Food – Page 7 – Emma Varnam’s blog

Yummy Scrummy Cake

I mentioned the other day that I had decided to spend some time experimenting with two new cake recipes. Firstly I came across this recipe for Lemon and Blueberry tray-bake on the fabulous BBC site. It does taste good, especially the topping, and it disappeared very quickly.

The most hilarious thing was I made a major schoolgirl error when beating the icing sugar and butter together, basically using a very small bowl and a very fast speed on my hand whisk. Yes, I got covered in the finest stickiest white dust from head to toe. Oh and so did the kitchen. It made me giggle.

I am also always on the look out for the perfect Banana Bread. I am not sure why I have not been satisfied with previous recipes. However I think this recipe might be the answer. I got it from the most recent copy of Coast Magazine. But it came from this jolly looking book,Caravan Cookbook, by Monica Rivron. I don’t have a caravan, but we do go camping, so I am rather tempted to buy it. The cake is delicious. Yummy Yummy Yummy. Have a lovely weekend.

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Cupcake keyring

I am not sure when the cupcake muse will leave me…(soon I hear you cry!) However my friend Elise has been begging me to write up my Red Velvet cupcake pattern. Being obtuse, I failed to do so, but thought ‘Ah why haven’t I made a keyring/bag-charm in the same theme?’ It is a cutie wee thing and I have made the pattern available to download for free here. So if you are so inclined please do make one yourself. It is an evenings work at most.

This evening I have done a couple of things I have been meaning to do. In recent joyous trawls through magazines and websites I found a Banana Cake recipe and a Blueberry tray bake which I have been longing to try out. If all goes well I will tell you how they turn out share the source of the recipes. Yummy Yummy x

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Cupcake Heaven

Inspired by my little friends Alicia and Esther, I made two more calorie-free cupcakes. From the left: St Clements (orange and lemon), Red Velvet and finally Peaches and Cream. Yummy.

As an aside I got frustrated with failing to make a rib pattern in the round for the cupcake cases. (Any suggestions very welcome). So I sort of invented my crochet stocking stitch pattern, which might very well already have a name, but if you would like to know how to do it I will prepare a photo turtorial.

Then last night I had a group of lovely ladies over to my house for a clothes party. It was ALOT of fun. I asked my very gifted friend Elise if she would make me some of her wonderful cakes in honour of the event. My word, she did an amazing job, but I am thinking that they might have had calories in them! I think anyone who saw them thought I bought them from a professional bakery. She made some ‘Hydraenga’ cakes – one of my most favourite flowers and a ‘Daisy Cake’ so beautiful.

Thank you talented Lady x

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Cupcake Sunday

What is it about cupcakes? For a couple of years we have been obsessed, and I am not sure the contenders for the crown (Whoopie etc) will really overtake its place in our hearts. I think it is because they are a small bit of indulgent sweet heaven, which you can have just to yourself. (Let us not dwell on what that says of our generation).

I was at a party yesterday afternoon, and the generous hosts had provided the most beautiful cupcakes for the adults to eat. Now I didn’t feel hungry, I certainly could have done without eating one, but the butter cream and glitter spoke to me. I had to hold it in my little hand. Foolish girl.

What I do know is that both the baked form and the knitted/crochet variety still appeal to me. The very first jumper I designed had a cupcake on the front. My very first crochet design was a cupcake which began a small series of food items to liven up Little B’s play kitchen. He had such fun serving them in his imaginary restaurant. However as I walked through our garden this morning, I found that first little crochet cake abandoned, soggy and forlorn on the grass. It had a good life.(Pause). But this summer new versions should be made in the interest of health and safety and the imaginary world.

Today, good friends of ours came for lunch. Their youngest daughter was attracted to the little cake I made last night and then spent a happy half an hour drawing me her own designs. They were very good, and I thought I might use them as inspiration for a series. Having these little cotton cakes in your life certainly make putting on jeans a little easier.

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Birthday Celebrations and Pink Cake

In previous posts I have mentioned how much we like a lemon sponge cake. Well for the birthday celebrations I was tasked to make a lemon and orange cake. I used a new recipe which was really very easy. However, a word to the wise. The icing required the juice of half an orange. I dutifully obeyed. Unfortunately it was a blood orange. So the icing came out a little pink … OK very pink. Little B was unimpressed. I did make it worse by adding pink glitter. But the situation was not rescued when I realised that the only cupcake cases I had left for the strawberry cupcakes were the lovely pink ones I had for Christmas. Oh well. They tasted nice though!

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Lemon Drizzle

Look I am sorry this has been a bit of a food week, but to keep a promise from a kind commenter I just thought I would share the recipe for my failsafe Lemon Drizzle Cake. This is the cake which Little B always wants to make if we have time and way back in November I blogged about the fun we had together making it. Now I really can’t remember where it came from, but it sits on the dirtiest, stickiest page of my recipe notes. Here goes, I hope you enjoy it.

For the cake: Zest of 2 unwaxed lemons, 100g butter, 175g self-raising flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 175g caster sugar, 2 large eggs, 4 tbls of milk.

For the topping: 100g icing sugar, juice of 1 lemon

Preheat your oven to (180 C, 350 F, Gas Mark 4) Line a 450g loaf tin. Place the lemon zest and all remaining ingredients in a large bowl. Beat well until blended. Pour into the tin and bake for 30mins until golden. Turn out onto a rack to cool. Mix the icing sugar and lemon juice together and then pour over the cake.

It is sticky, gooey and a little bit zesty – yummy x

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Sticky Toffee Weekend

A dear friend of mine had a significant birthday this year and her darling husband gave her the opportunity to attend a cookery school with a friend for a day. Generously, she asked me if I would join her. Immediately I said ‘Yes’ and then immediately my husband said, ‘lets make a weekend of it!’

Now the cookery school is based in the Lake District in the north of England. If you don’t know it or anything about it, I have to say that it is truly one of the most beautiful landscapes which we have in this country. Mountains, lakes, pastoral green fields, views, woolly sheep. It is the landscape of Wordsworth, Ruskin and Beatrix Potter. If you saw the Beatrix Potter film a few years ago then the beauty of the countryside seems little changed from its rural charm shown on the film. Whenever we go, our spirits are lifted and especially in the winter it has a dramatic grandeur which takes your breath away. The photo above was taken from where we were staying near Ambleside as we left in the morning.

OK, OK, cooking! Well when it actually dawned on us that we were doing a full day of cooking, both A and I felt quite nervous. The cookery school is set in lovely countryside, and as we arrived we were invited to sit in the ‘Aga Room’ to help ourselves to fresh coffee and some lovely fruitcake. The day was a full on experience of teaching us recipes and then going straight away to stand by our stations and cook it ourselves. The two chefs, Ryan and Tim were very kind, and excellent teachers, so you didn’t feel under pressure at all.

Now if you are vegetarian please look away now. The funniest thing was the second task of the day was learning to bone a chicken. I will not be blogging this as part of ‘Lessons Learned’ because, I couldn’t faithfully repeat how you do it accurately and I wonder if I will ever manage to repeat the feat again. I got the fit of the giggles half way through as I held my poor inflicted chicken up high, grabbing it by the leg and thinking, I am actually in that film, Julie and Julia. People who know me, know I love to mimic and I started doing the Meryl Streep accent whilst unskillfully butchering this poor bird. Well the accent didn’t help, but I did do something I would never in a million years have attempted before.

We came home at the end of the day, with more food than we could carry, lovely lasagna, Spanish Chicken and the most awesome Sticky Toffee Pudding – yummy. But, boy were we tired. The boys had as much fun, with walks, scooting and laughter. A good weekend, with kind and generous friends and a beautiful place.

Big B took these photos, due to the concentration on the food on my part and a romantic vision on his.

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