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All in One Lemon Cake

February 18, 2009 By

I went to Albion last week for lunch, which was all very nice and lovely, but I found it’s packaged nostalgia bemusing. The little shop attached to it sells all manner of lovely looking ingredients, along with homemade cakes, and when asked if there was a cake I fancied I found myself blurting out “No thanks, I can bake.” I am loathe to pay over £3 for a piece of sponge cake when you can make a whole one for less than that. What happened to rustling up a cake? Shouldn’t we all be doing more of it in these straightened times? (I know, I’m totally preaching to the converted.)

It made me think about the heritage cake. You know the one: it’s that recipe an aunt or your mum, or your gran, or someone else’s gran passed on to you, the kind of cake they would make without even needing to measure things properly because they’d been making it for fifty years.

recipe

This heritage cake came to me by way of my mother-in-law, who in turn had it from her mother. It’s the simplest cake ever, and is perfect when you don’t have the ingredients lying about for a fancy cake. I used to bake a lot when I was 8 or 9, and while my own preference was for chocolate, I think this cake would have done the job too.

Ingredients

6oz Self Raising flour
1tsp baking powder
6oz sugar
6oz marg (you can use butter of course)
3 medium eggs
Grated rind of one lemon
1 tbsp lemon juice

Icing : 1/4lb icing sugar and 2tbsp lemon juice

Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 3/ 170 C/ 150 C fan

Grease, line and grease a cake tin.

Sift the flour and baking powder

Add in all the remaining ingredients

ingredients

Beat until glossy and light

beaten

Pour into the tin and bake for 1 to 1 1/4 hours.

Rest for three minutes in the tin before turning out to cool.

Combine the ingredients for the icing, pour into the cake and leave to set.

cake

What’s your heritage cake?

Filed Under: House, Other Things -

Thrifting

May 25, 2008 By 17 Comments

I have always been envious whenever I’ve seen people posting about finding fantastic things in their local charity shops, which they then take home and fashion into marvellous things. It seemed as if I was doomed not to be able to partake, because the selections in my local charity shops were thin and uninspiring.

Persistence pays though, doesn’t it? And the reward this time was this fantastic 70s single duvet cover, washed and pressed, and with the magnificent price tag of £2. I’d wanted something like this ever since seeing how they could be re-fashioned into fabulous house trousers, or as they are also known, lounge pants.

Even though the week was full of preparations for my holiday (washing, cleaning, shopping for provisions for husband, more washing, finding the suitcases, having friends round for dinner, packing, getting essential prescriptions and contact lenses, yet more washing…) I still managed to find time to trace the pattern, cut the fabric and gradually piece together something approaching trousers…

Actually I love them, although I abandoned the suggestion of making a tie from self fabric, and instead used ribbon. Ribbon is always nice, isn’t it? The contrast of texture and the sheen adds so much.

And apologies for the sideways photo – you can click on it for a larger version, but still sideways. This is what happens when you’re up a hill with a laptop on an intermittent connection and iPhoto dies :)

Filed Under: House, Japanese, WIPs - 17 Comments

Weekends full of busy

April 14, 2008 By 9 Comments

Proof of door

Proof of door! Our friendly family joiner came around at the weekend and fixed up our house so it is fit for visitors again. Who knew so many people would be so picky about privacy? Ok, so the lock isn’t quite finished, being currently secured with some of those red elastic bands that the postman so kindly drops on my doorstep every single day, but since there is an actual door I am beyond carping about small details.

The weekend was exceedingly pleasant, even considering that I walked to Deptford. I don’t know how to explain Deptford to you lovely overseas readers, but it is not what you would call ‘a destination’. But I was surprised, as I often am in London, to find that it isn’t as bad as it is painted out to be. There’s a beautiful church just off the high street, where we sat and contemplated the storm clouds, and a very nice cafe serving homemade soup and tasty salads, as well as a proper market, where I could have bought any amount of cheap zips (but didn’t).

The point of the trip was to visit the sewing machine shop because I have half a mind to invest in a new machine. It wasn’t really a shop. It was a workshop masquerading as a shop, staffed by a very nice man who just wanted to repair and service sewing machines all day. The walls were lined with new and old machines, including a couple of beautiful old singers with foot pedals, and workbenches covered in tools stretched off into the back of the building. It smelled of oil and parts, and was oddly comforting. Unfortunately the machine I am interested in was only in their Maidstone shop, but he’s bringing one up for me and I should ‘come in with some material and give it a good go.’ The sad thing is knowing that it’s little shops like this that are the victims when an area up and comes, so selfishly I hope Deptford stays just the same.

Aside from that, work continues on the blanket, as you can see.

Squares

I have this laid out on the coffee table so that when I sit down to watch an episode of something or other I can pick up a square and do a round. It’s low pressure and easy to do, so much so that I’m tempted by this book, 200 Crochet Blocks for Blankets, Throws and Afghans: Crochet Squares to Mix-and-Match, so that I can just carry on making blankets right through the summer. Planning more things and not even finished this one yet…No change there, then.

Filed Under: Crochet, House, Other Things - 9 Comments

Bathroom

March 15, 2008 By 7 Comments

So here, finally, are pictures of the bathroom renovation. Apologies for the pictures being so large, but I like large…

taps before

This was on the left of the door. Truthfully you had to open the door, squeeze past the basin and shut the door before you could actually get to the toilet. And the shower screen sometimes fell off.

New taps and bath

Now this is on the left of the door. And there is no squeezing, although at the moment that’s because there is no door, but even when we get one there’ll be no squeezing.

Straight ahead of the door

Straight ahead- the floor tiles were all cracked because they hadn’t stabilised the floor, the bath panel was made out of rough MDF and the cupboard doors didn’t fit properly. Although Charlie liked to go and hide in there. She still miaows for it and hasn’t really forgiven me for getting rid of it.

now what’s straight ahead

But this is what we have now. I thought about moving the magazine rack, but that would be a lie. This is actually how we live.

Basin before

On the right. Nothing quite so depressed me as cleaning my teeth here. The basin was too large for the gap so it was wedged in and the boxing underneath it was impossible to keep clean. And there was no cupboard for things.

Basin now

This just makes me happy. A cupboard for things, a shiny towel radiator next to the basin so you can actually keep a towel there to dry your hands, a little shelf for storing cotton wool and products and a glass with the toothbrushes.

The shower headThis also makes me happy. We used to have to back right up to the taps to get under the shower, but this just dumps water on your head. I was waiting to show pictures of the bathroom until it felt as if it was ours – you know when you get something so new you can’t quite believe that it’s really yours to use. But looking at the pictures of what it was like before made me realise just how much I’d forgotten, and also made me wonder why on earth we lived like that for three years?! I think you can put up with a lot simply because it’s just the way things are, which should make me do something about the rest of the house I suppose, but I’m not likely to.

And just in case you would like to know where things are from, because I know that I’m nosy and maybe you are too, and if you liked something by the time you asked me where I got it I’d probably have forgotten:
Filed Under: Finished Things, House - 7 Comments

Take Two

February 16, 2008 By 5 Comments

Main panels attached

I really would have taken more pictures of this while I was doing it but I came over all superstitious, and felt that if I did I might jinx it and have to unpick once more. This is not to be advised with this particular fabric so I just gave in to the feeling and pressed on until it was done.

(Sorry for the quality of the photo – it was just too darn bright today. Yummy for humans, not so much for cameras.)

It still came out with excess fabric, and was the same on both sides. I’m not entirely sure what happened – I checked that I’d put the end panels on the right way round, and I lifted the pressure a bit on the foot, but no matter what I still ended up with two inches of spare bag flesh. Bizarre, yes. Still worried about it, no. Life is very much too short for that. Besides which, now that the bag is beginning to look like a bag, excitement at the possibility of having a finished project is spurring me on – I’ll move onto step 11 just as soon as I rescue the bottom panel from behind the cupboard where the kitten kindly stashed it this morning.

Now I’m off to use these, because I can now, even if the rest of the room isn’t quite ready yet.

taps.jpg

Filed Under: Bags, House, Sewing, Sophia Carry All, WIPs - 5 Comments
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