Battenburg Heaven

I love Battenburg. In fact I love anything with an abundance of marzipan-y goodness. If I could have my dream piece of Christmas cake it would have 3cm thick marzipan and 1mm thick icing. Marzipan....mmmmm.

So, two of my faveish things in the world.....cupcakes... and Battenburg. How about an amalgamation of the two?? I've been tossing the idea of Battenburg cupcakes around in my head for a while and after catching the baking bug again last week with the raspberry choccie goodness I thought I'd try to get the idea from my head and into the muffin pan. They worked out pretty well for a first time out. Maybe a little tweaking required for next time but they were yummy and pretty and did indeed taste of Battenburg so I will declare them a success. Here they are in all their pink and yellow glory (terrible photos again, sorry):

and the inside, just to prove they looked Battenburg-y there too:



Here's the recipe. It's a bit of a mish-mash of weights and measures I'm afraid, mostly because it's easier for me to think cake recipes in grams and frosting recipes in cups! Method in my madness I'm sure. If you want to convert them then I'd recommend you go here. That'll do the job.

Battenburg Cupcakes

For the cakes:

150g unsalted butter
150g caster sugar
150g self-raising flour
3 medium eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp milk
Red food colouring

In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the flour, vanilla, eggs and milk and beat until smooth.
Split the mixture into two and add a drop of red food colouring to one half (I added one drop, next time I will probably add two so it's a little more pink).

Line a muffin pan with cake cases. Using two dessert spoons pick up a spoonful of each colour mixture and pour the pink mixture into one side of the cake case and the yellow into the other side at the same time (quite hard to do this without spilling which makes the cakecases look a little messy when baked, hopefully I'll have a steadier hand next time).

This mixture made 11 cupcakes but I could have made 12 if I'd been a little more even with the pouring. As a random tip if your mixture doesn't make enough to fill each mould in the cake pan fill the remaining ones half way with water. This will ensure the heat is distributed evenly still and the steam from the water also helps with rising).

Bake for 20-22 minutes at GM 4 (180oC, 350oF)

Allow to cool in the tin for 5 minutes then turn onto a wire rack.



For the Topping:

2 tbsp Apricot Jam
4 oz (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
4 cups icing sugar (confectioners sugar)
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 almond extract
1 cup ground almonds
double cream

Melt the apricot jam in a saucepan until runny. Brush the tops of the cooled cake with the mixture (this would be optional I would think, I included it because I think the jam that normal adheres the marzipan to the cake in a Battenburg adds to the taste).

For the frosting:

Beat the butter until fluffy
Add the icing sugar a cup at a time until you get to quite a thick consistency (stop when it's quite thick).
Add some of the double cream and the almond and vanilla extracts and beat
Add about half of the ground almond and beat
Now keep adding icing sugar, ground almonds and double cream until you get to the consistency and sweetness that you want, thick enough to hold its shape but runny enough to pipe (difficult to be exact on this. If you taste it and it reminds you of over sweet marzipan you're on the right track).

Remember, the sweetness of the icing sugar will fade over time so make it sweeter than you think it needs to be if you don't want to be eating butter frosted cakes come the morning.

Pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes, or spread on with a palette knife. I my head these had piping with a star/flower shaped nozzle but I need a new piping back so they just ended up with the circle nozzle. I don't think I'll lose any sleep over it though.

If you're really sad and phaffy when it comes to decorating your cupcakes (as I clearly am) then you could go the whole hog and make the little marzipan Battenburg toppers. If you want to make these then take some natural marizpan, cut three equal pieces about a half inch thick. Add a drop of red food colouring to one piece. (Use some icing sugar to ensure you don't stick to the marzipan and to "flour" your work surface). Split the pink marizpan and one of the yellow blocks in two and then roll each piece into a sausage (make sure they're equal thickness). Flatten the four sausages so they're cube shaped and stack them so they look like a Battenburg (yellow on pink/pink on yellow) using some water to stick them together. Roll out the remaining yellow piece into a rectangle wide enough to wrap around all four square pieces. Lightly rub the surface of the flat piece with water and wrap round the squared sausages. Seal along one edge. Now carefully slice the mini Battenburg "log" into pieces and use them to top your cupcakes.

Eat them.

They went down a treat at work, with my boss declaring (once again) that they are the best cupcake's to date (she says that with EVERY new flavour!). I have to say I'm particularly proud of them because this is the first time I've really had a recipe I can call my own to post. Go me!

I did promise you scrapbook pages too didn't I?? Oh, go on then......









See, I do put herma to paper around here sometimes. Honestly.

Right, I'm off to do the work the I brought home with me tonight (being as we're being inspected (audited) at work tomorrow and I've had the sudden and scary realisation that there are no work instructions for my role. Eek!!). Roll on Wednesday at 4.30pm when the inspectors have left the building and there won't be a damn thing we can do about their verdict!!

TTFN

300 (with a Giveaway)

Nine hundred and thirty eight days ago I stood in our back garden one evening and declared I was going to start a blog. Kendo questioned what on earth I had to say to the world...well, lots, clearly. 300 posts worth of lots in fact. 300 posts worth of inane babble about babies, motherhood, puke, paper, card, yarn and fabric all mixed up with some laughter, some tears and some days were I could barely remember my own name, let alone type it!



So, in keeping with blogland tradition - A Giveaway for my 300th post. Inspired by this post from a little while ago I'm going to giveaway three of the Morsbags I've been working on. You get some Cath Kidson-esque shopping bag goodness and I feel better about saving the planet. It's win-win!. These are the bags I've been working on:

If you'd like to get one then leave a comment (come on all your lurkers - let me know you're out there listening....er...reading...whichever) and I'll pick out three people to get a bag.



Right, that's the formalities out of the way. In other Cookieland news - well, there isn't much really, hence the not much blogging. We had a fabulous visit from our good buddies Louise, Emily and Xander - of which I took practically no photos, fortunately Miss Lou is much more organised that me and has blogged about our little get together here.

Halloween has come and gone (Grace was a witch, Egg was a vampire, there was chocolate and sweeties and falling over).

Bonfire night has come and gone (there were indoor sparklers and watching some fireworks from the window - not much else though it was too bloomin' wet around here!). I figured I'd better get blogging something or Christmas would be come and gone at this rate!



The big news yesterday was that this guy:







My (much tormented by me) oldest nephew, has passed his fitness test to be accepted in the Royal Navy. He's waiting to get a start date so he can head off down to HMS Rayleigh for his basic training. We're so proud of him. He worked really hard training to pass this fitness test and we're really proud that he's choosing to serve in our armed forces (if a little scared that he's chosen this time of war we live it to do it).



Mostly though? I'm looking forward to being able to tease him about wearing this get up:



Because trust me when I tell you that taking the mick out of someone for wearing this silly hat and flares never gets tired. It just doesn't. It's quality torment material to last a life time. Flares I tell you! (Okay, the fun does kind of wear off when they spend 30 minutes lecturing you on the reason they have to wear the flares (easier to turn up when you're swabbing the decks, in case you're interested) but for the most part it's fun).

The final thing for this 300th celebratory post? Baking. Mmmmmmmmm. Cupcakes were requested by my hubby yesterday as his minion at work is leaving (moving across the country) so he thought cupcakes would be a nice last day treat.

Devil's food cupcakes with raspberry filing and vanilla mascarpone frosting. Mmmmmmm.


They weren't quite this green looking, I swear. The lighting in my kitchen is appalling at 9.30 at night!

Next time I will have some finished scrapbook pages to share (scouts honour).

TTFN

Attic Inspired

I’ve mentioned before my love of all things Attic24. Lucy’s blog really is the most inspiring place. She’s just full to brimming with lots of amazing, colourful, lovely ideas (which thankfully she’s just as keen to share as she is to create).

Lucy’s been unveiling a lot of little projects on her blog lately and they’ve gotten me to thinking (once again) about the idea of original ideas. I’ve mentioned this before too (I’m a really “Rita Repeater” today it would seem (that’s what we call Miss Grace when she insists on repeating the same statement over and over – drives us potty)). It’s so very difficult these days to come up with an “original” idea. I’m always totally in awe of people like Lucy, and Julie, and Barbara and Jodie (to name but a few)who time and time again come up with amazing new things for us to drool over. There’s some seriously amazing creative talent out there in crafty blogville. Love it!

So. In light of the thinking about original ideas, I wanted to try to come up with something which for once wasn’t something I’d copied from elsewhere. Nothing big, just a little something out of my brain that was just mine. A blank. That was what I came up with. So, I figured, start smaller. Start with a little inspiration from elsewhere your first time out and build from there. So, I started with Lucy. More specifically, I started with these. Lucy’s teeny tiny flower pattern. These are so cute, and so easy to make (thanks once again to Lucy’s fabulous pattern writing skills). Now I just need to find something original to do with them. So, I did this:

A crocheted headband for Miss Grace. Not rocket science, but not something I’ve seen anywhere before (although I’m sure if I trawled through the internet that someone, somewhere, has done this before, no more original ideas and all that). She likes it. I like it. I might even try to write a pattern (but don’t get your hopes up, it won’t be a patch on an Attic one!).

Other then the random crochet item making I've mostly been baking around here, but not cakes for a change. I've really been getting excited about bread making this week (sad, I know). I have tried baking bread in the past but it's always been a bit of a disappointment. So what's a girl to do when something isn't going as it should? Why, read a book on it, of course! A little trip to the local library while Grace was at dance class yielded a copy of this book, which is very informative and has some great recipes. Clearly the problem in the past was that I didn't quite understand the science of it. I'm a scientist at heart and once I'd gotten my head round the processes that are going on in that yeasty-smelling floury mixture things just made sense to me. So now instead of the usual almost flat and completely yeasty tasting disasters that I normally produce, we get this:



Deliciously yummy bloomer loaves. And you know what, they taste goooooood. I forsee much more breadmaking in my future. Of course I'd have to give up work and bake full time if I intended never to buy shop bought bread again - no sooner have I baked these than they're already half way through being eaten!

On a last note, I haven't forgotten about these. They're a work in progress. More about that next post. Talking of which. Next post. Could be exciting. Can you count?? Google dashboard can and it's telling me exciting things......

TTFN

An Eye Opener

My seaside swap partner (and swap organiser) Rachel has a great blog over here at Contented. (She's also just had a birthday - HAPPY BIRTHDAY RACHEL).

She also runs another blog with her friend Emma called "That Little Bit Greener" which aims to share information and ideas amongst the blogland community about what we can all do to make our lives that little bit greener, to lessen the impact we have on our environment and to reduce our carbon footprint a little.

This last Wednesday over at TLBG where was a post about a project called "Morsbags". Set up by a lady in London (Claire Morsman), it's a project that aims to get people sewing resuable shopping bags from recycled sources (old duvet covers, curtains, clothing etc) and handing them to out free to people (in front of supermarkets, in shopping centres etc) in an effort to get them to use the resuable bag instead of plastic bags.

Now, I have to confess at this point that whilst I have quite a few shop bought resuable bags I am AWFUL at remembering to use them. Shockingly bad infact. I almost never remember to take them with me, or if I do they end up getting left in the boot while I do the shopping so I end up with another pile of plastic bags (which lets face it are crappy whichever way you look at them).

After I'd read the post on TLBG on Wednesday I wandered over to Morsbags.com for a peek. Oh my. What an eye opener that was. Obviously I was aware that plastic bags had a detrimental impact on the environment, but some of the information on there just blew me away.

This film particularly:



struck a chord with me. Just awful.

Then I read this article. I've posted a link, but I warn you that the photographs particularly are not for the faint-hearted. One particular photograph (the one of the turtle on the second page if you're brave enough to look - but don't say I didn't warn you) just plain broke my heart.

The core of the issues is this. Plastic bags are made from petroleum based plastic. They aren't biodegradable (at least probably not in our lifetime!). When they get into the sea then marine life mistake them for food and ingest them and can't digest them. When the bags do breakdown they only break into smaller pieces, these microscopic pieces of plastic are swallowed by plankton eating marine life like whales.

On Friday I popped into a local charity shop where I found this rather lovely Cath Kidson-esque duvet cover for the princely sum of £2.50.

It's destined to be my first round of morsbags. The website encourages people to set up "pods" where people get to gether to sew up bags to make it social event. As I'm just starting out I'm going to be a solopodist - unless any of my blog readers would like to join me in a "cyber-pod".

The whole thing has certainly had an impact on my already. I forgot to take bags to the supermarket again last night (I really need to practice making it a habit!) but I ended up only using one bag (for all the small bits I'd bought) - the rest I put directly into the trolley and then into car one at a time. Not perfect, but a start. Once I have some morsbags on the go hopefully I'll never need to use another plastic bag again.

TTFN

Some Small Miracle.

A miracle occurred in this house last night. Not a huge miracle. Lives were not saved. Disasters were not averted. Wars were not won. What did happen was this:

I COMPLETED AN ONLINE SCRAPBOOKING CLASS!

Yup. My Learn Something New Everyday Album. All done. Finito. Completo.

After taking countless number of Shimelle's classes and not making it to the end of them I'm completely ecstatic that I've actually managed to accomplish this.

You've seen up to Day 22, so here's the rest:

September 23rd

The age old lesson I that I only ever "almost" learn.

September 24th



THE most hectic week of the year for me. Horrifically busy, but it still only lasted a week.

September 25th



Too many Fridays in a row in work meant no time for housework to get done.

September 26th



A little jaunt over th'pennines for some scrapping time with Miss Louise.

September 27th



Horrible light-headed, nauseous feeling all morning - I just had to go back to bed.

September 28th



For all I'm organised at work, when it goes down to the wire I'm definitely a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of girl.

September 29th



We do love a bit of Dr Seuss in our house. Reading "Did I ever tell you how lucky you are?" to Grace when this paragraph really jumped out at me. A little reminder in these times that there's always someone worse off than you:

It's a troublesome world. All the people who're in it
are troubled with troubles almost every minute.
You ought to be thankful, a whole heaping lot,
for the places and people you're lucky you're not.

September 30th



It might be finished, but it certainly wasn't finished "on time". Ah well.

End Page



Just a few little words to round up the album. Here's the finished thing:



Hurrah to actually finishing things. There may be hope for me yet.

----------------------------------------------------

This morning was Miss Grace's first school assembly (that is the first assembly held by her class where they've all actually had to stand up and speak). The theme was friendship and they all had a line to read about what friends do for them and about a little recipe for friendship. Grace also had the extra task of standing at the front with one of her classmates and putting "ingredients" for the recipe into a big bowl. She read her line beautifully and handled the extra responsibilty really well. At the end they were allowed to come over and see us before they went back to class she when I told her how well she'd done and how proud I was she cried! Poor little love! I think she was a bit over-emotional with the nerves and the build up to it etc. When I asked her what was wrong she said "I've got that lumpy thing happening in my throat and I can't stop it!" I just love how they can put into words so easily what I think adults would have trouble describing. I knew exactly what she meant by that. We trundled off to the toilets to get some tissue paper and some cuddles and nose blows later all was well with the work. I'm so proud of my little girl.

Just time for me to have a cup of tea and a biscuit before I pick Egg up from nursery and then we take Mum and Dad to the airport while they jet off to meet their cruise ship in Palma. Lucky sods! There's barely a day goes by when I don't see my parents (being that they live next door) and it's so strange for me (and the kids) when they go on holiday. I miss them terribly, especially Mum. They're both really in need of a holiday to recharge their batteries though so I will keep everything crossed for calm seas and good weather (and no pirates, Egg is very worried that pirates will get his Nanny!) and a safe and speedy return.

TTFN

Rain, Rain Go Away.....

OMG. How rainy is it here today? Soooooooo wet and overcast and grey and miserable. Definitely the most grisly weather day we've had for a long time. I've been listening to it bouncing down all morning out the office window (being thankful that I'm in here and not outside!). This was the view from my window this morning. A grey day indeed.

 

Before I start waffling, can I just ask you to excuse the [scanned] thing if it appears in the post title. I'm emailing this blog post in from work (being that I still can't post properly from work and probably won't ever be able to thanks to our IT department and their total knobbling of blogger access. Grrrrr). That's played a part in my big lack of blogging lately (just not getting to blog in the day when I used to) so I've decided that I must bite the proverbial bullet and deal with the lack of functionality (editing, photo uploading etc) that comes with blogging by email lest I succumb to their neferious plan and never blog again. The other option was to switch my blog over to typepad but for the moment that's not going to happen because a) I don't want to pay for my blogging service and b) I can't be arsed transferring everything over to another blog platform! Lazy tight-arsed blogger, that's me :P

 

So, what's been going on in cookieland? Well, despite Ewan giving us the big "I can't walk Mummy" fright a couple of weeks ago he's been absolutely fine, running around, jumping etc. Little tinker. We're going to see the orthopedic specialist next week (13th) so hopefully they will clarify what this "shadow" on his X-ray is and it won't be anything serious.

 

Grace has been settling in really well into Year 1. She completely loves her new teacher (a guy, which is quite unusual for Year 1 teacher) and is enjoying doing more maths and getting more books to read. She has a reading to do in their first school assembly on Thursday (which I will actually get to see for once as I have Thursday booked off to take my parts to the airport while they jet off for their mediterranean cruise (lucky so and so's!)).

 

The Saturday before last I had a fabulous day escaping to a crop with my lovely bloggy buddy Louise (see, no functionality, normally I'd do that clickable link thing so you knew which Lou I was talking about! Grrrr IT Services, you evil, cruel people!). It was great to see Lou for a whole day without the company of our small people. There was lots of chatting, lots of coffee drinking and a surprisingly large amount of scrapping (none of which has yet been photographed to upload. I will do that. At some point)).

 

I'm nearly almost completely finished with my LSNED album. I have two pages to complete (they're all set to go, just some cutting and sticking to do) and a closing page to complete. I'm hoping to get to those this evening, so I will have *shock horror* actually managed to complete a Shimelle class! I'm thinking about tackling the Journal Your Christmas class again this year (as an alumni I get to take part for free and Louise is taking part for the first time this year) so once LSNED is out of the way I will start looking into album sizes/supplies etc for that one. It is only 80 days till Christmas you know, which means only 56 days until JYC starts. Scary!

 

Fortunately I'm being disgustingly organised this year and have already purchased 7 Christmas presents. Woo hoo! Who knows, I might actually get around to sending cards this year. D'ya think?

 

Right. That's all the catch up from me. Hopefully there will be more regular (albeit slightly formatting-limited) blog posts now I've embraced the emailness.

 

TTFN

 

Catch ups, Construction and Cabbages

I am shamelessly stealing this from Louise. Sorry Lou!



I've been (miraculously) keeping up with my daily layouts for the LSNED class, but been shockingly bad at blogging them. So here's Sept 11th through 22nd (in a handy little slideshow).

In other non-LSNED related Cookie news, my baby isn't a baby anymore!! Ewan turned a big 3 on Tuesday amidst much presenty, birthday cakey goodness. There was a distinct "Construction" theme to his present this year - he's all about the tools at the moment and he's been happily constructing kiddie meccano models in his Bob The Builder outfit. I can't believe that he's 3 already, it doesn't seem like two minutes since Lou, Rach and I were sitting round with our big ol'preggie bellies bemoaning the ridiculous heat of the summer of 2006. How time flies.



Here's the birthday boy showing off some of his presents:

Last weekend (as you can tell from the LSNED pages) was a pretty busy one. I got an unexpected invitation on Saturday to go with my Mum to watch Great Britain Versus Poland in the Davies Cup Tennis Championship which was being held in Liverpool. I've never watched live tennis before (only ever on the TV) and it's a very different experience in the flesh. I thoroughly enjoyed it though (even if we did get walloped by Poland 3 sets to 1!!). I'd definitley look at doing something like that again.



More sporty activity on Sunday but this time we were the ones to be getting the exercise. You'll recall that Kendo and I started a running plan earlier in the year. One of the things we did as part of that to spur us on was to sign up for our first 5K race. The Antrobus Cabbage Canter. The race took place Sunday and I'm proud to say we made it round in 37 minutes (and 8 seconds). I've no doubt Kendo would have made it round more quickly if he hadn't have had to keep pace with me and spur me along when I had a couple of walking breaks (thanks for sticking with me Mr K! :)) but we crossed the line together and proudly collected our T-shirts, medals and cabbages (half of which Kendo ate on his sunday roast later that day!). He's already picking a 10K for the next race. My calf muscles object. Strenously.

Other than that, nothing much has happened in Cookie land. Work is insanely busy with resitting students from last year and this years intake about to arrive tomorrow and I haven't managed to do anything crafty other than my LSNED pages. I'm escaping the madness of our house on Saturday to head over to see Miss Lou and go to her local scrapbooking crop. A whole day of non-kidding interrupted, dedicated scrapping time. I CAN'T WAIT!! Just need to decide how much of my stash to pack!! It could take a while.



TTFN