forward planning

The PTA Christmas Fair (or Fayre, I dunno) and the Christmas disco are coming up and I'm baking for both. So being quite incredibly organised, I've actually planned what I'm baking and I've done a trial run of one of them. Seems implausible doesn't it?

Pinterest has been very useful in getting fairy cake/cupcake decoration ideas. I'm a fan of the chocolate orange anyway, so when I saw pictures of chocolate orange cupcakes, well... Drool. I had a rummage through my various recipe books and found a recipe for chocolate fairy cakes - though as always it was a weird quantity, enough for 16. I've only ever seen tins for 12 ever, in my whole life. Mind you, it's better than the recipe I used for the Hallowe'en cupcakes which said something random like 'makes 27'. 

Miss M and I threw together a batch at the weekend, iced them with *blush* ready-made 'frosting' (butter icing in this case as far as I can tell) and topped with Chocolate Orange Minis. Well, most of them - Miss M doesn't like chocolate oranges, weird kid, so she had them without the segment. The Boy has had a cake in his packed lunch every day so far this week, but there are, ahem, only a couple left now. The ready-made frosting feels like a total cheat but it goes on so easily and is much tastier than I thought it would be, so I'm happy with it. Thumbs up from all!

I'd like to try them with orange essence in the cake mix but I fear Miss M would disapprove. Oh well, two batches, eh?

My other plan is to make rainbow cupcakes, so we'll need to give those a trial run too. Miss M likes playing with food colouring so I'm sure it'll all go swimmingly. Maybe.

may contain traces of sugar

There has been a certain amount of Hallowe'en-inspired culinary creativity going on in the last couple of days.

 Miss M came home from school today with 'Dracula's dentures' today - two digestive biscuits, mini-marshmallows, icing sugar and food colouring. Pretty effective, don't you think?

And the Boy came had Home Ec. today so he came home with a chocolate apple - I'm quite relieved they didn't try toffee apples!

So they were happy eating their creation.

Miss M's school had their Hallowe'en disco last night so I was providing a bit of home baking. I made two batches of chocolate chip cookies because they're quick and easy, but they looked a bit boring so I did a quick batch of fairy cakes as well, and then looked on Pinterest for decorating inspiration, and rather regretted it. It turns out that some people really throw themselves into producing incredibly disgusting-looking Hallowe'en party food. I stuck with spiders' webs and eyeballs as being just gross enough to satisfy children, but not actually stomach churning to look at.

I'm not really cut out for fiddly cake decorating but these were reasonably easy using squeezy tubes of icing. Reasonably. That's me all baked out for a while though!

Ah'm makkin bannocks

A grim day outside

One of my earliest memories is of being at the playgroup at the community hall and sitting at a table just below the stage playing with playdough (not Play-Doh, just salt dough) with some of my friends. I was about three or four, and my friend Allan was rolling out the playdough when he announced in a deep and serious voice 'Ah'm makkin bannocks'. I don't know why it stuck in my head, but it did. Maybe it was just because he sounded so earnest.  Allan is now an accountant but in my head he's still the little boy who was makkin bannocks.

Anyway, since Up Helly Aa I've been meaning to have another go at bannocks, as my last couple of tries were a bit hit and miss. As it was a grim, wet, windy, wild day today I thought a bit of baking might cheer things up a bit or at least stop me staring out the windows. I googled and found a Youtube video, Makkin Shetland Bannocks, in which Mina Flaws demonstrates how to make bannocks, obviously.  It helps a great deal seeing someone making them and technique seems to make a difference as today's batch turned out a lot better than the last lot!

The ingredients are given in imperial measures in the video and I'm a metric cook. I thought my kitchen scales had a way of switching to imperial but I couldn't find it - I'm sure it's blindingly obvious and I'll figure it out sometime next week but for today I was googling again.

A lot of it is done by experience really. The first four were slightly singed as I had the heat a little high, but you don't want it too low either or it'll be raw in the middle (I'm hearing Paul Hollywood saying that in my head).

But overall they looked pretty good. Actually I was really chuffed with how they turned out and they tasted not bad at all! Going, as ever, for the multicultural experience I had bannocks instead of naan bread with my sweet potato and chana dal curry and it worked brilliantly. Mmmmm..

Food photography's a bit weird isn't it? I very rarely try it because everything turns out yellowy orange. Fortunately this is a yellowy-orange curry so that's okay. Or so I tell myself.

In non-baking news I'm going on with knitting my cowl, having fixed the bit which had inadvertently stopped being moss-stitch for half a (lengthy) round and turned into rib instead. That was a lot of un-knitting. I might even be finished by the time spring kicks in!

summer term frenzy

Every year it takes me by surprise - the Easter holiday drifts by and then we're into the summer term frenzy and so much happens that I'd like to blog about, but there never seems to be any time. The days get longer, yet somehow shorter, and my to-do list gets ever more unmanageable, and the weeks fly by far too quickly.

At the end of May there was a long weekend and we headed to the Highlands to see Mum and Dad. While we were there we saw an oystercatcher nesting in an overflow carpark at the Highland Wildlife Park. She was very defensive of her nest and the staff had put out traffic cones to protect her well-camouflaged eggs.

And back at Mum and Dad's, the duck who has adopted them and flies in most days for a snack.

As we edged into June we had the school's fun day, for which I did what felt like an epic amount of baking (somehow when you do what feels like an epic amount of baking it only ever amounts to enough to fill a few plastic tubs) and manned the coconut shy. There was a bit of lemon drizzle traybake left. I'd never made it before but it's a very forgiving recipe and turned out perfectly. I'm not really that much of a cake person, but this was quite good.

School sports day got cancelled at the last minute due to torrential rain and the teachers, PTA (including me) and teenage helpers from the high school, cobbled together an indoor alternative which left us all knackered.

And I caught a cold, which always seems so unfair in summer. Accordingly I treated myself to a copy of Pompom Quarterly  - I ordered last winter's issue, because there's a hat pattern in it I really like and I don't really do summer knitting. Out of season it may be, but it's lovely.

Then the sun came out again and I found this gorgeous bee in my garden:

I think it's a red-tailed bumblebee and is apparently quite common but I've never seen one before.

The sky was so blue I went round the garden taking pictures of the underside of the flowers and plants. My favourite is this poppy - the contrast with the sky is so strong.

The garden's looking quite happy actually. Quite exuberant in fact. And nicely quiet. The school year finishes a week on Wednesday and the frenzy continues until then, so I'm hoping for a few quiet (and dry) spells when I can sit in my deckchair and appreciate it all.

Day 1: Still no flying cars.

There for your perusal is the Hogmanay onion-skin-and-daffodil dyed wool. 

As ever, a yellowy shade is almost impossible to photograph - in reality this one is rather more mustardy and rather less pleasant. However as a contrast colour in some kind of colourwork I think it'll work quite well. Maybe some stripes would look good. Hmm. I sometimes think I spend more time planning (or just day-dreaming about) future knitting projects than actually knitting them. This is completely normal, isn't it?

Today we have continued with our strategy of lazing around doing not much, which is quite nice, though the kids are possibly going a bit stir crazy. Certainly the bicker-o-meter went up a few notches today!

And I finally got round to having a piece of Christmas cake. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... very nice this year. At some point I'll try to blog the recipe so that when I find I've lost the printout-with-scribblings in 10 months time I won't panic. It was actually the recipe I usually use but for a smaller tin so I had to start by doing arithmetic to work out the proportions, which I don't care to repeat too often. It's funny, I honestly hadn't felt like eating anything as overtly Christmassy as Christmas cake until today. And it'll probably last me another month.

Peely-wally

I'm spending a cosy day indoors with Miss M, who is recovering from a sickness bug she had yesterday and is still a little peely-wally. It's been fairly horrible outside - high winds, rain, hail, sleet, snow (briefly) and clouds that look as if they're made from concrete but we're snuggled up on the settee and two-thirds of the way through watching The Wizard of Oz. Oh, actually it's snowing again now.

Miss M's bug came on really quickly - she was absolutely fine at school yesterday, and then we went to her swimming lesson straight after school. It was the classic Parenting Fail. As I parked at the swimming pool she told me her tummy was sore. Well, Miss M's sore tummy has been mentioned with consideration, as Mr Bennet would say, for a long time so I didn't think much of it. Halfway across the carpark she said ' Mama, I feel a bit sick'.
'Well, we'll see you how you feel once you get ins-'
'BLEURGHHHH'

That's right, ex-macaroni cheese all over the carpark. Good job it didn't happen ten minutes later when she was actually in the swimming-pool! The Boy, being squeamish, ran away - that's probably the reason he never gets ill then.

I hate it when my kids are ill - which to be fair, they hardly ever are. Miss M looked awful last night. Thankfully she stopped throwing up before eight o'clock, had a good sleep and woke up with colour in her face again and today she's been quietly doing jigsaws, playing on the computer and watching The Wizard of Oz.

Aside: Oh I do like the Wicked Witch of the West. Margaret Hamilton was brilliant!

I made a cake the other day. It was my half-birthday, good a reason as any. I share a birthday with the Boy so although we had cake then, it was according to his tastes and he prefers water icing which I find a bit sickly. I prefer butter icing, and as I'll only be 42 once, I thought a birthday cake for me, with butter icing and chocolate buttons on top would be just the thing. I'd intended to put a half next to the 42 but there wasn't room.  Actually I should have been making the Christmas cake, but I don't know if I can be bothered really.  I notice that although both of the kids supposedly don't like butter icing they've been happily scoffing my cake. Hmmm.

Wonky donkey

Oooh, look September! (Yes, I know it was eight days ago). I love changing the page on the calendar - simple pleasures, y'see.  Especially when the pictures go all autumnal in theme and show baking stuff. I've been doing a bit of baking recently - one batch of brownies, one batch of bannocks, apple and blackberry crumble, and another batch of brownies because the kids liked the first lot so much. I broke the whisk making the first lot, which was a bit bizarre, and had to go and buy a new one. It was surprisingly difficult to find anywhere selling a whisk, and I ended up getting a Marks and Spencer one for more than I'd intended to pay, but at least it seems quite robust, so if my whisking superpower ever recurs we should be okay.

It's been intermittently sunny, and I'm insanely proud of the picture of my cosmos. If you look carefully you'll see the silhouette of a fly on the petals of the left-hand flower.

I had this brilliant idea, while watching the Boy playing Plants vs Zombies, that I should grow a line of sunflowers along one side of the garden next year. Not sure about the peashooter plant things though. Maybe a row of peas? I've never grown peas before.

Remember when I used to talk about knitting rather than 'what I did on my holidays'? (In my defence, it was a cracking summer). Well, I have been knitting and I've even finished some things:

I've been getting arty with the knitting shots today. I've finished the Boy's scarf and thought I'd have fun with photographing it seeing as the stripes make it interesting.

And then there are the two little bunnies. Okay the first one looks like a Wonky Donkey (ah, happy memories of Ant & Dec in days of yore) and the second one looks a bit strange generally, but the kids are pleased with them. They think they're funny.

 Hmm. So now I'm knitting an otter.  It probably turn out looking like a grizzly bear.

The widening gyre

A bit of Yeats for you there, because I'm still spinning and because Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart, died this week, which made me think of the poem.

So, yes, still spinning. The doctor says it's labyrinthitis which is what I suspected.  It comes and goes. And is particularly bad in supermarket checkout queues! I think that's because that's the only time I'm actually standing still. The rest of the time I'm either moving or sitting down, and it's manageable then. In fact it's not really bad, I'm functioning, getting the kids to and from school, doing most of the usual things, though Powerhooping is out for the moment - the sight of all those hoops is just too much!  I've been using the computer less and for shorter periods of time which is why I haven't been blogging - I'm a s-l-o-w blogger,  it takes me a while to find the right pictures and write a post!

So what have I been up to? Well I did do another loaf of bread, following an actual recipe this time and it turned out ok:

 Then My Beloved made some of his wonderful oaty rolls using his usual method of haphazard measuring and, as far as I can tell, minimal kneading, and they were amazing!  Hmph.

 I've made choc-choc-chip cookies with Miss Mouse:

And apple and blackcurrant crumble just for me, 'cos nobody else likes it (but no picture of that because the ones I took looked too visceral).  Comfort food? Oh yes! It's been grimly cold with a really biting wind. I've just been watching the snow falling again. It's been snowing a bit every day for days - mostly tiny pebbles of snow, not hail because it's too light and soft for that, but not flakes either, more like very small polystyrene beads. Today it was back to real flakes though briefly. I'm not looking forward to going out to get the kids. This time last year it was like this, which was nice but weird.

Today I mordanted a skein of wool - that's the first mordant this year, we're getting to dyeing season, yay! I might even invest in a bigger pot so I can do more than one skein at a time.

And that's all for now. It's taken me two hours to write this post because it all got too spinny and I had to go and lie down in the middle, so if it's incoherent don't blame me, blame my inner ear!

Equilibrium

 I woke up on Friday morning to discover that my sense of balance had stepped out for a bit. I assume it's some kind of inner ear thing - I didn't feel light-headed, faint, sick or anything like that, I just wasn't clear on what was up, down or sideways. I found myself clinging to the floor, thinking 'the enemy's gate is down' which isn't much help when you're trying to get to the bathroom. I'd be rubbish in space.

It eased, and sleep helps, but I'm still a bit off-balance and spinny. It's all very odd, and has meant I haven't done some of the things I've meant to do over the last few days.

However I have made bread (above) - on Saturday, from a packet mix admittedly, but it was quite nice and I feel inspired to make some more, this time not-from-a-packet-mix.

Today I did some spinning.

I've had a spindle or two since my re-enactment days. The light one got sat on by somebody and snapped but this one, my 'good' spindle survives. I don't know if it's 'good' in a spinning sense but as an object it is lovely. However I've never really got to get grips with spindling. Somebody kindly showed me the basics at a re-enactment event years ago - at Scarborough Castle actually, after a largely sleepless night in a tent pitched in the castle grounds. Scarborough Castle is on a headland sticking into the North Sea, and the wind was quite 'fresh' that night. So I didn't take it all in that day. But I've had a go a few times since and yesterday I actually got round to looking up a helpful Youtube video, which has helped. As you can see the 'yarn' is quite lumpy but believe me it's way better than it was. It suddenly started getting almost even instead of insanely thick immediately followed by insanely thin. I was quite proud of myself and went downstairs and said to My Beloved 'I've been spinning' and he looked confused and said, 'What, your head?'  Actually my head was surprisingly unspinny while I was spindling. The same cannot be said for the Powerhoop class I was at this morning - all those hoops spinning round and round and round did not help my balance issues :-D. Apparently I looked like a rabbit in the headlights. Hmm.

This evening, while watching last night's Top Gear, I've been going on with the yellow stripey thing, which I should have finished by now as we're onto Green (March/April) in the Project Rainbow spectrum, but there you go, these things happen. I should never have tried to knit it while watching engrossing subtitled Danish crime drama last week!  Talking of which, slightly tangentially, the next thing to get excited about is Shetland (showing next Sunday and Monday), which I am so looking forward to, even if Douglas Henshall is nothing like my idea of Jimmy Perez. I shall be squeeing at familiar places though, and looking out for one of my friends who was an extra for a day. And no, on a clear day you cannot see Norway..

Hogmanay

 Invigorating!

I really should be wearing my slippers. We're at my parents' house and the floor downstairs is concrete under the carpet. The picture above is from yesterday when we were on our way here. It looks worse than it was actually - it rained most of the way and was only sleety snow at Drumochter, the most chilly and exposed bit of the journey. But on the way I saw deer, coming further downhill due to the snow, and lots of pheasants.

 Today. Chilly.

Christmas turned out quite frenetic in the end.  No matter how organised you are (not that I was) this can happen. No point worrying about it, though obviously I did, because I wouldn't be me if I didn't. We had an untraditional Christmas really. Although my Beloved and I like roasts, though not turkey, the kids don't really, and my mother-in-law (vegetarian) was coming over for Christmas Day, so we had homemade pizza instead. Everybody chose their favourite toppings, it was all quite quick and easy and there's minimal washing-up, so all in all it was ideal.  And delicious. Mmm pizza...

I made a mincemeat traybake from the Be-Ro cookbook, rather than than mince pies and it came out really well except that I baked it in a silicone 'tin' and I always forget that silicone doesn't conduct heat in the same way so the pastry didn't crisp up properly - oh noes, soggy bottom! Still tasted nice, but I must remember to use a tin next time.

And now it's Hogmanay. I spent some time this afternoon winding some Yarn Yard Clan into a ball. On a spurtle as I'd left my nostepinne at home. I couldn't have been more of a Scottish cliché if I'd been eating shortbread and drinking whisky, which I'm planning to do shortly of course.  The yellow Clan is for the next stage of Project Rainbow, though actually I've only finished half of 'orange' - a single lonely sock. I'll cast its mate on shortly but thought it'd be nice to have the gloriously sunny buttercup Clan ready to go in dreich January. I'm not really a fan of New Year as a celebration, never have been. It's all so arbitrary. And has the distinct disadvantage of ringing in January, my least favourite month, but when I'm feeling Januaryish I'll look at that yellow and forget it all!  I don't have very much (65g) so it's going to be the main colour in a thin stripy scarf, and I'll use up various leftovers from socks and other small projects, including 'red' and orange', as the contrasting stripes. In my head it looks fantastic!

Well, happy new January everybody - my Kiwi friends are already waking up with a hangover, my USian friends are probably eating lunch and I'm off for a glass of whisky with my parents and my Beloved!

Comfort

Today has been a very stressful one but at the end of it My Beloved made his truly delicious oaty rolls - comfort food at its best.

Dough

Friday night is Pizza Night in our house. It started when we got the breadmaker - initially we made bread, then we discovered the pizza dough recipe, then we realised that while we were using the breadmaker regularly, we were only using it for making pizza dough.  And then the breadmaker blew up ceased to function and we've discovered that actually pizza dough is incredibly easy to make without it, so we've kept going minus the breadmaker.  The kids love it - they sometimes help with the dough (that's Miss M doing her best Paul Hollywood impression there) and they like to add their own toppings. The only downside is that it's rather spoiled them and they're inclined to turn their noses up at non-homemade pizza. Ah well, there's worse ways to be spoiled.

I don't really do anything doughy apart from the pizza dough. My Beloved makes incredibly wonderful oaty rolls occasionally, and sometimes bread. And I've been known to make soda bread in the past. But having watched the Great British Bake Off now I'm tempted to try a plaited loaf - I've done all sorts of braiding, how hard can it be...?

The Great British Bake Off was a surprise hit in our house - I hadn't seen the previous two series, and only started watching this year's about halfway through because people kept telling me about it and Funky Knitwear James is from the part of Shetland where I grew up so I felt obliged to watch. No, I don't know him - I'd headed off to university before he was even born (How To Feel Very Very Old) and we'd moved out of that area by then though I still had relatives there, but in the way of people originally from small places I can 'place' him in the community. Do you get that in other small places? In Shetland people like to know who they're talking about and if you don't you can place them by who they're related to or who they were at school with. I was just 'Peter's daughter' for years, probably still am to some.

The Great British Bake Off entertained me greatly but I'm not entirely sure why, given that almost none of the baked things made me drool. Oh, I admired the skill involved in making them, but I'm not into pastries or puddings and not even particularly keen on cake. I have one friend who said the doughnuts episode made her really hungry but there was nothing I saw that I'd have wanted to eat until John's chocolate cake in the final. So it was a bit of an odd thing to watch really.  I think it's just the satisfaction of watching people who are competent, because even when they had disasters they were all much more technical in their baking than I'd ever be (or choose to be, if I'm honest).

But anyway, talking of cake and the Bake Off, may I recommend Mary Berry's Chocolate Sandwich cake? I love Nigella's Chocolate Fudge Cake but this one is almost as good, much quicker and less fiddly so it's what I use for the kids' birthday cakes. It's brilliantly easy, even with kids helping, and always gives great results.  I originally found it on the BBC website with their 'Recipe Finder' and normally I'd include a link but I can't find it there now so here it is, with the disclaimer 'This is Mary Berry's recipe, it deserves to be known and baked, often!'

Mary Berry’s Chocolate Victoria Sandwich sponge cake

Makes 20cm/8in cake

Preparation time less than 30 minutes

Cooking time 30 minutes to 1 hour

Ingredients

2 tbsp cocoa

3 tbsp boiling water

225g/8oz soft margarine

225g/8oz caster sugar

4 eggs

225g/8oz self-raising flour

2tsp baking powder

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Grease and base line 20cm/2x8in sandwich tins.

2. Blend the cocoa and water in a mixing bowl then leave to cool slightly. Measure all the remaining ingredients into the bowl and beat well until thoroughly blended. Divide the mixture evenly between the tins and level out.

3. Bake in the preheated oven for about 25 minutes or until well risen and the tops of the cakes spring back when lightly pressed with a finger. Leave to cool in the tins for a few moments then turn out, peel off the paper and finish cooling on a wire rack.

Chocolate buttons optional.  Were there any chocolate buttons on Great British Bake Off? All a signature wotsit needs is chocolate buttons and gold star sprinkles! In our house anyway.

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People often say that baking has to be really accurate and you should follow the recipe to the letter. Actually I take liberties with baking - my Christmas cake always has loads of extra fruit and I leave out things like glace cherries which I don't like. I've made mistakes with weighing ingredients and *whispers* it's not as critical as the books would have you believe (think about it, how long have really reliable and accurate scales been in existence? How long did people mostly measure 'by eye'?). And when I made Miss M's birthday cake last month I realised far too late that the margarine I had was 'light' and 'not suitable for baking', so I used mostly that with a bit of leftover butter from something else I'd been making and it was delicious.  There are occasional disasters of course, but not many.

Happy times

Cake:

more cake:

 a trip to the frozen north:

 loot from the 'Glasgow School of Yarn' event:

 and finally, a picture and story by Miss Mouse:

'I wish I had a coin ov choclit.'

 I like the snails she's done at the bottom of the trees - click to embiggen, they're a cheery bunch and worth a look.

                                                               -------------------------

It's been the October break here - the kids went back to school yesterday. The holiday started with Miss Mouse's birthday party, then the next day on her actual birthday we headed up north to see my parents for a few days (hence cake picture no.1). It was cold but glorious there, and it was snowing lightly just as we left. The last chilly picture was taken mid-morning the day we left.

When we got home we had a couple of days lazing around and I made Miss M a birthday cake, cake pic. no.2. I always make the kids a chocolate sandwich cake with chocolate buttons on top on their birthdays - it's not an intentional tradition, it just evolved really. Of course we were travelling on her birthday, but although she had cake at my parents' she couldn't miss out on her own special cake could she? I think the chance to blow out candles may have something to do with it of course!

Then on Saturday I had some glorious time to myself and went into Glasgow for day two of the Yarn Cake's second birthday bash, the 'Glasgow School of Yarn'. I caught up with old friends, met some Ravelers (Ravellers?) in real life for the first time, bought some very nice yarn and generally had a brilliant time.  I'd been saving since last year's GSoY but actually I was fairly restrained. Possibly if I'd been there on Day One I'd have spent more as I imagine quite a lot had already sold by the time I arrived on Saturday lunchtime!

I've just realised there was something stuck to my monitor that kept making me imagine rogue commas - very distracting, I kept trying to delete it!

Winging it

My happy socks - sock one nearly finished. But as it's 6-ply and I've been following my normal knitting pattern it's a bit baggy about the toes. I don't mind it being a little looser and slouchy on the ankle but wide toes don't work. So I've been very brave and ventured off-piste. My last few socks have been a bit pointy of toe really so I decided to try more anatomical toes, just winging it to see what works. It hasn't really worked but I've learned from the process so it's no loss. I'm going to frog back to the instep decreases and decrease a bit further so it's snugger on the foot, then start the toe decreases for the outside of the foot earlier.


That's the theory. I'm not sure when I'm going to get the chance to put it into practice though. We're into end-of-term bedlam at the moment. We had the PTA fun day a couple of weeks ago:

 I was on duty on the cake stall. Mmm, scones..

Then it was the school show last week - two performances and I went to both because there were tickets spare for the second one and Miss Mouse had begged me to go again. There were quite a few Primary One mums in the audience for the same reason! No pictures because every last one turned out blurry.  My hand must have been shaking with emotion.. or laughter. There were moments of pure dead-pan genius I can tell you!

Miss Mouse was in a dance display for the fun day of another school yesterday:

It looked at one point as if the whole thing might be called off as the weather forecast looked iffy, but in the end it was quite sunny and there was only one rain shower just after the kids had finished dancing.

She's going to a friend's birthday party after school tomorrow, it's the end-of-term disco on Wednesday, and the holidays start at lunchtime on Thursday. There'll be knitting time in there somewhere won't there? I could do some now but I need to go and buy cat litter. Oh the exciting and glamorous life I lead!

Reasons To Be Cheerful

I've got to say, I'm struggling with Reasons To Be Cheerful this week. There are Reasons To Feel A Bit Swamped, Reasons To Be Mildly Anxious, Reasons To Need More Sleep, but.. Reasons To Be Cheerful? Well, it's not coming naturally. That's not to say I'm feeling depressed or anything, there's nothing wrong, I'm just Not Cheerful as such. I've even been Too Tired To Knit.

However, there are Reasons To Smile.

1) Watching Warehouse 13 - our new addiction. We'd seen the Eureka/Warehouse 13 crossover ('Crossing Over') so thought we'd try Warehouse 13 itself, and very enjoyable it is too. Fun programme with plenty of geekiness. Yes, just right. We've watched Seasons 1 and 2 in about a week and a half.

2) Daffodils. I have a pot of Tête-à-Tête daffs that I bought in a supermarket last year, and after they'd finished flowering the pot just sat in a corner outside the back door. I'd intended to re-plant the bulbs in the garden but the pot got shoved behind something else and forgotten about. Until a few days ago when I noticed green shoots coming up from that little pot. I brought it inside on Wednesday and on Thursday the first flower appeared! Yay!



3) Apple crumble. Mmmmmmmm.

4) Just thought of a fourth Reason. It was beautifully clear last night so the kids and I went out (well wrapped up, it was baltic out there) in the back garden to look at the stars just before bedtime. I've finally got round to buying a planisphere so we have more idea where to look and what we're looking at. The Orion nebula (fuzzy blob in Orion's sword) was more obvious last night - usually the light pollution here makes it hard to see - and the Boy was really pleased about that. Miss Mouse just likes looking for patterns and making up constellations! I also found our binoculars which was helpful - I can't see a thing through a telescope but if I shut one eye, binoculars work quite well for me.

Deep and crisp and even

It's the annual tradition of digging out all the cookery books and trying to remember how to do royal icing - my books vary hugely in the quantities they think are required. I think I've got it right this year - enough coverage but not too deep (getting crisp but not quite even). I've discovered that the new 'natural' food colourings are not nearly as strong as the old-style best-not-ask food colourings. I usually add a drop or two of blue colouring to the icing to stop it looking yellow. Once I accidentally added a little too much and had a turquoise cake. This year I kept having to add more and more. I'm pleased with the result though.

It looks almost identical to last year's of course as I only have the two retro style cake decorations!

Maybe I'll tie a ribbon round it too.

Further to yesterday's marzipan musings, on checking the top shelf of the cupboard today I found a spare packet of marzipan from last year - clearly this has happened before.

Tinselly

I'm cheating - it's Tuesday morning. I was too dozy to blog last night. I switched off the 'puter, then I remembered I hadn't actually written this - which had been the point of switching it on in the first place! Easily distracted, see..

It was that kind of day. At twenty to five I'd suddenly remembered that Miss Mouse was supposed to be at her dance class Christmas party at five. Cue mad panic! We made it on time though and she enjoyed herself - in the picture above are the decorations at the venue, a masonic hall of all places!

Despite the inherent chaos of the week, things are reasonably well under control (or so I keep telling myself while madly writing Christmas cards and to-do lists) and starting to feel a bit sparkly. I put the marzipan on the Christmas cake last night, which is always fun! Like playing with play-dough only the smell is better. I'd bought two packets of marzipan but actually as I prefer a fairly thin layer of marzipan on my cake I only used one, so I'm wondering what I can do with the other packet. I don't think a last minute stollen is feasible!

Christmas Cake

So this is how I spent my morning. A bit of frenzied weighing, chopping and mixing, then several hours of inhaling delicious cake-baking smells. Mmmmm..

Anyway, here's what I did!

This is not my own recipe, it's a Sue Lawrence Christmas cake recipe with a few tweaks for personal taste.

The tweaks being that I don't like cinnamon, ground cloves, mixed peel or brandy so I've made some substitutions - ground ginger instead of the cinnamon and ground cloves, chopped dried figs (and actually a few chopped dates this year as well) instead of the mixed peel, and whisky instead of brandy. I always use whisky instead of brandy in Christmas cakes and it always works well! And this is what I like so much about Christmas cakes, they with stand quite a bit of tweaking - I've tried quite a few recipes over the years, substituting when they call for such horrors as mixed peel, glace cherries, cinnamon and nutmeg. They've all been fine, but I like the Sue Lawrence recipe as a base the best so it's the one I've stuck with for the last few years.

I tried one recipe one year which called for a couple of tablespoons of treacle which was a bit of a 'mare because a) treacle is such a pain to work with and got everywhere and b) I don't use treacle for anything else so I had the tin sitting oozing in the cupboard until the end of time (or until I got fed up with it).

Ingredients:
250g self-raising flour
1 ½ tsp mixed spice
three-quarters of a teaspoon of ground ginger
50g ground almonds
400g currants
250g sultanas
400g raisins
50g dried figs, chopped
50g dried apricots, chopped
50g walnuts, roughly chopped
50g whole (unblanched) almonds, roughly chopped
250g unsalted butter, softened
200g dark muscovado sugar
grated zest and juice of 1 unwaxed lemon
5 large free-range eggs
100ml whisky (any cheap stuff). Plus will need some for 'feeding'.

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 150°C/330F/Gas 2, and prepare tin (grease and line with baking parchment).
[Actually I don't preheat the oven until just before stage 3 because it takes me forever to do all the weighing out and chopping]

2. Sift the flour spices and ground almonds into a bowl. Then add the currants, sultanas, raisins, figs, dried apricots and nuts. Stir thoroughly.

3. In a separate bowl cream the butter, sugar and lemon zest until fluffy, then beat in the eggs one by one, adding a teaspoon of the flour mixture with each egg.

4. Stir the egg mixture into the flour mixture with the lemon juice and whisky.

5. Spoon into the prepared tin. Level the top and bake for two hours. Very loosely cover with a sheet of greaseproof paper and continue to bake for another hour, making three hours in total - but test for readiness after two and three quarter hours' cooking. The cake is cooked when a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean and the sides have started to shrink from the edges of the tin.

6. Remove to a wire rack to cool. Once completely cold, wrap in foil and store in an airtight container 'til Christmas. removing every two weeks to 'feed': unwrap, prick the top with a long skewer and spoon over 1-2 tbsp of whisky. Reseal as before.

Notes
The original recipe calls for 350g each of raisins, currants and sultanas but I vary the amounts of each from year to year (providing it adds up to 1050g) - I prefer a dark cake so tend to use fewer sultanas and make up the weights with raisins and currants. Last year the proportions were 450g raisins, 350g currants, 250g sultanas, but this year I fancied a higher proportion of currants.

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I have some dried fruit left so I'm considering making mincemeat next. I've never made it before - I usually buy a jar of mincemeat with good intentions, then not get round to making mince pies. Maybe I will this time!