I did not get a chance to make the usual Christmas cake so my Mum made the cake and I offered to ice it. This is my third Christmas cake and I reverted back to a traditional Holly decoration… simple but I quite like it.

After a few ideas (like making a cake model of a Mini!) I decided it was best to keep it simple. I already had a silicone rectangular cake tin, so based on that, I thought a simple sponge with white icing, a 30 in black icing which would be the track and a mini cooper cake topper. How easy…

First of all I needed to find a firm sponge so I tested out a Madeira recipe from a cake decorating book I have. It worked well and Anthony even did a taste test for me under the guise that it had come from my mums work! hehe…

Next, I wanted to make my own icing. So after taking over my mum and dads kitchen and covering it in icing sugar I came to the conclusions I wouldn’t be able to (a) make a piece big enough to cover the cake/roll it out to an even thickness or (b) get it from the worktop to the cake (it was rather sticky!). I decided quite quickly that I’d use a ready rolled fondant icing instead.

Making the cake
I made the madeira sponge 3 days before the big day and the sponge turned out well. After leaving it overnight I turned up at my mum and dads house (our kitchen is too small) ready for some cake decorating… with my mum looking after Elodie I set about triming the sponge (cakes in silicone tins splay out at the sides!). Triming the cake was a time consuming and delicate job as I was scared a huge chunk of cake would come off!

Once I’d managed to make the cake more rectangular I set about splitting it in half and filling it with a thin layer of raspberry jam and buttercream. With a little help from my mum we managed to put the cake back together in one piece.

Next, I covered the cake in a very small amount of warmed marmalade to allow the icing to stick and started to ice it… I have to admit at the point I was rather lucky with the ready roll icing – I could only get a circular one which just fitted over the rectangular cake with a little nip and tuck ;)

I had bought a block of pre-coloured black fondant icing. With some careful rolling out I cut out my 30 and with my mums help again, we transferred the numers to the cake (they were very flimsy!).

It had taken a few hours to get to this point! So I was relieved to put the finishing touches to the cake (white icing for road markings and a black ribbon to hide the bottom of the icing!) and we put it away in a cake tin until his birthday.

Anthony seemed to like his cake but I think he enjoyed the driving experience even more – I thought I was giving him something to pacify his love of Minis when all I seem to have done is make it worse :) Ah well…

Here are some pictures of the cake and one of Anthony enjoying his present…

My mum kindly offered my services a few weeks back to bake some cakes for the cake stall at the Zoes Place Summer Fete.

It seemed like a great idea at the time, come Saturday evening post-baking it seemed altogether exhausting.  We arrived to set up our stall very last minute, but despite the rush, it was nothing less than a huge success.

Every year Zoe’s have a cake stall & the local Greggs bakers supply them with numerous freebies to sell so we had a front stall of homemade cakes and a side stall of Greggs baked goodies.  I am pleased to say that the homemade cakes sold out quickly & we were left with lots of Greggs muffins and cookies but by the end of the day everything had been eaten.

Between us, we made:

• 3 sandwich cakes
• tray of rocky road
• tray of mars bar rice crispy bake
• 24 sponge cakes with icing
• 24 rolo cupcakes
• chocolate muffins
• blueberry muffins
• chocolate cornflake cakes

We’re not sure of the final figure but it looks like we made just over £200 which will be doubled by my mum’s work, so it was certainly worth an exhausting days baking.

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…

Last week I signed up to the Abel & Cole website and ordered my very first box. My first impressions of the company and website were very positive and I especially liked the fact you can set likes and dislikes so hopefully there won’t be any waste.

We decided to set up an order bi-weekly just so that we aren’t over-run with veg in the first week so we’ll have too see how it goes.

So I was excited to arrive home this evening to find our little brown box on the doorstep.

This week we have been sent:

• Fennel (1, large)
• Celeriac (1, medium)
• Celery (1 bunch!?!)
• Vine Tomatoes (4, rather large, but ones exploded!)
• Linda Rosa Plums (8)
• Fair Trade bananas (5)
• Potatoes (6)
• Carrots (6)
• Leeks (2)
• Oranges (6)

So my next task is to work out what we are going to make…

And whilst I do that please take a nosey around my new pad and leave me a comment to say hello!

They are a speciality to Northern Scotland – so with some of my family roots being in Elgin it is something my Gran & Grandad would have enjoyed on a more regular basis. We bought most of ours from the bakers in Aviemore but they have to be eaten fresh, so when we got back last Saturday eveing I took a quick drive round to my mum & dads so they could be enjoyed the next morning.

We froze the ones we kept and enjoyed them for a leisurely breakfast this morning. Served warm with marmalde and a nice cup of tea.

Oh, and Ginger, if you read this – you asked what I was talking about last time so I hope this now explains!

I say we, but it was Anthony that cooked up a delicious starter. Steamed asparagus spears with quick hollandaise sauce. This sauce is not a traditional way of making hollandaise but is lower fat and much easier and to be honest, tasted just as good

Quick Hollandaise Sauce

• 1 egg yolk
• 1/2 tablespoon cornflour
• 1 1/2 rounded tablespoon creme fraiche
• 5ml white wine vinegar
• 1/4 tablespoon lemon juice
• 25g butter

Basically you put everything except the butter in a small pan. Whisk together and heat over a medium heat until simmering – whisking all the time. Take off heat & whisk in the butter.

Serve with steamed asparagus tips.

After enjoyed the asparagus I got on with the pie. And as it was Saturday evening I thought I’d use the potatoes I picked up for mash to make dauphinoise potatoes. This is something I’ve had in the back of my mind to try for a very long time and I searched on the internet for a recipe that suited what we had in. The link takes you through to the recipe I used from the bbc website.

We served the pie, dauphinoise with some steamed kale.

It is certainly a dinner to enjoy once every few months as it oozed lots of creaminess. But it went down very well with a nice cold white wine.

I was going to post some more about our adventures in Scotland but Hubby posted about it a few days ago.

To be honest, I haven’t cooked anything very exciting this week. I rustled up a tasty pasta bake on Wednesday with a tin of tomatoes, an onion, a green chilli & a clove of garlic – then mixing it through with some par-cooked pasta & mozzarella. Baked for 10 minutes and hey-presto. It was lovely & I quite enjoy it when I just throw stuff together that takes no more than 20 minutes.

Other than that we’ve not had anything exciting really. My enthusiasm has dipped a bit.

But I will get back & up running soon. In fact here is my list of ‘must cook soon’:

• Hot cross buns – after Jules posted her pics a year ago, I’ve been waiting for Easter to come back around!
• Cupcakes & shortbread – it’s sport relief next week so I assume work will want some baking to sell for measly prices! Bah. But I love doing it :)
• Pancetta-wrapped salmon for the new delicious magazine
• Roasted parsnip & Parmesan soup, again from delicious
• Bread – I did make a rather nice chilli loaf a couple of weeks back but didn’t blog it
• Lamb & rosemary burgers from Sarah Ravens book

Tonight I think we’ll be having a creamy chicken & tarragon pie which has featured here at least once with steamed kale & maybe dauphinoise potatoes – something that’s been on my ‘to cook’ list for ages. I had intended on making a chicken & asparagus pie in the week but ended up with asparagus risotto so I may use the last of the asparagus up with a ‘quick’ hollandaise sauce as a started – again a new one for me to try!

I am really keen to kick start my cooking again & I cant wait to move over to my new look blog – Hubby has been busy with things so it had to take a back seat for a while but I promise it is coming soon!!

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.

Pancake Day
I made some pancakes last Tuesday. Hubby doesn’t like pancakes (except for Little Chef ones apparently, but I think that is more of a rekindled memory as he hasn’t been to a Little Chef for a very long time). Every year I make myself a couple of pancakes with lemon and brown sugar and try to tempt him into trying them to no avail. This year I think I won. Well, I won him over with the filling – ice cream and Dulce de Leche (sickly toffee sauce). I stuck to my lemon and sugar combination but here is Hubbys sickly sweet pancake…

Rhosneigr
On Saturday we took a day trip to the lovely beachside village that is Rhosneigr on Anglesey – it was a beautifully sunny day and it really did not feel like February. The kite surfers were out in force enjoying the good weather…

And we quickly visited the South Stack in Holyhead before heading home…

Sausages and Mash with Jamies O’s Red Onion Gravy
We spent most of yesterday having a good clean and clear out. I had intended on sitting down at some point in the day and deciding on the weeks menu’s but left it far too late. In fact we only just managed to get to a Sainsbury’s about 20 minutes before closing. With the rushing around we ended up with a rather satisfying dinner – chilli & corriander sausages with mash, purple sprouting broccoli and my trusty red onion gravy…

Red onion Gravy (for 2)
1 red onion, finely sliced
1 clove garlic, finely sliced (can be left out)
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
hot water & vegetable stock cube

Fry onions & garlic gently for 5 minutes
Add balsamic vinegar & reduce by half
Crumble in a little stock cube & add hot water – keep simmering & add water as required to consistency you require