Category Archives: baking

Weetabix cake

Its no secret that I enjoy baking cakes, in fact when I am feeling stressed I can often be found baking cake very late at night !!

A life time ago in another life I baked many cakes for many RAF coffee shops, including this one.

Luckily for me now,I know lots of people who like eating my cakes, else I might be a little larger than I am. I don’t like posh fancy cakes but good easy wholesome one’s and the occasional Guinness Cake that i still have to make for the girls at work ….

An old favourite recipe is A weetabix cake, many people have asked me for this recipe, including the Cambridge Rambling Club Ladies, after i took one for after our Saturday walk, so I thought the easiest way was to put the recipe here on my blog

2 weetabix

half a pint of skimmed milk

8oz soft brown sugar

8oz mixed dried fruit

1 egg beaten

8oz S/R flour

Place weet-a-bix. milk.sugar and fruit in a bowl and leave to soak over night.

add egg and flour then mix well.

bake in a lined 2lb loaf tin for aprox 1 hour, until skewer comes out clean at 180

Best left for 24 hours before eaten and keeps well for a week 

Better late than never !

Finally today I have baked our Christmas cake, something I love to do every year, I enjoy trying out a different Christmas cake recipe each year, I even made one last year and took it in my luggage to Les Gets

photo (22)This year though I seem to have lost my MoJo for baking and cooking, something I thought you would never hear me say 🙁

I think there are two reasons for this…

With Geoff away travelling so much and the boys cooking for themselves and their girlfriends, its no fun cooking just for me so I suppose I have just got out of the habit 🙁

and then of course there is the cost and time.

So the most exciting thing I seem to make is soup as its quick easy and don’t cost a lot to make.

The cake recipe I have tried this year is a simple one, BE-RO Christmas Cake .

Hopefully my MoJo will have returned in time for cooking the Christmas Lunch,else it will be a Turkey sandwich and a bike ride 🙂

Chocolate brownies and a run

Every now and again I meet up with my friend  Gina from Norwich it usually means a lot of chatting Chocolate Browniesand some exercise, the last time we met it was for the Daffodil Dawdle Challenge walk in March.

Today Gina visited me at home so we could go and run my new favourite 10k route around the Church Ruins at Bawsey. Luckily for us the weather was kind and the wind and rain stayed away.

It was a great opportunity for me to cook lunch for us too, we had Chicken Chilli and Sweetcorn soup and the most amazing chocolate brownies that have not lasted the day 🙁  Both recipes came from another friend of mine Yvette, who we visited at Easter.

As Gina was unable to join us for our Wherryman’s way walk maybe our next meet up should be to walk the Boudicca way a 36 mile walk from Norwich to Diss.

Cranberry, Orange and Almond fruit loaf

I am always on the look out for new recipes especially at Christmas time.

This time I came across a few great recipes in the Christmas issue of the Tesco magazine, realfood.

Which has an ipad app but no iphone app which is a shame as I like to store my recipes on line now but thats where Evernote comes in handy.

So last week I found myself  baking a cranberry,orange and almond fruit loaf, I liked the sound of the recipe as it had marzipan in the ingredients.

I enjoyed making this christmassy cake, it was easy to make, looked special, and tasted lovely

Certainly a recipe to add to your list for this christmas…….

with a little bit of help !

With a little bit of help I baked our Christmas cake tonight, it took just over 4 hours to bake but it was Geoff’s electric I used 🙂

I used the Delia’s classic christmas cake recipe and at the moment the house is smelling devine.

Preparing the Cake tin is the first job and makes for an evenly baked cake…

 

 

 

 

 

Mixing in the fruit can be a tough job but I had some help with this…

 

 

 

 

 

This year I wont be icing the cake, as it has to travel to Les Gets with us, so instead we decorated it with Almonds

 

 

 

 

 

I shall leave it to cool in the tin over night then take it back to Kings Lynn with me as Isla is worried that granddad may eat it !!

Jubilee Cake

At the weekend I had 2 little helpers to help make our Jubilee cake.

I decided to keep it nice and simple, 3 sponges red white and blue, put together with jam and a Philadelphia cheese and icing sugar topping, like what you use on a carrot cake.

Then we decorated it with rice paper flags and a home made flag 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But can you spot the mistake I made ????

Luckily this did not stop it from tasting delish !

Herman number one

After looking after and feeding my Herman  for 9 days , I let 2 friends adopt some of him , I  then kept some for a Herman number two and finally I baked my Herman number one.

I was worried it may taste yeasty as my kitchen had smelt a bit like a winery while I was nurturing him !

I decided to stick with the basic recipe and added apple ,raisins, cinnamon and vanilla essence, along with the eggs sugar flour and oil.

 

I baked him in a tray bake which was a perfect choice and I had no problems with a soggy middle as reported by a few other people. 

I sprinkled the top with brown sugar before baking but not the melted butter as I felt this was not really needed.

He baked really well and tasted totally delicious 🙂

I would like to keep him going until Geoff  returns from his long walk as I am sure he would love it and will need fattening up !

 

Passion Cake

We have some friends that are getting married at the end of march, the reception is going to be a tea and cake affair , fitbit will not like that at all 🙂

Passion Cake

Obviously I offered to make a cake, it was suggested that I make my trademark muffins but I wanted to make something a little more special, so the search for a recipe began !

Then I remembered about a cake recipe that I had seen on a blog,that would be just perfect, but could I remember which blog…..no ! so the big search began and finally thanks to Geoff and google history I found the cake I wanted.

These friends came for dinner at my house last weekend so it was a perfect opportunity to try the recipe out, it was a huge hit, not only did it look beautiful but it tasted delicious too.

You have to admit a Passion Cake is just perfect for a wedding 🙂