Day 88~366

One of the blogs I follow is called A cookbook a month and is written by 3 ladies who test and review a cookbook a month (makes sense). I follow it because their reviews are funny and I like funny. I’ve never done any of the books or recipes, though I’ve bought a couple of books on their recommendation, but a couple of posts ago one of the ladies, Maureen, tried a carrot cake recipe but reckoned her usual recipe was better, so I asked for that recipe as I like carrot cake (one of the few that I do) and fancied having a go.

Firstly, a thing to note is that I don’t bake, not being into cakes and the like it has never been a thing for me to do, so I’m a cake~bake virgin.  The recipe I followed can be found on cookbook a month HERE.

It took quite a long time to get all the ingredients weighed out and ready.

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and I was surprised at just how much stuff you need, a whole cup of sunflower oil was worrying, am sure my mum never used that and she was a baking person, and there was heaps of carrots so I thought it might taste like vegetable cake!  I forgot to get walnuts, and should have had a cup full of chopped ones, but I found some cashew nuts in the cupboard and used them instead 😀 but only had enough for half a cup. I completely forgot the 1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves, but other than that everything went as the recipe said. Mixed it all together as instructed, and voila!

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The icing cream didn’t go as planned at all. The recipe called for 900g of icing sugar. 900g!!! Thats a ginormous amount, and the icing sugar I had only came to 450g, so not to worry I thought, I’ll just halve the amounts of the other stuff.  Unfortunately I got distracted by our family arriving, and when I went back to do the icing forgot then to halve anything else, with the result being my icing cream was a bit too sloppy, so I just put it in the middle of the cake to stick the 2 halves together. There was heaps left over, so when our local shop opened at 6pm I went round and bought more icing sugar and thickened the rest up to lay over the top of the cake. 🙂

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The cake itself is really lush, didn’t taste vegetably at all, it’s lovely and moist and tastes gorgeous. I definitely will make it again, but reduce the icing sugar bits, I’ve had to freeze the rest of it! 🙂  Anyway that was my homemade square of the day, and now I’m going to eat it 😀

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Day 72~366

More tea and cake 🙂 though I have to be honest, the cake is meh. I don’t like marzipan at all, neither does Phil so this is going to be consigned to the bin, which I feel bad about but there’s no-one to give it to.

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Home & Away

Have been visiting my son Ben and Grandson Lewis down south in Leighton Buzzard, as it was Lewis’s 4th birthday yesterday.  We had a grand day out shopping in Milton Keynes, and bought all manner of Thomas the Tank Engine goodies. Finished up with a buffet tea and a Thomas cake!

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