Traybakes - Apple and Plum two ways

There will definitely be recipes on this blog from time to time as I love it, and am baking constantly. In the past week I have experimented with this cake, and made it two different ways, which both turned out lovely but individual results.

First Way - Using Mincemeat

I make lovely Plum and sloe gin mincemeat every year for Christmas (in fact I'm sure I shall post a recipe for it  come November), and my biggest fear every year is that I shall run out of it before the desire for mince pies ends, so I always over make, and this leaves me with a surplus that needs using at some point. Fortunately it keeps well, so here I am in June still using some of it. I've made this a few times and its always been very popular, it ends up being a lovely moist, spicy cake, and has a much more complex flavour then the work would suggest, as all that effort is got from the mincemeat. Any type of mincemeat that you make, and have left over would work well in this recipe.

- 6 oz caster sugar

- 2 oz golden syrup

- 8 oz butter

- 4 eggs

- 10 oz self raising flour

- 1 tsp baking powder

- half a jar of mincemeat (this part isn't very precise, the more you add the fruitier the cake will end up being)

Cream butter, sugar and golden syrup. Then slowly and an egg at a time and beat after each. Then sift in the flour and baking powder and mix. Then stir in the mincemeat.

Bake in a small rectangular pan, at 180 C (gas mark 4) for about 35 mins. Its done when the sponge springs back to the touch, and a knife comes out clean.

Second Way - Using Fruit

This one ends up being more of a "plain cake", but is really yummy, and not too sweet.

- 2 oz caster sugar
- 6 oz golden syrup
- 8 oz butter
- 4 eggs
- 10 oz self raising flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 apple
- 1 plum
- 3 oz currents
- 2 oz sultanas
- 1 tsp almond extract

Cream butter, sugar and golden syrup and almond extract. Then slowly and an egg at a time and beat after each. Then sift in the flour and baking powder and mix. Chop up apple and plum, then stir in all the fruit.
Bake in a small rectangular pan, at 180 C (gas mark 4) for about 35 mins. Its done when the sponge springs back to the touch, and a knife comes out clean.

Well if you try either of these let me know what you think.

Love Eggs xxx

Arts and Crafts

I haven't posted anything since July, which seems rather a long time ago now. I was on one Christian youth camp, and then a hol with the fam in Tuscany and the my Church youth camp. Which I had heaps to get ready for, here is me starting to pack up all the Arts and crafts stuff for camp.

This is just the contents of one box. There were heaps more to try and squeese into my car and the mini bus. Another six boxes.

These are a couple of the fabrics that I bought for some of my crafts.

And some pretty scraps that always come in handy.

Unfortunately I didn't manage to get heaps of photos of some of the things people made. But here is a wee taste.

This is a wee felt tiger made by one of the boys in the upper sixth, I think its a solid effort. I did offer him a pattern for it, but he ploughed in and made it up himself from the pic in the book.

One craft that was very popular was the notebooks, we always take loads of notes in camp from the meetings, we're blessed with some amazing speakers, so this idea really appealed. A lot of girls decided to recover their bibles too, everyone loves a pretty bible. 

This was another felt animal, adapted from a  rabbit pattern in this book Home made Vintage Gifts, which is a lovely book just too look at even. As you can see its a sweet koala, and it was made using an old cashmere jumper of mine that I felted, so the baby that will be its recipient will have something extremely soft. The girl that made this did an ace job.

There was defs a large variation of skill level involved, ranging from crafty girls down to boys hanging around  because there was some girl they fancied and wanted to impress, but most of the options simplified down fairly well, so I'm pleased. I had an absolutely fab week, but am now rather catching up on lost sleep. 

Hope your summer hols were splendid too.

Tons of love

Eggs xx