Sarah's Blog

Cake heaven

Unashamedly "housewifey" post today - all food and craft!

I've dug out my Christmas cake stand (what with it being soooo close to Christmas day!) and have been making yummy teatime treats to go on it. Here are some recent choccy chip muffins - very gorgeous - I PROMISE I am going to get my recipe page up in the new year and start adding these things!

The other thing I did a couple of days ago is marzipan my Christmas cake - heavens! It smelt boozy when I unwrapped it! We'll be getting squiffy on it *laughs*.

I always have this "issue" when it comes to marzipan-ing and icing my cake because I get really irritated with trying to get the bottom nice and even. Before, I've always tried to cut the bottom while the cake is flat on the worktop and it's never worked very well and I've ended up doing a patching job with bits of marzipan/icing and got cross.

This year I had a lightbulb moment (quite why I never thought of it before, I don't know). I looked at the cake and looked at a dinner plate ... hmmm ... the central, slightly dipped part of the plate was SLIGHTLY larger than the circumference of my cake. Hmmm. Aha! Put the cake on the plate, cover with rolled out marzipan (clearly - not going to just stick a slab of marzipan on top!), grab sharp knife and cut round the bottom level with the edge of the dipped bit of plate. On removing the spare marzipan, smooth down the bottom and it's PERFECT! No patching!

Sometimes I surprise myself ....

Mmmm! SMELL the alcohol!

Bingo!

Away from food, I've been crocheting (generally only when the heating has been on because otherwise my hands are too frozen!) I'm waiting for same yarn to arrive in the post (absolutely GORGEOUS deep plum colour) so that I can start a nice warm shrug to go with my dresses but in the meantime I'm doing squares. I decided, on impulse, to use up all of my scrappy bits of pastel coloured yarn and make granny squares. Eventually, I'll piece them altogether and make a throw or something - given the colours, it will be nice for the spring .... so I've got a project to keep me busy over the winter :)

That's about it for today folks! :)