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!