Competition Coffee Cake

Today is the judging for the Virginia Show, so Mom, Siob and I are going down to drop our things in. I made the coffee cake earlier and realised I never put up the recipe for it!

It's really nice (well, the last time I made it it was, I can't cut this one and taste it!), and pretty simple, so you should give it a go!

They want it undecorated sadly, so that's why mine is lacking some nice coffee cream, but I'll add the recipe here:)

Mocha Cake

(serves 10-12)

175g self-raising flour

50g cocoa powder

225g soft light brown sugar

175g butter, melted

4 medium eggs, separated

60ml very strong coffee, cooled

3 tbsp water

Coffee Butter Icing

100g butter, softened

200g icing sugar, sifted

1 tbsp milk/water

3-4 tbsp cooled very strong coffee

- Preheat the oven to 190C/ 375F/ Gas Mark 5. Oil and line a 13 x 23cm loaf tin with parchment paper so that it comes over the sides of the tin.

- Sift the flour and cocoa powder into a large bowl, add the sugar and stir to combine.

- Using a wooden spoon or whisk, beat in the melted butter, egg yolks, coffee and water until smooth.

- Whisk the egg whites in a large bowl until fairly stiff peaks form, then gently fold into the cake mixture in 3 batches. Make sure there are no white lumps left!

- Turn the mixture into the loaf tin and smooth the surface. Make a small well in the center so that the cake bakes level and doesn't crack! (You'll see from my photo I forgot to do this!)

- Bake in the oven for 35 mins, then reduce the temperature to 160C/ 325F/ Gas mark 3 for the last 20 mins or until a skewer comes out clean.

- Allow the cake to cool for 10mins then lift out by the parchment paper and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

- Make the icing. Beat the butter until very soft and paling. Add the sugar, then milk/water, and then add the coffee.

- When the cake is cold, remove the paper and cut the cake horizontally and spread about a third of the icing on the lower half with a palette knife. Place the other half of the cake on top and put the remainder of the icing on it. Sprinkle with chocolate shavings or chocolate sprinkles, which I like to use!

- Leave it to stand for about 30mins before cutting. If you can wait that long.

(This also makes 12 cupcakes at 190C/ 375F/ Gas Mark 5 for 15mins.)

Yum! x

Cross Stitched Apron Cupcakes!

I wanted to put this in a separate post, though while I said goodnight in the last one, I'm seriously going after this one!
My Mom is quite the wizard at cross stitching and is even entering her cross stitched Zac Efron cushion she made Siob for, as you might guess, best cross stitched item at the Virginia Show. Seeing as I am incredibly slow on the crochet/ knitting uptake, I have decided that the next few presents I have lined up to make are going to be cross stitched.
Cos I can do that. I just need Mom to help me start it (all that finding the midpoint etc).
Recently she cross stitched cupcakes onto a plain white apron for her friend's daughter Maeve who would always be baking something in preparation for her Junior Cert Home Ec practical when Mom was over. I think it's really pretty, so took a photo of it to post here! I just made her a little card too to go with it.



Next stop: a cross stitched bookmark for a darling dear.

Sidenote: I am more than delighted that my laptop is now completely fixed and I can work so much faster on it!

Thank you Mr. Doug Computer Man for fixing it, you lovely man you.

I hope your day was nothing short of lovely, my dears.
And now I must sleep. x

LJ's bag- at long last!

This birthday present for Lovely LJ took me far too long- again with the fear of cutting the material and then ruining the whole project before it has even begun! I had never made a bag before in any shape or size, so to be honest, it was a guessing game the whole way!
I had an idea of the shape and style I wanted it to be, so started there. I also had the problem of deciding on a fastener for the bag... I was perplexed as to how I would put a zip on it properly, so I thought I'd cheat a little...
I put velcro on the inside and a big button on the front.

Okay, so you can clearly tell the button is just for decoration, but it was the best I could do!
I lined the bag with a black shirt I don't wear (don't worry LJ, it was freshly laundered!) and made a pretty sizable attempt at a gusset for the bag to give it some dimension.

making the strap for the bag

To me it was still too plain and needed something else, so I got some black felt for it and embroidered a rather stumpy looking bird.

By the way- embroidering on felt is very sore on the fingers. Beware!
But it looks cool. I added some buttons for 'food' for the bird, but also cos buttons look groovy.
I sewed three sides of the felt, so it serves as a phone pocket.
Or whatever LJ wants to put in it.

a headless Siob modelling the finished product

When I eventually got down to it and made the bag, it was relatively quick and easy to make!
Watch out you lot- it could be bags for everyone this Christmas.

Oh- and before I go, you may know my love of polar bears, so here is my new (still nameless) friend. He's been keeping me company:

And now I must retreat to my bed and read the Gary Lightbody interview in HotPress.
Sweet dreams!x

Little snippets of various things!

Hey there! The 69th annual Virginia Show is coming up, and with prizes for some of my favorite things to do, I'm entering some photos and a coffee cake! I'm really hoping I win with at least one photo, I'm entering five, though I've to wittle them down cos I'm finding it difficult to choose the entry ones!
I went up to the attic to get my very first camera to show you- I got it when I was about 5 years old and it has a two eyes visor which is strange! I could always use it properly, but it confused my Mom. Maybe it has something to do with how kids use their brain...I have no idea.

My how my cameras have advanced!:P

Also up in the attic is my first computer/laptop!
I must ask my parents what age I was when I got it, I really am not sure, possibly 7. If I stuck batteries in it it would probably work better than my one now...really should send that into the computer doc...It's so funny looking, but brilliant to still have I think, so I thought I'd stick it up here too!

But until July 31st which is when the Virginia Show is on, I thought I'd post this up! Hopefully with happy results:)

Tomorrow night I will be at Sarah Griffin and Lisa Keegan's round two of Scarleh Fer Yer Mah Fer Havin' Ya in Ormond Studios for a night of mortification a la teenage diary entries! The first night was a fantastic success and tomorrow should be even better! I think I'm going to be reading, so we'll see how that goes! I recently rounded up all my diaries from their various spots around the house and they're quite the stack!

Ignore The Book Thief, that's clearly not one of my diaries...

And also a taster of the birthday present I've been working on for LJ...please ignore the stumpy-ness of the bird...


Love!x

Devil's Food Cake! Ooooh!

A few posts ago I made Angel Food Cake for my Mom, and today I whipped out the cookbook again to make its counterpart for me! It really is just a chocolate cake with a few extra additions, such as my new friend food dye! It has a little bit of red dye in it which I know is in a red velvet cake that I really want to make soon!









It called for whipped cream, but my little country shop only had fresh cream, so I had to make do with that! I also added a little bit of strawberry jam between the layers and some chopped nuts to the top. Yum! Mary G called over to have some with tea and she enjoyed a big wedge and brought some home too:)

The birthday present I've been working on can finally be posted after the weekend as I'll have given it to a lovely friend at long last!
I've been scouring crafty blogs for ideas for my sewing box bits and listening to Tired Pony. It's quite a wonderful way to spend your time.
I've spotted a pair of beautiful key earrings on Etsy that I want, so I might purchase them tomorrow! I believe you should always get yourself little treats;)

Devil's Food Cake!
180g butter
385g caster sugar
3 eggs
225g self-raising flour
75g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
70g cocoa powder
3 teaspoons instant coffee granules
125ml water
125ml milk
1/2 tsp red food coloring
300ml whipping cream, whipped

rich chocolate frosting
60g dark eating chocolate. chopped
60g butter, chopped

-Pre-heat the oven to 170C. Grease and line bases of two 20cm round cake tins.
-Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy; beat in eggs, one at a time.
-Fold in sifted flours, soda and cocoa powder with combined ocffee, the water, milk and coloring, in two batches.
-Pour mixture into tins; bake for 40 minutes. Stand for 5 minutes before turning cakes onto wire racks to cool.
-Make the frosting!
-Sandwich the cold cakes with whipped cream, then top with frosting:)

For the frosting:
Combine the chocolate and butter in a small heatproof bowl over a small saucepan of simmering water, stir until smooth, then remove from the heat.
Cool at room temperature, stirring occasionally, until frosting is spreadable.

Enjoy!x

2am Rainbow Cakes!

This, my friends, is a rainbow cake.
I highly recommend you bake them at 2am with an incredible friend such as Griffin and eat them at a silly hour of the night with a decaf tea. You don't want to be kept up past your bedtime or anything like that...
It was Griffin's idea to make them rainbow and I can honestly say I will never make a plain bun again.
All you do is whizz up the normal cupcake/fairy cake recipe (I have a stupendous new one I'll add in at the end), divide it between as many bowls as you have food colors, and add a few drops of the color to each. Into each paper casing you place a little bit of each colored mixture.
Don't blend them!
Looks a bit like Playdoh here...
Then pop them in the oven to bake, allow to cool, then top with some vanilla buttercream.


Oh my oh my.
The inside of them resemble those gobstoppers you would suck on for weeks as a child, though these won't cut your tongue, simply give you the same sugar rush at the end of it.

New Cupcake Recipe!
(Makes 48 mini cupcakes, 24 bun sizes, or 12 muffins/cupcakes).

90g butter
175ml milk
tsp of vanilla essence
3 eggs
200g caster sugar
210g plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

-Cream the butter (which I always warm gently in the microwave first) and sugar and vanilla.
-Then add the eggs, one at a time, and beat after each.
-Add the milk, then sieve in the dry ingredients.
-Bake in the oven at 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4 for 13 minutes and allow to cool before icing. Use the vanilla buttercream from an earlier post and bam, rainbow cakes.

You will never look back.

The fun with food dye didn't end there!
Nope, at breakfast we made blue blueberry pancakes! Just add a few drops, swirl it gently and fry it up.


It doesn't add any taste, merely looks pretty. However, the new cupcake recipe is fantastic!
So go add some food dye to your food! Yay!

New life for an old skirt!

Hey there! Some late night sewing going on here! Just finished this, and now I'm off to make a birthday present!
I got this skirt from one of my cousins about five years ago and because I never throw away things for fear that I may one day need it, I decided I'd give it a facelift!

The skirt initially had a thin, hidden elasticated waistband with a teeny black bow and was below-knee in length. It was a bit frumpy and quite plain to be honest, so first of all, I took my scissors to it and made it to just above-knee.

my new skirt!

I found the elastic in my sewing box that I'd forgotten Laura K gave me for my 21st (where would my crafting endeavours be without her?!) and decided I'd stick it on to the top after I chopped off the waistband.

old waistband

It looked a bit 'blah' with just this, so I took out the olive green ribbon I had intended for another project (which I royally ruined tonight, so I'm currently trying to think of a crafty way to salvage it) and sewed it onto the bottom hem. While I was finishing things off, Siob was messing with the rest of it and made a lovely bow out of it, and so to bring in the green a bit more (there's only hints of it in the pattern) and more dimensions to the skirt, I stitched it onto the waistband with one stitch also on each loop to stop it from drooping forward.

bows win

I'm thinking about wearing it out Saturday with a black vest top for my birthday, but it's not what I had in mind (it was the currently stalled project), so I'll see how the mood takes me and if I get a source of divine craft inspiration by Friday night!

Angel Food Cake

Oh I'm seriously starting to neglect things these days! I made this cake about 2 weeks ago now and I'm only posting it now! Eep.
I was in the wonderful bookshop By The Book in Virginia with the Fam one day and got the Australian Women's Weekly 100 Classic Cakes cookbook which was a steal at €8 and is full of cakes I didn't even know about, such as this one. Mom had a flick through in the car and when she saw it said "You're making this when we get home".
Which I did.
She had it years ago in NY and has dreamt about it since, apparently. It's a funny kind of cake- it has 12 egg whites (no joke) with pretty much a sprinkling of flour, cornflour, a good bit of sugar and some vanilla.
It's a bit sweet and sticky. It recommends having fresh berries with it, so i chopped some strawberries and blueberries to have with it. Some of the Fam found it too sweet which meant Mom had a cake for herself that lasted days in the house of locusts.