Party Update

Well, V's party was great fun: lots of tasty food, a mad Chinese drinking game - a wee bit like Ring of Fire but much better - and some good tunes.  My cake was a big hit, I think the most random thing anyone said to me all night was, 'Baking is my forte, and that's a quality sponge!'

Even through a slight beer haze I thought that was random!  He kept going on about how he loved cooking and baking, so I think he expected my cake to be crap.  I guess I should be honoured that he liked it so much, ha ha.

The next morning was a bit mad, with V finishing her packing and weighing her case and giving away stuff she couldn't take, then a taxi bolt to the train station to go to Prestwick.  Still, she made it OK, so it's all good.  I'm really going to miss her, she's so lovely.  It's quite random how we met but as soon as we did we became really good friends.  I think she's just one of those people, she's so nice and kind that everyone that meets her loves her.  So now she's away back to Italy, until at least September.  She has a really good job opportunity there and after a bad accident on her bike here about a month ago I think she wanted to go home for a bit.  But she says maybe she'll come back to Glasgow after the summer, so we'll see.

So, today is Fathers' Day, and at first I had no idea what to buy my dad until one day I got a blast of inspiration and bought him a new dressing gown.  That might sound like a boring present but you have to know my dad to appreciate the genius of it:  as soon as he can in the evening he puts his fleecy jammies on (another present from me, I might add!) and his dressing gown, and then settles down on the couch.  So, I found this uber soft, fleecy dressing gown - in a size small, the only one I found in any of the shops I tried! - and got him that.  He's well chuffed with it, he kept saying it was 'a cracker' and when he tried it on I don't think he wanted to take it off!  Present success!

My mum and granny are coming back from Tenerife tonight, they don't land til about midnight in Prestwick so I hope they've no delays or anything.  And my bro is away for his first trip to Ireland this weekend.  He was going to a 21st party in Droughada last night, and today he's spending the day in Dublin.  According to my dad, he was so hungover this morning that he couldn't even stomach the free Irish breakfast that he got in the B&B - which was one of the things he was looking forward to!  You know it must've been a good night when my brother isn't hungry the next day, I'm glad I'm not sharing a room with him, that's all I'm saying.

Anyway, I hope he has a good time, he's been desperate to go to Ireland for years now, I don't know why he never made it before.  I'm sure he'll love Dublin and Temple Bar.  I suggested doing the tour of the Guinness brewery but he pointed out that 'I don't really care how it's made, I just want to drink it.'

Fair enough, I suppose!

Cake Time

It's amazing how much the weather affects your mood - and your appetite!  When it was raining at the start of the week, I was planning on making a caramel cake to take to my friend's party tomorrow night.  Today, with the sun belting down, I decided to go for a lemon cake instead!  If it rains tomorrow I'll probably change my mind... but by then it'll be too late anyway so I'll just need to go with it!

This is the same lemon sponge cake that I made before, and it's really tasty.  It's like a lemon overload - lemon-flavoured sponge, lemon curd between the 4 layers, and lemon buttercream icing on top.  Ohhh yeah!  All the lemon flavours are quite subtle so it's not overwhelming but when you put them all together it just like the perfect lemon cake!

Need to go to the supermarket for flour and eggs though, can't be bothered.  And my dad's just put his jammies on so my chances of a lift may be a bit slim!!

Sunday musings

After tanking so much wine on Friday night, on Saturday I decided to start going back to the gym, as I hadn't been since before I went to Spain, so today I made it down and onto the treadmill.  I've only just started to run on the treadmill, I used to just walk and go on the cross-trainer for the harder part of my workout, but then one day when the gym was quiet and there was no-one to judge me if it all went wrong (!) I decided to give running a go.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could do it for whole minutes at a time, as when I first started jogging when I moved back from Spain I could literally do about a minute before I'd have to walk again.  I also got a lot of stitches.  Anyhoo today I managed ten mins before I walked, which I was quite proud of, though it doesn't sound like much.  I think it's surprisingly easy to build up your times if you stick with it.  And I find it more enjoyable than the cross-trainer which always feels like a big chore!

So that's my exertions for today out of the way, nothing energetic planned for the rest of the day!

My friend V is moving back to Italy on Saturday and she's having a leaving party on Friday night so I thought I'd bake a cake to take with me.  Any excuse, really!  I've decided on this amazing sounding caramel cake from The Caked Crusader's blog, which is my baking Bible.  I've never made my own caramel before, but the way The CC says to do it sounds easy and fool-proof.  Whether or not this is true remains to be seen, but I've never used one of her recipes that didn't go exactly the way she said it would, so I have complete faith in her.  Caramel, cream, and sponge - if it all goes well it'll be a total winner of a cake!  I hope V likes it, sometimes I get so excited about the cake-making progress that I forget they're actually for other people!

I made a cake for FL's birthday when I was in Spain, and it went OK but it was very touch and go - for a start it took about 3 times as long in the oven as the recipe said, my friend EWL' had warned me that that was usually the case with her oven but I didn't really believe it til I tried it myself!  The cake rose but split right down the centre, which apparently happens when you fill your cake tin more than half-way up, I had no idea!  Then after I'd made the cake we went out and when we came back at about 3am, we thought it would be a good time to make the buttercream icing so it could set over night!  Well, the icing came out fine but EW's kitchen was left looking like a fake snow factory had exploded in her kitchen! 

Gin + electric whisks + a mountain of sugar = sweet carnage.

FL had asked for a strawberry cake so I made a normal sponge with strawberry buttercream icing and it came out looking like this:

The icing looked quite grainy, because the sugar I used wasn't as fine as the icing sugar I would have used here (this also made the sponge a wee bit denser than normal), and then I think when I added the strawberries the wee pips made it look less smooth.  But it tasted good all the same! 

I love cakes!

Cake!

I was out at MM's yest, and at one point she mentioned that suddenly everyone is talking about cupcakes on their blogs.  This is true, and I'm afraid I'm about to add to the cake-chat by telling y'all how my coffee cake turned out.

Once again I got the recipe from the treasure trove of cakey goodness that is the Caked Crusader blog and, with the help of my new electric whip, I got started...

The recipe is very simple and easy to follow, and the sponge came out nice and soft, though I think I could have cooked it for a minute or 2 less to make it slightly more moist.  The buttercream icing on the top was incredible though, it was so tasty I ate a big spoonful out the bowl after I'd finished icing the cake.  The coffee flavour wasn't that strong, unfortunately, but if I make it again I'll just add a bit more coffee to the mix and see if that helps.

This was my first sandwich cake, and although one of the halves was slightly lopsided, I just made that the top half and used the other, flatter one as the base.  I documented the whole process in pics (yeah, I'm a loser, you don't have to tell me!), so I thought I'd stick one or two here.



Just out the oven



The final result







I think I might invest in a piping bag, because it would help make the finish a bit nicer.  Also, I ended up using twice as much icing than the recipe suggested to make sure I had a nice thick layer on top, but it smooshed out a bit between the two halves, and I'm not sure how to tidy it up properly. I'm sure there's a method out there somewhere, I'll see what I come up with.  All in all though, I was pretty chuffed with my efforts! I'm already thinking about what to make next, I'm thinking a lemon sponge with lemon-lime buttercream icing.  Yums!



The icing-top of joy.



My wonderful friend KH

...just got a new job, so hearty congrats going her way.  Sounds like a much better job plus a humongous (how do you spell that?  Is it possible to mis-spell a word that doesn't actually exist?) pay-rise and more holidays.  KH always provides a couch for me to crash on when I go to London, and she also does a great line in tanking bottles of red wine and then marching (drunkenly) out without paying for them.  What more can you ask for in a best friend, than someone who also loses to track of what you've paid for already and what you haven't?

Anyway, I'm very chuffed for her, and whenever I hear success stories like this I start thinking again about post-grads, masters, second degrees etc etc etc.  Can't say the current climate really does much fr the confidence but even so.  Case in point is Glasgow Uni who are currently in the process of savagely obliterating their language departments in order to spend millions on new computer systems and encourage higher-fee-paying oversees students to do business courses.  On the cut list are:  Russian, Polish, Czech, Portuguese and Catalan.  These are all the kind of more unusual languages which are taught in very few unis across the UK so they actually attract students, and cutting them makes no sense at all.  It's all just going down the tubes.

Day off tomorrow, and I'm meeting my Auntie C for a coffee and then I think I'll go to the west end and buy the dress from the shop (not hanging about though!) and then see if I can get an appointment to get my hair cut.  I think I'm going to leave the length but get a chunky fringe cut in.  I had one a couple of years ago in Valencia and I saw a pic of myself recently and remembered that I quite liked it!

I have a voucher to get £10 off a haircut, plus another fiver if you book online, so it'll come out at about £18, which is pretty good.

Oh, for anyone who's interested, Waterstone's have a deal on modern day Penguin Classics at the moment.  Books of short stories are £3 each and 3 for the price of 2.  They had Virginia Woolf, Camus, Kipling, Hans Fallada, and loads more so worth popping in if you're looking for something to read! 

I also got an amazing voucher deal for the Body Shop last night - buying the £12 voucher gets you £30 to spend in store.  Think I'll stock up on some moisturisers and things that are normally too pricey for me!  The wondrous Beauty blogger RJ hooked me up with this one.  I'd highly recommend her blog for all sorts of barginous make-up stuffs!

Oh yeah, I also have to make some cake and biscuits for the Glasgow Feminist Network meeting on Saturday.  There's an awesome blogger called The Caked Crusader, and it was her Bakewell tart recipe that I found, and it's always a big hit, so I think I'll make that again and maybe one other cake, I'll have a look on her  page and see what else she can recommend that looks easy and doesn't need any weird ingredients!

Aahhh, cake.  There's something very satisfying about baking.  When it goes well.  When it looks like it's going wrong it's quite stressful, but I've loads of time to do it tomorrow so I'm sure they'll turn out fine and tasty!