Cake of the Week - Cakes for Boys

Once again I have an entry for Helen's Casacostello Cake of the Week blog. This week I'm bending the rules slightly (it's OK I asked first!) and I'm entering cakes that Mr P made.

Every now and them he gets an idea in his head and comes up with something amazing!

Last week it was Sabbuteo cupcakes!!

He painstakingly made each little figure with attention to detail way beyond my patience levels and came up with these

 The writing relates to some of Mr P's Twitter followers who were awarded very special #cakeawards

I think he did an amazing job for someone who says he's not creative, imagine what he could do if he was!! ;oD

Pop over to CasaCostello & see the other entries.

Cake of the week - Lauren's Birthday Cake

Once again I have the opportunity to join in with Helen's Cake Of The Week link on her fabulous blog CasaCostello I linked up a couple of weeks ago for Megan's Birthday where I not only made my first fully iced birthday cake, but a two tier one at that!
Thankfully Lauren's request was simpler, a chocolate cake with blue feathers on! So that's what she got!

As usual I left it until very late on the night before her birthday to decorate it and didn't really have an idea of how I was going to decorate it until I started. It's fair to say it was less than perfect. The chocolate icing didn't behave quite like the white I'd used for Megan's cake and it wasn't nearly as forgiving, hence the double ribbon round the sides.
Lauren had chosen the feathers so I popped those on, along with her candles and her name but it looked far too plain. I decided on butterflies with a couple of little flowers and it just kind of grew from there.

Helen made some lovely comments on my last cake, but this one has confirmed to me that iced cakes are not my strong point!! Maybe on day in the future when I have more time (who am I kidding, right??!!) I'll learn the art of decorating celebration cakes, until then they'll be for the children only and I'll concentrate on cakes for the shop!

But most importantly the Birthday girl loved it! Happy 11th Birthday Lauren! xxx

Pop over to see Helen's last wedding cake for a while, talk about go out with a bang! It's amazing!

The Gallery - FOOD

This weeks Gallery theme is food, how could I not take part!!??!! Food has always played a huge role in my life. I come from a family that loves food and feeding!!! I grew up with a love of cooking and baking as my Dad formerly a chef in The Royal Navy, never lost his love of food and cooking and my Mum, a keen baker worked in a bakery for much of my childhood. I'm so pleased that they took the time to teach and encourage me to cook, and it's something I've had the chance to pass on to others, through work or friendships.

As many of you know we (Mr P & I) are in the process of setting up our own Coffee Shop, which once open will sell home made cakes and pastries. Contrary to belief it's not me that will be doing the bulk of the baking. Mr P has thrown himself into learning many processes that have produced fantastic results and it's him, not me that will be in charge of the kitchen. So I'll leave you with some images of just some of the amazing things he's made over the past few weeks. When you're done, pop on over to Sticky Fingers to see all the other great entries.

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

Double Choc Berry Heaven

Chouxchouxbedoo buns! Lemon meringue, caramel, coffee & chocolate flavours

Raspberry & White choc macaroons

Lemon Macaroons

Sour Dough Bread

Individual Quiches

Apple, cinnamon & custard tarts

Mint Choc Chip Eclairs

Pistachio cake

A variety of Whoopie pies

Checking in.....

Hello! I've not posted for a while as I've not had any major news to share about the shop. Things are plodding along slowly and steadily. We're almost there with the building regulations and pen pushing stuff and soon, very soon, the building works and real work can begin. But don't worry we've not been wasting our days, we've been filling them with all kinds of research. This research has mainly involved visiting other coffee shops for inspiration and making some of the lovely things we hope to feature on our own menu.

So last week we took a trip into Manchester and went to a lovely place called Tea Cup recommended to us by Bimble & Rose

They specialise in Tea and even have a separate tea menu. You get a timer on your table telling you how long you need to allow your tea to brew before you pour it from the red pot into the white one ready for drinking! It's wonderful! All the cakes are home made and there is a fresh cake list daily. We left full of tea and cake and some ideas too.
While we were in the centre of town we decided to pop to Patisserie Valerie and bring some treats home to try, be rude not to really!

We also went to visit our potential coffee supplier. They have a room filled with different coffee machines and Jay, whose job it was to demonstrate, made us several different kinds of coffee and chocolate drinks. The company roast their own coffee on site daily and the smell hit us as soon as we stepped out of the car. We left having chosen a machine and sampled lots of coffee, lets just say we were both wired by the time we got back in the car!

In between the fun there have been plenty of less exciting appointments, like the Bank, Business Advisor's and energy suppliers so it's not all tea and cake!

There's been plenty of baking going on too. Today we made a cake inspired by our visit to Tea Cup. It still needs a little tweaking but it's certainly not bad for a first attempt!

I'll leave you with the pictures of our Pistachio and Vanilla Layer cake MK1 (I'm working on getting Mr P to make MK2 tomorrow!)

March Madness

What is the weather doing?! Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, far from it. This weekend has been like a dose of summer and very welcome.
I've felt like I've had a black cloud hanging over me this past few weeks and no matter what I've just not been able to shake it. This wasn't helped by a tummy bug going through most of us in the family, leaving me feeling wrung out. So a weekend full of sunshine was very much what the Doctor ordered.
On Saturday I had offered to help at a tea and cake charity event organised by our local Clandestine Cake Club, in aid of the Marie Curie Charity. I baked a cake and went along to help serve tea from vintage teapots.

Mr P's lovely Mum came along to support the event and M came along to keep her company. It was lovely chatting to all the people who had come along to support the event and have tea and cake on a sunny afternoon. We raised a fantastic £750 for the charity too!

We came home to find Mr P, his Dad and the children in the garden. The children had cleaned the trampoline and were having a good bounce while Mr P and his Dad had installed a new swing so a good day all round.

Today we all stayed at home and again there was lots of activity in the garden. I baked in the kitchen, while the children were out in the garden in bikinis, IN MARCH! they were bouncing, swinging, reading on the blankets they'd put out on the grass, it really was like a summers day. This afternoon we got the summer clothes out of storage in the loft and went through them to see what still fit and what needed to find a new home. As M said to me, it doesn't seem like 5 minutes since we packed them all away, or since we had our last day of summer.
Mr P was very busy indeed, building what will be a hen house for the bottom of the garden.

He's building the house from wood that would have been discarded at work so this fits in perfectly with our current budget for project 'Hen House'(ie. Zero!)  although someone in the family has other ideas and thinks that Mr P is building something for an entirely different purpose......

"It's for me, right?"

Poor Felix! He's been sunbathing on it since Mr P stopped work for the day, silly old cat.

I hope you had a lovely weekend in the sunshine where you were. Lets hope this fine weather carries on into April.

Old and New

I've been baking and making quite a lot lately. Some recipes have been old favourites like this lovely recipe for a lemon polenta cake that I got from Delicious Magazine when I was lucky enough to have an annual subscription.

I've made this cake many times. It has a lovely taste and texture and goes down as well as a dessert as it does a cake. With only 4 teaspoons of flour it has low gluten content too. I made it this week for the latest CCC event. The theme was 'Doing the Continental' This cake has an Italian theme so it fit in really well.
The standard of baking in our local cake club is astounding.

After tasting Helen's Black Forest (voted favourite by me & my children!) I decided to come up with Black Forest Cupcakes. Sadly my idea didn't really work out. They looked lovely when they came out of the oven, but rapidly collapsed! The taste was very nice but the texture was all wrong so I shall rethink those ones.

I also made a fruit cake with a difference. I decided I should try making a fruit cake, but no one in our house, apart from me, really likes it. So I made a light fruit cake but turned it into a chocolate cake. I really wasn't sure it would work, or what it would taste like, but actually it was really nice. All three children and Mr P liked it. It worked!

Lastly, an idea I'd had rattling around in my head for ages was a PB&J (Peanut Butter & Jelly) Cheese cake. The girls in this house (yes, I'm including myself in that!) love PB&J sandwiches and out of nowhere the idea of a PB&J cheese cake popped into my head. I worked, out in theory how I would make it happen and today I put it into practice. I'm delighted to say it turned out really well. Mr P, having never tried a PB&J sandwich (shocking I know!) reserved judgement as he really wasn't sure he'd like it.

I'm very pleased to say, he did indeed like it! It's a very light cheese cake, and it wasn't too sweet or sickly so it works really well.
So two out of three inventions worked this week. I can live with that.

I'm in the club!

NO! Not that club, the cake club or to give it it's proper name The Clandestine Cake Club. Clubs are popping up all over the place it seems. I'd read about it, seen posts from people I follow on Twitter, marveling at the cakes they'd seen and tasted and I'd even visited the website. I was very intrigued and so this time when I was invited to go along I said yes (the first time I declined you can read about that Here)

Every CCC meeting has a theme, set by the event organiser, in our case a lovely lady called Helen. The theme for this event was the Patron Saint of cakes. You can interpret the theme in any way you want to. I, as usual, put way too much thought into what I was going to do, to the point I got really stressed! Helen assured me that this really isn't what cake club is supposed to be about and it's certainly not a baking contest.
I decided to make my take on an Angel Cake, not an angel food cake, but the old fashioned pink, yellow and white cake that as a child we had with our Sunday tea. I didn't want to make it in a slab, or bar as you buy it in the shops as it needs to go round a fair few people. Being 'Angel' cake it fitted in with the heavenly theme quite nicely but also I used a recipe from my own saint of cakes, my lovely Mum. She was always baking something. In years gone by she and my Dad had made celebration cakes for people, Mum always baked for church events and often she would disappear, only to be found in the kitchen whipping up a Victoria Sandwich or a batch of jam tarts! So I used her recipe, what she used to call "4,4,4,2" (Butter, Sugar, Flour in ounces and 2 Eggs)  I used a triple quantity of that mixture, added some Vanilla extract, divided it into 3 bowls and coloured one portion pink and the other yellow and baked the three sections in sandwich tins.

I sandwiched the three cakes together with a simple vanilla butter cream, dusted the top with icing sugar, sprinkled on some glitter, stood back and started to panic!

Was it big enough? Would it be too simple/plain/ordinary? Would my cake look like the poor relation among all the other creations?

I'm happy to say I worried for nothing. When I arrived at our venue,(always somewhere different and never revealed until about a week before the event) I was greeted by welcoming smiles and a table full of cake of every kind.

Everyone finds a space for their cake on the table, then fills in a slip with their name and the title of the cake that they've baked.

I'm pleased to say my humble little cake didn't look out of place at all.

After a brief welcome from Helen and an informal introduction from us bakers, of us and our cakes it was time to dig in. Our venue was Cheshire Cakes a cake shop that doubles as a coffee shop. They kindly let us use the shop on the understanding we purchased tea and coffee. So it's like being in a nice coffee shop but having free reign of the cakes. I found choosing which to try really hard. There were sixteen cakes to choose from! I wanted to try as many as possible so chose to take tiny slices in the hopes I'd be able to sample a lot of the selection.

I think I managed six tastings and I didn't finish them all, as hard as I tried. There wasn't a single cake that I tried that I didn't like, they were all lovely.
We spent the evening chatting, eating cake and drinking tea. I got to know some of my newer friends a little better and forgot about the things that had been troubling me through the day.
There was a lot of cake left over, but never fear none of it is wasted. One of the great things about cake club is you get to take lots of cake home! We each cut slices of the cakes we'd wanted to try but hadn't got round to or the ones we really liked and wanted another taste of and filled our cake carriers with slices to take home.
What could be better than that? An evening eating cake, drinking tea and chatting to lovely cakey people, fantastic.
I really was worrying for nothing. Everyone was so friendly and I'll most definitely be putting my name down again.
I came home to Mr P, whose eyes lit up at the sight of my cake carrier laden with slices of cake. I simply got him a fork and he got stuck in. I'd had enough cake for one night so simply told him which was which. He didn't eat it all, there were about about eight slices, but he did have a try of each. This afternoon when the children came home from school we sat down with cups of tea and forks and did the same. It was all very civilised!
M's favourite was the Maple and Pecan, which was also one of my favourites. It reminded me of the Maple Brazils my Mum used to treat me to if ever she saw them in a nice sweet shop.
L's favourite was the double chocolate and cinnamon and R couldn't decided which he liked best, he liked them all, which is a huge compliment as he doesn't generally eat that much cake.

If you think it's something you'd like to take part in have a look at the link at the top of this post and see if there's a club near you and if not why not set up one of your own? You'll get all the information and advice you need. I can guarantee you won't regret it, we're a really friendly bunch!

Valentines Craft and Bake 2012

As part of my 'trying new things' I wanted to start taking part in other peoples blog hops or competitions, not so much for the chance of winning but just to take part and get involved.

The lovely Jacqueline at Cakeboule set up a 'Virtual Valentine craft and bake competition' where she invited anyone to take part and enter either craft or bake entries on a Valentines theme.

Mr P and I don't really 'do' Valentines, not because we're unromantic, but just because we don't feel the need for a special day to say I love you. Flowers are over priced and restaurants are over booked and it's all got a bit commercial. What we do try and do it have date nights at home, where either one of us cooks for the other or we cook together. The children go to bed early (they don't mind at all and even tell me off if I don't get dressed up!) and we have some 'us' time.

All that said, I was more than keen to take part in Jacqueline's competition. I am as soppy as they come and I love a bit of romance. As Jacqueline will be away for Valentines day she's asked that all the entries are in early, which I think is great as it might give other people ideas of things that they could make or do rather than go down the commercial route.

So craft or bake???? Hmmmmm.........I did both!

I always give my children a gift on Valentines day. Nothing big, in fact sometimes it might just be a heart shaped lolly and a home made card, but it's a little reminder that I love them very very much and it makes them feel involved in something that usually passes children by.

For the children I made keyrings or bagcharms whatever they decide to use them for. They were quite simple to make and I think they'll like them, but these I will save for Valentines day itself.

4 Hearts for our 4 Sweethearts

They're made from soft red fleece, stuffed just a little bit and then embellished or embroidered. I had real trouble getting just the 'ring' bit of a keyring (got them now from trusty old eBay!) So I bought keyring blanks.

Then for the baking. I had so so many ideas in my head and I wanted to make them all, but I managed to narrow it down to two bakes that I made today.

First was this heart shaped chocolate cake, topped with chocolate ganache and a simple message. Mr P does love chocolate, so what better way to say I Love You, than on a chocolate cake?

Then I made these Cupcakes, so that everyone could enjoy a little bit of love in cake form!

I made rose one's with little handmade roses and edible red glitter

I made swirly one's again with my handmade roses, but no glitter

And Heart-topped ones too

So this is how I've chosen to remind the one's I love, just how much I love them and not just on Valentines day, but all year round.

Some of the other entries to the competition are amazing and very varied indeed. I really look forward to seeing them all once they're in. And if you want to enter, it's not too late. The closing date isn't until 4th Feb 2012 and I know Jacqueline would welcome new comers. Pop over to Cakeboule if you fancy joining in.

Half Term Hols

I always love the October half term and this year was no different. We were treated to lovely autumnal weather on most days which meant washing on the line and walks in the park. We did so many things this past week that it has flown by and I really can't believe that it's back to the old routine tomorrow!

MB was spending the week with us so we had our full quota of children for the week. There were lots of things to fit in, some of them pretty routine but as is often the way they have to be done while were off from work/school.

We had trips to the park

Our Fabulous four

Bruno taking a rest 

Beautiful Autumn colour

After trips to the park we made time for hot chocolate and dvd's, we all enjoyed some quiet time after the fresh air.
We only had one whole day at home I had a job to do that I'd been putting off for a while. You can read about it here. I also had a couple of little sewing jobs to do and I'd promised L that we could make her Sock Monkey from a kit I'd got her for her birthday. We did it together and she's turned out pretty well, I think.

Careful does it!

She's taking shape

Ta Dah!!!!!

Trips to the shops were also required this week as my birthday always falls in half term. Mr P had given the children money so that they could each choose and buy their own gift to give to me. Two trips were required. The first to the local shops, as R had picked something from one of the many Christmas shop brochures we had lurking, and the second to a shopping centre. The girls went off one way while R & I were left waiting for them, so we had a wander in a few shops of his choice. He's really not a lover shopping of any kind but he was quite happy browsing in the 'boy' shops!

A sign of things to come?

We squeezed in a family trip to the cinema to see Johnny English, which made all of us laugh out loud along with all the other families. It was really lovely to hear so much laughter.

And then came the big day, my birthday! It has to be said that by the time my birthday comes, I've usually run out of steam, but this year the children and Mr P had been plotting and planning so I went with it as they had all put in so much effort.

I got up to banners on the walls and balloons all over the floor, my gifts (there were a lot of them!) were all presented beautifully and the children were all so excited that you'd have thought it was their birthdays!

Each one had chosen gifts that they thought I'd like, without help from any other adults and I was so touched and amazed at what they'd chosen.

Felix trying to blend in

From R, a two tier cake stand and two candles in glass jars to go on my dressing table. From MB a pencil case complete with contents for my work bag so that I no longer have to scrabble around in the deepest darkest corners of my work bag for a pencil only to discover there isn't one there! And two pretty nail polishes. From M and L a basket decorated with ribbons full of wrapped goodies including, chai tea, posh coffee, shortbread, a hairclip, socks, hazelnut syrup (for coffee) and pretty tissues.
Mr P ordered me some beautiful underwear from Victoria's Secret in America. It fits like it was made for me and made me feel very special.
After all my gifts and cards were opened L painted my toes for me and M made some lemon cupcakes. I'd decided that I'd like to go out for lunch instead of dinner so that's what we did. We headed to the local carvery for a nice roast dinner and we weren't disappointed. We all left rather full and came home for a relaxed afternoon doing nothing much, which was perfect.
Later on M presented me with the cakes she'd made. They were her first attempt at piping and I think she did a pretty good job.

Cakes on my new stand

I'm more comfortable being on the other side of the cakes!

 I think it was probably the best birthday I have ever had. Everyone had put so much thought and effort into me having a nice day That means more than anything. My girls had even bought and filled little party bags for us all out of their own money, it was a lovely touch and shows that even though as a Mum, I sometimes feel taken for granted, that they really do care.
It rounded of half term week really nicely. It's lovely just to have time to spend together as recently some of our weekends have been taken up with other things. The next time we're all off like this will be the Christmas holidays, which are getting ever closer. Thankfully another task we managed this week was the children writing Christmas lists, those shopping trips came in handy! I hope you all had a lovely half term too what did you get up to?

A day off

Last week I had a day off in the week. Not something I have many of during term time. So like many working Mum's if I do get the odd day off then I put it to good use. I could sit at home, watch a bit of TV and relax but actually I can't! My Dad always said that if my Mum sat still her bum would be making buttons! A very odd saying but what it means is that she could never be still, she always had to be 'doing something', a trait that I seem to have inherited! If we have a 'lazy day' at home I find myself genuinely feeling anxious that I should be 'doing something'. I know that it can be frustrating for those who have to live with me and I know they don't understand because I can remember not understanding when I lived at home with my Mum. A film would come on TV and Dad & I would say we'd seen it but Mum would swear she hadn't and we'd always blame it on the fact that she never sat still long enough to watch one!

So on my day off I did all the usual daily chores, like cleaning up the kitchen and getting some washing done. I popped into town to pick up a parcel, go to the bank and pick up a few groceries and when I came home I headed for the kitchen.

We'd already eaten most of the cake I made at the weekend, although Mr P had taken some into work for a colleague to try so that's why it had disappeared quicker than usual (that's my excuse!) so I decided to make another one. We love the Fruit and Almond cake and I do make it most weeks so I decided to make something different. I've had Rachel Allens Bake book for a while and haven't used it much so I picked that off the shelf. I chose a recipe for an iced orange cake. It sounded lovely and I had oranges spare so even better. However, when I opened the oven I was horrified that the cake hadn't really risen and it had sunk in the middle. I was less than impressed! I iced it all the same and hoped it would taste better than it looked but I really wasn't happy. I still took a picture as I don't believe in only sharing successes and it was only just now as I looked up the recipe online so that I could include it here that I got to see a picture of Rachel's finished cake. Her cake has a sunken centre just like mine! She'd iced it a little differently but the cake itself was the same.

Too sweet for my taste

While the cake was in the oven I decided to make some soup to stock the freezer. Mr P likes to takes it to work for his lunch. I just used up what I had in the fridge which happened to be mainly root vegetables. So it was carrots, parsnips, swede, an onion, a leek and a squash that was lurking! I added some Garam masala and cinnamon to give it some warmth.

Ready for the freezer

Lastly I made a beef and barley casserole for our tea. I started it off on the cooker top and then once the cake was out of the oven I popped the casserole in, no need to heat the oven twice that way! I can't usually make a casserole in the week as I don't have time to cook them when I'm working so if ever I'm off that's what I'll make. And of course any good stew or casserole should have dumplings!

The recipe is so simple that it's barely a recipe at all!

I use
 200g self raising flour
 100g butter
pinch of salt
any herbs or spices I feel like adding
Water to mix

Rub in the butter into the flour by hand then add salt & herbs/spices and enough water to make into a soft dough. Roll into balls and place them on top of the casserole. (they'll be half in the liquid and half out) You can cover the casserole or leave it open for a crispier top to your dumplings but I cover mine you can use the same recipe to make a cobbler too. Bake for 30/35 minutes on gas4/180c at the end of cooking.

This makes about 12 dumplings.. You can adjust the recipe easily as it's simply 2 parts flour to 1 part butter
On this day I added some smoked paprika to the mix. It gave a lovely flavour and colour to the dumplings and complimented the smoked paprika in the casserole. And before anyone asks, I'm afraid there isn't a recipe for the casserole I just put in what I have to hand (beef, onions, celery, root veggies, unpeeled new potatoes and barley) with some good quality beef stock and what ever herbs and spices I fancy.

Ready for the oven

The whole house smelled amazing for most of the day and when everyone came in from school or work they were greeted by warm comforting smells wafting from the kitchen.

The casserole was lovely, really hearty and filling. The soup, Mr P tells me was very nice indeed but as for the cake......lets just say I won't be making it again in a hurry. Everyone else said they liked it but it really wasn't for me.