Summertime Hop

Yesterday Chris and I went to the Made in the Shade Summertime Hop event at the Roxy Arthouse in Edinburgh. It was a craft fair with vintage clothes, jewellery, cards, art, homeware etc. I got a cute retro T-ball league t-shirt and we got a free gift when we entered. It was a quirky hanging fabric ornament with lavender inside it of Frank Butcher from Eastenders - I can't wait to hang it up in our new place soon!

However, the highlight was sampling some delicious cake from Aunti M's popup Cake Lounge. Auntie M's Cake Lounge is a cute 1950s vintage coffee lounge in Glasgow and luckily for us she had brought some of her fabulous home baked delights to the Summertime Hop for us East-coasters to guzzle. I imagine that the name Cake Lounge has something to do with the indulgent experience of enjoying the cake over a relaxing cup of tea or coffee - mmmmm. I'm getting hungry writing about this! I had a large slice of the more-ish sweet potato cake, which was lovely and moist with delicious carrot cake style cream cheese icing. Chris had the chocolate cake which had a yummy buttercream topping. Other cakes on display included chocolate peanut butter cake, carrot and passion fruit, chocolate brownies, lemon drizzle cake and cup cakes. I will definitely be stopping at this place next time I'm in Glasgow. Some of the best cake I've had!

Happy Birthday, Sam!

Yesteday was Sam's birthday so Chris and I got out our mixing bowl and cake tins and a bunch of other cooking equipment and ingredients and got to baking a birthday cake. We went with the same Victoria sponge as we used for our Norway Day cake, but tried out a new buttercream vanilla icing. As it was Sam's cake we also decorated it with the Stoke City badge using writing icing. It was a bit tricky but I think it looks good enough and no one had any trouble working out what it was. I think it had an amateurish charm to it and it tasted super yummy! It got sliced up during his party and lots of people commented on how much they liked it, so I'd say it was a hit!

The recipe is this cake as before.

The decoration was Dr Oetker writing icing, which you can buy in any supermarket.

This is how to make the icing:
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 cups (around 350g) icing sugar
4 tablespoons evaporated milk
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Cream the butter. Add the icing sugar, evaporated milk and vanilla and mix until smooth. Smooth over the cake and leave for around five or ten minutes before decorating with the writing icing. Then put it in the fridge for at least 20 minutes before gobbling it all up!

Relocation, relocation, relocation!

Eeeek! Chris and I have found a place to live in London (Ealing) so we will have a new venue for our baking adventures and new people to test out our recipes on! It's a shared house with an organic vegetable garden so we can branch out into savoury treats and hopefully get some new tips and ideas from the international melting pot of housemates we will have. It's all so exciting! Chris is going during the first week of August but I won't be going until the end of August so I may have to turn to solo baking and eating of cakes to distract me from my loneliness and boredom - although I will have more to post here that way.

This week is Sam's birthday so we're baking him a birthday cake tomorrow (sshhh, don't tell him). He is a Stoke fan so we will try and decorate it with the Stoke badge using writing icing but we'll have to see how that goes! I love baking so I'm quite excited about it as it has been a while since we last made anything. It's a nice day today and I feel like making some lemon drizzle cake but I should wait for tomorrow's baking as I don't want to be a fat tattie. If only it was true that cakes were healthier than other foods. Perhaps they wouldn't be as yummy that way though. Part of the experience of eating and enjoying cakes is probably due to the knowledge that you are indulging in a treat that you know isn't good for you.

All this talk of food is making me hungry though so I might go and rustle up some tea. More on Sam's cake later...

Doctor Who - Big Bang? No, not really.

I'm really into Doctor Who and absolutely loved David Tennant's Doctor. I think Matt Smith has done a good job and I like how the new series has tried to link back to the pre-tennant doctors and the old series with the new titles and the references to the old doctors in several episodes. In this way, the writers are asserting about Matt Smith's doctor 'I'm the 11th Doctor and I'm one in a long line of people to be this guy, not a replacement for David Tennant'. However, I've found the emotion in this series flat and I don't like Karen Gillan as Amy Pond much at all. I think she's a bad actress and she's just annoyingly sarcastic all the time. There have been some brilliant episodes this series though - The Van Gough one, the weeping angels double, the James Corden episode and the penultimate one. However, the last episode was, in my opinion, a big disappointment. I felt so strongly that I actually commented on this review of the episode in The Guardian. I was confused at first to see so many people say they 'loved it' and that it was the best episode of all time. But many people agreed with me, and me with them, so I think it's an even split. So, enough of my Who geeking, you can read the review for yoursef (I'm HarmonyandMe). And if you liked the episode, good, I'm glad you did. Just wasn't for me. It does look as though things could be great next series though - if they drop Pond and actually complete some stories! x