Last year for the first time I made my own Christmas cake flavoured with chocolate and cherries. It was meant to be a little different, but to be honest it wasn’t that different from a traditional Christmas Fruit Cake.
This year I am trying again to go a little on to the unusual side. In this case by using Indian spice blend Garam Masala instead of just the usual Christmas spice collection: cinnamon, ginger, cloves and all spice.
I am following this recipe for Garam Masala Christmas Cake.
I’ve just started a sewing class, you know to learn how to use a sewing machine and make a skirt. It’s a Sunday night class, because I can’t make the ones during the week, and it turns out these things take concentration.
Sewing in a straight line takes focus and sewing a curve is worse. By the time I leave with a skirt full of unpicking to do… it’s blowing a gale outside, it’s dark and raining. I want something to eat but I know we have nothing in the cupboards.
Then I get into the house, it’s bright and warm, my husband asks me as I enter the front door if I want a hot drink, and suddenly I relax. I know what I am going to make.
I have an apple tree in my garden. It has a special place in my heart because seeing its blossoms in the spring time lift my mood, and remind me that summer is on its way. Secondly, it’s the only thing likely, after many attempts, to bare fruit in my garden this year.
In the run up to Christmas I did eventually find the time to ice my cake, but only just enough time. In the end I went for a very simple Christmas tree decoration.
I’ve been meaning to post this for a while.
Every couple of weeks I have been feeding my Chocolate Christmas Cake with Amaretto.
Of course I can’t tell you much about how it tastes, but it smells wonderful – deep, rich and christmassy. Every time I unwrap the cake the aroma fills the kitchen.
Tomorrow I will ice the cake, however I still haven’t quite decided on how to decorate it, my options so far on this iced Christmas cake pinboard.
Then once I have taken like a billion photos, I will chop it up and eat it.
I’ll let you know how it tastes.
At the end of December I wrote a post about how I had stopped cooking and baking during the stress of planning a wedding. How I had resolved to get myself back into it using a list of techniques and dishes I wanted to create by the end of 2012. Needless to say I can’t strike a single thing off of that list.
My first year as a married woman has not been spent as a domestic goddess, with apron on, baking delicious treats and warming homely dinners. While it is extremely unlikely I will ever be that woman, I can always hope (and pursue) more of a life/work balance for the next year.
However there was one thing that shines out above all others on the list, to bake, marzipan and ice a cake.
Last summer I was growing a whole host of different veggies in my garden, but in the end I never got much of anything. Unless 3 cherry tomatoes counts as a glut.
Towards the middle of last summer my Mum brought me up a rhubarb plant, by this point I had very low expectations of anything in my garden.
However I planted it, not really believing that it would last the winter. (With new rhubarbs you are meant to leave them a year to bed in before picking).
Surprisingly not only did it survive but it’s doing amazingly well!
With my homegrown rhubarb I knew I wanted to something a bit different – not something I could buy in the shops like a pie or crumble and something so good I would have to blog about it.
It’s been a while since I have made the staple of this blog – the muffin – so the decision was easy.
I also have plans for Rhubarb Vodka and Rhubarb Ice Cream.
The summer months are just long enough to forget how difficult it can be to get decent lighting for photos. I do most of my baking in the evening, by the time its finished it’s too dark to take good shots. I ended up taking these photos in the morning sunshine, but somehow it’s not the same.
This is the second yoghurt cake I’ve made in the last week. This is by far the prettier of the two.
This Lemon and Blueberry cake has been on my list ever since it was on the front cover of BBC Good Food magazine for their March edition. They labelled it as the perfect Mother’s Day cake, but to me this cake says one thing – Spring!
It has hard to remember that spring is coming when it’s been raining all day, the winds are ferocious and snow is forecast for tomorrow morning. Yet there has been the odd day when the sun has broken through and you can almost remember what summer is like. This cake is for getting us through till then 🙂
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