A Domino Effect

As part of its fund-raising campaign for better and more affordable housing, the Shelter charity does an annual Spring event called ‘Cake Time’ (foams at mouth), where you basically bake a bunch of scrummy cakes and flog ‘em to friends, family, colleagues or complete strangers, in exchange for donations to Shelter.

A poster for Cake Time initially caught my eye in a Shelter shop window last year because of its cute and quirky advertising (glamorous fifties housewives, retro cake stands and pretty bunting ahoy – yay!).  I’d been hankering after a fun and easy way to raise money for a charity for a while and this seemed like the perfect thing, given my enduring and unqualified love for all things home-made.

So my friend Chloë and I hosted a Cake Time party at work last March which went down an absolute storm (give some people cake and they honestly will love you forever).  We raised around £65, of which I was rather proud, given the fact that my office is by most accounts miniscule.  And yes I did also take that princely return as reflective of the quality of the confection on offer!

I mention all this because I was contacted by Shelter earlier today about doing another event this year.  I agreed immediately, and have been avidly thinking of recipes ever since!  I might even expand this time and do some Del and Rodney-style flogging to friends and family as well as colleagues.

So if you enjoy baking and are keen to do a little bit for ol’ charidee, Cake Time is a totally brilliant way to get people together and have a bit of calorific and tasty fun while also raising some much-needed and hugely-appreciated cash for an extremely worthy cause.  You can register for your free Cake Time pack, which includes posters, stickers, recipes and a collection box here.  Oh and you get a nice certificate when you send your collected funds off to Shelter.

Job done!

Image above from Flickr: chotda.

If anyone fancies a spot of the old baking in the near future, might I suggest lemon drizzle cake…

I made one last night for today’s work coffee morning and I have to say that for such a tasty cake it’s absurdly cheap and easy to put together.  I used the BBC good food recipe which you can find here (a much more involved, but seriously tempting, recipe can be found here).  Basically, all you need for the simple version is flour, butter, sugar, eggs and lemons – easy, inexpensive and classic!

The sponge might, depending on your oven, need more than 45-50 minutes – mine certainly did, and I used the juice of three lemons (including the one I stripped for its rind) for the drizzle topping as opposed to the 11/2 suggested in the recipe I used.  The result is a much tangier lemony taste…delicious.

Image available courtesy of Flickr: alasam.

Readers may be interested to note that I’ve now reached the conclusion that Loopy Lorna’s tearoom on Morningside Road (http://www.loopylornas.com/da/86375) does THE finest Victoria Sponge I’ve ever tasted.

It is slightly pricey at circa £3.50 per slab but my oh my is the expense justified by the taste sensation that kicks off with every bite.  The sponge is light but deliciously moist – completely perfect in texture – and the butter icing and home-made jam that hold the thing together are both delicious and lathered on generously (nothing worse than a decent sponge with a stingy jam/icing quotient now is there?).

All in all LL’s VS constitutes one of the most pleasurable cake experiences I’ve ever had.  Washes down perfectly with a delicate china cup of delicious breakfast tea or a mug brimming with frothy latte.

*Image above courtesy of Flickr: wwilliamm – http://www.flickr.com/photos/benidormone/

Here’s a sample of the bread I’ve been making since Christmas Day.  I have been absolutely astounded as to how very simple this thing is to work – you really do just throw in your ingredients, switch it on and let the magic happen.

The most important thing is to make sure the measurements are perfect – there’s no space for a slosh of this and a dash of that as there is with cooking.  The accompanying booklet refers to breadmaking as a science as opposed to an art, and I imagine it’s pretty easy to bugger it up royally by making only the tiniest of mistakes.

But get those right and you really, REALLY can’t go wrong!  You simply choose the appropriate setting, select the weight of bread you want and how dark you want the crust to be (!!).  It beeps when it’s done, although your nose will be able to measure the progress as it happens – the smell is just wonderful.

Today’s offering is raisin and cinnamon – toast it, butter it, enjoy it!

Well I hope everyone had a very Happy Christmas of eating, drinking, being merry and binging on Christmas TV!  I certainly did – I even watched Eastenders last night which is definitely something I haven’t done since my student days.

A very generous Santa bestowed a breadmaker upon me this year (a breadmaker!!).  As I type this I’m waiting expectantly for my first loaf – it’s sort of like how I imagine waiting for your first child to be born feels.  Excitement mixed with fear and a dread that it won’t work out (sorry, a better analogy escapes me).  Hopefully I’ll master the art, or the science, as it appears to be better termed, relatively quickly and thereby forever be exonerated from buying crappy supermarket breads at inflated prices.  I bet it will taste delicious too.

Alongside my carb-producing mean machine I received a book entitled ‘Less is More’ by Cecile Andrews and Wanda Urbanska (New Society Publishers, 2009).  The tagline reads ‘embracing simplicity for a healthy planet, a caring economy and lasting happiness’, and it contains a collection of essays by people who write regularly about simple living.  It appears to come from a similar background to ‘All Consuming’ by Neal Lawson, which I read and couldn’t put down so it remains to be seen if this latest offering has the same effect.  I also received a hand-knitted scarf from my Mum which is a triumph and will match the hat she did for me last year – she really is a demon with those knitting needles!

But the prize for greatest gift of the year has to go to Laurence who, bearing in mind our many, many discussions about the evils of consumerism and pointless ‘thing’ buying presented me with what he termed an ‘experience-based’ gift – a home-made food hamper, bursting at the seams with cheeses, pates, oatcakes, chocolates, wine and tangerines.  I’m almost physically chomping at the bit to get back to Edinburgh to dive into it!  He found an old wicker basket in a charity shop and dressed it up with a smattering of Christmas tree decorations – it really is an eye-pleaser!  So don’t expect a post on Wednesday/Thursday of next week avid readers, for I will be partaking in the most shameless display of gastronomic over-indulgence of my 23 years to date, from which I’m certain I will need some time to recover! :0)

***live update: my bread is taking shape!!!***

On a more thrifty note, I saved the better bits of wrapping paper from mine, and other peoples’, presents yesterday, and I also kept as many gift bags as I thought I could get away with.  I’m going back to uni next September, so the more savings I can make on these tiny little things now, the better off I will be on my return to skintsville (which I have to say, I’m actually looking forward to)!  Every little does help, after all.