2015 round up

Here we are again, at the end of December, somehow?! 2015 has been a difficult year for me personally, but it has ended much more positively than it started so things are generally on the up.

Blogging-wise I've had a pretty good year, probably because it was a welcome distraction from anything unpleasant going on in "real" life. I've continued to bake regularly, mostly cakes, but that's hardly surprising considering my blog title. I really, really  like baking and eating cake.

a collage of most of my bakes from 2015

I haven't gone to the effort to see which bake was most popular this year, but I'd say my personal favourites were the raspberry trifle cupcakes (soooooo good) and  3D gingerbread dinosaurs as they were great fun to put together. I definitely need to use those biscuit cutter again.

My biggest revelation this year has been knitting. What casually started as one turquoise hat quickly snowballed into a full blown hobby. Knitting appears to have the ability to unwind and calm my brain which is great for a naturally anxious person. I genuinely think it saved my sanity this year. It can be bloody frustrating as I'm still a beginner and make loads of mistakes, but on the whole it seems to restore a sense of balance in me. I'm really excited about knitting more next year and already have projects lined up.

 I also crocheted something for the first time in a few years (the pineapple garland) which was fun!

My new found love for knitting sadly slowed down my sewing production, especially in the latter half of the year when I became obsessed with finishing my yellow agatha cardigan (which I am still stupidly proud of) but I'm really happy with what I managed to produce. Although I still haven't figured out my fitting issues I definitely feel a little more knowledgeable than this time last year. I'm also delighted that I took the plunge to sew with stretch fabric this year. My green coco dress is probably my most worn handmade item as it's just so comfortable, like stealth pyjamas, so I should definitely make more knit/jersey pieces.

And to round off the year I'd like to introduce my new partner in crime: an Elna sewing machine!

It was a complete surprise to receive an Elna for Christmas, although admittedly a new machine has been on my radar since my 11 year old Singer ran into problems and needed fixing last December. Although the sewing machine man fixed her he warned me it probably wouldn't be long term. He thought it was quite likely she'd fully conk out on me soon. Somewhat amazingly she has continued to work well this year, but I was aware I'd need to consider a new machine soon. Enter Elna!

Elna is a good bit fancier than old Sally the Singer and a lot quieter. She even has an automatic buttonhole foot and function! I don't know much about Elna machines other than they're Swiss designed with Janome parts. I like Swiss stuff - cheese, Toblerone, Roger Federer - so we should get along fine.

So, new year's resolutions... make something which requires multiple buttonholes? Give Elna the sewing machine a name? Learn to knit cables? Bake more things which aren't cake? Roll on, 2016!

self saucing lemon pudding

I had 30 minutes to organise a pudding before World's Strongest Man came on tv this evening. I glanced at what was in the fruit bowl, flicked through my ever reliable Mary Berry Baking Bible and arrived at the hot lemon souffle pudding. Strongest Man came on just as the pudding went in the oven so my timing was bang on and the pudding was ready to eat by the end of the programme. Result!

I haven't decided who I'm supporting in Strong Man this year. Hafthor Bjornsson is obviously pretty bloody awesome but it's hard not to root for Zydrunas Savickas or Brian Shaw. Ultimately nobody will ever replace my love for Magnus Samuelsson; he was the best. I still miss the big Swede.

The pudding was a big hit. Dad proclaimed it was "outstanding", my brother who generally isn't fussed with lemon flavours said it was "hellish good" and Mum went for seconds. We easily polished it off between the four of us.

I think this was better than the last lemon pudding I made a few years ago, which I think was a Rachel Allen recipe. It's tart yet sweet and has lovely textures: soft, almost moussey sponge on with a glubby, lemon custard/sauce underneath.

Now I have to tackle the pile of dishes...

Lemon pudding
Recipe from Mary Berry's Baking Bible

75g (3oz) softened butter
250g (9oz) caster sugar
3 large eggs, separated
75g (3oz) self raising flour
grated zest and juice of 2 lemons
450ml (14 fl oz) milk

Preheat the oven to 190C/170 Fan/Gas 5. Grease a shallow 1.5L (2 1/2pt) ovenproof dish. (I forgot to grease, but it was fine.)

Beat together the sugar and butter in a large bowl. Mix in the egg yolks followed by the flour, lemon rind and lemon juice. Pour in the milk in a steady stream whilst mixing. The mixture will look a bit curdled but don't worry, that's fine. In a separate (clean, grease free!) large bowl whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks. Carefully fold the eggs into the other mixture using a metal spoon.

Pour the mixture into your ovenproof dish and place in a large roasting tin. Pour in enough boiling water into the roasting tin to come halfway up your dish. It's easier to do this at the oven door with the tray already on the oven shelf, otherwise you risk spilling when carrying it to the oven!

Bake in the oven for 1 hour or until golden brown on top. Mine was looking quite golden at about 40 minutes but I wasn't sure it was fully cooked yet so I turned down the temperature a bit for the remaining 20 minutes. I recommend keeping an eye on the oven in case you find yours bakes quickly too. Serve immediately with a dusting of icing sugar.

festive bakes

It's that time of year again... when I become so disorganised that I lump all of my festive baking into one blog post on Christmas Eve. YAY!

Personally, I find it just isn't Christmas without gingerbread boobie angels and saucy santas. This year I made sure I scheduled in the time to make them as I didn't manage to make any last year and it just felt plain wrong. Their little faces fill me with so much joy! I baked a batch of these to take in to my local music group's Christmas party and they went down an absolute storm.

I also baked a batch of mankini-clad gingerbread men and some questionably styled Tory hipster gentlemen as part of an in joke for some friends. This is probably the height of my piping decoration skills.

The amount of sugar and butter I've gone through in the last couple of weeks is obscene! I can't remember how many bags of sugar were emptied for all the tablet I made but I definitely used up at least 6 packs of butter for shortbread. I have a large extended family so large quantities of foodie presents are needed to take around when visiting relatives over the festive period.

It's always worth the mammoth effort though as I love seeing everything all packaged up with my childish funky handmade labels.

As I had leftover cranberries from my cranberry orange muffins I decided to try the cranberry, apple and cinnamon cake from Hannah's blog, Honey & Dough. I more or less followed the recipe, substituting caster sugar for soft light brown sugar, a cooking apple instead of a granny smith, and added 1/2tsp of vanilla bean paste to the batter. I also mixed some whole cranberries into the batter as well as scattering on top. My cake took twice the length of time to bake, probably due to the amount of fruit I put in, about an hour.

I baked this as a pudding to take to a friend's house last weekend and it was so well received that my friend asked for the recipe and she bought the ingredients the following day so she could make one. Then I decided to bake another too! Needless to say, it's a very tasty cake.

And finally, I baked a couple of ginger syrup bundts. They're full of flavour, keep pretty well and the recipe is nice and simple... unless you're baking whilst really tired and forget to add an ingredient. Yup, I forgot to add baking powder to one of them. Oops! So I got to keep a flatter bundt for myself.

I've been meaning to make mincemeat pies as well but I think I've reached my limit. After baking most evenings for the last two weeks I must admit to feeling rather pooped. You never know though, I might muster up some energy to make some closer to new year.

But for now I'm probably going to put my feet up, drink a lot of tea and wish everybody a very merry Christmas!

Trying to photograph the tree? Ok, I'll sit here then.
Cheers, Bob.

knitted: festive creatures

Hot on the heels of casting off my yellow Agatha cardigan I started some Christmas knitting. Mum stumbled across free festive patterns online and immediately printed them out as she thought we could have some fun knitting these in the evenings. A couple have been given away as Christmas presents but ultimately I made them for myself, hehe.

I learnt a couple of new techniques such as carrying a second yarn across a row. I got in a complete tangle with my wool at first but eventually figured out what (not) to do. As my wool was thinner than recommended the second yarn is visible through the knitting, on the robin especially, despite sizing down my needles. I don't think it spoils their overall charm though. They look ridiculously cute at this scale. It was well worth all the fiddly-ness.

My Mum had to go one stage better than me though and put fair isle patterns on her little Christmas stockings, without referring to any charts. She's one of those annoyingly talented individuals who doesn't knit very often, once every so many years, but still remembers how to do everything when she picks it up again. Myself on the other hand... brain like a sieve.

I'm hoping to get back to some sewing now that my knitting frenzy is starting to wind down. My poor Pauline Alice Turia Dungarees toile has been sitting in a crumpled heap on my sewing table for well over a month. That'll be my first creative project in the new year, although I do have a massive urge to knit a cable hat with a pom pom!

cranberry and orange muffins/cupcakes

Festive baking is now in full swing around here. I think I've baked something every evening since last Friday! The Christmas tree was also put up this week and I decorated it today whilst half watching a fantastically awful Hulk Hogan Christmas film on tv. Can't get much better than that really!

First up with the festive baking are these cranberry and orange muffins which I decided to bake as cupcakes as I really wanted to use my festive cupcake cases from last year. They have really cute patterned bases.

I came across fresh cranberries in the supermarket last week and absolutely had to buy them. I've never seen fresh cranberries to buy before so was pretty excited and immediately started searching for festive cranberry based recipes online. There were a few serious contenders but after a quick family poll these cranberry orange muffins from Sally's Baking Addiction won.

Sally's opening description is spot on - "Buttery and moist, these cranberry orange muffins are heavy on the flavor and bursting with cranberries in each bite." I absolutely loved the tart bursts of cranberry. Despite me loving full on sweetness in bakes I actually really liked that these muffins weren't overly sweet other than the orange icing glaze. They're a good antidote to all the Christmas chocolates, fudge and shortbread and would also make a lovely present for folk who don't like cakes loaded with sugar or icing.

These cupcakes/muffins also smell absolutely amazing. When I opened my cake tin the following morning the most amazing waft of Christmas came out. A heady mix of orange and spice. Lovely!

knitted: yellow agatha cardigan

I still can't believe I actually knitted this. Screw my school exam results, gaining my degree or passing my driving test, THIS is my proudest achievement in life to date.

IT'S SO FANCY! I made this.

(It was only after I had taken the photos that I noticed there were sunspots and rays in most of them, grrrr!)

When I unexpectedly started knitting at the beginning of the year I had a feeling I'd actually stick with it this time (after several half arsed attempts over the years) so I joined Ravelry. The first thing I bookmarked was Andi Satterlund's Agatha cardigan as I had been swooning over so many versions over the last couple of years. I wrote the following caption underneath the image: "I *will* learn to make this."

Surprisingly, I actually did.

 Showing off my side shaping decreases, not smelling my armpit.

I have learnt soooo much from knitting this: top down construction, knitting in the round, knitting with double pointed needles, lace work, how to undo mistakes (I made quite a few!) and working short rows. I have genuinely surprised myself.

 Loving the back.

Top down construction was a real eye opener. My Mum still maintains it's the most complicated written pattern she's encountered in her life, and yes it is confusing to the uninitiated, but I can see why Andi has done it this way. It's very clever the way it completely avoids any kind of seams. It just means that easily confused people like myself need to fully write out every row by hand to prevent getting lost with the lace panels.

The first 8 rows of the pattern were brain-meltingly difficult for me as I was learning all the different stitches and how to read/decipher the instructions, but things eventually started to make sense once I saw the lacework develop and became more comfortable with the stitches. It's all completely doable, even for a relative beginner, but you need to be switched on, preferrably with YouTube knitting tutorials on standby.

 Admiring the lacework on my sleeve.

Even knitting with double pointed needles for the sleeves wasn't as complicated or traumatic as I had first thought. The biggest difficulty was knowing how to wield all the needles. It initially felt like I was grappling with a pointy legged octopus but it did get easier with practise. Now I know it's not something to be afraid of.

As mentioned a couple of months ago when I started the project I fell slap bang between two sizes so I took an educated guess after swatching and knit the larger size (size M) with double knit wool instead of aran on smaller needles to create an inbetween size. Thankfully my gamble worked out pretty well, although I did have to make changes to the length and buttonbands. My top two buttons ended up closer to each other, but I'm willing to live with it. On the whole the cardigan is a little bit on the big side for me, but pretty good considering I'm a beginner who deviated from the pattern recommendations.

The recommended wool for the project is Cascade, a peruvian wool, but I didn't want to order wool online without having seen or felt it, so I went with Jamiesons of Shetland as I had their shade card swatches (my Mum orders from them regulary.) I know and love their quality and range of colours and they're also relatively local so it was great to know exactly what I was ordering. The shade I went for is called Scotch Broom - an ochrey yellow with little flecks in it, so not entirely matte. I absolutely love it and know this cardigan will get loads of wear as it matches a lot of my dresses and high waisted skirts.

My buttons came from a charity shop. Contrary to what my photograph suggest they're yellow and match my cardigan perfectly.

Buttoning up regular length cardigans over dresses tend me make me feel a bit frumpy-bag-lady because they fall at the hip level/fullest part of my skirt so it's lovely to have a cardigan designed specifically for high waisted styles. Cropped body, fully long sleeved cardigans are so difficult to come across in shops (why are they all 3/4 length sleeved?!) so YAY I CAN MAKE MY OWN. Over 3 months, but still. Handmade cardigans! Living the dream.

Apologies for such a long post. I guess I had a lot to say about my new favourite cardigan. If you can't get enough of my knitting rambles or want to know more about this project's process then feel free to check out my notes on my Ravelry page.

Anyone else knitting at the moment? Mum and I have been knitting little Christmas decorations over the past week which has been great fun!

malted chocolate chip biscuits

I was going to write "cookies" but just couldn't bring myself to do it. To me, these are biscuits.

Regardless of what you want to call these, they are utterly delicious. The malt flavour really comes through and tastes fantastic with the milk chocolate chunks. It's like Malteser chocolates but in biscuit form. 

Go and bake them. NOW.

Malted chocolate chip biscuits
Recipe slightly altered from Choclette at Tin & Thyme, altered from Ruby Tandoh at the Guardian.

150g butter, softened (I use slightly salted)

100g golden caster sugar

1 egg, large

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

225g plain flour

1 1/2 stp baking powder

90g horlicks (or equivalent malted drink powder)

100g milk chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Cream together the butter and sugar. Mix in the horlicks powder and vanilla extract, followed by the egg. In a separate bowl combine the flour and baking powder then add to the other bowl. Mix into a dough. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Roll the dough into walnut sized balls and flatten slightly. I got 20 from my mixture although admittedly I did eat bits of dough... If the mixture is really soft then put in the fridge to firm up a bit, about 20 minutes. Place on baking trays spacing well apart to allow for spreading in the oven.

Bake for approx. 12 minutes until lightly golden around the edges. Allow to firm up slightly on the tray for a minute before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.