Hi Honey, I'm home!

Hello bloggy friends!
Long time no post. Did you miss me? (Of course not - blogs left ignored for seven months by their owners aren't likely to linger in the minds of others, I know. But humour me. I'm an invalid)
Sorry I disappeared. I've had an ... eventful few months. And by eventful I mean challenging. And by challenging I mean atrocious and never-to-be-repeated.
Between a depression so crippling I haven't been able to leave my room for days at a time, discovering that what I thought was just a different way of being fat was in fact a major hernia that had been tearing for 7 years, and having an additional stay in hospital a month after the operation because of infection, I've been Proper Poorly. I've tried to keep the business ticking along in the background as best I could but the surgery and subsequent infection have had me out of action for six weeks.
However, I'm on the mend now and ready to get back to my life. Well, from the surgery and stuff. Depression is a different kettle of fish. Let's not worry about that too much though; I've lived through it many times before and I know how it works. I need to keep faith that it won't last forever, get all the help I can, and one day I'll realise I'm out the other side. Until then it's just a case of 'Keep on keeping on.' Which I can do, incidentally, as I took the precaution of having an amazing partner, family and gigantic circle of friends.

Geez, I didn't mean to get bogged down in that stuff so much. My apologies, my lovelies. Let's get down to baking, shall we?

Something that tickled me pink last autumn was that I was invited to speak to a Church Ladies' Guild about baking. Me. To a sort of WI thing, composed of more mature ladies of the parish who'd no doubt been baking since Adam was a lad.  Did I mention they wanted to pay me?

I can only assume they had me confused with someone else.

I had a marvellous time. I love love LOVE to talk. I love to show people how to do stuff, just as I love being shown new skills. I get such a buzz out of teaching someone a new way of doing things, and seeing them get all chuffed with their competent, achieving, bad-assed selves. And I like talking about the science-y bits behind baking.

The Guild and I had agreed I would demonstrate making scones and covering a Christmas cake with marzipan, sugar paste and a few simple decorations.  I took along jam and cream too. The people were so positive and friendly. (Hmm, do you think the freshly baked scones, homemade jam and cream had anything to do with that?)  I realise that talking and baking must be a doubly ace way to make a living!

I also did my kids' primary school fair, have done two more sets of Baking Club with 8 and 9 year olds, and started another set of Family Cake Decorating evening classes at the high school. That is particularly fun to do. Just a few techniques and a little bit of guidance and people can do SO much. It makes me very happy seeing people proud of what they've achieved.

I haven't played around with recipes much for a good long time. I spent the autumn re-learning to knit and crochet so I could make Christmas presents for all my lovely friends, and doing bits of sewing as well. I think that making things - baking, knitting, sewing, planting, preserving - nurtures the soul. Doing something practical is a a great weapon against depression.  I take it as a Very Good Sign Indeed that I spent last night browsing muffin recipes to bake this morning.

So, here I am making plans, looking to the spring with some optimism, and smelling the lemon and raspberry cornmeal muffins bake in the oven while the coffee brews.

Happy new beginnings, my lovely friends.

Messing About Muffins

(slightly adapted from this recipe, after experimentation)

1 cup fine cornmeal
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp bicarb
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
1 1/4 cups sour milk (or milk with a dash of lemon juice, or milk and plain yog mixed in)
2 eggs
1 small glug (a tablespoon or two?) vegetable oil
zest of a lemon
1 handful of fresh or frozen berries, tossed in a sprinkle of flour

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C and line a muffin tin with 12 paper liners
Sift together all the dry ingredients
In a jug, beat the milk, eggs, oil and lemon zest until well combined. Pour into the dry ingredients and stir until only just combined. Muffin mixes need to be lumpy - weird but true.  Fold the berries in very gently. I found using the 1/4 cup measure as a scoop was about right for 12 muffins.
Bake for around 16 to 20 minutes - less with fresh berries than frozen.
These are not sweet cake like muffins. They are proper muffins like those I grew up on in Canada - best served split open with a bit of butter, a strong mug of coffee and a broad and friendly smile on your face.
Good day, eh.

Playing with chocolate

Here I am, bright eyed and bushy tailed and feeling positive about the recipe testing. Well, mostly. It's Vegan Chocolate Cake Day and the first batter is in the oven.
I thought you might like to follow how it's all going. I converted the American recipe to metric for ease of use.

Joy The Baker's Cake (ish)

Dry -
380g plain flour
300g sugar
50g cocoa
1 tsp bicarb
1/2 tsp baking powder

Wet -
250ml warm strong coffee
125ml vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla

Sift the dry ingredients together to thoroughly combine them. In a jug, mix the wet ingredients together and pour them into the dry ingredients. mix until combined. This is a very thick batter indeed - i kept re-reading it hoping for more liquid. 

Joy bakes hers in a bundt tin. I've gone for a deep 8"/20cm tin because the extra surface area of bundt cakes means they tend to dry out more quickly which is no good for a cafe, which needs cake to remain saleable for longer.

As it's a very deep cake it needs 50 minutes to bake. 180 degrees C, as usual.

On reflection, I would be better with two sandwich tins. It rose much higher than I expected and I was concerned that the outer bits were overdone by the time the centre was cooked.  It smelled good. I cut it horizontally (ish) and spread it with the third glaze (see below).

Oh, funny story - We have some friends who wanted to serve a raspberry sorbet and langue du chat biscuits for dessert at an event.  The recipe was American and asked that the biscuits be baked at 320 degrees. My friend didn't look at the oven dial and think "Mine only goes up to 250, so something must be wrong here." Nope. She thought "I can only get up to 250 so it might need a little longer."

She didn't notice that the American recipe was in Fahrenheit and her British oven was in Celsius.

The biscuits were charcoal. She decided raspberry sorbet on its own was dessert enough. Smart woman

Cake from AliciaK at Instructables (mostly)

180g plain flour
200g sugar
35g cocoa
1tsp bicarb
1/2tsp salt
250ml warm water or coffee
80ml vegetable oil
1tsp vanilla
1tsp cider vinegar

Sift the dry ingredients together. Beat the wet ingredients together in a jug and pour into the dry. This one's a very wet batter! Pour into a 9"/23cm square tin and bake for 30 mins.

This came out of the oven looking dark and moist. It is a low traybake, good for parties and multiple servings.

Glaze 1

50g Trex
50g sugar
100ml water

250g icing sugar
20g cocoa

Heat the fat, sugar and water together until dissolved. Sift in the icing sugar and cocoa, beat well and pour over the cake.

DISASTER
I started out with a straight substitution - vegetable fat for butter. I make this glaze a lot - it's runny and if left undisturbed will set with a lovely dark gloss.
Unfortunately, this was one of those moments when I am reminded that I am just a domestic chemist. The sugar crystalised immediately. I tried sieving out the chunks of sugar but it was still gritty.  Total failure as a glaze. On the plus side, I bet it would make a kick-ass beauty product.  Forcing it through the sieve left me with soft, silky hands.

Ho hum.

Glaze 2

200g dark chocolate (check no milk solids!)
80ml soy milk

Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl, stir in the milk, spread over the cake

Wow, soya milk much more yellow than i expected. Smells a little strange. However, melted with athe dark chocolate it seemed to work well.  A more bitter topping than I'd planned, and definitely a 'Grown up' icing rather than a kid's cake.

Glaze 3 - 

200g icing sugar
30g cocoa
splash of coffee

Sift the cocoa and icing sugar together, mix in the coffee until smooth.

THE RESULTS

Cake 1 was too dry as a deep cake. However, the mouthfeel was better overall, and it certainly looked the part. The dark chocolate with soya milk made the cake too bitter. 

Cake 2 was very moist and had too little substance to it. Miss B loved it, but all the adults found it too insubstantial and commercial for 'real' cake. Glaze 3 worked a treat, though. Although not overly rich in flavour it added moisture and sweetness to the cake.

Therefore, I am going to bake Cake 1 in two sandwich tins for 22 mins, and use Glaze 3 both between the layers and over the top of the cake.

Me and my big mouth

I did it again.  That "sure, no problem" thing.
A new vegetarian cafe is opening in Leeds next week and is interested in stocking some of my cakes as a trial. This a A Good Thing - a potential 4th outlet for my stuff.  However, they'd like vegan cakes.
I was a vegetarian for a good few years.  I still claim to be a veggie because it stops people serving me meat but I'm not vegetarian because I eat fish and am not nearly so worried about rennet and so on these days. I love veggie cafes - the old cooperative Roots and Fruits was one of my favourite haunts; it's great to have a decent choice of things for lunch apart from cheese or egg sandwiches. I like vegetarianism and love heaps of vegetarians.  I love my vegan pals too (waves at Ali and Kram).
I have a number of dairy free recipes that are wonderful. They produce lovely, long-lasting cake with a delicate and moist crumb. I'm totally fine making dairy free cakes.
BUT
It's eggs.  I don't like cakes without egg in.  They aren't fun to make (at least in my experience so far.) They aren't as reliable and the texture isn't right. Those I've had in cafes have been rather heavy, wholemeal-y and worthy. Cake can be a lot of things but it really oughtn't be worthy.
Then there are our 9 free range hens in the back garden - as spoilt a bunch of birds  I've met. They looked under the weather so I was making them porridge with Marmite and calcium earlier this week (Yes I know it sounds vile but they love it and it is ferociously good for them). Our household eggs come from them and my business eggs come from a lovely free range flock that the extremely ace Ian Taylor keeps. I know veganism is more complicated than just animal welfare but I do think the eggs I use come from very well looked-after chickens.

Eggless cake recipes are often American, with things we find harder to source here.  Heaps of them call for apple sauce, which is not sold in the gigantic jars in the supermarket like is was in Canada when I grew up.  I don't have time to make my own applesauce before making my own cakes. Some recipes call for cane juice, egg replacer, or xanthan gum (I have no idea what that is).

So there I am, talking on the phone to the nice woman about her new cafe and saying "Sure, no problem," in answer to her request for vegan chocolate cakes while inwardly shouting Oh Bloody Hell, How'm I Going To Manage That?? (Recipes and suggestions welcome!)

And that is how, instead of having a morning off, I will be spending tomorrow experimenting with vegan recipes.

O Canada

It's July 1st. The garden fence is bedecked with maple leaf bunting, there are flags in all the flower beds, the kids are wearing red and white and I am in my official Olympic Team Canada Hockey shirt.  Happy Canada Day!
I wanted to bake something to celebrate.  Some years I make maple cookies, a variant on gingerbreads with a healthy dose of maple syrup.  Some years it's maple and pecan melting moments. If I think of a quintessentially Canadian baked treat, I think of butter tarts.  However, it appears most others think of Nanaimo bars.
I have to admit I'd never heard of them until a Canadian acquaintance asked if I could bake some. I guess they hadn't spread to small town southern Ontario by 1985, the year I left to live in the UK. However, I googled for recipes and they look delicious.
 The story goes that Mabel Jenkins, a woman from just south of Nanaimo British Colombia made these bars for a baking competition in the 1950s. They became hugely popular, spread far and wide, and apparently have been sold by the mighty Tim Hortons, the Canadian coffee and doughnut chain. (Although the idea of going to Tim Horton's for anything other than a Dutchie is madness).
I didn't get the chance to bake them for my fellow Canuck when he originally asked. I thought Canada Day would be the ideal opportunity to rectify that.
I followed the recipe from here for the most practical of reasons. Many recipes call for almonds, which I do not have. This one had walnuts or pecans - I have both and I LOVE pecans. A clear winner for me!


115g butter
50g caster sugar
30g cocoa
1 beaten egg
200g crushed digestive biscuits
50g dessicated coconut
50g chopped pecans (or walnuts, or almonds, blah blah blah.)
Melt the butter. Remove from the heat and stir in the sugar and cocoa. Add the beaten egg and return to the heat briefly, beating furiously to stop the egg getting scrambled.  Once thickened, remove from the heat and mix in the digestive crumbs, coconut and nuts. Press the mixture into an 8" square tin and refrigerate for 1 hour


50g soft butter
2 tbs custard powder
splash of vanilla
230g icing sugar
2-3 tbs double cream
Beat the ingredients together to make a spreadable buttercream, adding just enough cream to make it easy to work with. Spread across the base layer and refrigerate for 30 mins

120g dark chocolate
1 tbs butter
Melt the chocolate and butter together in a bowl over a pan of hot water.  When liquid enough to pour, spread across the custard layer. Chill for 10 to 15 minutes before serving.

As I type, the tray of bars is cooling in the fridge ready for slicing. They are VERY rich and sweet - I haven't had a finished bar but the constituent parts are enough to dissolve my teeth just looking at them. The kids are dying to tuck in. I'll report back when I can tell you how the bars have gone down.

Happy 145th birthday, Canada!

Edited to add - Oh. My. God. Terrifyingly sweet and rich, yes, but absolutely lush. The kids are already begging for more. If you fancy some, I'd drop by our house sharpish!

Tumbleweeds roll by

Hello Blog!

It's been 2 months since I last wrote anything, which is most remiss of me.  I'd like to say I was too busy lazing about in the sunshine or I was off having a fabulous time but actually I've been working.  And working. Then some more work in the gaps between the work.  I moved past busy and over-committed into Holy Crap I Need More Caffeine Stat.

A lot of my business has been to do with teaching.  I know, right? Me, actually teaching people things. Teaching used to figure on my Most Unlikely Job list, alongside athlete.  But here I am, over a year into home educating my son and running classes and workshops for baking and cake decorating.
I've done a couple of workshops here for 4 to 6 people. The kids' workshop had them making sugarpaste decorations, icing and decorating a celebration cake, using royal icing on biscuits, baking and icing cupcakes.   They took home all their creations and were so proud of themselves.  I got some lovely thank you notes; they were a wonderful group.  I'd post photos but I haven't asked their parents for permission and I do hate it when people put photos up without agreement
My next kids' workshop is this weekend.

Then there was a cupcake evening with 5 adults. They were all novice bakers so we went through basic techniques, made vanilla cupcakes and lemon and raspberry cupcakes, did buttercream icing with palette knives and piping bags, made sugarpaste decorations and drank Prosecco. Oh, and ate little cheese and marmite pastries I'd baked.  I am DEFINITELY making those again, they were delish.
Anyway, my adult students did marvellous work and have done so great baking at home as well, judging from the photos they're sending me.  I will do another class like that in a heartbeat (even though as the tutor I don't get Prosecco. Bummer.)

My other teaching work has been at local schools.  Lesley from Thomas Danby, my amazing tutor, would no doubt laugh her socks off at the thought of me teaching anyone cake decorating techniques.  I felt like the duffer of that class; there were so many talented people there I was often intimidated. But the level of stuff I'm teaching is the sort of thing I do week in and week out so i can teach it with my hands tied behind my back.

On Mondays I teach 15 people how to pipe royal icing, apply buttercream, model with sugarpaste and coat celebration cakes with sugarpaste. And example of the things wee do is the photo. The students are all women and girls - the youngest about 11, the oldest about 17 and their mums.  They are a lovely bunch. My favourite bit is watching them leave with the things they made, buzzing with a sense of achievement and happiness.  Passing on how to do something is VERY rewarding indeed.  I love what I do and I especially love helping others get fun from doing it too.

Tuesdays are more challenging.  It takes place in a primary school and is for family groups.  The age range is Reception to Year 10, with 22 people including the 5 parents.  Such a large group and enormous age range is very hard to manage successfully. Individually they are all very nice but as a group it's kind of overwhelming.  I have to dash between them so quickly, helping each one as s/he need it and setting projects that all skill levels can work within. I am always exhausted after that class.

I've also had more private commissions this last few weeks.  Some have been pretty straightforward. There have been red velvet cakes, cupcakes, plain birthday cakes with a message piped on. There have also been reflecting the passions of the recipients - hiking, lawn bowls and flowers, in one case and lilies of the valley, forget-me-nots, poppies and daffodils in another. I was very proud of the flowers; quite a few things I'd never tried before. But they are awfully time-consuming and time is something I'm running short of just now.
 I think I'm averaging about 48 hours a week at the moment. Combined with Home Ed and parenting  - not to mention the twin horrors of laundry and washing up - I'm pretty much exhausted.  Today I hit the new low of having a glass of coke with a coffee chaser in a bid to keep going.

Still, I've no business to complain. I have a business I love, I'm in demand and never have to advertise for work, and I am getting better at it all the time.  I can sleep later on. 2013 maybe.

Call me Zeitgeist-girl

I am so *very* up to the minute! I've been reading loads of baking blogs and saw something I fancied trying. As we get to weather for days out and picnics -  actually, we're in weather to stay in and avoid the torrential rain but hope springs eternal - the idea of easy to pack, hard to damage portions of cake seem just the very thing. So here we go, push up cake pops.

Crap name, must actually call it something decent.

  Anyway, I started with a tray of cake, done in two colours. I had been tempted by disposable icing bags for use in my workshops and hadn't used them myself, so I took the opportunity to have a go with them as well. I tinted the icing two shade and if I were making a bigger batch I might use 3 different colours.

Don't they look fun? They pass the first test, which is that my kids are clamouring for them. The pass the second test, which is that Himself thinks they look great. Obviously the important thing is that they taste great.  I haven't tried an assembled one yet, because I'm about to have my dinner, but I've been cheekily scoffing the trimmings and I can vouch for their deliciousness.

After that, I must do a costing. If the unit cost if more than any sane person would pay I have to give up on a project. This happens quite a lot. Decent ingredients are really rather expensive.

Then it's longevity I look at.  I will make some and store them in the cupboard, fridge and freezer and see what the various shelf lives are. In general, a fridge KILLS cake, and it drives me bananas when people store it there.  Fridges dry cake out.  However, as these are totally enclosed they ought to be fine. I think.  Hence the testing.

If all of these are positive, and to be frank I usually go back and tweak the method about a million times, I can finally look at selling them.

I think they'd be lovely for both the milkshake bar and the soft play centre. The down side is that there is a lot of plastic packaging. It can be put through the dishwasher and re-used, and is fully recyclable but it does go against the grain to have such a heavily packaged, non-biodegradable product.

Anyway, that's the latest experiment. What do you think?

Cake Boxing Guide To Life

Hello, lovely blog-reading pals!
I've not done any writing here for 2 months, which is a bit rubbish.  I've been stonkingly busy with work, Home-Ed, and some substantial home life upheavals and I'd just not had anything to say that wouldn't have included big dull moans about how tired I was.  I thought I'd spare you all that guff.
Anyway, here I am on a cold, rainy April afternoon juggling cake baking, chores, preparation for some work up ahead and teaching No 1 Son some maths.  None of these was engaging my interest very much; it was all a bit routine. So I got to thinking about how to make my day better. And because I'm friendly-like, I thought I'd share my conclusions with you.

I'm always telling my kids they they are the most powerful people in their own lives. They may not control everything that happens to them but they can choose how they react and what changes they make. If my day was to feel better I needed to practise what I preach.

1. Being Awesome
Deciding that you will be the kick-ass fabulous You for the day is generally a good plan.  I like Awesome Me way better than Can't Be Bothered Me, although she has her time and place.  Awesome Me is more likely to get stuff done, and more likely to make sure she fits something ace in to her day.  The act of deciding to Be Awesome means I approach the day in a more positive, productive and flexible way. My eldest approves of Awesome Me, which is a high endorsement indeed.
Should you feel you need inspiration for Being Awesome, why not visit The Bloggess? She'll steer you right.

2. Coffee
I love coffee.  I really, really LOVE coffee. One of the things I like most is what it stands for - a couple of minutes break from what I'm doing, a small gesture of being cared for (because coffee made by someone else is the best kind). Having a small indulgence definitely makes a day nicer. I've gone from instant to cafetiere to individual filters to cheap espresso machine to proper espresso machine and I don't begrudge any of the money we've spent. Proper coffee is delicious. Not to mention the caffeine kick. All hail the Goddess of Coffee!

3. A List
Everything is better if you have a List. Sometimes the List is so long that I intimidate myself, but at least once it's all written down I'm not trying to remember everything. Also, they mean I can easily prioritise things because I can see them all at once rather than remembering in a panic that I meant to do such-and-such before ringing so-and-so.  And of course the MAIN joy of a list is crossing things off it. For that reason I write mine the old fashioned way, with a notepad and pencil. My laptop or iPhone can do lists too, but crossing items off is less fun that way.

4. Tom Petty
Happy guitar music is one of the most ace ways to banish tedium.  It helps if you know the words and can belt out the chorus along with the laconic Mr Petty but fake it if necessary.  Free Fallin', Yer So Bad, Learning to Fly, You Wreck Me... I love heaps of them. Oh, had a thought! There's also Tom Petty in The Travelling Wilburys, and that gets you George Harrison, which leads neatly onto the Greatest Pop Song Ever Written, Here Comes The Sun, and by extension all of The Beatles' music. Crappy days are less crappy when you sing to happy guitar music.

5. Growing Something
Not a beer belly, not a hairy chin (middle age can be a bitch for both genders.) I mean growing plants. My preference is for stuff you can eat rather than the strictly decorative stuff, but to start with I grew winter pansies in pots by my back door and those made me happy too. Nowadays we rock an Allotment Chic look i.e. very grubby with scaffolding plank raised beds and plumbing tubing as hoops to hold the netting in place. But just having a small plastic trough with cut-and-come-again salad seeds planted there would do just as well.  I get so much happiness from having some of my own grown veg in my dinner. I really can't recommend it highly enough. 15 minutes a day outside faffing with the garden does me no end of good.

Not glamorous, but wonderful anyway

6. Fridge Magnets
Built in fridges that coordinate with the kitchen are kind of depressing.  I like a busy fridge.  Ours, as you can see, is full of stuff the kids made, receipts, invitations, reminders, vouchers, tickets, and lots and lots of fridge magnets. They are one of my favourite souvenirs because they don't take much packing room, are cheap and easily available, and I look at them all the time. Especially the ones from New York. I nearly always wish I were in New York at any given moment.

Also, if you are feeling really fed up you can use the magnetic letters to spell rude words.  A small act of rebellious silliness can do a soul a power of good. It's quite important to remember to change them before the kids come in, though. Oops.

7. iPlayer
Thank you, BBC, for the wonderful, marvellous delight that is iPlayer. The laptop plugs into speakers in the kitchen, and I can listen to ANYTHING while I work.  Only caught Woman's Hour on the Jane Garvey days (ho hum) but missed the Jenni-Queen-Of-Fabulous-Murray shows? Easy peasy, click on iPlayer and there it is. Stories, music, comedy, current affairs, documentaries: the delightful boffins at the BBC give them all to us. Adam and Joe's 6Music show was my favourite but now they're off doing other stuff like writing movies, so I dabble with different shows.  I keep forgetting I shouldn't listen to The News Quiz when I'm mixing things because the Kitchen Aid drowns out what they're saying.  However, with iPlayer I can rewind the radio. Modern life is brilliant.

8. Exercise
Just kidding.  No, honestly, I'm joking. I know all the theory about how good exercise makes you feel and how it helps in innumerable ways but I hate it worse than rats. With the exceptions of skating outdoors and rowing on the boating lake in Central Park I have hated pretty much every bit of exercise I've ever tried. Walking is good, because it takes you places. Getting tired, sweaty and wheezing for no actual purpose is my idea of hell. How about a nice cup of coffee and a slice of cake while you read your book instead?

See? There are heaps of things I could do to make my dull day better.  So I did.

A Helping Hand

This week I have a work experience student with me.
She's friendly, interested, smart and hard working - all ace.  She also LOVES cleaning, practically thumps me if I go to do the washing up and keeps asking if she can stay to mop the floor because mopping is fun.  This I find richly bizarre. But I'm all for it.  God knows I hate cleaning and regard washing up as the worst bit of the job.
On the first day she rather slowed me down.  It takes a while to get confident with new equipment and to feel settled, obviously.  However, the pace was far slower than I'd anticipated.  I was a little worried because I knew I had an extremely busy week ahead. Would I be able to get the Valentine and half term orders?
I needn't have worried. By Tuesday she was mucking in, volunteering to do things and really being a great help.
I tried to alternate her tasks between the workaday chores and playing with icing.  She had fun doing the faces on the gingerbread men, became a dab hand at sugar roses and loved icing the mini cupcakes. Across the week we talked about a design for a celebration cake of her own.
Today, amongst the orders for customers, we've made a vanilla and berry marble cake for her. She cut it into 3 layers, spread berry coulis and buttercream between the layers, covered with a crumb coat then sugarpaste. As I type she's making the last few roses to go on it. I think she'll be very pleased with her work.
I've missed Radio 4, talking to myself while I work and singing aloud whenever I fancy. I'll miss all the help and having someone to tackle the washing up - although I won't miss trying to remember not to swear every time I drop something!

Cocktails, anyone?

Today I had a go at a gin and tonic cake.  I had a good browse online, looking at others' experiments. I made tiny gin and tonic mini cakes some years back using my beloved Annie Bell book, but they hadn't impressed me.
I started with a light lemon cake as the base -
225g butter
225g caster sugar
zest of a lemon
4 eggs
225g self raising flour
a splash of milk.
As usual, I creamed the butter, sugar and zest together, added the eggs one at a time and the flour.  It was a bit stiff so I poured in a splash of milk. I baked the cake in two 20cm round tins for 25 minutes at 180 degrees C.
Then I made the syrup.  I wanted that quinine taste of tonic and a good splash of gin.  however, i only had the VERY nice gin I was bought for Christmas, so I was a little more stinting that I would be if it had been cheaper stuff.
100ml tonic water
100g caster sugar
juice of 1/2 the lemon
25ml gin
I simmered the tonic and the sugar together until the sugar had dissolved and the liquid had about halved.  I added the lemon and the gin - it smelled lovely!  I brushed the syrup across the warm cake very liberally as it came out of the oven and left it to cool.
For the icing, I wanted a nice smooth white butter cream with a gin kick.
100g butter
250g icing sugar
G&T syrup
25ml gin
I beat the butter until it was white, added the icing sugar and drizzled in the G&T syrup I'd got remaining after brushing the cakes. It was too mild so i added another 25ml of gin.  It's still to mild - you get a lovely juniper whiff as you smell it but the taste is just a lemon and something. You'd not guess G&T.  I'm having another go with more gin in the icing. Just as soon as I have a cheaper brand of gin to play with.

New Year, New You?

I'd been looking forward to January.
This is my 4th January trading as Cake Box (happy 3rd anniversary to me!) and the previous three have been deathly quiet.  Everyone's full of New Year Resolutions about healthy eating,  Indulgences like cake are brushed aside as people join gyms, think about summer holidays and go on diets. Or at the very least looking to the credit card statements with some nervousness after the Christmas spend.
It's the prospect of this extended period of quiet that keeps me going through the very busy autumn.  By Christmas week I'm ready to hibernate. Orders will be down, I can choose not to accept the birthday or anniversary orders from private customers. I can use the time to recover from the marathon baking session that October to December involves and I can look to the future.
Well, that's the theory.
I don't know what went on this year. The deli had a quiet fortnight but the soft play centre went mental for cake. Orders were up, not down.  I had my much-anticipated weekend away, but the work either side was heavier than ever.
So here I am, on the last day of January. I'd done my tax return in plenty of time and my admin is up to date. But I've not worked out a business plan for the year, nor done any recipe testing.  I have a fair amount of guilt about that.
Looking forward, I've an interesting fortnight ahead.  From Monday I've a work experience pupil with me for a week.  I've worked out which jobs to give her and which skills and techniques I can show her.  It's my hope that she'll do some of the low skilled stuff that chews up my time - stuff like washing up and wiping the counters down - as well as some baking and cake decorating.
One job she's looking forward to and I'm delighted to be rid of for a week is piping the faces on the gingerbread men. It's the sort of job that is fun if you don't do it often. However, it is a right pain if you're doing 150 of them at the end of a busy day when your hand is so tired it keeps cramping.
We'll also talk abut how to professionally cover a cake and ideally she'll design and make a celebration cake across the course of the week that she can take home for half term.
Should time allow, I'll use the opportunity to do some recipe testing while I've help to hand.  I've got a list of HEAPS of things I'd like to try.
During half term itself we hope to have the marvellous Miss P back with us.  She did a few days of work experience with me in the summer and charmed the whole family into loving her.  She's impossibly tall and beautiful, good company and ace with the kids.  If she's this marvellous at 16, she'll set the world alight by her 20s.  She's been asked to decorate a wedding cake for a family member, and I've invited her to come here and use my equipment to help her.
If I do get some new cakes ready, I'll pop here to post the recipes, I promise!

Happy New Year!

One of the things I like about baking is that you can be very friendly and welcoming with so little bother. Our horrendously grumpy neighbour moved out just before Christmas (yay!) and to welcome the new couple to the neighbourhood I dropped in some mince pies and a card. To get to know them better we've invited them around for a cuppa and a cookies on New Year's Day.

20 minutes messing about in the kitchen and the house smells lovely. Miss B, now a grown up young lady of 6, deigned to help for a bit. It was mostly an excuse for nicking unbaked cookie dough in her case, but fun nevertheless. Anyway, it's so little real work, knocking up a couple of batches of biscuits.

And at the end of that bit of effort it's ace offering lovely warm cookies to our new neighbours. Baking for someone is such a nice way of saying Hello, or Welcome to our house. I also find people are much more forgiving of the mess you live in when they are distracted by fresh baked goods!

On the selfish side, I could also take the opportunity to play with recipes from the marvellous Dan Lepard book. I've had a lovely time reading it lately and was dying to have a go baking some of the recipes in it. The oatmeal and cherry cookies were delicious. I'd not got the dark chocolate and mint cookies quite right; I'll need to work on that.

Another happy baking time this holiday was when my very ace friend and her family came over for Miss B's birthday. I made a chocolate cake using Annie Bell's recipe (my old favourite) and then had a go at a pecan pie from Edd Kimber's book, using rum instead of bourbon.

We are all fans of When Harry met Sally, so the pie was greeted with many exclamations of being "Proud to partake of your pecan pie," (which we found funny for longer than was seemly.) The pie itself was utterly delicious.

I'd used the wrong pie dish - a quiche dish - and it stuck quite badly despite being greased before hand. It also couldn't accommodate nearly half of the syrup mix, which was such a waste. I found I needed more pecans to cover the top than the recipe called for, but that might have been down to the wrong size dish as well.

Despite this, the pie was gooey, crunchy and flavourful in all the right ways. It's taken us 4 days to eat it and every mouthful has been scrumptious.

Now I know what I did wrong I shall certainly be making it again soon!

Tomorrow I'm back to work, baking what needs baking rather than whatever takes my fancy. It's only a fortnight until I hit my 3rd anniversary of Cake Box, so I'd best get cracking.

Happy 2012

Christmas treats

I love other bloggers. It's so fab to get new ideas from people who love food and baking and messing about with recipes.
Lately I've had top fun with the blog from the very ace Mary-Anne Boermans, one of the final three in this year's Great British Bake Off. M-A is the sort of woman I'd enjoy hanging out with, and the recipes I've tried from her blog are delish. You can follow her on Twitter as @wotchers
Incidentally, I've had to go back and edit out the word 'ace' in that paragraph 3 times - I clearly associate that word with M-A very strongly!
Anyway, my most recent bit of playing as been with her recipe for millionaire's shortbread cups. Their appearance of dainty little treats are a disguise for the buttery sweet explosion of tastes that take you back to childhood. I made them last night for Luke because he's not a fan of the mince pies, Christmas cake and other fruit-laden things filling my house and I wanted him to have a baked treat he'd enjoy.  We swapped the dark chocolate for milk in this case, because that's his favourite, but I would stick to the dark otherwise to offset the super-sweet caramel.
Thanks to someone on a parenting board I play on, I also found the truly scrumptious Exclusively Food site from Australia.  It was the chocolate Christmas pudding truffles that took me there.  Chopped up Christmas cake/pudding, pecans, melted chocolate, cream and rum mixed into little balls then dipped in dark chocolate. I put a blob of white chocolate on top and a pair of sugar holly leaves and berries from my sprinkles collection to make them look properly festive (I'm going through a phase, I think - all my chocolate cupcakes look like Christmas puds at the moment too!)
I made them far too big; they should just be a little mouthful as they are so very rich. I will definitely be making more!  My 9 year old son, with tastes far above his age, thinks they are delicious.
The last bit of domestic baking I've been doing is my home made mince tarts.  They aren't technically mince pies as I don't tend to put lids on them.  I like more filling than pastry, personally.  The pastry is utterly delicious, though. It's adapted from my tutor Judith's recipe, and is called German Paste; a very rich shortcrust. I love butter, so have swapped it for half the fat.  You could stick with Judith's method of all veg fat.
Here's the recipe. It makes masses, so scale down as needed:
600g plain flour
200g caster sugar
200g butter
200g vegetable fat (like Trex)
1 beaten egg.
Stick the flour, sugar and fats into the food processor and whiz until breadcrumb-y.  Add the beaten egg and whiz again. Tip it out and pull it together into a soft dough. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate.
I am rubbish at handling pastry - hot hands, hot kitchen - so I find rolling it out between two pieces of cling film means I get thinner pastry without overworking it, using heaps of flour and making it tough.
For mince tarts I grease my tart tins, roll out the pastry thinly and cut rounds slightly bigger than the holes in the tins, pop them in gently, add a heaped spoonful of mince meat (recipe for that next time I have a moment) and bake at 180 for 10 to 12 minutes.
Right, back to the kitchen,
Happy Christmas!
Jay x

Multi tasking

I have a lovely life. It's ace. It's a bit too full and a bit too busy and I struggle desperately for enough hours in each day but it's lovely.

Teaching Number One Son from home has been an amazing adventure so far. To a certain degree he's autodidactic (isn't that a wonderful word?) where I help set him up with resources and he cracks on alone. For other things, I'm there working one on one with him. It's built an even better relationship between us (with occasional humdingers when we clash) and has taught me at least as much as he is learning. He's also good company and I'll miss him dreadfully when he rejoins mainstream education in a year or so.

However, I do rather miss a bit of free time to manage my own tasks, work and (dare I hope for one?) social life. Home education, running a business, looking after my other two kids and their needs and all the normal household stuff is a bit much some times.

Work is very busy as well. I'm supplying three outlets, all with very different markets which means I ride out the seasonal ups and downs pretty well. I've changed what I do quite a bit: the cake box club is taking a break because I don't have the time just now for all the experimenting. I also didn't do my usual load of Hallowe'en baking for parties and so on; there just wasn't the time.

However, I have branched out in a new direction. I start running an after school baking club at the kids' primary school next week. I'll let you know how that goes. I don't really have the time for it (obviously) but I thought it would be good fun and it does me good to get out of my own kitchen for a little while, even if it's only to go to someone else's!

I did my first ever baking birthday party last month (and supplied the Narnia wardrobe cake above to the birthday girl), and I'm planning workshop days for both kids and adults in the next few months. I've had quite a lot of interest. The main difficulties I have are setting prices - something I always struggle with as I hate charging people money - and sorting out the tedious stuff like insurance and so on. Then there's the Not As Easy As You'd Think matter of finding a weekend when I'm not already committed to doing things.

The last part of my task-juggling life right now is getting ready for Christmas. If last year is anything to go by, i need to make over 40 small Christmas cakes, 10 jars of mincemeat and spend the last week of November marzipanning day and night. I'm also doing some Christmas cakes with gluten free flour this year, which may take a little bit of experimenting.

So, as I said, I have a lovely life. A busy, untidy, chaotic, frequently noisy and usually delicious-smelling lovely life. I have great kids, run a business I love and only really need an extra few hours in a day to get everything sorted. Oh, and for the laundry fairies, washing up fairies and ideally accountancy clerk fairies to come and help out a bit. And a coffee.

Autumn splendour

What an astonishing year! Hot dry spring, cold wet summer, then a dazzling week of heat and golden sunshine as we entered October, with a 15 degree drop in temperature as the cold and rain hit us once more.

September was a blur of baking, home educating, and playing with preserves. I have a cupboard full of plum jam, damson jam, chutney, elderberry jelly, rosehip syrup and elderberry cordial. The latter makes truly marvellous (if very frothy) cocktails when mixed with sparkling white wine like Prosecco or champagne. A hedgerow Kir Royale - yum!

Luke wanted to learn how to make lemon curd, too. It's his favourite thing for toast or pancakes and we'd never had a go at making it. I decided to follow Nigel Slater's recipe from the Guardian as Nigel's always reliable for that sort of thing. It was absolutely delicious, and Luke was extremely proud of his efforts.

On the cake front, the plum cake season is over; shame, I'll miss it. It's apple cake time again, and I'm looking ahead to parkin recipes too. In the name of research I bought some from Betty's tea rooms in Harrogate. I'll not be happy with mine until it can compare reasonably well with that, so I may be some time...

Dabbling in preserves

Last year, faced with my usual disastrous tomato crop, I was ready to compost the lot of it. As each fruit ripened it was struck with blight and we didn't get a single edible ripe tomato. My ace and clever friend SJ said I should use the rest for green tomato chutney - genius!

I'd not really eaten chutney before and certainly never made it. However, I'm a game lass and thought it was worth a go. I found a likely looking recipe but wanted to tweak it a bit. The result was marvellous!

Like a total twerp I failed to write down the changes I made, so this year's deliberately-planted-to-harvest-while-green tomatoes presented a slight challenge. Mark and my pal Kate, who kindly gives me all her jam jars, both were very keen on last year's success and I felt the burden of their expectations a tad as I guessed at what I'd done the year before.

I rather overdid it on the cayenne pepper but on the whole it's turned out very well. Here's what I did:

500g chopped green tomatoes
500g diced red onion

125g sultanas

180g brown sugar

1 tsp (or a bit more) cayenne pepper
1 tsp freshly ground green cardamom

500ml malt vinegar

A quick word about the cardamom - buying whole cardamom and crushing them in a pestle and mortar makes a world of difference to the flavour of the chutney. The rest of the recipe is dead easy, so I do strongly recommend spending that 5 minutes bashing the pods open and crushing the seeds inside a bit.

Bung everything in a bit stock pot or maslin pan, bring to the boil and then reduce the heat to simmer for about an hour, stirring occasionally, until it's all soft and thickened. Spoon into sterilised jars and leave the flavours to develop for at least a fortnight if you can. It should make 4 or 5 jars of chutney (depending on the size of the jars, obviously!)

Mark likes it with pork pie. As a non-meat-eater myself, I can highly recommend it with strong cheddar.

And possibly a nice cooling yogurt to follow, if you went a bit mental with the cayenne pepper. Oops.

I've also been making masses of plum jam. My poor tiny plum tree is so laden with fruit that 7 of the branches snapped under the weight while we were on holiday. I can't have that happening in vain, so despite the fact some of the fruit are fairly unripe I've been churning out the jam at a rate of knots.

I use 1.2kg of stoned, rather unripe, plums simmered until soft in 400ml of water. I then add 1kg of sugar and bring to the boil, skimming off the majority of the skins which rise to the top. When it reaches setting point I pour it in warm sterilised jars and seal them immediately.

I don't think I've quite got that whole setting point malarkey sorted. I pop 3 small plates in the fridge and plop a spoonful on the chilled plate, leave it a few minutes and then push it with my finger to see if it wrinkles. I have to do this a bunch of times, I haven't got the timings right yet. But I'm not letting that put me off my experiments!

My final bit of preserving this week has been VERY fun. We picked a mass of elderberries from the hedgerows on Friday. Using that 'run them through a fork' trick from Jamie Oliver I removed the berried from their stalks and gave them a wash. I boiled up 1 kilo of them with a kilo of crab apples and some water until all pulpy. I slopped it into a jelly bag which drained overnight to give me a marvellously deep purple liquid. I'm going to boil it up with sugar (600g per litre of liquid) and make elderberry jelly.

The rest of them had a more fun outcome:

700g of elderberries
1 lemon
100ml water
150g sugar
Pare the peel from the lemon into the pot, add the lemon juice, berries, sugar and water. Bring to the boil and simmer for a good 20 minutes until the berries are very soft. Taste for sweetness and ass a bit more sugar if you like. Press it through a fine sieve and you've got an utterly marvellous fruit syrup. I'm told it is a very good cough syrup and is delicious over ice cream but most excitingly, it made Mark and I vivid purple and delicious Kir Royales with the champagne SJ brought us.

How to make: Elderberry Kir
a generous teaspoon of Elderberry syrup per glass of dry white wine (or sparkling wine for a Royale)

A word of warning - adding the champagne to the sweet syrup causes a MASSIVE explosion of bubbles, so do pour it very, very slowly. It was utterly delicious.

These Two Imposters

Fortunes up and down at the moment. I've tried new cakes, old cakes, and my first ever tiered cake (the prospect of which scared the pants off me) with both triumphs and disasters. As Kipling instructs us, I need to take both in the same spirit.

Life's been pretty hectic lately. This is no surprise - self-employment from the house, 3 kids, 11 chickens, bits of decorating to do in the house, veg beds to tend in the garden and all the other things that are part of family life mean that if it weren't hectic I'd be surprised. But it's been even more so than usual over the last month while my fabulous Number One Son has a break from formal education and we dabble in a period of Home Education. It's been wonderful but requires time I am struggling to give.

So, as the cake club weekend approached I had not done my usual recipe experimenting to come up with new treats for the subscribers. It'll be fine, I thought. I was wrong.

My rash attempt to tackle the dreaded flapjacks went properly wrong twice. TWICE. I hate my flapjacks, so I don't know which demon moved me to try again. I don't even like the flapjacks of people who make them beautifully all that much, not when I could have cookies or cake. Perhaps I should just admit they are not something I can make. Nah. I will plug away every year or so and one day I'll make flapjacks that I like.

I tried to make a Victoria Sponge following a recipe different to my usual one. Actually, cocky that it would be fine, I made a double batch and popped them in together. Both collapsed; four 20cm sandwich tins full of sunk cake. Great.

Overtired by the time I tackled the meringues, I made a basic error that I could have slapped myself for. The results were just delicious but not the sort of thing I was after. Fantastic; what was I going to do now? Only the Battenburg cake turned out well.

A wonderful thing about baking is that most mistakes can be transformed into something else. Not the flapjacks, unless we fancied unusual roofing tiles, but the others. The meringues suggested Eton mess to me, so the cake clubbers got Eton mess cupcakes. They were utterly scrumptious, they really were.

If you fancy a go, here's how -

12 vanilla cupcakes
100g soft butter
200g icing sugar
splash of vanilla
2 handfuls of berries (I used raspberries, red and black currants and blackberries)

20 small meringues (about the size of a jammy dodger) or equivalent amount of larger ones

Beat the butter until white, beat in the icing sugar and keep going until it's all fluffy and whippy looking. Stir through the vanilla, and if the icing is a bit stiff add a splash of milk.

Bash all but 6 meringues into big chunks. If you're using frozen berries, defrost them and drain any excess juice before folding into the icing with the meringues.

Generously ice the cupcakes with the berry/meringue/buttercream mixture and top each with 1/2 of one of the reserved meringues.

I've made cake pops with mixed success a couple of times before; I certainly wasn't particularly impressed. Having bought a few from different places to sample them, I've found them over-sweet, a claggy texture and pretty disgusting, really. However, I had lots of spare cake thanks to the collapsed Vic Sponges and I do love Bakerella's blog, so I thought I'd have another go.

I aimed at a drier, less sweet mix than I'd had elsewhere and I was far more happy with the result. I dipped them in pink coating with a few pastel coloured sprinkles or glitter on each. The cake clubbers got a pair each, alongside the Battenburg, Eton mess cupcakes and some VERY fragile but rather tasty home made jammy dodgers.

Incidentally, I'll try a different recipe for the dodgers next time; something slightly more robust so they'll be less breakable. Sorry, guys.

Once the cake boxes were delivered I could concentrate on a large order for an 18th birthday. I needed to make 12 vanilla cupcakes, 12 lemon cupcakes, 24 chocolate cupcakes, 60 mini cupcakes, one chocolate malteser cake, one lemon drizzle cake, 24 plain scones, 12 fruit scones, 12 lemon scones and finally a 2 tier cake with hand made butterflies, glittery polkadots and ribbon.

I had been fretting about the cake for days. My very lovely distant cousin in New Zealand had given me the business advice of steering clear of tiers and brides, and I'd generally followed her advice. Lesley, my rather fabulous college tutor, assured me it was a doddle and I'd be fine. And you know what? I was!

I did make mistakes with the cake. I was thinking about the tiers individually, so made them proportionally high, rather than as levels of the same cake, which should have the same height. The top tier needed an extra layer. I'll get that right next time.

My experiences at college had taught me to make spares of all icing details. This was A Good Thing as several butterflies broke when the lid balances across the top of the cake, erm, stopped being quite so balanced and touched them. Knowing my clumsiness, I'd made HEAPS of spares, so could make repairs, keep spares on hand for any damage transporting the cake, and still had enough to top the cupcakes as well.

I'm still pretty pleased with it, but I could really rather do with rest now!

Delish!

Chocolate and nuts - could there be anything nicer? Whether it's almonds in milk chocolate, hazelnut praline, good old Cadbury's Whole Nut or Reece's peanut butter cups, I think nuts and chocolate make a wonderful match.

After seeing a recipe in a cupcake magazine on holiday (the Americans have cupcake magazines, gosh!) I was keen to try chocolate and peanut butter cupcakes. I didn't fancy the recipe as they gave it - too much sugar and not enough butter for me - so I spent a happy time faffing about to get one I was happy with and by George I think I've got it!

Have you bought the Annie Bell book yet? Here's the link -

because if not, you really must. It's great. I use the chocolate traybake for my chocolate cupcakes. They remain moist and delicious for several days and it is an incredibly easy recipe to do. The batter does 18 cupcakes using a 1/4 cup measure, which is about 60ml, to fill each large cupcake case and they take about 22 minutes to bake at 180 degrees Celsius

The recipe for the icing is :

100g softened butter
250g icing sugar
70g smooth peanut butter

Beat them together until light and fluffy. It should have a gently peanut-y flavour. I found it crucial not to have too much peanut butter because it becomes a bit overpowering after a couple of bites and it can lead to an oily, claggy texture, so gently does it.

I was faffing about melting chocolate in the microwave, pouring it in a piping bag and squiggling flowers and stars onto some butcher's wrap, which I then popped in the fridge to set. I plopped one of the shapes in the top of each cupcake and the effect amused me. no good for eating in the garden on a sunny day but kind of fun anyway!

Back to reality

That was one hell of a holiday!

Florida was fantastic fun. I fed a dolphin! By hand! Stroked its chin and everything! I may need to use some more exclamation marks!!!! I was (and am) very excited about that.

I would calm down but I also need to tell you how truly awesome New York was as well. The kids managed to tear themselves away from playing on the Big piano at FAO Schwartz, riding the ferris wheel at ToysRUs and spending the year's pocket money at the Lego shop long enough to come with us to the Top of the Rock, to the glory that is MoMA, to the Natural History Museum (of Night at the Museum fame), to be wow-ed by the marvellous Hayden Planetarium (in the Rose centre, as featured in Spider-Man 2) and then around Central Park to look like extras from Enchanted. New York is like every film you can remember - "except dirtier and smellier" said my daughter.

We rode the Staten Island ferry, had lunch in Greenwich Village and visited the very lovely High Line Park. We saw the actual, original Winnie the Pooh and pals at the New York Library's Children's centre. (Said library appear in Ghostbusters, in case you were interested). The whole trip was about this good - !!!!!!!!!!!
Aren't you glad I saved all those exclamation marks for one little outburst?

Anyway, horrid jetlag and messy unpacking aside, I was straight back to work. It's not been too busy, thankfully. I need to get my body clock sorted before I embark on a major bake-a-thon.

I am inspired to try things based on the cakes and baked goods I sampled in the US. Candy apples - who knew? Apparently they're the new Big Thing. Whoopie pies and cake pops seem to have pretty much disappeared, cupcakes are still very popular despite 5 years of articles in the foodie press claiming they are SO over every couple of months. Tiny little portions of things were very popular too - mini cakes, 'bitty bites' and so on.

I went a little bit mental in the sprinkles store again. How is it possible to spend £120 on sprinkles? I am clearly a nut, but it was all so very tempting. I could have happily spent hundreds of pounds if only I could get it all home again. Still, my customers will get some very fabulous looking cupcakes and when I run out I have a great excuse to slope off to NYC again.

I feel so lucky to come back just before two long weekends and some astonishingly gorgeous weather. It makes it so hard to stay in the kitchen, it's true, but it does make life feel so much more pleasant.

On the down side, my fabulous son has had a tough week, our house is a total tip because we are still in the middle of decorating and have nowhere to actually PUT the clothes we're unpacking, Buffy the lovely hen and Lola our favourite guinea pig died while we were away, both were very young and it was very sad.

Looking at positives, we now own Amy Pond, Donna, Martha, Sarah Jane Smith, Leela and Ace the new chickens and Doctor Who returns to the telly this weekend. As the 11th Doctor might say, Hens are cool.

And so are cakes.

The final push

I'm going on holiday. An actual away-from-the-oven holiday. Soon. If I can last that long, which is in no way a sure thing.

My business has several different types of customers. I have a bunch of private commissions, where someone rings and requests a cake for a specific date. Easy peasy, I just tell them I'm unable to take the commission for that period. I have the Cake Box Club customers, who get a mixed box of lovely things once a month: again, I can schedule that to suit myself. And I have two wholesale customers who have regular weekly orders to sell on to their customers. And therein lies the tricky bit.

They still need cake to sell. I've tested every one of my products so I know which cakes freeze well and which don't - a freshly baked cake, frozen, is still very nice when defrosted - so as long as I can bake enough cake/cupcakes/biscuits to tide them over, they will have stock to sell. But I work pretty flat out most weeks. How can I fit in an extra fortnight's work in at the last minute?

(It is a truth of clients that they want the freshest possible cakes at the last possible second)

In order to fulfil this, I have been baking like a woman possessed for the past 5 days. Yesterday I made 15 chocolate cakes and 90 scones. Today I baked 7 cakes and 250 iced gingerbread men. It's been a bit manic.

Unfortunately, I managed to get a chest infection as well, so I've been a bit unwell. This has added to the strain somewhat. My knees ache because I've been on my feet for so many hours in a row and I'm not sleeping well because my endless coughing keeps waking me up. And of course there's all the stuff that needs doing in order to facilitate a family holiday.
Much of that seems to be paperwork or laundry. Laundry, like the poor, is always with us.

Mark keeps telling me that self employed people don't get to take holidays. (It's remarkable that he doesn't get the odd smack about the chops, isn't it. I am a shining example of self restraint.) I know LOADS of self employed people. Most of them take holidays. Surely it's possible if you just plan enough and slog through the tricky bit.

Anyway, I'm not quite at the finishing line but I reckon I can see it from here. And it is a sunny, gorgeous finish line.

If I make it, I promise to send you a post card!

Quick update - I did it! I'm so immensely relieved and a bit giddy with excitement.

RND hijinx

I do love an excuse to fund raise. I hate selling, I hate plugging my wares and charging people money (although I do LOVE getting paid) and I get all self-conscious about it. However, give me a cause I believe in and I am a shameless hustler demanding cash from everyone I see.

When I was just starting my business two years ago I raffled off this cake to raise money for Comic Relief

I wasn't very good at cake decorating back then and covering a cake in sugarpaste scared the bejeesus out of me, but I persevered. I raised £89 and was so pleased!

For Red Nose Day this time I decided to raffle a box of red-nosed smiley cupcakes. They'd retail at about £15 (including decent donation to Comic Relief) so my initial goal was to get at least twice what I'd sell them for in raffle tickets. I no longer go to toddler groups and other places with a nice captive audience so I thought I'd struggle to sell as many tickets this time. And to be frank, I didn't have much time to spend on flogging tickets because work has been pretty busy.

After the first go at selling tickets it was obvious £30 wasn't going to be a challenge, so the kids and I decided to aim at £50. By Wednesday that seemed far too easy, so we thought £75 would be better. My fabulous 11 year old got selling on my behalf and we passed the £85 mark. Had we the chutzpah for try for £100?

Damned right we had! After 4 days of pouncing on all the other parents in the playground and shaking our tin at them we reached a grand total of £126. Coo! That's a lot of ticket selling. Yay us!

Ever the enterprising soul, my able assistant explained he should get 10% of all ticket sales he made because Comic Relief getting 90% of something was much better than 100% of nothing and his hard work deserved a reward. I pointed out that virtue was its own reward. He looked unimpressed. Upon realising I'd saved a cupcake for him, however, he thought himself to be adequately recompensed!

I felt a bit bad that the chances of winning had become so slim because I'd sold so many more tickets than I thought I would, so I added a 2nd prize of a box of 4 cupcakes and a 3rd prize of one in cellophane with a red ribbon. The winners were chuffed to bits - it's always a nice feeling when people love your cake, isn't it - and I feel very proud of our little bit of fundraising.