may notice I didn't have enough of to completely ice everything).  Taking them to the school was a bit of a challenge till I thought of using the (cleaned out) bauble boxes to carry them in.

In the morning I helped the kids get to their classes with their boxes and then went home for some much needed coffee before taking the box you see above in a sneak ninja delivery attack to the school. Since they have an open door policy at the kids school I was able to sneak in, sneak into the teachers lounge, grab some serving dishes and put the cupcakes out and sneak off again without begin seen - the cupcake fairy strikes again! Of course they did know "who dunnit" due to the kids taking the same to their classes but it's still fun to do the cupcake fairy bit.

On Saturday I had the house full of kids so I baked another batch of cupcakes and surprised the kids with them - I made half vanilla and the other half strawberry. The kids and their friends were overjoyed and the cupcakes did their usual disappearing trick.

Somehow or another I was all ready on Christmas Eve despite starting the preparations a week late due to the illness I had the week before, so I decided to try my hand at baking an 8 strand braided bread. As you can see it didn't exactly look "right" as I'd misunderstood the braiding instructions, thought it looked weird (which it did) and then made some adjustments, which didn't need to be done at all. However it tasted good and went well with our Christmas Eve table grill meal (we usually do this on boxing day but due to the kids going to ex on boxing day we moved it to Christmas eve)

Overall it was a  busy week baking and doing stuff but the effort was certainly worth the end results!

Apple Cinnamon Cake

Sometimes a cake I made using someone else's recipe is so delicious I want to share the recipe and even more occasionally I get permission from the publisher to do so :) The apple cinnamon cake is just one such cake and The National Trust is that publisher. This recipe comes from "The National Trust Book of Teatime Recipes" by Jane Pettigrew that was printed in 1991 ( © National Trust/Jane Pettigrew 1991). Sadly it's out of print but fortunately The National Trust does have another book by the same author Good Old Fashioned Cakes and many more wonderful books in their on-line shop. And now on to the recipe I have copied from the book, I'm going to copy it as faithfully as I can so it won't be in my usual format.

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Apple Cinnamon Cake

Makes 1 x 8in (20 cm) round cake

FOR THE CAKE

7oz (200g) self-raising flour, sifted	5oz (150g) margarine, softened
3oz (75g) caster sugar	1 large egg

FOR THE FILLING

2 cooking apples, peeled, cored and sliced	2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons granulated sugar	2 tablespoons strawberry or apricot jam

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4, 350°F, 180°C. Grease and line an 8 in (20 cm) round tin. Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl. Add the sugar, margarine and unbeaten egg. Using a wooden spoon mix the ingredients gently for about 2 minutes until thoroughly combined. Turn two-thirds of the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth. Lay the apples on top and sprinkle with the granulated sugar and cinnamon. Drop spoonfuls of the remaining cake mixture on top of the apples but do not spread. Place teaspoonfuls of the jam in between the came mixture. bake for 1 hour until golden and firm, remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin.

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Personal notes:

• It's really really important to line the tin - if you don't the stickiness from the jam that ends up on the lining paper will get on your tin instead and it will be a nightmare to remove. (I found this out the hard way some time ago when making jam tarts)
• The mix is much much drier than most cake mixes and it needs to be - don't go and add more liquids! (no I didn't but I'm just mentioning this hehe)
• You will feel that there isn't enough cake mix - this is normal and will pass once the cake is baked.*grin*
• Use a teaspoon to put the spoonfuls of the remaining cake mix on the top - a tablespoon leaves larger lumps like the one on the right of my cake AND you won't have many spoonfuls to put on the cake.
• I used strawberry jam on mine, I'm partial to apple/strawberry jam and knew this would be loved by the kids.
• YES you really, really need to let it cool first! Jam gets VERY hot in the oven and a burnt mouth from hot jam is no fun at all. (yup first hand experience here.. that will teach me not to be impatient when wanting to sample jam tarts)
• I'm going to try this without cinnamon next time, while it was very good like this the kids asked to try it without next time.
• Don't allow your kids to eat all the cake in one go.. they won't want dinner!

Enjoy!

Summer day camp reward

The kids have spent all week at a summer sports day camp and as a thanks I made the people who had made the week so much fun for the kids cupcakes. There were 40 people working there and about 60 kids so it was really well staffed and they had put a LOT of effort in to make things fun.


I made 4 batches of cupcakes - chocolate, apple cinnamon, strawberry and of course vanilla. The people there were thrilled with the treat :)


I don't think I've mentioned how I make the apple cinnamon cupcakes yet so here goes:

• One batch of My favourite cake batter made with/omitting:
• Omit the vanilla flavouring
  
• Add 1 - 1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• Add an additional 5 ml / 1 teaspoon of milk
• About 50 grams / 2 oz chopped dried apple (this stops the cake from going soggy from the apple juices)

• If you wish to ice this use:
• Icing made with lemon juice 
• Caramel glaze made with: 
• 125 gr / 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 - 2 tablespoons of caramel coffee syrup
•  Half a batch of caramel frosting as found here

Enjoy!

Cupcakes, cakes and Cake kits..

Today was the last day of term and not just of term but also the end of the school year. Here we give the teachers a gift to show appreciation of the work they did in the year that's just past. Knowing that the teachers adore my baking we decided that a kit to make cupcakes would be a good way to go so I found some cheap 6 hole cupcake tins and got enough for the teachers we wanted to give a gift to. I also got a nice sized fridge/freezer box to put the mixes in as I didn't want the baggies etc lost before the teachers got home.

First I spent an age weighing out the right amount of each ingredient for each bag as I wanted to be 100% sure that each bag had exactly the same amount as every other bag. I was making 10 kits so I weighed out 10 x each ingredient for the chocolate mix and then 10 x each ingredient for the vanilla mix and put them in the baggies - I later (with the help of oldest) shook it all together in the baggie to make the mix evenly mixed before removing all the air and putting them in the little boxes.

  I then added some cupcake papers and the recipe, closed the boxes and wrapped them up.

It was really nice seeing the teachers faces - they were all surprised and happy with them so it was a gift well gifted.
 

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Meanwhile I was also baking cupcakes for youngest to treat his class with because it's almost his birthday.  He wanted to do mini cupcakes so he could let the kids have more than just the one so i baked 72 vanilla and 72 chocolate ones. I then put them on sandwich sticks in pairs - some with both the same flavour but most with one of each flavour. I ended up with a huge basket of these which were enjoyed by the kids and also by the teachers as I had, of course, made far too much

I also baked 2 large cakes for the teachers as my personal gift to all the teachers at the school and sneaked into the kitchen when they weren't looking and put them there - it's something I do every summer as my way of showing them how much I appreciate the teachers.

 This one was iced with the help of oldest vanilla ring cake on top and chocolate on the bottom.

And this is a caramel 2 layer cake iced with fudge frosting and filled with fudge. All in all the teachers were spoiled rotten - as they fully deserve :)

Baking was a pain as my old oven was on it's last legs and it was taking 2 x as long as it should have to bake each batch of cupcakes/cakes. But today (after I *really* needed it) my nice new shiny oven arrived. You can see the packing material reflected in the door hehe. I had to put the oven on for a bit empty to get rid of the factory newness smell that would make food taste bad. I then made some cupcakes to try the oven with.

They were done in 25 minutes - half the time I'd needed for the mini cupcakes last night and they are perfectly done - light and fluffy - all the things I'd been missing in the old oven lately that on occasion made me feel uncomfortable about giving people my cupcakes.

I am again a happy baker :)

Run off my feet..

Getting oldest ready for school camp has really made me run around a lot more than I expected *of course* he dropped at the last minute that his swimming trunks didn't fit and his slippers were broken (when asked last week he said they were all ok lol) so that resulted in another trip to town to get that stuff with money I had earmarked for other stuff.  Then of course there was the time spent adding name lables to *everything* so it doesn't get permanently lost if he forgets something or it gets mixed up with somebody else's stuff.

He did come home with some news that caused me to spend all evening and part of the night baking: ALL year 7 kids that had done their bicycle exam (similar to a drivers licence but without the "weight" of it - it just means that kids know traffic laws and can safely bicycle independently in traffic) and passed - it's rather unusual for the pass rate to be 100% so I decided that all the kids deserved cupcakes and got baking.

I made 3 batches of batter: one strawberry, one vanilla and one chocolate and somehow ended up with 3 different amounts of mini cupcakes: 34 vanilla, 38 strawberry and 41 chocolate. after baking I decorated them with a simple icing of water and icing sugar, adding strawberry flavour to the icing for the strawberry cupcakes and brown sugar to the icing for the chocolate ones.

Once the icing had set I split them into 6 bags of 18 cupcakes each as the kids were split into 6 groups for the bicycle trip to the school camp location and to make it easier for the teachers to share the cupcakes to the kids. The teacher I gave them to was thrilled - she loves my baking and had been disappointed that oldest had chosen to give his classmates ice creams on his birthday instead of cupcakes. (I just hope she does indeed share the cupcakes instead of keeping them for herself lol) Next time i need to start baking sooner.. I didn't finish till 4:30 am.

Birthday sleepover

It's almost my oldest son's 11th birthday and he wanted a sleepover party - I wasn't too keen on the idea but I decided to give it a go anyway and see how things went. (it's actually going better than expected lol) Any way - with a party there is party food and I spent the greater part of today in the kitchen baking, decorating and preparing food. First there was the afternoon party with a couple of friends who weren't allowed to spend the night but did want to come> I had baked a sponge cake and filled it with raspberry jam, made 4 kinds of cupcakes (melon, lemon, peach and popcorn) and 2 different types of biscuits (that's cookies if you are American ;) )  One batch was using an "Animal crackers" recipe and was first letters of the names of the kids coming to the party. The other batch was sitting dogs that due to the black splodges I gave them looked more like cows, stegosauruses and fish made with a sugar biscuit recipe. On top of all that I also served a "Chinoise" a French style "cake" made with mini rolled up brioches filled with French cream and then baked - I cheated and bought this in the shop though hehe.  I gave the kids a choice of orange, strawberry and blackcurrant lemonade to drink.

For dinner oldest wanted home made pizza - ones they could "decorate" themselves. So I spent an age cutting stuff up for them So I made the tomato sauce for them, red/yellow sweet peppers, spring onion, normal sliced onion, sliced cherry tomato's mushrooms, tuna, boiled back bacon (the dutch call this casslerrib) , raw back bacon, leftover kebab from last night, some mince I cooked specially, salami and ham. I offered 4 cheeses: old Gouda, young Gouda, a special blend of "gratain"  cheese and last but certainly not least: mozzarella. The kids had a load of fun making their pizza's and then spent the next 20 minutes complaining that it took so long to cook lol.

In a short while I'm going to be a good mum and make the kids a midnight snack, not entirely sure what yet but they will enjoy it :)

Time flies...

Goodness it's been a while since I last updated this - it's not that I didn't have anything to update it with - it's just that I lacked the time - below are some highlights of what I've been up to in the mean time.. Just images or I'll never catch up lol.


The WCD baking competition:

The 2+ meter strip of brown mini hexagons that I'd put in a jar for a competition elsewhere in early October.

Halloween cookies and mini cupcakes in odd (and not so odd) flavours (melon, cranberry, toffee and peach)

Taco's done our way:

The gift wrapping for oldest's "Sinterklaas suprise" for a class mate (she loved it!) that I made in 3 days flat including sewing the scraps together to make the fabric.

Christmas decorations:

 The Christmas eve bacon quiche:

Last night's dinner - Secret Chicken noodle soup:

Tea time...

Every now and then I spoil the kids and we have tea as a snack and then later a supper with more healthy stuff. Tea being the mealtime in this case not the beverage, although admittedly I do like a nice cup of tea with my tea *wink*. In this case we had 4 types of mini cupcakes: "after 8", almond, apple & cinnamon and "stroopwafel" flavours. I had also baked another batch of the caramel/fudge cupcakes and to top it all off we had digestive biscuits and mini stroopwafels.

I had made the "after 8"cupcakes by adding a few drops of peppermint essance + chocolate chips to the batter along with a bit of green food colouring so they'd be the same colour as the ice cream the kids like so much.

The stroopwafel cupcakes were made by crushing some stroopwafels and adding them to the batter along with a hint of cinnamon to give the batter flavour.

The almond ones were made with ground almond and a few drops of almond essence to give a nice rich slightly nutty flavour (you can use any nut for this of course )

I "cheated" and bought the biscuits *grin*

The most divine cupcakes ever...

Sometimes i have idea's about how to make something - last night after baking some cupcakes for a client I had this most wonderful idea but was too tired to mix up another batch of cupcake batter to try it out. Needless to say it was the best idea ever and I'm glad I took the time to try it out.

What I did was bake a batch of caramel cupcakes using My favourite cake batter  and replace just milk with a mixture of 1 - 2 tablespoon of caramel coffee syrup mixed with 3 tablespoons of milk.

Then after baking while the cakes are just out of the oven make a gooey Fudge mix:

• 150 grams / 6 oz finely grated fudge (it's a bit of a pain to do but worth it)
• 2 - 3 table spoons of milk

 How to make:

1. Put a small amount of water in the bottom of a small saucepan
2. Bring the water to the boil and turn down so it just simmers.
3. Put a bowl over the pan making sure it doesn't touch the water (you can throw away some of the water if it does)
4. Put the milk and fudge in the bowl and gently melt the fudge while stirring.
5. When completely melted take the bowl off the pan (turn the heat off) and allow to stand for about 5 minutes.
6. Use a syringe with a large opening (take the needle off) to suck up the fudge mix
7. Stab a cupcake in the middle with the syringe and squirt some of the fudge into it - it will spill out a little when you take it out.
8. You will need about 1/3 of the fudge mix for this.

Then using the rest of the still warm fudge mix make the fudge frosting - you will also need:

• 1 - 2 table spoons water
• 125 grams of icing sugar

How to make:

1. Add the water and the icing sugar and whisk till blended - add a little water if needed 
2. Spread the mix over the cupcakes
3. Allow to set.

Enjoy! ( I know I did *wink* )

Autumn wonders

Sometimes I like to go all out and decorate the cupcakes I made. I made a half batch of my usual cupcake batter and made half mocha flavour and half caramel flavour. I then made some simple icing from icing sugar, water and some flavouring (again mocha and caramel). I made some flowers from marzipan and put them on top while the icing was still wet.

Needless to say there aren't as many now as when I made the photo above *wink*

Chocolate Orange cake...

When making the mini cupcakes the other day I had gotten a bit carried away with making chocolate orange batter so had quite a bit leftover (about half a batch) so I decided to make a cake out of it using 2 of the 4 inch cake tins. After letting it cool (and after a trip to the shops for marmalade) I did the following:

1. Split the 2 cakes in half.
2. Filled each cake with marmalade - I used thick cut for this as i like finding chunks of orange peel.
3. I then covered the lower cake top with Nutella (you know you like it *wink*)
4. I placed the second cake on top and added a thin layer of Nutella on the top too (don't do the sides with Nutella - i know it's yummy but... it's overpowering too, especially on a little cake like this.)
5. I added some chocolate sprinkles.

You can also do this with a bought normal chocolate cake - or swap the marmalade for cherry jam (if you don't have orange chocolate batter that is *wink* )

Enjoy!

Cupcakes!

With the kids away on holiday I can make cupcakes in flavours I prefer. My main challenge today was making do with what I had in the house - no additional shopping allowed. This was a bit of a problem as the milk had gone off and smelled of cauliflower for some weird reason (I have no cauliflower in the house and haven't had it while that pack was in the fridge either) so I really couldn't use that. As a result I used freshly squeezed orange juice instead and that in itself made my choice of what type of cupcake I could make fairly limited. Since I was making mini cupcakes I didn't want just the one flavour so I challenged myself even more and looked for more flavours I could make.

The first flavour was obvious - plain orange.  The second flavour was inspired by Terry's Chocolate Orange
which I adore - only problem being that I don't have any cocoa in the house. I did have chocolate though so I melted that and let it cool a bit before adding that to the batter. The third flavour I decided to make was caramel orange, I used some of my caramel coffee syrup to make the batter taste of orange with more than a hint of caramel. As you can see in the image I'm still getting used to my mini cupcake tin so they aren't all the same size.

I'm listing the ingredients for a full batch of cupcakes for each flavour as it's easier than converting to the 1/3 batches I made by first making the orange cupcake batter and then adding flavours to 2 x 1/3 of it.

Ingredients for orange cupcakes:

• One batch of My favourite cake batter made with:
• Orange juice instead of milk
• Omit the vanilla flavouring (you might need to add some additional orange juice to replace this).
• Orange glaze made with: 
• 125 gr / 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 - 2 tablespoons of orange juice
• Orange colouring.

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Ingredients for chocolate orange cupcakes:

• One batch of My favourite cake batter made with: 
• Orange juice instead of milk 
• 50 gram / 2 oz chocolate slowly melted in a bowl over a pan of hot water, then set aside to cool while you make the batter - you add this last of all.
• Omit the vanilla flavouring (you might need to add some additional orange juice to replace this). 
• Orange glaze made with: 
• 125 gr / 1 cup icing sugar
• 1  - 2 tablespoons of orange juice 
• Orange colouring.
• Some chocolate decoration - I used doughnut shaped chocolate covered crunchy things. 

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 Ingredients for caramel orange cupcakes:

• One batch of My favourite cake batter made with:
•   1 - 2 tablespoon of caramel coffee syrup mixed with 3 tablespoons of orange juice instead of milk
• Omit the vanilla flavouring (you might need to add some additional orange juice to replace this).
  
• Caramel glaze made with: 
• 125 gr / 1 cup icing sugar
• 1 - 2 tablespoons of caramel coffee syrup

 Enjoy!

My favourite cake batter

Everyone has their own favourite batter for making cakes with and this is mine - I use it for cakes and cupcakes and adjust ingredients as needed for the different flavours I want. Since I make a lot of cakes I decided to put the basic recipe here and then refer to adjustments in the posts with my cakes. To convert my recipes to USA measuring standards I used this site: traditional oven Although they don't show it linked on their home page they do have some great converters that I found were accurate.

You can choose to either make this by hand, with a mixer or just in a kitchen machine.
For a 7" round cake tin or 12 cupcakes you need:

• 125 grams / 1 ¹/10  stick of butter of butter or margarine at room temperature
• 170 grams / 3/4 cup of sugar this can be castor sugar or demerara sugar etc.
• 2 large eggs
• 5 ml / 1 teaspoon of vanilla flavouring
• 35 - 60 ml / 2 - 4 tablespoons of milk
• 225 grams / 1 4/5 cup of self raising flour

Instructions to make by hand or using a mixer:

1. Preheat the oven to gas 4 / 350 F / 180 C
2. Prepare your cake tin by spraying it with baking spray, carefully covering the sides with butter or putting cupcake liners into the cupcake tin.
3. Put the butter in a mixing bowl and mix till creamy.
4. Add the sugar and mix well.
5. Add the eggs and mix well - if you did steps 1 and 2 correctly you will see little lumps of butter/sugar mix floating around - if not mix a bit more till it is smaller.
6. Add the vanilla flavouring and  half the milk and stir.
7. Add the flour and mix well - if it gets hard to mix add more milk.
8. Fill the cake tin/cupcake cases
9. If you are making a cake it will take about 55 minutes - if making cupcakes it will take about 35 minutes till baked - use a skewer or wooden toothpick to poke the cake down to the bottom and see if it's done - if it's clean when you pull it out it's done, if not give it 5 more minutes.
10. Leave it/them to cool a few minutes in the tin - then take it/them out and leave to cool on a cake rack (or just the counter top/plate if you don't have one)
11. Wait with icing till they are cold or it will get too messy

If you want to use a kitchen machine to make the batter do it like this:

1. Put the butter and sugar in the kitchen machine and mix till smooth.
2. Add the eggs and all liquids and mix.
3. Add the flour and mix for 5 minutes.
4. Continue with step 8 above.

Enjoy!

New cupcake tin...

Monday we were in town so the kids could spend their pocket money and while we were there they wanted to go into the sweetshop which happens to also sell baking stuff so I splurged and got a new cupcake tin - one for 24 mini cupcakes. Since we were in Tilburg yesterday I couldn't test it out till today and have found that I need a bit more than 1/2 a normal batch of cake batter to make 24 well filled cupcakes so I'll probably just stick to making 18 unless I'm making more than just one batch.

The white cupcakes are vanilla and the pink ones are raspberry and as you can see I didn't ice them as I had run out of icing sugar.

The horrors of cake mix packets...

 
It was the birthday of my youngest son's favourite can't live without cuddly thing (better know as Dilly) last Wednesday and, as I was still sore from our day trip to Leiden the day before I wasn't up to baking a cake for him as I'd promised, I decided to finally use up that packet of ready made add water only cake mix ("Home Made" brand)  that someone had given me a while ago and was close to going out of date. I rather wish I hadn't - it was horrible and as the image shows we didn't even finish more than one or two bites before we decided it was just too horrible to eat - we threw it away in the end.

The moral of this story - it's nicer to make real cake made from real ingredients, and tbh it's not as hard as people make it out to be - even my kids can make a cake on their own with a bit of help with weighing out the ingredients first.

Birthday cake...

Yesterday was youngest's 8th birthday and he was allowed to choose what type of cake I baked for him. He chose a cinnamon cake with apple and as that is best eaten warm I baked it shortly before I expected people to arrive.  Of course everyone arrived earlier. The cake when done was perfect though and it was mostly gone before I was able to make a photo of the whole 8' square cake I'd made.

Almond, Mocha and Chocolate cake

 With the kids at ex's I decided to bake a cake that was a little more grown up than usual an in flavours the kids mostly don't like so I made a batch of  plain cake batter, split it into 3 bowls and flavoured it with almond essence,  extra strong espresso and cocoa and put the flavours side by side in the long thin rectangular cake tine. In hindsight I think I should have done long thin stripes of it lengthwise or even one layer on top of the other to make sure that you can have all three flavours at the same time however I also wanted to save some of the cake for the kids (the chocolate bit) and did it like this. I won't be eating it *all* today - just a bit and freezing the rest in slices for a later date. I like how you can see which bit is which with the different shades of brown and think that if I did it the way I mentioned above it would make for an even better look. I won't be icing this cake - it looks fine as is :)