May 4th, 2008
Last weekend I made some Lamington cupcakes as a ‘Get Well Soon’ gesture for my brother who had just had an operation.
I had intended on following Bill Granger’s recipe for Lamingtons themselves but the sponge mix didn’t set and with 6 eggs in it I wasn’t overly surprised. So after a quick re-think I whizzed up a batch of Nigella’s trusty cupcakes and then topped each with lamington icing.
April 11th, 2008
Hello and welcome to my new blog. I hope you like it.
I am hoping my blogging friends from my blogspot blog will join me here, on what I hope to be, a more regular basis. So please can I ask you lovely people to re-save my link to: www.clairescakebake.co.uk and for those using a feed reader you’ll need click this link -http://feeds.feedburner.com/clairescakebake
This blog was designed by my wonderful web designer husband. I think he has done a great job so I just wanted to say thank you very much Anthony.
Whilst I am now up & running there are still a few bits to tidy up and set up, so whilst I’d encourage you to take a look around the different links, please let me know if you think somethings not quite right so we can fix it :)
Back to foodie related talk… Carry on reading & leave a comment…
February 26th, 2008
As I said last week, we have travelled North for a weeks holiday. Our first stop was an overnight stay at the Q Hotel just North of Glasgow, The Westerwood. Anthony treated us to a Suite and the price included Dinner & Breakfast. The dinner was lovely – unfortunately I didn’t get any photos but I enjoyed some Pollock from Peterhead served on a potato rosti with wilted spinach and a rather lovely creamy but light sauce.
On Saturday we carried on North and up into the Highlands, arriving at our accomodation after a leg stretching walk around Loch an Eilein. We are self catering in a very nice house towards the Northern end of the town. A view of a snowy topped Cairngorm can be found from the kitchen window.
Sunday was our first wedding anniversary and we spent some of it near the top of Cairngorm where we found some snow!
After wandering around and taking photos we grabbed a warming cup of hot chocolate & coffee before heading back down. In the evening we enjoyed a very pleasant meal at The Old Bridge Inn – it even started snowing whilst we sat enjoying our food. Proper big flakes of snow. Bliss. I enjoyed scallops to start – they were served in a light sauce flavoured with lemongrass and honey. For mains, I thoroughly enjoyed braised monkfish served with asparagus and seasonal vegetables. Anthony sampled some bruchetta followed by a venison steak (no photos again sorry!)
Yesterday we drove over to Aberdeen. If I am completely honest it was a miserable day weather wise. We kind of wish we hadn’t bothered with the 2 1/2 hour (each way) journey. You live & learn! On the positive side, we came back via the scenic route & literally came face to face with the most magnificent deer, possibly a stag. It was huge. I had put the camera on the back seat but was too slow in turning round to get it!
Today we ventured out for another walk, in the drizzly rain. After stopping off to get Anthony some more water resistant trousers. We climbed from Glenmore up to the valley in between
Creagan Gorm and Meall a’Bhuachaille. The views were beautiful. Lake Morlich shining in the grey light, snowy topped mountains and pine trees. By the time we reached the top the weather took a turn, the wind got up, the drizzle turned to hail and there was nowhere to shelter so we did a quick about turn and started back down the same route we had walked up.
Through the valley…
Views from near the top…
After getting back to the car we travelled a few miles back down towards Aviemore and stopped at the Ord Barn for a heart warming Parsnip & Honey soup served with homemade bread and a hot cup of coffee. Delicious. If I was to open up a cafe it would be something just like this… hot drinks with lots of homemade soups, sandwiches and cakes. Mmmmm.
February 21st, 2008
Rosie has meme’d me. But at the moment we are in the midst of packing for our holiday, but I did notice that one of the meme’d questions was ‘what were you doing a year ago?’
Well, I can’t resist quickly telling you the answer – and that, my friends, is running around like a mad hatter, bursting into tears at the drop of a hat, packing lots of bikini’s and shorts into large suitcases and putting the finishing touches to our wedding!!
I really can’t believe how quickly the last twelve months have flown by.
So I shall run off again now. But I will post the rest of my answers to the meme’d when we return from the Bonny Highlands. I hope you’ll let me off Rosie :)
January 1st, 2008
As the Zutons sing ‘this is just a night in the city of culture‘. Well it is now. 2008 is finely upon us. For some it may just be another year but for us up here in the Northwest it is a date that has been slowly dawning for nearly 5 years – I even remember hearing the announcement that Liverpool had won the badge for ’08 on Radio Merseyside! I digress…
Anyway, ever since the announcement, the construction world in Liverpool has gone crazy mad. The skyline shows the splendid waterfront interspersed with huge cranes. Liverpool One is well on its way to being opened in the Spring. It should be great with lots of new shops & I believe a new flagship store for John Lewis!
As you probably already know we don’t live in the City of Culture but we do have a rather grand view from our flat & it was here that we welcomed in the New Year. Despite being told that there were no fireworks display for the Capital of Culture, there was a service at the Catholic Cathedral & at midnight they did have some lovely fireworks – together with a lit up 2008 sign. As we weren’t expecting any, we didn’t have the camera ready but here are a couple of pics we managed to get…
So, its the new year and that means lots of resolutions. Here are a couple of foodie ones I’d like to share:
I hope 2008 is a good year for you all.
December 27th, 2007
What a mad few days! I really don’t know where to begin.
I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and Santa brought you some nice gifts. He certainly stopped here as I am now overwhelmed by lots of glorious & mostly foodie presents. To mention, but a few, I am now the proud owner of Simon Rimmers the accidental vegetarian which I cant wait to use. I also have (having arrived today!) the Best-kept Secrets of the Women’s Institute Jams, Pickles & Chutneys. I have a spoon rest, a new super-dooper set of scales, a years subscription to Delicous magazine, the very large & new Gordon Ramsay book and a beautiful Nigella cake stand in cream.
I also got my very own website which I will be moving to soon (I very much hope you’ll join me there). All I can say for now is Hubby is a lovely and very talented man – I have a new logo already – we just need to work on the website layout & content. So keep your eyes peeled for that!
Food-wise, we enjoyed a fantastic (as usual) Christmas day dinner at my mum & dads. We had smoked salmon blini with avocado, mango & chilli salsa. It was really really nice. Hubby had a sausage (its a long term joke in our family) as he doesn’t really like smoked salmon.
The main meal was Turkey with sausages, the-bestest-ever-stuffing (this is my favouritest part), roasted potatoes & roasted parsnips (in goose fat) so they were really crispy, carrots, sprouts (or for me, just one for tradition, I’m really not keen), bread sauce & cranberry sauce (i forgot to take mine, duh!).
Pudding was either Christmas pudding & brandy sauce or my mums triffle – loaded with sherry.
I will be making a smaller version of our feast, hopefully, at the weekend just for Hubby & I.
Oh, and our main present between ourselves was our lovely new digital SLR camera. My Gran was amused as I just took photos of anything that didn’t move all day long! So here are some of our snaps…
