The Queen of Hearts

The Queen of Hearts she made some tarts all on a summer's day;

The Knave of Hearts he stole the tarts and took them clean away.

The King of Hearts called for the tarts and beat the Knave full sore;

The Knave of Hearts brought back the tarts and vowed he'd steal no more.

Unfortunately in this Queen's kitchen there were no tarts for the Knave to steal since the Queen dropped the tarts when taking them out of the oven and the jam went all over the floor, her oven glove, her apron.....

It was a right Royal mess and the only place for the tarts was the bin. 

The Knave was very sad.

The End.

Silicone bakeware - good or bad?

I'm in two minds about this one. I've had some silicone cupcake cases for a while now and generally they seem to work quite well, although they do create more washing up. But recently I've been given a silicone loaf tin...

I've used it once before and it seemed ok, so today I thought I'd use it to bake some teabread in and save myself having to line my normal loaf tin. Unfortunately the results were less successful - it seems the sides of the silicone 'tin' weren't strong enough to withstand the expansion of the teabread and so I have been left with a bulging monstrosity...

We haven't eaten any yet but I'm hoping it tastes better than it looks and in future I will either have to find a way to support the sides of the silicone 'tin' or just stick to my normal tin!

Baking Blues

Normally I find that baking banishes the blues, but yesterday it just wasn't doing it for me and I ended up feeling quite depressed by the end. I was trying out a new brownie recipe from the Lorraine Pascale cookbook that a friend gave me a couple of months ago and things didn't get off to a great start. Or actually it did get off to a grate start as I managed to grate my thumb whilst trying to grate chocolate - fortunately no skin got mixed in with the chocolate but lots of blood started pouring out of my thumb so I had to dash upstairs to find a plaster. Bleeding stemmed I decided to chop the chocolate instead, an acceptable alternative according to the recipe. Mini-disaster no.2 was when I realised that I didn't have the right type of sugar - I had practically every other possible type of sugar in the cupboards but no light brown soft sugar... Typical! I compromised on a mix of light brown muscavado and soft dark brown sugar. Finally I got the brownies in the oven but I may not have had the oven at the right temperature initially as they took about 15 minutes longer than stated in the book to cook and even then the final product was possibly a little gooey even for brownies. Not to mention the fact that they didn't look much like the picture - it appears I may not have pushed the cookies you had to spread on top and push into the mix, in quite far enough.

Whilst the brownies were baking I thought I'd also whip up a quick batch of cupcakes as I wasn't sure whether our friend who was coming round for tea liked chocolate or not. It wasn't my best idea, possibly because I was rushing and overfilled the cases but the cupcakes didn't rise properly and just splatted out over the sides of the cases. They were rescued by slicing the tops off and making them into butterfly cakes!

So after all that effort I was left slight downhearted by my less than perfect results. Fortunately though looks aren't everything and my tasting panel (Mr W and our friend) were happy with the results, which finally banished my blues!

Retro puds

Ashamed as I am to admit it I'm quite a fan of retro food - one of my favourite starter choices is prawn cocktail, so when I spotted a cherry cheesecake recipe in the 'retro rapido' section of my Nigella Express cookbook I decided to give it a try. Unfortunately though Nigella was quite adamant that you shouldn't use cherry pie filling - this was quite a surprise given some of the other ingredients she's not ashamed to use - and as I couldn't find the alternative she suggested, a pure fruit conserve - the shops had every other flavour but cherry - I decided to scrap that idea and use my gran's recipe instead.

This is a recipe that I've had stuck in my recipe book for a while but have never quite got round to making, so what better time than to make it for the first time when you have guests for lunch?! Fortunately it was all quite simple, even though it had to be baked in the oven a couple of times and after the second time I had to give my Mum a quick call to see how set it was supposed to be at this stage as it seemed quite wobbly. One advantage of family recipes is that you can do this! It clearly tasted ok too as six of us managed to pretty much demolish a pud that I have been since told should serve about 10 people in one sitting!

Rock and pop

I've had a bit of a busy day yesterday - geocaching, gym, haircut and then going out to our triathlon club annual dinner in the evening, but knowing that we might not eat until quite late I wanted to have some cake in the house so that we could have a cup of tea and piece of cake late afternoon to keep us going. A Victoria sponge would have been nice, but didn't think I'd have time for that. Second choice was scones but we don't have any strawberry jam in the house and much as I tried I couldn't get my head around scones with any other flavour jam. No cream would be just about ok, but plum or cherry jam on scones would just be odd, same as I'd only ever countenance using raspberry jam in a Victoria sponge. Yes, I am quite possibly mad...

Cupcakes are my usual fail-safe when I want something quick but I wanted something different and so I opted for rock cakes - crumbly mounds of cake filled with a generous handful of dried fruit and topped with a sprinkling of crunchy sugar. Made in the half an hour or so that I had spare between lunch and showering before my haircut whilst bopping round the kitchen to a generous portion of the sort of cheesy pop that I'm only allowed to listen to whilst Mr W is out. My perfect afternoon!

Here is a pre- and post- oven shot of the cakes...

As a footnote, I am still reeling in astoundment at the comment from the lady baker on 'Turn Back Time - The High Street' that she didn't like making cakes - I don't understand, what is there not to like about the joy of producing something so yummy to eat?

Is it really baking?

I think I may be a baking snob...I haven't posted on this blog for ages but this advert in today's paper inspired me and it wasn't in a good way!

It's an advert for a Delia Christmas cake in a packet where all of the ingredients are measured out for you and you just have to combine them and cook it, which to me that is just wrong on so many levels...

Firstly it's rather cheating - I mean part of the skill of making a cake is getting the measurements correct. I guess you could argue that it's convenient if you don't usually bake cakes and don't want to specially buy lots of fancy ingredients. But if I'm honest, are cake ingredients really that fancy? I mean surely things like flour, sugar, butter and eggs are a standard store-cupboard ingredient? True you may not already have dried fruit but a Christmas cake uses a lot of it anyway and the leftovers can always be used to make more cakes or as a healthy snack. As for the spices, yes you only use a little bit in the cake but again they keep for ages and can be used to add a bit of zing to a crumble topping or in more cakes. So I reckon that claiming you don't want to waste ingredients is a somewhat lame excuse for being too lazy to measure it out yourself.

There's also the argument that it would be quicker, but I assume all the bits are individually packaged so by the time you've opened all of those you could probably have measured everything yourself anyway. The real time-saver would be a pre-lined cake tin to bake it in! And of course there is all the additional packaging that this must entail...

Finally the price - the pack costs a tenner and although I'm very anti- buying ready-made cakes, to be honest for that amount of money I'd want a finished cake not a bake-your-own job. Plus I wonder whether the pack includes all the perishable ingredients like eggs and butter, and what about the marizpan and icing, are they included or is there another pack for that?

Yes, whilst the advert is all glossy and sounds good, I think I will be sticking the more traditional method of bake-your-own cakes, although this year we're having Christmas at my parents and my godmother is bringing the cake so there'll be no cake-baking at all for me.

In a jam

I do like homemade jam, if only there wasn't so much stirring involved...

Whilst in town on Saturday afternoon I spotted strawberries on sale for a pound a punnet and on a whim decided to buy some to make jam. In an effort to ensure that the jam would set I bought jam sugar with pectin added and followed the recipe on the back of the packet to the letter, well more or less. I may have skimped slightly on the continually stirring that was requested but amazingly it all worked out okay and I ended up with four and a half jars of yummy strawberry jam. It even set without me having to faff about putting saucers in the freezer in order to test it. I still can't the fruit to be evenly distributed through the jar though - maybe that's down to lack to stirring!

Never mind the jam still tastes good on bagels, toast, scones with clotted cream...

Types of baking

I have recently discovered that I adopt different styles of baking dependent on circumstance and my mood. I've already blogged about "replacement baking" when I used baking as an excuse not to run in the rain and then the other weekend I started off with "preparedness baking", followed by "emergency baking" when the prepared cakes got used for an alternative purpose.

The story went as follows: it was Mother's Day weekend and I'd invited my in-laws for Sunday lunch, but thinking they were likely to stay for some tea in the afternoon I decided to be organised and make some cake on Friday evening. I opted for orange fairy cakes, a nice simple recipe - first time I'd made it with orange although I've made it using lemon in the past - and once I'd finished icing them and topped them off with little sugar flowers, they looked most appropriate for a Mother's Day tea I thought!

But then Saturday morning came and we had a phone call from our friends and their three children saying they were in the area and so perhaps they could pop in to say 'hello'. Always lovely to catch-up with friends, but not so good on the organised cake front since these are the friends from where the name 'zoecakes' originated and so it would have been very poor form not to share my latest creations with them. There was no time for baking pre-visit since we had gym plans (the cakes don't work themselves off you know!) and so the MD cakes were brought out. Happily they went down very well, but then the rest of my afternoon was spent in "emergency baking" mode - I opted to make Rock Cakes for a change, as it seemed a little dull to be making the same cakes twice in as many days, not to mention the fact that I didn't have any more oranges. Can't really go wrong with Rock Cakes and so my good daughter-in-law halo remained intact by the end of Sunday afternoon, other than of course the geocaching scuffles with my father-in-law after lunch, but that's a whole other story...

Foreign food

This weekend Mr Bad Wabbit and I are going to Barcelona - Mr Wabbit will be running his seventh marathon, as mentioned once or twice in his recent blog postings, and I will be sampling some Spanish hospitality, oops sorry I mean cheering him from the sidelines. Actually I will be doing both and I am understandably quite excited about the prospect - always nice to be able to see your hubby achieving his goals and I do enjoy eating!

Whilst Spain is not exactly renowned for it cakes, à la this blog, I'd probably need to go to a French patisserie for that, I am rather fond of tapas and sangria. It's tricky to pick a favourite dish, although chorizo in red wine is always a winner in the Wabbit household and for me spanish omelette evokes memories of when I worked in Spain several years ago. Based in an office full of Spaniards I'd made an English friend when out for a walk one evening as I'd spotted his English newspaper and wanted to know where I could get one for myself - I never did buy my own paper in the end as he generously offered to give me his once he'd finished it. So we established a habit of meeting after work for him to pass on his paper and to share a beer in a local cafe which was always served with a pincho of tortilla de patatas. Since then I have often tried to make Spanish omelette, but I've never managed to make it as light and fluffy as the ones I had then.

The different food tastes around the world never fail to amaze me - on a work trip to Houston last year we were taken to a restaurant that specialized in chicken-fried steak! It did also serve the more well-knowned option of fried chicken, but I thought 'when in Rome' and opted for the steak... I wouldn't want to criticise other people's choice of food but for me it was just bizarre and seemed to be a waste of a good piece of steak, so it won't be gaining a place on my top ten list of favourite foods. And even worse I was so full after all the batter on my steak, that I had no room for pudding!

Replacement baking

I was supposed to be going for a run this morning but it got cancelled due to rain and so I baked instead. I did feel rather guilty about replacing a healthy activity with an activity that created something rather less healthy, but then I looked on Facebook and saw that I wasn't the only runner who'd turned to baking as a replacement for running. It seems that we were all cooking up treats rather than pounding the streets in the rain...

This morning I opted to make a nice easy carrot cake - as described in "Too many cookbooks spoil the broth", although fortunately I had no problems finding the recipe this morning as I've been thinking about making carrot cake for at least the last week and so the recipe has been sitting on my recipe stand in the kitchen since then. I was also on my second set of carrots bought for the recipe as the first lot got eaten for dinner last weekend. It was nice to get back in the kitchen to make a sweet treat, as recently I've only had time for cooking dinner and no time for cakes. Similarly I haven't had any time for blogging either, although I confess that the blogging has suffered more than the cake-making - I do after all have a husband to feed and cakes generally win over words!

Hummingbird at home

A couple of weeks ago a friend gave me a copy of the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook and since then I have been looking for an excuse (and the time) to try out some of the recipes. Well the time hasn't really materialised but it being Mr W's birthday today provided the ideal opportunity for me to dust off my apron and whip up some cupcakes as a birthday treat for him last night.

I had prepared well, buying the right size eggs, full fat milk and taking the unsalted butter out of the fridge to soften prior to going to Brownies. However things started to unravel slightly as I was carefully measuring out the ingredients and realised that I was a bit short of cocoa powder. Not a lot I could do about that at 8.30pm on a Tuesday night with limited time to bake the cakes in secret before Stephen got back from running club and so I carried on regardless. After some gentle whisking the mixture was ready for transferring into the cupcake cases - I was a little surprised at how runny it was and there didn't seem to be enough to fill the cases to the specified level, but I refrained from panicking and instead put the tray in the oven. 20 minutes or so later they were done and didn't look too bad, even if I say so myself.

I then left the cakes to cool, persuaded Mr W on his return from running club that upstairs was way better than downstairs and that I definitely wasn't baking, before whipping up the frosting. Vanilla flavoured due to the aforementioned lack of cocoa powder! After five minutes of whisking the frosting as prescribed in the recipe my arms felt quite tired from holding the electric whisk in place (thank goodness I hadn't had to whisk manually!) but the results were worth it - obviously I had to have a little taste before putting it on the cakes, a girl wouldn't want to posion her hubby! A sprinkle of chocolate sprinkles and the cakes were finished - time for bed!

Fast forward to this morning and birthday tea in bed - add a candle to one of the cupcakes, locate matches to light said candle, a little bit of out-of-tune singing and you have one happy birthday boy!

Baking bagels

Mr W has been eating a lot of bagels lately as an extra snack to help get him through the day without ending up totally exhausted and so today I thought I'd see if I could surprise him with some homemade ones....

Well, when I say 'homemade' I actually mean 'homemade with a bit of help from the breadmaker', but the thought was there.

This was the first time that I had ventured beyond the recipes in our breadmaker's User Guide to those in a breadmaker recipe book given to me many moons ago by my godmother. She gave me the book when we mentioned that we were thinking of buying a breadmaker, it took us at least another 2 years to actually buy said breadmaker and its been another 2 years of owning the breadmaker until I've actually been brave enough to try something different!

Things started well - adding ingredients to the mixing bowl in a specified order and selecting the 'dough' option on the breadmaker. A couple of hours later and the dough was ready to be shaped into bagels and these left to prove for 20 minutes. But then came the tricky bit - cooking the bagels in sugary water prior to them going in the oven. As soon as I put the first three in the pan of boiling water the join split and rather than being round like a bagel they instead looked rather like uncooked croissants. Not being one to panic I fished them out of the pan, turned the heat down prior to putting the next batch in and gave the join an extra squeeze together before dropping them in the water. Happily these all stayed semi-round and I gave the ones that split a little help in looking more like a bagel by pinning them together with a cocktail stick. 15 minutes or so in the oven and out came 8 golden bagels - not as uniformly shaped as those from the supermarket, but a taste test later this afternoon showed them to be perfectly edible. Now just got to wait and see what the bagel connoisseur thinks!

Mum's cakes

Everyone's skills have to come from somewhere and I have to say that, although a lot of my cake-baking has been picked up along the way, the definite inspiration for my baking efforts is my Mum. And I was reminded this weekend that I definitely still have a long way to go.

When I was small (and probably even not so small) I can remember there always being cake in the house and in the last couple of years I have been trying to follow this example so that we always have some nice snack to take along to work and keep us going through the morning without having to resort to bought biscuits, snack bars, etc. filled with preservatives, E numbers and who knows what other nasties. However with only two of us in the house I am not a great offerer of choice, so imagine our excitement this weekend whilst visiting my parents to be offered a whole range of sweet treats to choose from to go with our cup of afternoon tea.

Mum had really surpassed herself and we may have even been offered four choices but my eyes had slightly glazed over and I was starting to salivate by the time she got to the Dundee Cake option after hearing about Coffee Sponge Cake and Mars Bar Rice Crispie cakes. 'Well, I shouldn't really as I'm going for a run in a bit' I virtuously proclaimed, 'well, maybe just something small for energy, perhaps a rice crispie cake...' But then out came the gloriously light (well that was my justification for eating it!) coffee cake with layers of butter icing in the middle and on top. Virtue went out of the window and soon I was happily tucking into the coffee cake with everyone else!

Incidentally I did go for my run eventually and I did get try to the Mars Bar Rice Crispie cake later in the weekend but somehow even with a long three day weekend I ran out of time to check out the Dundee Cake...

Cupcakes

I went to The Hummingbird Bakery yesterday. I've been curious about it for a while having read and heard lots about it and so took advantage of a trip to visit a friend in Notting Hill to also visit this infamous cake shop.

I found the shop quite easily nestled amongst the antique shops, jewellery stalls and other quirky shops on Portobello Road and was slightly surprised by its diminutive size. A couple of tables out front for those who want to enjoy their cakes right there and then, and then a small interior with some glass fronted displays showing the days offerings - a few 'specials' and then trays of their 'standard' cupcakes all beautifully iced. I chose a selection of the latter which were quickly boxed up for me to take as a gift for my friend. The store is known for its red cupcakes but I couldn't see any available and to be honest I'm not totally sure if the idea appeals to me or not - I like my cupcakes light in both texture and colour!

Happily my friend suggested that we try some of the cupcakes when I arrived and I can confirm that they tasted as good as they looked. Lovely deep and fluffy sponge cakes topped with a generous swirl of creamy butter icing (I'm sure that I could make cakes just as tasty but my butter icing would definitely let me down) topped with some coloured sprinkles or piles of chocolate vermicelli! What on earth is there not to like?!

Being a 'local' my friend reported that there is always a long queue outside the shop on a Saturday when they walk past having bought their fruit and veg at the market, a fact for which she assures me she is grateful as otherwise it would be all to easy to succumb to the temptations of these wonderfully indulgent treats!

Isn't it just common sense?

So, I've been watching the new show on BBC2, 'Economy Gastronomy', and have realised that maybe I am in a minority when it comes to food and doing the weekly shop. In case you've not seen the show, it features two chefs trying to help a family reduce their large weekly shopping bill but without depleting the quality of the food they are eating, and in some cases improving it! One of the things they advocate is cooking one big meal that can then be transformed into something else on two other days, ok so I don't do that but the other things they proclaim all seem pretty logical and obvious to me...

One, plan what you are going to eat a week in advance. Maybe I'm a bit anal but if you don't know what you're going to eat how to do you know what and how much food to buy? Which leads nicely on to

Two, make a shopping list and only buy what is on your list. Ok, so I don't rigidly stick to the second part of this rule, but if I didn't have list when I went shopping the impulse buys would be far worse and I'd also probably end up forgetting vital ingredients. Actually I sometimes do this anyway when despite the planning I inadvertantly manage to omit a crucial ingredient from my list.

Three, homemade is better and cheaper than ready-made. Surely this is a no-brainer? I'm no expert on ready meals and how long they take to cook but I'm guessing if you don't have a microwave it's around 25-30 minutes. A quick flick through a modern cookery magazine (or even the freebies they hand out in the supermarkets) and you can find countless simple recipes that proclaim to be ready in 15 minutes. Ok, so the reality when you do it in your own kitchen is a little bit longer but you're still only talking the same time as your ready meal takes to cook and surely the satisfaction of eating something freshly prepared easily outweighs the effort involved in preparing it. Homemade cakes and cookies take a bit more effort compared with shop-bought ones, but ultimately they taste better and there is a certain joy in the whole process of mixing the ingredients and then the aroma of baked goods filling your house.

So these three things I've been doing for years - part of the joy of planning what to eat a week ahead means that it gives me time to flick through my magazines and find new recipes to try out meaning we don't eat the same old things all the time. It also enables me to plan combinations of meals to ensure that I'm not wasting food (I'm not perfect at this but I try my best not to let too many things take on a life of their own in the fridge). The shopping list allows me to make a smooth trip around the supermarket without needing to double-back to pick up things I've forgotten, well in theory it does. Inevitably life doesn't run smooth and sometimes that crucial ingredient isn't available and so I have to rapidly re-assess my meal plan and re-trace my steps to collect the appropriate ingredients. And although I love the homemade bit, I'm not religious about it and do buy some ready made items, like pizza and chicken kievs, where the effort involved in making them is too much. Plus, don't tell my mum but even more occasionally I will buy some shop-bought cake, although only things like Battenburg which with its checkboard design I can imagine being a nightmare to make....

Too many cookbooks spoil the broth

Last night I made some carrot cake - a wonderfully simple recipe that basically involves throwing everything into a bowl and mixing it together. Ok, so there are three stages to the throwing everything in - first the sugar, oil and eggs; then the carrot, raisins and orange rind; and finally the flour, bicarb and spices - but even I, champion of effortless baking, wouldn't call that complex. The baking tin has to be lined but there's a cheat's way of doing that and the icing is a straightforward mix of icing sugar and orange juice, which I'm sure makes it healthier than your normal carrot cake with it's traditional cream cheese icing, so all in all it's the perfect recipe.

Well it would be, if only it didn't always take me ages to find the recipe before starting to make it! My collection of cookery books is vast but that's not the problem - if it was in one of those I'm sure I would be able to remember which one of those a recipe I like so much featured in. No, the problem is that it is a recipe I printed off the internet and so is on a scrappy, through use, piece of paper which needless to say gets slipped into one of the many cookery books or even worse into one of the many cookery magazines I've kept for the odd recipe that I've made and liked. I do have a notebook (actually make that 2 notebooks) in which I stick recipes that I've found from various sources but unfortunately it doesn't get updated very often and the carrot cake recipe has never made it into the book - another carrot cake recipe that I don't like has made it in for some inexplicable reason, but the favoured one hasn't! I'm sure last time I made the cake and put the recipe away I actively thought "I must put it somewhere safe so that I will able to find it again easily". Clearly that mantra was a waste of time as the recipe was only located after I'd been through 2 shelves worth of cook books and magazines, which now leads to the question 'just how many cookbooks does 1 girl need and how many is too many?'

Is it worth the effort?

Just done my first baking since starting this blog, well to be precise I am half-way through making some caramel slice, sometimes known as Millionaire's Shortbread, and to be honest starting to thing that in this case it is more trouble than it's worth to make your own. Generally I am a huge advocate of 'homemade' being best but I think there are some things that are best left to someone else to make. Take Battenburg Cake for example - there is not much better to cheer you up when you feel a bit down than the glorious squares of yellow and pink sponge with a strip of marzipan holding them together, but the thought of actually making it myself is quite horrendous. I am a cook who likes to keep things simple - the fewer the ingredients and the less steps involved the better.

Anyway back to my caramel slice, it's one of my favourite cakes and frequently my cake of choice when in coffee shops and faced with an array of treats to choose from, but this is the first time I've ever tried to make it. A quick bit of research in my cookbooks found a recipe that looked fairly simple and only involved ingredients which I had in the cupboard, so when I got home from work tonight off I went. Unfortunately the recipe is in a cookbook produced by my parents' local sailing club and so hasn't been through the scrutiny and review that your standard recipe book recipe would go through, meaning that some of the instructions are a little vague - knead the butter, flour and sugar together (I opted for the easy option of throwing it all in the food processor and hoping for the best) and cook in a medium heat oven (I assumed 180 deg C). However the base seemed to turn out ok despite needing to stay in the oven for much longer than the recipe suggested. But then came the caramel layer - 6 minutes of stirring the recipe said. Hmmph, if only! 20 minutes of stirring, sieving (had a little accident when I didn't stir enough and had too much heat) and 2 dirty saucepans later I finally had something that vaguely looked like caramel. Slapped it on top of the base and now waiting for it to set so that I can add the chocolate layer which goes back to where I started - it all seems like a lot of bother for something that will no doubt be gobbled up in minutes. And I haven't even mentioned the trail of destruction that I've left for Mr Zoecakes to clear up in the kitchen... ;-)

Not my favourite time of the week

So, it's Sunday night, the weekend is almost over and thoughts of the week ahead are looming. But tonight I feel surprisingly mellow - maybe it's the wine we had with dinner, or maybe it's because I've not really acknowledged that it's the end of the weekend yet... However I think it may be because I've just watched 'Coast' - call me a geek but I just love the mix of scientific fact and human interest stories that these programmes entail. Tonight's show went from Whitstable to The Needles on the Isle of Wight passing lots of places that we've been to along the way. It started with a second world war fort in the sea off Whitstable the design of which was recycled for the first oil rigs in the North Sea, then they went to Dover and learnt about the old hovercraft service across the Channel that became financially unviable once duty-free was abolished. There were beach-launched fishing boats and crazy golf in Hastings, an underwater electric railway in Rottingdean (rather disappointingly the train actually ran above the water on stilt-like legs - I had visions of something running along the seabed so you could see all the fish as you travelled along), and finally the story of how the Isle of Wight became an island. All quite fascinating and I'm looking forward to the next episode when they break away from our coastline and visit the Normandy coastline....

The beginning

So I never thought I'd be one to write a blog, but then I thought why not?! Today is my favourite day of the week - Friday, the start of the weekend! The day when I have high expectations of every thing I am going to achieve in the weekend and then as the weekend progresses I realise that there aren't enough hours in it and so rather than doing to boring chores I end up making cakes instead.

There's something very satisfying about making cakes - the mixing of the ingredients, the placing of the cakes in the oven and then the smell when they're almost ready! The best cakes are the simple ones, the ones where you can just throw everything into one bowl without a need to rub fat into flour or melt butter in a pan, etc. No cake baking for me tonight though, just a bit of wine whilst watching an old movie!

Happy days!