Festive - 365+1

A little festive view of my Christmas cake complete with woodland scene!  We managed to get home in daylight today after a long drive through the rain and wind to visit our son in Glasgow.  It was good to see him and we exchanged our gifts, hoping he will be down to visit us soon.

Katiecakes Cook Book Giveaway!

Would you like to own this cookbook? Well if you go and visit Katiecakes you can enter her first giveaway, a kind of Cake Candy lol!

Butterscotch Cake

Sorry about the poor photo of the iced cake, I think I was in too much of a hurry to eat it, lol!

I was in the mood to bake something yesterday, so made this simple Butterscotch Cake, it doubled up as dessert as we had some with custard, it was delicious.

Butterscotch Cake (Janet Cooke’s)

Recipe from Easy Cook Issue 25

Cuts into 8 according to the recipe, but I got a lot more out of it.

Ready in 45 minutes

Suitable for freezing un-iced sponge only

225g soft butter

175g soft brown sugar, plus 5 tbsp extra

175g self-raising flour

3 eggs, beaten

1 tsp baking powder

5 tbsp evaporated milk

Handful of toasted almonds, chopped (I used pecan nuts)

1. Bake the Cake: Turn the oven to fan 160C/conventional 180C/gas 4. Butter and line a 28 x 18 x 5cm tin. Put 175g of the butter, the sugar, flour, eggs and baking powder into a bowl and beat until well combined and smooth. Pour into the prepared tin and level out. Bake for 30 minutes until well risen and golden brown. Leave to cool in the tin.

2. Make the icing: Put the remaining 50g butter, extra 5 tbsp sugar and the evaporated milk in a saucepan and heat until the butter and sugar have melted. Boil for 4 minutes, or until thickened. Pour over cake and decorate with the nuts.

Easter Treats

First some traditional Easter treats. These Easter Chocolate Fudge Cakes are from a recipe on the BBC Good Food webpages and very delicious they were too - lots left for tomorrow and Monday.

Next I am showing you the Maze book that Kathy Black made for Ellie Wiseman's Auction over on Bubbly Funk Forum. I was lucky enough to win this in the auction and it was worth every penny. I cannot believe how much work Kathy put into this book, everything is perfectly made and beautifully finished. I take it out and look at it, then wrap it up again. I will have to wait for a very special occasion before I put any photographs or journalling in this book.

I love the circle of flowers round this frame.

and the corset-like fastening of this secret place,

The tag comes out from behind the flower.

This is really beautiful with the heart shaped tag comeing out and the pretty frame with the flowers.

Another hidden place.

Even the back is fab, love this squared design


Last, but by no means least, in the Easter treats is the CD book made by Rosie (Freycob), another auction win. I put my crafty CDs in it last night, it is really too good to use every day. It's been sitting on the mantlepiece in our bedroom for a couple of weeks because it goes so well with the orange walls! Just in case you think that sounds a bit odd, the bedroom has a sort of Indian theme with shisha glass and an elephant patchwork hanging which I posted on here a long time ago. Also our house is an old one, hence the fireplace and black marble mantlepiece.

Anyway, it is pretty gorgeous, don't you think?

Cosy Cats and Christmas Cake

I iced my Christmas Cake yesterday. I had been wondering how to decorate it and then had a brainwave! I made the stars from the fondant icing left from covering the cake, coloured one piece with blue and left the other white. I let the stars sit for about 10 minutes to firm up then I used a Cuttlebug Embossing Folder (snowflakes) and pressed it into the stars, pushed in a few silver balls and then left them to dry out for another 30 minutes before attaching to the cake with a little royal icing.

Here is a close up of the 'embossed' stars.

At this time of year our cats don't go out much, they tend to dominate the area around which ever fire is on.

I hope everyone visiting my blog a very Happy Christmas and if you don't celebrate Christmas, I wish you a very happy holiday.