Victoria sponge triumph!

It’s been a while since I posted and the plan has been to work my way through all the things I’ve made this year in order, but I feel the need to interrupt proceedings to celebrate my first ever successful Victoria sponge!

Look at the height of its layers!

I’m so chuffed. Normally when I make a sponge it’s average sized to say the least and I could never quite work out why it wasn’t as substantial as my Grandma used to make. I followed her recipe and instructions to the letter, but it always came out ever so slightly lacking in the size department.

Well, thanks to Mary Berry I’ve worked out what the problem was… I wasn’t making enough cake mix! My Grandma’s recipe calls for 6oz of marg, flour and sugar and 3 eggs which is fine, but I was using this with a 20cm cake tin so it was always coming out thinner than I remember my Grandma’s cakes. In Mary Berry’s Ultimate Cake Book, the queen of baking gives recipes for 15cm, 18cm and 20cm cake tins, so amazingly when I used the amounts for 20cm tins, it came out exactly right! I also used Mary’s all-in-one mixing method, so it was really quick and another tip is to use Stork margarine, which my Mum and Grandma have always sworn by. The only problem is, now I’ve struck it right with the recipe, I fear this may be the beginning of a Victoria sponge binge!

By the way, the filling is my Mum’s homemade blackberry jam which is the perfect accompaniment to the suitably-sized layers.

Here’s Mary’s 20cm all-in-one recipe:

sponge ingredients
8oz (225g) soft margarine (Stork is the Thomas family top tip!)
8oz (225g) caster sugar
8oz (225g) self-raising flour
4 eggs
2 tsps baking powder

filling and topping
About 4 tbsps jam, whatever flavour you like
A sprinkle of caster sugar

- Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C, 350 F, Gas 4. Grease and line 2 x 20cm tins with greaseproof paper
- Measure all the cake ingredients into a large bowl and mix well with a hand blender
- Divide mixture between tins and level out
- Bake for 25 mins until well risen and tops of cakes spring back when lightly pressed (mine only took about 20 mins so keep your eye on them)
- Turn out onto wire rack to cool
- When completely cold sandwich the layers together with the jam and sprinkle the sugar over the top.

I recommend enjoying with a cup of tea while watching Mary Berry in all her glory as a judge on The Great British Bake Off, BBC2, 8pm, Tuesday nights.

Better not be boring biscuits

You’d think gluten and dairy free biscuits would be boring wouldn’t you? Well I did. I imagined them as beige, weak little items. Insipid and tasteless. Of course it was wrong of me to have this notion, but don’t we often believe things that are based on nought but nonsense until we learn otherwise?

It’s only because I love my Falmouth girlies so much that I ventured into the gluten and dairy free world at all. I didn’t like the thought of making a batch of biscuits for one of our get-togethers that half of the gathering wouldn’t be able enjoy for one reason or another. So I rootled around online for a suitable recipe and set about tarting it up a bit. And here’s the result, Orange, Cranberry and Dark Chocolate Biscuits. And let me assure you that they taste as good as they look.

I adapted this dairy-free recipe by putting a little orange zest and some dried cranberries in the biscuit mix and then, instead of making butter cream and squidging the biscuits together, I made the icing (with juice and rind of orange in place of lemon) then drizzled it on top, along with some melted dark chocolate.

Strictly scrumptious cupcakes

During Strictly Come Dancing season (Sept – Dec) my friends and I take it in turns to host each other on Saturday evenings to indulge in a little vino and latino. This mainly involves shouting and whooping at the telly and passing our (expert) opinions as C-list celebrities in tight latin trousers and low cut leotards flounce around the dance floor. Great fun.

We often bring along home-made treats and one of mine that seemed to go down particularly well were Banana and Chocolate Cupcakes based on the Hummingbird Bakery recipe. As I have friends who are gluten and dairy intolerant I tweaked the ingredients a bit.

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C (325 F, Gas 3)

120g plain gluten free flour (I used Doves Farm)
140g caster sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
pinch of salt
80g dairy free spread (I used Pure)
120ml soya milk
2 eggs
120g mashed banana
50g dark chocolate, chopped (or use chocolate chips)*

- Mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, salt and dairy-free spread with an electric mixer until combined.
- Slowly add the milk and mix until well combined.
- Add the eggs and beat well.
- Evenly stir in the mashed banana and chopped chocolate
- Spoon the mixture into paper cupcake cases until two thirds full and bake for about 20 mins. They should be light golden and bounce back when touched.
- Leave to cool and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
- Once cold decorate with chocolate butter icing (can also be made with dairy-free spread, it tastes great!) or whatever toppings you like.

*The chopped chocolate was one of my additions to the original recipe and as you can see in the pic, it all sank to the bottom, but it was still delicious!

Last-minute (3-month) blackberry vodka

Sarah and I decided to make sloe gin very late on in the season last autumn and, despite out valiant efforts, could find not a single sloe in the greater Falmouth area. (We’ve since been told of several sites to tap up next autumn, so watch this space). What we did find though were plenty of blackberries and an almost-full bottle of vodka – the blackberries were wild, the vodka was Sainsbury’s and lurking behind the gin in my cupboard. So, roughly following Self-sufficient in Suburbia‘s instructions, we chucked the vodka (probably about two thirds of a litre), about 400g of blackberries and 200g of sugar in an airtight jar, shook it all up and waited ’til Christmas.

I kept it on my kitchen shelf next to my radio and shook it up every morning for a month and then once a week for a two further months. At first it looked like one of my childhood attempts to turn rose petals and water into ‘perfume’.

But as the weeks passed, it started to turn a deliciously tempting deep purple.

Eventually, it was all I could do to persuade Sarah to leave it locked in its jar until our New Year’s gathering when we mixed it with champagne (or at least some kind of fizzy wine that made us think it was champagne) and enjoyed it heartily with our nearest and dearest. I can’t remember exactly what happened after that, but I do know the blackberry vodka was a hit and likely to become an annual tradition.

The fight against cold tea continues…

Not content with merely keeping tea warm while in the pot, my obsession with cosies recently transferred to the very cup itself. I didn’t have long to whip up a gift for Ruthie’s birthday so I thought a small but perfectly formed mug cosy would be just the ticket. I’d seen a few mug cosy patterns knocking around, but none of them were quite right so I grabbed some Patons Shadow Tweed from my stash (left over from making these Christmas socks for my brother last year), cast on 12 sts on 5mm needles and fashioned a mug cosy using Irish moss stitch.

All I did was knit a rectangle big enough, cast off then picked up 6 sts at one end, leaving 2 sts at the top and 4 sts at the bottom, then knitted these 6 sts in moss stitch, including 3 buttonholes. Then I did a very poor version of button hole stitch around the button holes in a deep red embroidery thread…

and chose some matching buttons from my button tin…

et voilà!

(As a footnote, I pressed Ruth to tell me whether or not the cosy is actually useful and unfortunately, as I had kind of predicted, she reports that when you attempt to drink the tea, it dribbles down the side of the cup and makes the cosy soggy. But at least it stays hot!)

 

Popping my scone cherry

It’s hard to believe that I’ve lived in Cornwall for over two years, but until recently I’d never made a scone. My excuse is that living in a place where every other shop is a tea room where you can buy cream teas all day, every day has made me lazy in the scone-making department. (My absolute favourite place to indulge in a cream tea is De Wynn’s on Falmouth’s main shopping street, do pop in if you get the chance!) But I was spurred on by the fantastic BBC show The Great British Bake Off which pitted bakers against each other to find Britain’s best amateur baker. I knew the programme was going to become a favourite when a man in the first episode cried over his sunken marmalade tea loaf – classic! The addition of Mel and Sue as presenters sealed the deal.

So I followed the silver fox Paul Hollywood’s scone recipe from the programme’s website and here’s the result:

Pretty darn tasty they were, but I think there’ll have to be a lot more batches baked until I get it exactly right.

(By the way, I know the scone on the right looks like it’s got egg oozing from it, but it was mango sauce which is all together more appetising).

A cosy for every occasion

My obsession with sticking a cosy on anything that  stands still long enough has developed in an egg-ward direction, but to be fair it wasn’t my fault. One day my fella said, “Clare at work said if you can knit tea cosies you could probably knit an egg cosy,” and how else could an enthusiastic knitter such as myself respond, but to whip up said egg cosy for him in doublequick time?!

I used this pattern from Knitty Bitty which I found on ravelry and had me a couple of crazy cosy-knitting hours in front of the TV. Sometimes I’m so rock and roll it hurts. The colours wouldn’t be my usual choice but seeing as my chap supports West Ham, I thought it appropriate. And as if they weren’t cute enough on their own I also added the teeny little pom poms. Now I reckon you’d be hard pushed to find a better dressed (or cosier) egg.

How d’you like them apples?

 

I’m not normally the kind of person to choose a fruity cake over a chocolatey one, but sometimes, just sometimes, there’s call for a fruit based bake and this is one of my favourites.

A few months back the apple tree in the communal garden on my road was shedding its load gratuitously all over the lawn so I thought I’d gather some of the little chaps up and make them into a spicy apple loaf, another hit recipe from my pilfered book Muffins and Quickbreads, for my monthly novelists’ meet up. I’ve made it on lots of occasions (mainly when I have a few wrinkly apples festering in my fruit bowl) and it never lets me down. It’s lovely after it’s cooled but even better nice and warm just out of the oven.

1 egg
250ml bottled or homemade apple sauce
55g butter or marg, melted
110g dark brown sugar (can be made with light muscavado for a lighter textured cake)
50g caster sugar
285g plain flour
2tsps baking powder
½tsp bicarbonate of soda
½tsp salt
1tsp cinnamon
½tsp grated nutmeg
70g currants or raisins
55g pecans or walnuts, chopped

- Preheat oven to 180 degrees C/ 350F/ Gas Mark 4
- Line a 9×5 inch loaf tin with greaseproof paper and grease.
- Lightly beat egg and stir in apple sauce, butter and both sugars.
- In another bowl sift flour, baking powder, bicarb, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.
- Fold dry ingredients into wet in 3 batches.
- Stir in currants and nuts.
- Pour into the tin and bake for about an hour (until skewer inserted in centre comes out clean).
- Let stand for 10 mins then turn out onto a cooling rack.

Special 60th Birthday Surprise

When my Mum turned 60 in July, my brother and I wanted to get her something extra special so we commissioned Adam King to make a bespoke love spoon. You can buy traditional Welsh love spoons in a huge range of designs with each of the symbols used carrying their own meaning, but we wanted a one off so we worked with Adam to create a unique design. It includes a dragon (because Mum lives in Wales and also collects dragons), a bird (because Mum loves to feed the birds and watch them visiting the garden), Celtic and Art Nouveau inspired knot work (because Mum likes these styles of design and uses them in her own textile work) and a needle and thread (because Mum’s a textile artist). The finished love spoon is now hanging proudly in Mum and Dad’s living room and I hope bringing Mum lots of love from us every time she looks at it!

 

Thank goodness for tea cosies

There’s nothing I like to knit more than a tea cosy. It’s becoming something of a joke amongst my friends, but I don’t care. It’s so satisfying knowing that when you give the gift of a tea cosy, you’re not only giving a beautiful object, but a highly practical item that means the receiver of the gift need never suffer cold tea again! I liked the pattern I used for my Grandma’s tea cosy last Christmas so much that I’ve since made two more in that style to ensure the toastyness of tea in the South East region would no longer be at risk.

One blue and white one as a wedding gift for Catherine and Will…

… and one red and white one for Mandy to match her checked table cloth.

Now I just need to get round to making one for me.