Showing posts with label Cake. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cake. Show all posts

13/05/2012

Slow progress and baking

Good afternoon all,

Life has been so busy lately.  Things have been busy at work and then I come home and things are busy here too.  One day last week I pulled 11.5 hours at work and them came home to clean my carpets.

Frankly, I live the life of an international movie star.

So, we've made a tiny bit of progress at the in-laws.  We managed some time there yesterday to:

- Remove an inexplicable plank glued, screwed and no-nails'ed to the ceiling
-Replace above with a made-from-scratch ceiling rose
-Painted all walls in the bedroom
-Painted the bedroom door (including the edge...more on that to come!)
-Re hung the wonky 'kitchen' cabinet
-Got a coat of chalkboard paint on said cabinets

All in all, about an 8 hour day there.  On the plus side, we sent the estate agent pictures of the house and asked if they wanted us to paint it back white.  They asked us to leave it as it is, and also put the rent up £20 a month for the next tenants.   We were due to have 3 viewings last Friday, but the first lot took it in a heartbeat, so no more strangers traipsing through the house.  It is already starting to feel like someone elses house, though.  Anyway, you're just here for the pictures.

Depressingly, the colour on the walls IS a different colour to that on the cupboard doors, but in this pic it looks pretty much the same.

Still, this wall was dark grey and now it's dove, and you can just about see the pink on the edge of the door there.  Little touches like this make me happy.


Pink door edge up close.  (FYI the colour is pin-up pink from Crown Vintage, and the walls are our old staple, Chic Shadow Once, by Dulux)


There was so much work involved in getting this ceiling rose up.  The bizarre plank that preceded it pulled up pulled down a bunch of the wallpaper (yes, wallpaper) when we pulled it down, and the no nails had seeped out and turned everything brown.  We managed to a. find some scraps of wallpaper, b. Pattern match them and c. paste them up with wallpaper paste.  I then painted the new paper and a bit of the old white, which highlighted the fact that the ceiling wasn't white after all.  Meanwhile, the Mr set about finding a suitable sized piece of wood and cutting it into a circle and routing a nice pattern into the edges.  Once the ceiling is fully dry we'll screw it up tightly and fill and cover the screwholes.  All the electrical gubbins is on the underside, so there should be no need to take it down again.



And here's the newly-straightened cabinetry (and cameo from the Mr) drying after it's first coat of magnetic chalkboard paint.  Long way to go in there yet... As you can see, the tiles go to the bottom of the cabinets.  This included the one that was lower than the others, so theres a few missing tiles where the cabinet used to be.  Luckily my in-laws never throw ANYTHING away (like wallpaper used to cover a ceiling 15 years ago...) so there are more tiles around.  After chipping off the existing half tiles, the wall is now ready for some new tiles.


And Baking!

I went to a lovely BBQ today and got burned to a crisp despite wearing high factor sunscreen.  I baked a lemon drizzle cake, but didn't have a chance to take any pictures before we left, so I'm afraid the pictures were taken in the car.





Tune in next time for more exciting developments!


26/04/2012

Smarties Cake and Friends...

Good evening,

I've spent the last two evenings baking my arse off in the name of charity.  To raise money for my companies charities we often hold bake sales.  These rather inoffensive events can easily turn into a competitive 'Great British Bake Off' if you're not careful.  Ask anyone who knows me, they'll tell you I'm not famed for being careful.  So, I baked a cake I've seen over on the Pinterest.  I present...

The Chocolate Smarties KitKat cake (Hell Yes).



In all fairness, it was a pretty easy cake to make, although I never want to unwrap another KitKat, ever again.  It's basically a chocolate sponge, covered in buttercream, with KitKats stuck to the outside and Smarties poured on top.  Simple, but effective.  This cake is going to be raffled at the bake sale, so it had to be robust enough to stand a journey both IN and OUT of work again.


I also baked a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, a regular chocolate cake, some vanilla cupcakes, a ginger cake aaaaaaaand a lemon drizzle cake.  What can I say?  I like to bake.





More epic Smarties cake... Actually, I think I'll dedicate this to my Blog Stalker.  You know who you are ;-)


And on that rather delicious note, I shall leave you!  I'll try and get some pictures of the cake trolley tomorrow laden with goodies, including homemade flapjacks, made by someone else, but from my secret recipe! (FYI, the secret is cornflakes.  Shhhhh!)





08/10/2011

Baby Shower!

Good Evening All!

I've just finish clearing away after a very successful baby shower.  Unfortunately this is going to be another cake-related post.  I will get back to the house at some point, I promise...

So,  Remember the chocolate ombre cake I made a few weeks back?  Well that was a practice cake for the baby shower.  I made a pink one this time and made the 'roses' a little smaller, and I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.  (I also made cake pops, sausage rolls, quiche and biscuits...)







Sorry the pictures aren't that great but the lighting kinda sucked and people were arriving whilst I was trying to put it together!  It was great fun though, and I think my Sis had a really ace time!

17/09/2011

Carrot Cake!

Good Morning!

I seem to be going through a 'baking' phase at the moment (never mind that it's lasted about 6 years...)  Until we get the dining room and hallway up to scratch, I present my carrot cake.  This recipe is taken from the Hummingbird Bakery book, and is the carrot cake with 1/3 quantity cream cheese frosting.





Enjoy!

11/09/2011

Chocolate Ombre Cake!

Hello everyone!



I've had so much going on lately!  We've repainted our hall, stairs and landing, but this is still only half a job as we have two sets of stairs and have left the biggest wall white.  Here's an idea of the progress we've made...

It's really difficult to photograph as when the doors are closed, the only light comes from a skylight above the stairs.  Hopefully I'll have got the hang of it by the time the painting's done...

Onto the subject of the post then...Chocolate Ombre cake!  I've been feeding my cake addiction (No pun intende...OK. Pun intended) on Pinterest when I started coming across the pink swirly ombre cake, from glorioustreats.blogspot.com.  I am a chocoholic and started looking for a chocolate version.  Unable to find one, I made my very own...

On the inside I used two cake recipes-Lady Mary Berry's All-In-One sponge,  and the Brooklyn Blackout cake recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook.  I made one layer of chocolate cake, one layer of vanilla sponge, and two mixed layers so that the ombre effect continues inside the cake.

I baked the cakes and then used vanilla butter icing to sandwich and crumb coat the layers.


From there I mixed up the butter icing (some chocolate and vanilla, again from the hummingbird cookbook) and mixed some together to get graduating shades.  Then I filled up my piping bag and attached an open star nozzle and had at the cake with swirls!

Hooray for cake!  All ready for my dad's birthday party tomorrow...